I give an involuntary shudder. “Gross. If that’s meant to be a double entendre, you ought to know right now that you’re terrible at it.”
He chuckles, bends his head to his task, and I dig deep for the relief and pride I usually feel when I manage to crack open that hard shell of his. But he’s right. I’m tired, and a little wary too, nervous and concerned and it’s hitting me, all at once, that we’re almost done with this, that the presentation is the last major hurdle, and then one more week and this will be done—we’ll be done. I look toward the lodge and see Lorraine out on the porch, deadheading a pot of mums that are fighting the increasingly cool weather. Under Aiden’s plan, the lodge will have to expanded considerably for counseling services offices. He’s got a schematic in his binder that shows half of that wraparound porch removed, a whole new wing that would eliminate the space Paul and Lorraine had used, just last weekend, for a wedding dance floor.
I told him to take out that schematic. Maybe they don’t need to know about that, for now.
When he’s done, we both wave at Lorraine and set out hiking our way back to our cabin. We stay mostly quiet, and when I look over at Aiden, I can see that he’s running through it again in his mind. I think maybe once I catch his lips moving, practicing it out, and my heart tugs in admiration, in something else I don’t want to put a name to.
Once we’re inside our cabin, I decide a hot shower is in order, maybe a nap if I can swing it before we have to meet the group. Aiden passes on the offer to join me, the binder already set out on the desk, ready for him to review again. I purse my lips in an effort not to say anything, to warn him not to overdo it so he doesn’t sound robotic tomorrow, and head into the shower. I turn the water as hot as it will go, stand under it way too long, arranging my body in the way I know now is best for avoiding that stage-five-clinger shower curtain. It’s a little funny, how used to it I am now. I know the water’s harder here, so my soap takes longer to lather. I’ve even gotten weirdly used to my bunk, to waking up close to the ceiling. I’ve got this stretch I do when I’m climbing out of it in the mornings, arching my back while I keep my hands wrapped around the top rail, my whole body lengthening in relief.
When I come out to the main room, though, I see I won’t be doing that stretch tomorrow.
Aiden’s taken apart my bunk, has found a way to detach it from the one below, setting the two beside each other and shoving them together, the once-bare bunk beneath mine made up with clean sheets and a blanket of its own. When I look over at where he sits in the chair, I can see the skin underneath his stubble flushed slightly pink, whether from embarrassment or exertion or some combination of the two. “Felt like we could use a real bed,” he says, shrugging.
“Right,” I say, a little stiffly, ignoring the feeling of his eyes on me while I walk to the dresser, pull out fresh clothes.
“That all right with you? I can put them back.” He’s already up, moving over toward the beds, but I stop him.
“No, it’s okay,” I say, crossing to him, putting my arms around him while I’m still in my towel, probably making his whole front damp. This is so different, this weekend, this affection, this—tenderness. It’s been different for a while, but him showing up to my place has changed everything, and I don’t know what kind of complication sharing a bed is going to do to me. Or maybe I do know, but I don’t want to think about it too hard just now, with those two bunks looming. I lean back from him, adjust my towel, and shrug casually. “It’ll be nice,” I say, forcing my voice into its light, teasing register. “Very civilized.”
He tips his head, some faint curiosity that passes through his expression before he smooths it out, turns back toward the desk. “Very,” he says quietly, and we don’t talk much after that.
I think about that bed too much through dinner, but if there’s a silver lining to Aiden’s obsessive preparation for his presentation it’s that he decides to do one more round after dinner, and so I settle into it on my own, pillows stacked up and my ereader on my lap, as near as I can get to my nighttime routine at home.
He comes in late, after eleven, bringing the smell of crushed leaves and cold night air with him, his movements careful and quiet. “I’m awake,” I call to him, waving my book in the air, its screen lighting me up with the faintest glow. I can see him, though, in the light from the entryway, and he looks better—a little tired, but more relaxed too, a different person from what I saw yesterday morning.
“It went okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, turning toward one of the sinks, toeing off his boots while he puts toothpaste on his toothbrush. I’m glad he’s not going to shower—he’ll still smell like the outside when he comes in. “I think it’ll work.” Then, like he’s worried he’s jinxed it, he shoves his toothbrush in his mouth, scrubbing vigorously to shut himself up. It’s a few minutes before he finishes washing up his face and hands. I notice, this time, that he doesn’t forget and shut off the light, and my standard protesting reminder dies on my lips. When he comes into the living space, he undresses quickly, draping his clothes over the desk chair before pulling on a pair of mesh athletic shorts and crawling in beside me.
There’s a moment—a tightening of the air between us, where I think—What now? It’s late, the day so long, and both of us are tired. The kind of sweaty, half-frustrated sex we have doesn’t seem fitting tonight, me with my pajamas and my book. I shut off the screen and set it down on the floor, tucking it slightly underneath the bed, wondering if maybe I should get up, go to the bunk that’s usually Aiden’s, sleep apart again.
The whir of my thoughts is stopped by his arm snaking around my waist, pulling me toward him, and I do what feels most natural, curling onto my side so he can tuck in behind me, his chin resting on the top of my head, the whole front of his body pressed against the whole back of mine. But my spine is stiff, that ramrod posture I used to have at work. Aiden tightens his arm around me and says, gruffly, “Don’t overthink it,” and somehow, it’s enough. I don’t want to overthink it. I just want to be warm and sleepy like this, with him.
I’m drifting off when I feel Aiden’s body twitch and stiffen beside me, a grunt of discomfort escaping. He lifts the arm he has wrapped around my waist, twists his torso away from me, another small grunt. “I’m sorry,” he says, when I stir, turning toward him. “Sorry,” he repeats, and reaches his arm up, crooks his elbow awkwardly as he tries to reach and scratch at a spot on his back.
“S’okay,” I murmur, moving so I can put my own arms around him, and I scratch right above the spot he tries to reach, and he makes the most gorgeous, satisfied noise, a growly bear delight that makes me smile.
“Oh, God. Keep doing that. Harder. A little to the left.”
I press my smile into his chest, loving the way his body shivers in pleasure, the way his muscles bunch underneath my fingers.
“More,” he pleads, shifting so my hands go to where he wants them. “Feels so good.”
“You’re like an old man,” I say, laughing now, all that awkwardness gone. “Or a bear. You should go outside and rub yourself up against a tree, be with your comrades.”
“Trees don’t have nails like yours,” he says, releasing another groan.
“Did you get into something? Poison ivy, or…I don’t know what. Other itchy-type plants?”
He chuckles, a rumble in his chest that I feel against my breasts. “No. Just sometimes get itchy at night when it turns cold. I think your soap yesterday made it worse.”
“That soap is made with cocoa butter,” I say, annoyed, and he breathes out another soft laugh.
I run my nails up and down his back, pulling him so he rolls partway on top of me. He resettles, hunching down and resting his cheek against my chest. The scruff on his cheek and jaw abrades my skin, but I don’t mind. I keep my hands moving over the muscled planes of him, as far as I can reach in this new position, and Aiden sighs against me, his warm breath tickling underneath the edge of my camisole, blowing against my left n
ipple, which peaks in response. He notices, lifts his head enough to kiss me there, gently, no intention to it, before resting against me once more. And it’s the perfect kiss, the perfect feeling, somehow. It feels like we’re not in a hurry, like there’ll be time and time again to get back to him inside me.
And all of a sudden I feel tears well up behind my closed eyes, my throat constricting slightly. I almost recoil at the shock of it, my mind immediately racing to account for the oddity: The last couple days have been stressful. You’re overtired.
But deep down, I know it’s something else. This moment, and this man, and these two twin beds shoved together in this cold, spartan cabin—it’s the most intimate experience of my life. It’s the feeling I chased in those stupid, careless months after my dad died and I’d felt so alone. Of all the things I’ve done for Aiden over the last few weeks, it’s this thing—this small service that makes him snuffle and wriggle in boyish delight—that makes me feel as close to him as I’ve ever been to anyone.
I swallow reflexively against the tears, and Aiden props himself up, rising over me, his brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?” he asks, and I can’t do anything at first but clamp my lips shut, shake my head in a wordless nothing while I wait for this storm to pass.
“Zo,” he says, one hand stroking the hair back from my forehead, the gesture so new that a fresh clutch of emotion seizes my throat. “Don’t look like that.” It’s so abrupt, so commanding, and I smile a little, a few tears that I’d held in springing out of the corners of my eyes. It’s that knife-edge feeling I get with Aiden, all the time, mixed-up emotions he brings right to the surface in me. Anger and lust. Frustration and sympathy. Fear and freedom.
Lonely…and still, somehow, in love.
“I was married once,” I blurt, the only thing I can think to say that will keep me from thinking about what I’ve just admitted to myself about how I feel for Aiden. I’ve said it because I want him to be shocked. Because I want to push him away.
But other than the stilling of his hand, he doesn’t move at all, and I am desperate to fill in the silence. “I’d just turned twenty,” I tell him, and I expect, any second, for him to roll over onto his back, to have to tell him the rest of this without his eyes right above mine and without the heat of his body so close. He doesn’t do any of that, though—he’s turned to stone up there, but surprisingly, it doesn’t feel hostile. It’s just what Aiden does when he’s turned his full attention to something.
I don’t tell it quite the way I did, years ago, to Kit and Greer. Here, it’s messy, not chronological. I start in various places, have to circle back and fill in the blanks, though Aiden asks nothing as I talk. He was much older. It only lasted a few months. His name was Christopher. I met him after my dad died. It was a bad time for me. I gave him my inheritance, to save his business, this shitty little bar where I learned to beat you at darts. It strikes me how little time it takes to tell it, the basic story always the same: I was grieving, and I didn’t know what to do. I was young. I’d inherited money I didn’t want. I made a mistake, lost most of the legacy my father left to me. Then I cleaned up my act and I started over.
When I’m done, Aiden’s stillness and silence start to feel uncomfortable, recriminating. I offer a meaningless, “So,” and roll onto my side again, away from him, the movement awkward—my hair catching under his arm, one of his legs heavy over mine at first.
“How much older,” he says, softly, hard to hear over the movement of my body and the rustle of the sheets. He repeats it when I pause before answering.
“He was thirty-eight.”
This strange intimacy we’ve forged means I can feel him thinking, even though we barely touch now, just the faint brush of the hair on his legs against my smooth ones. I lie there, my eyes open, staring across the room, my gaze level with the exposed pipes beneath one of the sinks.
“You were too young,” he says, finally.
“I know,” I snap back. Maybe I expected his censure, but it still hurts to hear it.
He sets a big hand on the curve of my shoulder, stroking down to my elbow, which he cups in a tender, unfamiliar gesture. “Zo,” he says, his voice soft, the way it was in those first minutes after I’d fainted in his driveway, how I imagine he talks to the sick and scared people he picks up to put in his ambulance. “I mean this guy, he shouldn’t have married you. He should’ve known better than to marry someone your age.”
Kit and Greer said this too, when I’d told them—making Christopher the predator, absolving me of responsibility. But I’m defensive of my own guilt, of the shit I deserve to eat for that time in my life. “I asked him. I gave him the money of my own free will. He was—is—a good person.” I mean, I guess he is. I’ve never spoken to him again, not after the divorce.
He strokes his hand back up to my shoulder, tugs lightly so I roll onto my back. “So are you,” he says, simply.
I close my eyes, not realizing until he’s said it how much I want to hear it, from him more than anyone else. “Your brother,” I whisper, so he doesn’t forget—or maybe so I don’t forget—why this isn’t permanent.
“You’re not responsible for what happened to my brother. You know that.” He leans down, rests his forehead against mine. “I know that too.”
“I am sorry. You’ve never wanted to hear it from me, but I am.”
He’s quiet again, and I try not to let the disappointment pierce me. Aiden will never give me anything of Aaron. He won’t even give this camp anything of Aaron.
“We should sleep,” I say, just to say something, and anyway, it’s true—we’ve had a long couple of days, and tomorrow’s so important. When Aiden rolls onto his back so that we’re now awkwardly side by side, untouching again, I know he’s agreeing implicitly, and my face feels hot with embarrassment at having taken the night in this direction—spoiling the easy familiarity of backscratching and teasing. I begin to shift into a more comfortable position, but before I can move, Aiden moves back on top of me, his skin hot and tight, like his muscles have all bunched up underneath.
“Did you love him?”
I almost repeat the question, to stall. After all that, I want to give him the long answer, the answer that makes me look better—I thought I did, but I was young, and grieving, and I got love mixed up with movement, with doing something. But I shear it of these platitudes. They don’t really matter, in the end. “No,” I say.
He kisses me then, his tongue licking into my mouth, and before long it’s heated—his hand under my camisole, cupping one of my breasts, one of his legs pushing between mine, nudging them apart. I wrap my arms around him, using those nails he likes so much to dig into his back, until he grunts in pain, or pleasure, or both. I’m as desperate as he is, arching my back off the bed to get closer to him, tensing in frustration when he pushes my hips back down. He curls his fingers around the waistband of my pants and underwear, tugging them down over my hips to my knees, where I kick them off the rest of the way. I reach my hands into his shorts, squeeze his ass, force his erection against me, and he leans down, sucks at my neck. I register dimly that it will leave a mark, and all I can think is, More of that, leave more of those, make sure I feel this tomorrow.
I bend my wrists so I can press his waistband away from his body and get his shorts off, but he plants his knees and reaches around to stop me, lifting my hands from him and pulling off my top, then circling each of my wrists in his hands. He tugs them up, setting them on either side of my head, and lets go, kneeling between my legs and looking down at me, his stare telling me, somehow, what he wants me to do. I slide the backs of my hands up until I feel the cold steel of the bed frame and I curl my fingers around it. He nods, one quick duck of his chin, and the movement thrills me, my hands gripping tighter until there’s a sound—a tiny clink against the metal bed frame that indicates I forgot to take off the ring tonight. I know Aiden hears it. I see his mouth tighten, but I don’t have time to wonder what that means.
Because then—then
Aiden starts to take me apart.
He starts at my mouth, kissing me slow and deep—long, drugging kisses that he only interrupts when I take one of my hands from the rails to touch him. “No,” he says, thrusting his hips against mine, once, and I do what he says. He moves down, teasing the underside of my right breast with his fingers, setting his lips and tongue to my left, and he stays and stays, switching between them, touching and licking and sucking them each until they ache, until I’m straining to bring my legs together, to rub them against each other if he won’t come to me. This is what he wants, I realize, to make me crazy like this, to see how close he can get me to coming just from the hot press of his mouth against my nipple, the pulling, pressing bluntness of his fingertips—and to my surprise, he is getting me close, closer than I thought possible from just this simple act that I’ve always thought of as a little foreplay, or a little extra incentive during the main event. “Aiden,” I whisper, “please.”
It comes out like a whimper, and his hand is gone from my breast, splayed low on my abdomen so that his fingertips fan out, his thumb crooking down over where I’m wet, where I need him—and then he presses, exactly enough, right there, and I need nothing else, no rubbing or grinding. I just come, from all the anticipation he’s wrought in me, and it’s long, shuddering, not slow to start but slow to spread all through my limbs, even into my hands, which are gripping the bed so tightly that I can feel his ring pressing hard into my skin.
I wait, breathing hard, for him to strip, to get a condom and get inside me. But he does none of that. He pushes himself lower, not far before he encounters the other end of the metal frame, and he grunts in frustration, barely hesitating before he hooks his arms beneath my knees and lifts, moving me so I lie diagonally across both mattresses. And then he lowers himself, kneeling on the floor, and presses his mouth against me, open and searching. I’m so wet that I tilt my hips back, a shy reflex. “No,” he repeats, bringing me back to him, and it’s what I need to be able to enjoy this—his commitment to it, his moans of pleasure. When one of his hands leaves my hip, I know where it’s gone; I know he’s gripping himself, as turned on as I am. I close my eyes, picturing it, the hand he used to touch me closed over his cock, and I feel another orgasm building—and that’s what he wants. I can feel him wanting it, coaxing it from me, and when it comes, when I cry out, one of my heels pressing into the mattress, our pushed together beds splitting apart a little, Aiden groans in relief, licking me softly until the pulses stop.
Luck of the Draw Page 22
