Her eyes narrow. She taps her fingers on her steering wheel. Her lips thin out. “This isn’t about just me.”
I wish I was funny like Raven. Irreverent. That I didn’t give a fuck more often that I do. I get up in my head. I get lost in logistics. That’s what makes me a great tech guy. That, and my endless patience and love for solving problems. But in real life? It doesn’t translate the way I want to.
“I’d like to do a campfire and s’mores, hotdogs, and whatever else you brought. I never got to go camping as a kid. I’m still waiting for my first ever trip.”
Holy shit, no pressure or anything.
She finally cracks a small smile, reading my mind. “No pressure.”
By the time we get there, it will probably be almost dark. The cabin was opened up at the start of June, but it will still need some airing. And god help me, I’m not that great with fires and stuff. I’ll want some daylight to try and get the thing going.
Esme’s eyes search my face. “I’ll follow you?” There’s subtext there. Words that she’s not saying. I can’t stand here, wasting her air conditioning, trying to figure out what it is. I have almost two hours to figure that out.
“You have the GPS pin on your phone in case we get separated going through the city, right?”
She nods. “But I know you’ll be there waiting for me along the side of the road, even if we do.”
She’s not wrong. Her faith in me hangs between us, heady and thick as the humidity sticking all my clothes to my skin. I really need to get back into the wind or I’m going to turn into a human puddle with a swamp for boots.
I don’t mean to stand like a total creep, my eyes locked onto Esme’s face, caressing the gentle swell of her lips, the curve of her throat, the line of her jaw, the low hanging sun sparkling in her eyes, but of course I do. Her eyes never leave my face either. Not until I force myself to nod and turn around.
I’ve never white knuckled the handlebars so tight in my life, when we ride out, but I can’t make my hands relax. I can’t convince any part of me that this isn’t a bad idea. Because whatever we talk about and whatever Esme’s answer is, yes or no, I have a thousand fears, a thousand questions, a thousand what ifs.
I keep telling myself that fate isn’t a thing, but whether it is or isn’t, this day was still years in the making.No pressure at all.
Chapter 12
Wizard
Iwant, but she wants too.
The cabin, the woods, the mountains in the distance. We’re safe here. She looks at me with flames licking her eyes as vibrant as the fire I just doused. We have separate rooms in the cabin, but she doesn’t want hers. She wants me. The need vibrates through me, rattling me down to my bones. My cock stirs to life, and for once, I don’t talk it down. Not when she’s looking at me that way, her eyes sparking. She sets her hands on my shoulders and kisses me. Truly. Kisses me. I have no breath. Our clothes disappear between frantic hands. She’s glorious naked. A masterpiece. A work of art. She sets her hands on my shoulders and pushes me across the room, then guides me down to the bed. She’s on top of me, her breasts so lovely, her nipples hard little buds. I suck one, my tongue roving over her until she throws her head back and hisses at the pleasure.
She climbs over my hips, straddling me. She takes my hard cock in her hand. I’m leaking from the tip, slick already.
“I want you inside of me,” she groans.
I sink my fingers in her hair, and she shifts on my lap. She notches my cockhead at her entrance. My balls are going to explode. There’s so much heat. So much wet. She’s so tight as she takes me into her body. Her breath hitches and her hips move, shifting on my lap. She digs her knees into the bed sothat she can ride me properly. Her legs press against mine, strangling me the way her tight walls clench around my cock.
She dips her head and presses her lips against the column of my neck. She sucks there, hard enough to bruise. She continues down, scraping her teeth and kissing a trail over my collarbones, down to my nipples. She sucks one as she starts to move. It’s all so intense. I want to drive into her.
I grasp her hips as she rides me, rocking and swaying as I move. She ripples all around me, her legs grasping my legs, every bit of her body strangling me in the best way. My hips thrust up and up and up. She’s there, surrounding me. Her breaths against my neck, hot and frantic. My heart is going to explode out of my chest. I moan and she shifts to lick the sound from my lips. She captures my breath. I pour it all into her lungs. I grasp her hips and rock into her. Harder. Driving my cock deeper and deeper and she takes it all. She’s so wet. I’m so wet inside of her. My balls are soaked with it. Our thighs.
And then… my cheeks?
She’s ripped away. Sucked out of the room. We’re no longer at the cabin. We’re in a dark room. I’m… alone. A sterile metal table stands in the center. There’s something on it. A shape. A form. Bright lights. Tile floor. The scent of bleach and rot. I never knew what it meant to be broken, but I am. There’s nothing for me now, because I know what’s under that sheet. I know where I am.
It’s cold and sterile and all wrong. Death. It’s in my nose. It’s in my head. My heart. I force myself to look at the mental table. At the white sheet covering the slim body. Suddenly, there’s a noise in the hallway. A woman wailing. Her mother.
Why? Why didn’t she come to me for the money? Those men found her. They broke her. They stole her from me. There is no us now. No future. Only a past where I couldn’t love her enough. Where I could have, but I didn’t. I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t warn her. She never came to me because she thought there was nothing for her here.
There’s me, reaching to find her cold fingers, the wax of her skin all wrong beneath my own. I want to kiss her lips just once. Once, before she goes into the ground. The love of my life, alone. Just one, before we’re parted forever. Me, having no good reason to pull back that sheet, but doing it anyway. Peeling it back and back and back, looking at the bruises and the destruction. I did this. I did it by not loving her properly. By not telling her that I would stand by her, that I was here. She didn’t know she could come to me, and so she didn’t. She tried to take care of it all on her own. She tried to cover up my brother’s sins, and now… she’s gone.
I’m torn from the dream, terror clenching me in a tight fist. It wraps around my lungs, squeezes my middle, hollows me out with razor sharp serrated edges. I’m soaked in sweat, shivering violently. I grasp the sodden sheet and toss it aside, trying to drag in a ragged inhale.
I turn my face to stare at the glow from the outdoor lights mounted around the cabin. I should be able to hear some of the birdsong, or the whine of insects, the endless chatter that never stills from the woods, but my harsh breaths drown out the peace of the night.
I know it’s ridiculous. It was just a dream. None of it happened. My brain isn’t in the mood for rational conversation.
