“Not on that part of my ear at least.”
His laugh rumbled deep in his chest, and she felt it thrum through her. She pushed her breasts more firmly against him.
“My front half is pretty warm too,” she added.
He kissed her again, taking his time, feeling the bend and ease of her spine as he found the edges and dips of her desire. His tongue traced the line of her jaw. “Mine too,” Hank said.
“Come on, you’re starting to get too cold. I’ll race you.” He pushed her away from him, catapulting her toward the shore. She kind of adored how he could toss her body around like that.
She could feel his presence behind her and pulled harder to beat him to the shore. Maddie ran out of the freezing water and dove into her backpack to take out the small face towel she’d packed. It was enough to pat herself dry. She hunched over her bag and tried to casually take her freezing wet bikini off without making a big deal about it. She pulled on her sweatpants and then pulled the sweatshirt over her wet top, then reached under and removed the wet bathing suit, keeping herself covered with the loose hoodie.
“All set?” Hank asked. She turned to face him and realized he was still standing there sopping wet and must have been staring at her the whole time.
“Yeah. Did you enjoy the show?” She hoped he did.
“One good strip deserves another, right?”
Maddie caught her breath when she thought he was going to give her a full Monty right then and there. He must have followed her salacious train of thought. He shook his head right and left. “Not now, Post. I meant last night when you were watching me under cover of darkness.”
She smiled and folded her arms across her chest. “You obviously wanted me to watch if you were going to stand there by the open window and pull off your underwear for the whole world to see.”
He walked toward her, then bent down to pick up her damp face towel. “May I?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
He began to dry off his neck and then his arms and then under his arms. Maddie was mesmerized. She loved the way the fabric rode across his muscles. She loved the way he touched himself with such deft efficiency. She wanted to be the frigging towel.
“You all right, Post?”
“Yes.” But her voice cracked.
He laughed and dried off his insane abs. She kept staring. He reached the towel around to his lower back, slowing down a bit to give her a little extra time to focus on his stretched hip flexors. She bit her upper lip and pulled her folded arms tighter into her breasts.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m sure. Go on.”
He stood there for a few moments, deciding what to do next.
“Yes, ma’am.” Hank snapped the small towel over one shoulder, then slowly unbuttoned the wet fly of his cargo shorts. The water had tightened the buttonholes, and it forced him to slow down his pace. Once he’d gotten them all loose, he reached his thumbs into the waistband of his boxer briefs and pulled the whole wet mess off. He walked naked over to one of the rocks and bent over to lay the clothes out so they might be drier by morning. Chances were slim that they’d dry, but he had another pair of shorts and a larger plastic bag to put this pair in if need be.
When he turned back to face her, Maddie was frozen in place.
“You are really something, Hank.” He looked down at his nakedness, as if seeing himself through her eyes.
“Not a lot of big lugs like me at Brown?”
She’d decided about ten seconds ago that he could say any stupid incendiary thing he chose to and she was absolutely, 100 percent not going to come up for it. “Oh, there are plenty of lugs.”
Maddie couldn’t really catch her breath. His legs and thighs were so strong and solid. His hips like some ancient Greek statue. His shoulders—well, she’d seen those already, she supposed, but they were still amazing. And he was so comfortable in his own skin, just prowling around the campsite as if it were perfectly normal for him to be buck naked in the middle of the forest. Maybe it was.
“Do you go naked camping a lot?” she blurted.
“Do I what?” He was crouching by the circle of rocks he’d just finished building for their campfire and was snapping small twigs and throwing the bits of kindling in.
“Do you come out into the wild so you can roam around like a big old naked caveman?”
“Maybe?” He said it like a question, but he was smiling. “I’m just more comfortable like this, I guess.” He shrugged, and she watched the muscles in his back shift and glow in the early evening light.
“Well,” she chuckled, “you certainly don’t need to put on any clothes on my account!”
She walked over to where he was busying himself with the fire. He’d already gotten a small flame going, and she stared at the flickering light against the planes of his face. She lowered herself to sit next to him, then reached out hesitantly to touch the muscles on his back. His eyes closed at her tenderness, and she felt a tingling sensation in the palms of her hands. She felt like St. Jerome with the lion. Hank could turn on her at any moment, but when he was pliant like this, it was incredibly powerful. She leaned in and kissed his upper arm, then rested her head gently against his shoulder. He leaned his head against the top of hers, and they both stared into the growing flames.
Maddie heard the steadying pace of his breath and tried to calm her skittering heart. Despite her possession of condoms and sharing banter about hussies and hookers, the truth was that Maddie had never quite gotten around to losing her virginity. She wasn’t saving herself or anything, but it had just never happened. She was always perfectly happy fooling around and doing what her roommates used to call “any old thing.” But that next step always felt just too emotionally perilous.
And Hank . . . well, he was probably the most emotionally perilous person Maddie had ever met. She wanted to kiss him and touch him so badly, but there was no way she would spend the rest of her life having to confess—if only to herself—that she’d lost her virginity in a tent with some guy she would probably never see again after this summer.
Her heart was calming down. She reminded herself that a summer fling and the-first-man-I-ever-had-sex-with were two entirely different concepts. She needed to keep Hank firmly in the summer fling department. For both of their sakes.
She took a deep breath and relaxed closer into him.
After a few minutes of what Maddie could only vaguely describe as communal bliss, he kissed her forehead and said, “I think the fire’s ready for the fish. If you want to set it up.”
“Sure.” Maddie answered but didn’t move. She didn’t want to break the spell of the two of them just sitting there next to each other like that, without any banter or misunderstandings or anything, just being like that. Together. She took a cleansing breath and stood up to get the fish.
Hank watched her walk barefoot across the pine needles that created a soft bed underfoot. “You should probably put some shoes on,” he said.
“You should probably put some clothes on,” she volleyed back, without looking at him.
He laughed and rustled through his backpack before finding the pair of sweatpants that he’d packed all the way at the bottom. He snapped the elastic waist and turned to face Maddie as she worked on placing the fish-stakes at different angles over the flames. She looked up and smiled. “You look great.”
“You too,” he said quietly.
The fish was done quickly, and they ate it with their hands, right off the sticks, like melted marshmallows.
“So, good, right?” Maddie was in the food zone again, relishing every taste that went into her mouth.
Hank nodded and went back to his new favorite pastime of watching the way her mouth moved when she chewed. She licked every bit of fish off the smooth spikes she’d whittled, then tossed the wood sticks into the fire. “Now, that’s what I call a good dinner!”
“You are one cheap date.”
Maddie rolled her eyes at him. “I know it’s prob
ably a lot to ask, but could you try, for like a few hours, to keep the cheap whore jokes to a minimum?”
“I didn’t mean it like that!” He laughed.
“Sure, you didn’t!” But she laughed, too. He finished eating, then tended the fire to make sure there were no stray branches that could catch a spark. He’d unrolled the two sleeping bags earlier and set them into the tent side by side.
“How cozy,” Maddie said as she passed in front of the triangular opening.
She used a bit of water from her water bottle to moisten her toothbrush and quickly brushed her teeth. When she turned back to Hank, he was in the midst of strapping up his backpack on a high branch away from where they were sleeping.
“Bears,” he said, in a pedantic, leave-it-to-me tone of voice.
“I know.”
She crawled into one of the sleeping bags and shook her legs down into the end. A few minutes later, Hank joined her in the tent.
They were only a few inches from one another, the small space not allowing either of them any privacy. Hank was kneeling awkwardly, trying to get into his sleeping bag.
“Are we going to fool around?” Maddie asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
“You are such a piece of work.” He shook his head.
“Why? I just want to know. Because if we’re not going to, then I’ll just fall asleep and not lie here wondering.”
“Wondering what?” He started moving again, working his way into his sleeping bag. The moon was bright and the tent was barely dark. After a few seconds, they could see each other’s faces easily.
“You know, stuff like: Is he asleep? Is he going to reach over and hug me? Is he going to kiss me? That sort of thing.” She turned on her side so her face was only a few inches from his profile. She kept her hands to herself, tucked up to her chest inside the sleeping bag. When he didn’t make a move, she yawned. “I’ll take that as a no,” she said, yawning a second time.
“Get some sleep, Post. You’ve had a long week.”
Her eyes were closed and she felt safe next to this strong, caring man. Even though he wasn’t really touching her, he created this vibe around her that made her feel totally protected. Maddie fell quickly into a deep sleep.
They both woke up just after five, the sun barely beginning to peek over the horizon.
“Hey,” Hank said softly, touching her cheek.
She opened her glassy eyes, then closed them again, turning her lips to kiss his palm. “Mmmm.”
There was nothing “Mmmm” about how much he wanted her, thought Hank, it was more like hell.
She rolled away from him—good, he thought, I’ll be able to escape—then she shimmied her entire body against his—her back to his front—and made that disastrous “Mmmm” sound again. Obviously she felt him against her; how could she not?
“You feel good,” she added sleepily, swiveling her backside into him.
He threw his left arm over her hip and pulled her roughly against him. He’d kicked off his sweatpants in the night and he was naked against the slippery nylon inside the sleeping bag. Hank made an unintelligible sound of frustration. Maddie looked over one shoulder.
Delectable. All half-asleep and willing.
Hank’s heart began to pound.
“What is it?” she asked, without a hint of irony. “Are you okay?”
He pulled her around to face him, then pinned her to the ground with his body, both of them still in the sleeping bags. She strained her neck up to kiss his hard chest and felt it deep inside when he gasped in response.
“Maddie . . .”
“Hank, please let me . . .” He was still trying to hem her in with the cage of his strong arms, but she was slipping around in her sleeping bag and managed to get her sweatshirt off while they were sort of wrestling like that.
“Oh, Jesus . . .” His voice trailed off when he looked down at her exposed body. She shook her mussed hair out of her face and arched up to him.
“Please, Hank.”
He dipped his head down toward her, and she felt like he was in slow motion. Like he was underwater. He would make love like he was in the water. With natural power and grace.
“Mmmm!” She was holding her lips tightly closed between her teeth, trying to silence her piercing reactions to his kisses along her body.
“I want to hear you, Maddie. No one’s around for miles. Let me hear you.”
She didn’t need any more encouragement to let her voice, and her body, do as he bid.
She was so immersed in his touch, reveling in his exquisite attention, that she lost her focus entirely. Her fingertips slipped along his back in a dreamy near-touch, trembling along with his strained muscles. He was methodical. Competent. Thorough. She almost started laughing when she realized he was going to take her to the heights of sexual pleasure just like he did everything else: confidently.
And then she was gone, her head flung back, her eyes staring blindly at the seam along the top of the tent, her body sizzling and heating up higher and higher as Hank worked his way down her stomach with possessive kisses. When his face reached the edge of elastic at the waist of her sweatpants, he bit the fabric and tugged it down with a low growl.
Everything stopped. She gasped.
“Maddie?” There was a tenderness in Hank’s voice that shifted everything. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure she wanted him tender. Tender was complicated. For all her talk about being opposed to some two-dimensional hook-up, Maddie realized she didn’t want to have an emotional quagmire on her hands, either. That’s what she kept telling herself, at least, because the alternative—that she was already starting to care way too much about the mess of feelings that swam behind this man’s eyes—was not an option. She needn’t have worried.
He yanked her sweatpants all the way off and drove all thought from her mind, kissing his way up her thigh.
When her final piercing cry reverberated through them both, Hank slowed down his pace, drawing out her pleasure. He softened his hold on her hips and caressed the inside of her petal-soft thighs with his thumbs, then kissed his way back up her rising and falling abdomen.
“Good morning,” he said with a smile of arrogant satisfaction.
Maddie panted and smiled back with a little nod.
“Good. Speechless. I like it.” Hank trailed his palm back and forth across Maddie’s bare stomach, watching the skin pebble and ripple in the wake of his touch. “Amazing skin.”
After one long exhale, Maddie finally started to come back to earth. “Hey.” She stared at his buzz cut and the two-day growth of whiskers and the tiny scar on his left cheek. She touched the scar with the tip of her index finger, just to feel it. She had no mind for curiosity. Everything had been reduced to physical sensation. Starting with the contact of that one fingertip, her body began to wake up to the possibilities of Hank’s entire body at her disposal. She pushed him onto his back and straddled him.
Maddie’s head almost touched the top of the tent when she was astride him like that. She placed her palms on his chest, then leaned down to enjoy every square inch of this man’s hard, toned body.
As she learned to map the areas of his greatest response—the pale flesh of his ribs, the turn of his neck, his sensitive ears—Maddie gradually moved down his body, just as he had moved down hers.
“You don’t have to—”
Maddie was so close, hovering between his navel and her objective. Her hair fell along his hip, a silky panel.
“But I can if I want to, right?” She stared at him, waiting for him to answer. “I mean, you’ll try to like it, right?” She’d already begun touching him lightly between his legs.
His voice was thin. “Only if you want to.”
Maddie wanted to. Badly. So she did.
After, the two of them lay there breathing hard, Maddie’s cheek against his lower belly. Hank’s hand slowly loosened its grip in her long hair and he massaged her scalp absently. It felt like gratitude.
They both fell back to sleep.
>
When Hank woke up an hour later, he was naked and alone on a pile of empty sleeping bags. He rummaged around until he found his sweats, pulled them on, and ducked his head as he moved out of the tent opening and looked around for Maddie. She was sitting on a rock near the edge of the water, facing toward the long, narrowing end of the lake, where the sun was making its slow ascent. He intended to leave her alone, but she must have heard his rustling and she turned to face him over one shoulder. Her face was the picture of peace, angelic, with the new sun creating a golden glow across her wide cheekbones and gently curved mouth.
Hank’s immediate reaction was to walk backward, very slowly, like he’d been trained to do if he happened upon a suspected land mine. Danger! Danger! That look of satisfied harmony that emanated from her was like a spike in his gut.
“I’ll break down the tent,” he said, turning away from her and getting busy.
She shrugged and went back to watching the day explode before her eyes.
They had a couple of energy bars for breakfast and spent the rest of the morning in the canoe. What had happened in the tent had made Maddie far softer, compliant. She didn’t fight him on the direction of the boat or the pace of their paddling. The two of them moved around the lake in easy symmetry, exploring small coves, pausing to listen to the slap of a jumping fish or the slow awakening of the insects and small creatures that lived in the woods. Around noon, Hank said it was time to pack it in and head back to the trailhead. Three hours of portaging and three hours of driving still lay ahead of them.
Unfortunately for Hank, Maddie’s sense of peace and ease seemed to deepen in inverse proportion to his anxiety. On the drive home, he pecked at her with little jabs of repartee, and she just smiled at him and said mild things like, “Don’t be such a grump.” Or “It’s no big deal.” Or “Maybe you’re hungry.” He was far more comfortable when she was chatty and confrontational—it kept things light to have that banter between them. This new turn of events was starting to feel like the beginning of that most dreaded of all words in Hank’s vocabulary: A Relationship.
Vague. Unpredictable. Amorphous.
Love in Maine Page 7
