She laughs. “No way.”
“Walk back. I’m not asking, I’m telling.”
She’s shaking her head, laughing.
“Princess. Let me look at you again. You’re the best fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
She walks back, laughing, and turns, and walks toward me again, swinging her hips. I get on the bike and pat the seat behind me to give my hands something to do other than grabbing her and throwing her over my shoulder.
“Up.”
Bethany gets on the back, her arms wrapping around my waist. The front of her body presses against the back of mine, her soft tits against my shoulder blades. Her thighs against mine.
She tightens her arms around me at every corner. By the third switchback she has stopped pretending it is for safety. Her hands have moved down from my ribs to the place above my belt. She is gripping the front of my jeans with both hands, the flat of her palm half an inch from where I am hard for her, and my cock goes from interested to insistent instantly.
By the time we come out at the top of the mountain, my hands are shaking on the bars. I pull into the gravel turnout, kill the engine, and sit there with my eyes closed, breathing through my nose.
“Off.”
She gets off, slow, dragging her body down the length of mine on the way. I get off after her, picking her up and kissing her. Her mouth opens for me as her legs wrap around my waist. She makes the little breathy sound she made in the truck last night, the one that goes straight to my cock. Her breath is warm as I explore her mouth with my tongue.
I pull back.
“Bourbon,” I say.
“Bourbon in the morning?”
“Best time for it.”
The viewpoint is a gravel turnout the size of two cars with nothing past the edge of it but clear air and the valley going down forever. The sky overhead is deep blue.
I shake the wool blanket out across the gravel near the edge. I get the coffee flask and the bottle out, pour out the coffee into two enamel cups and add a shot to each.
She comes back from the edge and sits on the blanket. Knees up. Arms around them. I sit next to her and hand her one. She takes it with both hands.
“All right, princess. Order of operations. I'm going to tell you about me and you're going to listen. You're going to know whatyou're saying yes, if you still do once you’ve heard my story. Then if you still want what I think you want, you are going to have it.”
“In that order?”
“Correct.”
“Um… why is the talking first?”
“Because I'm not made of fucking stone. If I touch you again, we won’t get any talking done.”
Bethany smiles into her cup.
“Twenty-eighteen. I was twenty-eight and I'd been fighting for paychecks for nine years. I was addicted. To the thrill and the money. Gambling, owed money to loan sharks, so I got back in the ring when I had no business being there. You get a number stitched on the back of your shorts and some asshole in a folding chair tells you who you're fighting and how much you get if you don't lose. The man in the folding chair was a piece of shit named Pavel, who is a story for another night.”
She doesn’t move.
“That night I lost. I had been partying for three days in advance. I lost stupid. He hit me in the ribs in the third round. I went down and didn't get up. Pavel had me dragged out the back into the alley and dumped, because you don't get a doctor if you don’t stand up, you get a parking lot in case you die. I was bleeding out from places I didn't know I could bleed. There was a dog barking somewhere I couldn't see. I'm telling you this so you understand. I was finished, princess, in that alley and I wasn't going to make it another hour.”
A tear rolls down her cheek as she looks at me.
“There was a man at the fight who'd seen what Pavel did with the men he didn't pay. He came around back to see if there was anything left to save. He picked me up and took me to a doctor he knew who saved my life. Stood over the bed in the room he put me in until I opened my eyes. And when I could stand he asked my name. I told Prez my real name. Reed Barnes.”
“I like your name.”
