by Lia Lee
“That smells fantastic,” he said. “The smell of coffee and bacon is sure to get any man out of bed.”
I smiled and dished up the food. Luke took his plate, and I took mine. We sat down at the little table together. We were starting to create a routine, and I liked it. I didn’t feel like I was a guest anymore, or worse, a patient. I felt like Luke and I successfully turned it into a little home.
The moment I thought it I pushed it away. Luke and I were playing happy family because he had no choice. I was here until the roads opened after the snow had made them inaccessible. This wasn’t anything other than a necessity.
“I want to go back to Dillon today,” Luke said.
“Why?” I asked. “Didn’t you say you only go a couple times a week?”
Luke nodded. “Ideally, yeah. But they sold me meat that’s gone off before nighttime. I want to exchange it and fight with the butcher. He knows me. He knows he should check his meat before giving it to me.”
“It’s very cold for meat to go off,” I said.
“My point exactly. Would you like to come to Dillon with me again today?”
I nodded. We had been to the little town only yesterday, but the cabin was small, and it was easy to get cooped up out here. The snow had been falling steadily so heading out for a walk hadn’t been possible.
“It would be a good idea to call Lizabeth again,” I said. “Maybe she has a weather update for us. It’s her parents I was traveling to in Steamboat Springs. She’s in New York but they invited me to stay while I’m vacationing here, and they’re worried now that I dropped off the map. It’s good for Lizabeth to be able to let them know I’m alright.”
Luke didn’t ask why I didn’t phone Lizabeth’s parents directly, and I was relieved. I didn’t know what I would have said in response. Instead, Luke nodded. “New York can be a great place or a scary place, depending on how you look at it.”
“Do you go often?” I asked.
“Not in the past year or so, but I used to live there. I have an apartment there.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “For some reason, I thought you had lived in New Jersey, too.”
Luke shrugged his shoulders. “I grew up in Atlantic City, but I moved to New York when I was fresh out of college and built a life there.”
“Until your parents disowned you?” I asked.
Luke nodded. I frowned. It didn’t make sense to me. Why would Luke have left New York if his parents lived in Atlantic City?
“Do you miss New York?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” Luke said. “But I like the simple life out here. In the city, it’s so easy to get caught up in the rat race, in doing what you have to do no matter what.”
I could relate to that. We might not have been coming from the same place, but I knew exactly how that felt; doing what I had to do no matter what.
“If you don’t mind me asking, you’re a grown man and you had your own place in New York. Why did you come here when your parents disowned you? Could you not have stayed in New York?”
Luke shook his head. “No.” He glanced at me, and a look crossed his face that suggested he’d just remembered something. “I mean, I guess I could have. But my life was so damn full, and I needed to get away. We had this cabin in the woods, so I decided why not?”
I envied Luke the ability to leave everything behind and go. Sometimes I wished my dad would disown me so that I could stop running, stop trying to impress him and always fail. But that was unfair. Luke had been close to his parents, and he had lost them, and here I was practically wishing my father away. But if Luke’s parents had put Luke through the kind of hell mine had put me through, maybe he would feel the same about his parents.
“So, the cabin is in the family?” I asked.
Luke nodded. “I grew up in the mountains. We came out to the cabin often. My parents got the room, of course, and I had the sleeper couch. It was an adventure to come out here. My dad taught me everything I know about hunting and trapping and surviving in the wild.”
I watched Luke talk about his family, and it was so obvious he missed them. I felt sorry for him. He wanted to be with them, but he couldn’t. It was horrible to think about, and it made me envy the bond he must have once had with them. I had never had a bond with my dad. I had been trying to escape him my whole life. It was the first time I had had enough courage to get this far.
“I can see why you would escape here,” I said. “There’s something about this place that’s nothing like anywhere else I’ve ever been.”
“It’s the wilderness,” Luke said. “It’s strangely accepting. At least, to me.”
I understood what he was trying to say, even if he thought it sounded silly. The wild mountains, the secluded cabin, the snow that kept us in most of the time and prevented me from leaving, all of it made me feel like I fit in somehow.
That, and how Luke was treating me. I could see why he would come out here and spend more than a year in the mountains, living from supplies that he bought in Dillon and virtually no social life.
How different it was from the life I had grown up in. Aside from my dad being in the mafia, I had lived a normal, city life. I had rushed from one place to another, and I had always had too many people to see, too many places to rush off to. Out here, there were hardly any people at all, and in only a few days I had slowed my life down to a snail’s pace.
And it was wonderful. It was easy to see how Luke could have stayed here for so long.
We arrived in Dillon, and Luke stopped in front of the butcher. He went inside with the meat he had bought yesterday to take care of it. I stayed behind in the car again and dialed Lizabeth’s number. She wasn’t as frantic when she spoke to me this time. After she made sure I was still alright and let me know how her parents had reacted to the news that I was alright, I asked about the weather again.
“I know it’s the most boring thing in the world to ask my best friend,” I said. “But you’re my only contact to the outside world right now.”
Lizabeth laughed. “Well, I guess we don’t have anything better to talk about than the weather, seeing that you’re not going to give me any details about the mystery man you’re staying with.”
She was fishing for information, but I wasn’t ready to tell her what had happened between Luke and me, yet. I wanted to relish in what we had done by myself for a short while longer before I dropped the news to Lizabeth that I had lost my virginity. I knew she would squeal and go on about it, and I wanted to wrap my mind around it, first.
“I’ll talk to you about it when I can,” I said. “For now, I need to know if I can reach your parents. What are they saying?”
Lizabeth sighed. “I guess I’ll have to be content with that. They’re saying there’s going to be a window tomorrow where the roads will be open, but it’s not going to last too long. There’s another storm pending for later in the day. So whatever you do, do it fast.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Liza. You’re such a help.”
“Anytime,” she said. “I think what you’re doing is so brave. I’m glad I can help even if it is only through weather reports.”
We ended our call, and I walked into the store to find Luke, who was looking at new cuts of meats to replace what he had brought back to the butcher. When he saw me, he flashed me that charming smile that made me melt every time.
“Is everything alright?” he asked.
I nodded and told him what Lizabeth had told me about the weather.
“We’ll discuss what to do when we get home,” he said. “First, tell me what you think of this.”
Luke pulled me into a discussion about the meat and which cuts were the best to take. I didn’t usually enjoy shopping, but it was fun with Luke. Then again, I was starting to realize that no matter what I did with Luke whether it was sex or dishes or grocery shopping, I enjoyed it. Everything about Luke was fun.
Chapter 10
Luke
After we were in Dillon together, Anna and I head
ed back to the cabin. She helped me unload the new meats I had purchased and this time they were fresh. I had enjoyed shopping with her. The more time I spent with Anna, the more I enjoyed her company. She was open-minded about life, and she wasn’t afraid of hard work, but she was elegant and graceful at the same time.
They said it was impossible to find a perfect woman, but Anna was pretty damn close.
While Anna put the kettle on in the kitchen after everything had been unpacked, I built up the fire. It crackled, licking around the fresh wood I had brought in from outside, and the cabin warmed up quickly so Anna and I were able to take off our coats and boots.
“I’m going outside for a while,” I said to Anna when the fire was ready.
“Why?”
“I set some traps this morning to see if we can catch some game. Now that the storm has passed animals might be around, and we can have a good dinner tonight. Have you ever tasted deer?”
Anna shook her head. “They’re fresh out of those in New York.” She chuckled.
“Well, hopefully, we find something. I think you’ll like it, and I can cook up a mean deer.”
“Are there bears in the area?” Anna asked.
I nodded. “They usually hibernate in winter, though. I doubt we’ll see any of those around until the snow melts. But there are plenty of woodland creatures, deer, the odd mountain lion here and there.”
Anna raised her eyebrows. “And we went out for a walk in the middle of the night.”
“They don’t come close to the cabin,” I said. “They know there are people here and they know people kill them. We’re safe as long as we stick to the cabin and I didn’t set traps that far out into the woods. Only a few yards out to catch the few creatures that dare wander close enough.”
“It’s so different, thinking you catch your own food out here. I know it’s what we did once upon a time as cave men, I guess, but we’ve become very comfortable and domesticated.”
I nodded. “It’s scary to think how dull people have become. “
“Well,” Anna said. “Life out here certainly isn’t dull, and I like the idea of fighting for survival, making it happen so we stay alive. I’d like to try whatever you can find.”
She was so open about everything. I liked that about her. Anna wasn’t like other women I had known growing up. She didn’t mind getting her hands dirty if it came down to it, and she wouldn’t cry over a broken nail. She was the kind of woman I could take on a hike, and she wouldn’t complain about bugs or animal droppings.
“I’ll be back,” I said and walked to her to give her a quick kiss on the mouth.
Anna smiled at me, her dark eyes beautiful and trusting. I stepped out of the cabin back into the blistering cold. Despite the sun shining through patches in the clouds and the storm having died down for a while, the cold had a bite to it that reminded everyone winter wasn’t over yet.
The trees were covered by a blanket of snow that lay perfectly on each leaf and each bunch of pine needles. The snow was thick and undisturbed, my footprints from earlier the only footprints that cut through the powder that had fallen throughout the night. Even though the undisturbed snow was beautiful, it was also a bad sign. No animals had come in this direction. There weren’t any tracks.
When I was a little boy, my dad had taught me how to track animals in the snow, what their footprints looked like, and how I could spot a pattern by the way the prints were laid out in the snow. He’d taught me to follow those tracks to burrows or fresh water and to see when there was a scuffle. I had used so much of what my dad had taught me out here in the mountains the past year, it was as if my dad was by my side all the time.
I’d had to leave them behind when I’d gone on the run. I had cut off all communication with them because I was scared Frankie and his men would use them as leverage to get me back if they knew where to find them. Frankie would stop at nothing, and my parents didn’t deserve a life of fear because I had made stupid choices.
I walked the trail I had followed earlier in the morning to set the traps and checked them one by one. They were all empty, as I had expected judging by the lack of tracks. Strange, I had never had problems with animals being scarce before. I only caught a few animals when I needed food, and I tried to put my traps in different places so they didn’t start avoiding certain areas. Animals were smart.
I wondered if they had realized I was here to stay and they had started looking for other grounds. But that seemed unlikely. I had been trapping the whole year I had been staying here, and the animals had never moved away to greener pastures, as it were.
The forest around me was quiet, with no birds chirping in the trees. The storm had driven them all away.
A whistling sound made me turn my head and listen. It was almost the sound of a person whistling, but not quite. I recognized the sound but wanted to be sure. A few chirping sounds following, close to what birds made but again, not quite.
I knew what I was hearing. A mountain lion was somewhere close by. People often mistook the sounds of a mountain lion for birds chirping of someone whistling, but I knew better than that. I had grown up out here, and it was mountain lion country.
It explained why the animals were so scarce, why I hadn’t been able to trap any. With a mountain lion around, it was dangerous for all animals out here. Aside from the bears in the summer, the mountain lions were at the top of the food chain.
Chapter 11
Anna
I walked to the bathroom to take a shower on Saturday night, after supper. It was my last night here. In the morning, Luke and I were going to set out early to drive to Steamboat Springs, and Luke would have to race back home to be safe before the storm hit.
It was risky, but Luke had insisted on taking me, and it was flattering that he wanted to take care of me. Luke had been attentive and caring since the moment I had arrived at the cabin, and the more we’d gotten to know each other, the more caring he had become.
I was sad it was my last night with Luke. I didn’t want to leave, yet. I wanted to spend as much time with Luke as I could, get to know him even better. But what future did we have?
I pushed the thoughts away. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was here and now.
I turned on the hot water and walked back to the room while the shower heated up. In this cold, it took a while for the water to get hot. I found clothes in my bag and carried them to the bathroom. I didn’t close the door behind me. Instead, I stripped naked and stepped in under the hot water. It cascaded down my body, and I tipped my head back, wetting my hair. Taking a hot shower in this cold was the best thing I could imagine. It drove away the chills, and this was the only time I was warm without wearing layers of clothing.
The bathroom door was open, and I had left it like that on purpose. I wanted Luke to come to me, to have his way with me. We had only done it once, and I was nervous about instigating it, but I wanted to sleep with him one more time before I had to leave. Being with Luke was the most amazing experience, and I didn’t want it to be over.
After I had been in the shower for a while, Luke walked into the room. He glanced in the bathroom, saw me under the water and froze. I looked at him with an innocent face, running my soapy hand over my body. Luke’s lips parted, and I watched as the bulge in his pants grew. It was so hot to know that I had that effect on him.
“Do you want me to close the door?” Luke asked after clearing his throat. He looked at my eyes, and I could see what a struggle it was to force himself to look away from my body. I was still sliding my hands over my curves, cupping my breasts, sliding my hands down my stomach, over my hips, and between my legs. I washed myself seductively, looking at Luke all the time.
Luke swallowed hard and cleared his throat again. He tugged at his belt, trying to rearrange his pants.
“If you close the door the heat will stay in the bathroom,” Luke said. His words trailed off as his eyes slid down my body again. He couldn’t stop himself from staring.
“So
? Close the door but stay in the bathroom with me,” I said.
Luke did as I asked. I didn’t think he had the capacity, staring at me naked and touching myself, to do anything else. It was perfect. It was just what I wanted.
“Join me,” I said when the door was closed with Luke remaining in the bathroom, still staring.
He looked me in the eyes and hesitated only a second before he started stripping off his own clothes. When he was naked, his cock hard and sticking up into the air, Luke opened the shower door and stepped under the water with me. He closed the shower door behind him. The bathroom had already started to fill up with steam, and Luke’s face was hazy against a steamy backdrop. It made him look even more handsome, his eyes an impossible blue.
Luke lifted his hand and trailed it down my cheek, his eyes glued to mine now that he was in the shower with me. I put my hand on his wrist and slid it up his forearm. Luke stood so close to me I could see small freckles on his nose that no one could see otherwise. Droplets of water clung like small crystals to his hair.
Slowly, Luke ran his hand over my body, touching me everywhere but my breasts and my pussy, and I shivered. He used only his fingertips, and the sensation was almost ticklish. I ached for Luke. I wanted him to touch me properly, to take me. But he was teasing me. His eyes were filled with hunger, and he swallowed now and then, but he wasn’t going to give me what I wanted until he was ready.
Instead of going in for a kiss, getting him to succumb to me, I did the same to him as he was doing to me. I brushed my hands over his body, exploring every inch of him. I stared at his hard dick when my hands played on his hips. I had seen a few dicks in my life, but it was mesmerizing to watch Luke, thick and hard, the mushroom head bulbous and oozing with lust.
