I only have to hang on for a minute, my fingers on my clit while he steps out of the shower, and when he returns and sees me touching myself, he groans. "Fuck, Red," he says.
"What?"
"If I weren't so worked up already, I'd make you do that a while longer, just for me."
He's behind me, the way we were a moment ago, and when he enters me, I'm already swollen with arousal. "Keep doing it," he whispers. "Keep touching yourself while I fuck you."
"Do you like that?" I ask, as he fucks me, his movements perfect, bringing me higher and higher so quickly it takes my breath away. "Me touching myself?"
"I fucking love it," he says.
So I tell him how I’ve touched myself, how I’ve fantasized about him, sliding my fingers inside me while I’ve thought about what I wanted him to do to me. He growls, spinning me around and lifting me up to impale me on his cock, my back against the shower wall. I wrap my arms and legs around him, clinging to him as he thrusts inside me.
And begging him to fuck me harder, whining for it. Desperate for it.
"I had to see the look on your face when you came,” he says. “I can't get enough of it."
"Shit, Luke, I'm so close.”
"Tell me what you thought about when you touched yourself," he says, his words punctuated by thrusts inside me.
"I thought about you," I say. "I thought about your cock."
"Tell me what you thought about exactly, sweetheart," he says. “I want to know.”
"I thought about your cock in my mouth," I tell him. "I thought about sucking you."
"Oh shit," he groans, thrusting inside me, and I'm so close. "You thought about me coming in that sweet mouth of yours?"
"I thought about you fucking my mouth," I say before he brings his mouth down on mine again.
"Shit, Red," he says. "I can't get enough of fucking you. I can't get enough of this tight pussy."
"Oh, God." I'm slipping against the cold shower tile, water and shampoo running down my face, but all I can think about is how hard Luke’s cock is inside me, how swollen it feels, like it’s ready to explode.
He takes my lip between his teeth, biting down and sending a pang of pain through me, bringing me even closer to the edge of oblivion. "Oh hell," he says. "Are you going to come on me? I want you to come on me, baby."
He doesn't even finish the sentence before I let go. My orgasm triggers his, and I can feel him explode into me, shuddering as I cling to him, consumed by my own pleasure.
"Fuck," he says, looking up at me. My heart is still pounding in my chest, my breath short. "Some friend you are."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Luke
I lie on my stomach in Autumn’s bed, recovering from the last round of sex with her. Her hand traces lazily along my back, fingertips brushing the scar. I don’t know why I even told her about it. It’s a part of myself I keep hidden away, locked up from anyone who knows me.
But Autumn...there's something odd about the way I’m so quickly comfortable with her. It’s easy being with her, which is fucking strange because she’s probably the most tightly wound chick I’ve ever met. But hell, I’ve never stayed in someone’s bed like this, fucking and hanging out and talking, without wanting to get the hell out of as I was finished getting off.
"Did you always want to be a smoke jumper?" she asks, her voice soft.
“Not really,” I say, looking at the small painting that hangs on the opposite wall, palm trees and water and bright colors. I wonder if she lies here at night, looking at it.
“Not really?”
“Nope.” How do I explain that I never imagined myself doing anything -- being anything? The Saint family’s name was shit in this town, and we weren’t supposed to amount to anything. We were always outsiders here, and that was only worsened by my father’s shittiness. "I just needed a way out of this place. I like being outdoors, working with my hands. I like the land. And the rush. I always liked being on the edge.”
I leave the second half of that sentence unspoken -- because when you grow up the way I did, you never know if the next breath you take is going to be the last. There’s something about that fact that just sits with you. You get used to it. And that’s how you live.
I don't say that part, because I think that part is pretty fucked up, and Autumn isn't the kind of person who would understand my particular brand of fucked up.
“You were running away,” she says. When I roll over, she’s lying on her side, her head propped up on her hand.
I’m not sure if she’s talking about when I first left West Bend, or every day since then. “I guess.”
“I ran away, and found this place,” she says.
“Who runs away to West Bend?" I ask, shaking my head.
She shrugs. "It was an accident," she says. "I didn't go out looking for West Bend."
"You threw a dart at a map or something?"
"Almost," she says, laughing. "I ran out of gas."
"You ran out of gas, so you decided to stay?"
"I had kind of a meltdown," she says.
"A mid-life crisis, you mean."
"Shut up," she says, punching me in the arm. "I'm not middle aged."
"Hey, you're the one who keeps going on and on all the time about how old you are," I say.
"I was having a shitty week," she says. "Not a mid-life crisis."
"Must have been some week to land you in West Bend."
She laughs, but there's no joy in the sound this time. "You could say that."
Then she tells me about her ex-husband, and how she walked in on him and his secretary, the same day her father died. When she was going to tell him about her pregnancy. And all I can think about is what a total asshole that guy must be, how fucking blind and stupid you have to be to miss what you have right in front of you when the woman with you is someone like Autumn.
"I just walked out," she says. "I didn't have a plan. Everything in my whole life has been planned out – the right schools, the right experiences – and I've never deviated from it. That was the first time I've ever not had a plan." She looks at me for a long moment. "Except for now."
I've never had a plan for jack shit in my life, and Autumn was sure as hell not a part of my non-plan. "Why the hell did you buy an orchard?" I ask.
"I ran out of gas right now the road from here," she says, grinning. "And June, this girl – she owns a bed and breakfast right near here – gave me a lift down to the gas station. When I saw the orchard, I made her pull over."
"So you just up and bought an orchard," I say.
"Well, when you say it like that, it sounds crazy," she says.
"You're slightly more spontaneous than I thought you were."
"Thanks," she says, her tone sarcastic. Then she's quiet for a minute. "I needed a change. My father left everything to my brother and I – my mother passed away a couple of years before. We didn't agree on how to run the company anyway. I let my brother buy me out. He thought that my coming out here meant I'd really had a nervous breakdown or something, that I'd honestly lost my damn mind."
"Do you regret it?" I ask.
"Coming here?" she asks. "No. I don't know anything about cider, or about orchards, not really. But my whole life, I never took a leap of faith before that. I'd never had to close my eyes and just jump."
Close your eyes and jump.
"Besides, this place just gets under your skin after a while."
I look at her for a long time, before I reach out and brush a piece of auburn hair off her shoulder. "Yes," I agree. "You try to get away, but it never leaves you."
Autumn laughs. "That just sounds creepy."
"It can go either way," I say. "Good or bad."
"I don't know," she says. "I like it here. So many people are leaving, getting their properties bought up by that mining company, you know? I thought about leaving, taking Olivia and going back to Kentucky. But this place feels like my home."
"Yeah, they tried to buy my mother's property too," I s
ay.
"But you're holding onto it," she says. She doesn't ask anything else about my family, has the sense not to probe into things.
I exhale heavily. "It's complicated."
"Things are never simple."
"My family is about as complicated as it gets," I say. I don't say anything else. I don't want to bring her into my bullshit. I don't want to contaminate her with my family and whatever the hell is going on with this town. She thinks of West Bend as this oasis, this perfect place isolated from the rest of the shit that happens outside of here. She ran from enough bad shit in her life that she doesn't need mine.
I don't want to poison her.
My family is poison and I know it.
In fact, the best thing for her -- and for Olivia -- would probably be if I stayed way the hell away from her. The trouble is, I’m not sure staying away from her is something I can do.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Autumn
Sunlight streams through the windows, bathing everything in the room in a warm mid-morning glow.
Mid-morning.
I bolt upright in bed, pulling the sheets around my naked body, my heart racing. It’s mid-morning and I haven’t heard a peep out of Olivia?
Scrambling out of bed, I throw on a t-shirt and pull on my pajama pants, that were previously crumpled into a pile on the floor. There's an empty spot where Luke was last night, and the initial twinge of disappointment I feel when I see it turns to panic when I check Olivia’s room and see her empty crib.
I race down the stairs two at a time, mentally running through every possible catastrophic, terrible scenario in my head.
My thoughts are irrational, crazy, but I can’t stop them. This is like the beginning of every episode of one of those horrible news shows. I'm going to be a cautionary tale, something people tell about the mother who stupidly slept with a man who kidnapped her child.
Then I hear Olivia's laughter, her high-pitched squeal, and I burst into the kitchen to see them. Olivia sits in her high chair, clapping as she presses a spoonful of yogurt against Luke's nose. He looks at her with wide eyes, his nose dotted with yogurt, and she collapses against her high chair in hysterics again until she's nearly breathless.
"Did you sleep?" He looks up at me, casual like he does this every freaking day. As if he's in the business of entertaining toddlers.
"What are you doing?" My voice comes out harder than I intend it, but my heart is racing, pounding in my chest so hard I think it's going to explode. I look at them together, Olivia delighted with her new playmate, his nose covered in yogurt. For a second, I want to walk over there and kiss him.
"You were sleeping so soundly, and you were so tired, I figured it'd probably been a long time since you got to sleep in, so when she cried, I brought her downstairs. There's coffee over there if you want some. Bacon and eggs, too."
"How long have you been awake?" My voice is still clipped, with an edge I can’t quite seem to control, and I’m not sure why I’m so annoyed by this. I watch as Olivia applies more yogurt to Luke's nose and collapses into hysterical laughter again.
"A couple of hours."
"You've been entertaining her for a couple of hours?" He’s trying to be nice, I tell myself. The rational part of me knows that. But the protective mother in me thinks, you slept upstairs while some guy was alone with your child for a couple of hours?
"I figured if she got really upset, I'd just come up and get you."
"You should have gotten me anyway," I say, my tone clipped. "Unless you have vast childcare experience I don't know about."
It just comes out, and I look at his expression, and know I’m being mean. But I'm still on edge, still worked up by the fact that I thought that something had happened to her.
And by the fact that I feel suddenly vulnerable, finding him down here, laughing with Olivia. Taking an interest in my child.
You’re scared because he’s taking an interest in you. Because maybe he isn’t just a fling.
When Luke looks at me, his jaw is clenched. "I didn't realize you'd have a problem with it," he says, standing up and wiping the yogurt off his nose with a napkin.
I keep my tone level, my voice quiet, aware that Olivia can hear us. "You didn't realize I'd have a problem with a strange man in my house, alone with my child?"
Holy shit.
I don’t even mean to say it. The words just come out, and I immediately want to take them back. I regret them instantly. A hurt look flits over his face and then disappears behind a stony one, and I feel terrible.
"You're right," he says, his voice flat.
"She's my kid," I say. I don’t try to offer another explanation, put into words how I’m feeling this morning in the wake of what happened between us last night. I’m feeling panicked and skittish and not at all like myself.
His jaw clenches, and he looks at me, his expression hard. "No problem," he says. "I should get going anyway."
He calls Lucy, who pads over to Olivia's high chair, licking her toes, and Olivia giggles with delight.
"Luke, I -- " I start, but don't know what the hell to say. I could say a thousand things that would make this situation better – I could explain that I didn't plan to wind up dealing with a morning-after breakfast with anyone anytime soon. And that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.
Instead, my mouth goes dry and I stand there stupidly, tongue-tied, saying nothing. For once, words completely fail me.
"No worries," he says, avoiding eye contact with me. He starts down the hall, calling Lucy, who trails after him.
"Luke, you don't have to go," I say weakly, as I unbuckle Olivia from her high chair. "I didn't mean anything -- "
"It's all right," he says, giving me a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "We're still friends, right?"
He gives Olivia a little wave before he walks out the front door. And I let him go. I let him drive away, even though I could easily have asked him to stay, apologized for being an idiot.
But instead, I stand there, with Olivia in my arms, telling myself that I'm in the right.
Even after I walk back into the kitchen and look at the breakfast he cooked for us – that he cooked for me while watched Olivia and let me sleep in, because he was trying to be nice.
Damn it. Why can't I let someone just be nice?
***
"It's nothing," I say, trying to sound casual but my voice betrays me.
"Obviously," June says. We're sitting on the back porch at her house, watching the kids play in the sandbox. It's not our regular play date day. It's the emergency Saturday morning play date I called an hour ago.
"I mean, it just happened," I say. "It was stupid. Irresponsible. I shouldn't have brought him over. It's one of those things that you're not supposed to do, right? Isn't there some kind of rule about that, a recommendation from experts or something?"
June laughs. "Rule about what? Having a little bit of fun for a change?"
"A rule about bringing a man home when you're a mother," I say. "About not bringing some random stranger and exposing your kids to a creep or something."
June purses her lips and frowns. "Oh, so now you're saying Luke
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