Chapter 14
The soccer ball arcedinto the water, and the boy reached and fell as he had a hundred other times, but this time Cruz kept his pack on and stayed dry. He could feel the ground under his boots, firm, safe. Tonight the dream would be different.
Kahananui jumped.
Nooooo—
His best friend reached the boy in a few splashes, and Rey yelled, “Stay there, don’t come back, climb the other side, don’t fucking come over here,” anything to change what he knew would happen.
Then his friend turned like he couldn’t hear and laughed at Rey and the rest of the team high and dry on the canal bank. He made a tidal wave with his arm and sent water toward them. “I need a board. You gonna come in and hang ten, brah?”
Nooooo—
Shower spray surged andretreated, the motel’s uneven water pressure ineffective at chasing away Grace’s bad night of sleep. She seemed to have lost the stamina to recover from a second beer sometime after her thirtieth birthday, although to be honest, listening to Rey breathe in the other twin bed and knowing he too was awake hadn’t helped last night’s sleeplessness.
By late afternoon they’d reach Fort Campbell, one-fifth of the way through this trip, in the sense of time, if not miles. She toweled dry and pulled on jeans while thinking about the day ahead. Today she’d visit Rey’s apartment before movers packed next week, see the things that mattered to him. His teammates were still deployed, but he might introduce her to other friends. Instead of returning her deodorant to her travel kit, she hesitated over whether surviving the afternoon required a second application. In the mirror her clothes fit well, not shapeless, not embarrassingly tight. Nothing about her would stand out negatively.
She was as ready as she could be to meet Rey’s friends.
The cheap motel carpet was worn smooth under her bare feet as she crossed to the suitcase beside her bed. Dim light from the bathroom illuminated enough to show her that the thin sheet and standard tan blanket had slipped, revealing Rey’s chest and shoulder tattoo. He must have shed the T-shirt he’d worn to bed. She hadn’t seen his bare chest yet on this trip, but she remembered the shape of his muscles and the dark hairs sprinkled around his nipples.
Now wasn’t the time to think about his chest. Now was the time to get ready for the road, but her feet did what they wanted and moved closer.
Over the seven months of long-distance chat, she’d forgotten the violent beauty of his ink and how far the skull and serpent distanced him from the researchers in her world. She watchedhis shoulder muscles twitch and the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, faster and more shallowly than her breaths.
A drop of water fell from the end of her hair to land on his chest.
He shot upright in the bed, arms reaching, hands thrust forward in stiff flippers. The explosive movement, as forceful as a whale breaching, shocked her backward.
His wide eyes and snarl revealed a level of raw pain she’d only seen in injured animals. “Rey—”
He heaved himself at the wall on the bed’s far side and thudded hard enough to rattle the light sconce. His shoulder blades rose and fell as he panted. “Hurt you.” He pounded a fist against the sheetrock. “No, no, no.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” Okay, he wasn’t like other men she’d spent the night with, guys who stuffed pillows over their heads and relied on alarms and automatic coffee machines. Rey came awake with his hands up, and the sooner she understood that, the sooner her heartbeat would normalize.
“Could.” Emotion seemed to have diminished his speech again, yesterday’s multi-word answers reduced to loaded single syllables.
“But you didn’t.” She put one knee on the bed. “Is it okay if I touch you?” Because he didn’t object, she assumed permission and lowered the hand that had been hovering between them. His skin was hot and smooth over muscles that felt like stone to her fingers.
“I’m sorry I startled you.” She matched her voice to her hands, low and even as she made slow circles.
His clenched fingers opened and slid down the wall, landing with a muffled thump on the mattress. As she kneaded and dug her fingers below his shoulder blades, the muscles of his back became supple. The harder she pressed, the deeper he sank into the mattress. His body’s transformation from lethal to bonelessdrew her closer until she scooted all the way against his side in order to fully use both hands at her task.
He threw his arms alongside his head, improving her access. Twisted at his hips, the sheet exposed his back to the curve of his buttocks.
“Good. Verr-good.” After the briefest pause, he appended another phrase. “Thank you.”
She kneeled to add force behind her strokes. “Five words in a row.” Her thumbs pushed into the hollows below his shoulder blades, making him groan in his throat. “I fully expect Shakespeare next.”
Used to the rhythm of his silences and speech bursts, she focused on gliding her hands across his skin. In a moment he’d say three or four words to move their communication dance another step.
Instead of speaking, he raised himself on two arms, like a push-up, then stayed up with only one bracing his torso. The other encircled her waist and yanked her flat to the still-warm pillow. The speed of the action took her breath away.
Not only did he have moves, he had biceps like no man’s she’d ever touched, and her fingers bonded to the arms above her. While she marveled that she could in fact be squeezing a muscle this big on a man, nothing she did put a dent in his strength.
Unlike her, the pillow and sheets had spent the night next to Rey’s skin, covering him and imprinting with his scent. The musk and spice that she’d noticed faintly in the car yesterday rose around her and replaced the lingering traces of her own shampoo with flashes of man, heat, working on a boat deck in the sun, bare arms and sweat and the desire to throw herself wide open. She breathed deeply, glad for the pillow under her head as a weightless feeling left her floating, anchored only where her hands connected to him.
If he’d asked a question, she’d been too dazed to answer, which must have satisfied him because he kissed her. In the awkwardness of last night they’d been exhausted and building trust. Somehow kissing hadn’t happened, but being pressed body to body in a bed made this kiss rise to a stratospheric level of sizzle.
