"Nothing."
"Rafe."
"You have something." I point to my own cheek.
She wipes at her face. Wrong side.
I step in and brush the cedar dust off her cheek with my thumb. My hand stays for a second longer than it needs to. Her eyes on mine.
"There."
She doesn't step back.
We make lunch together. Grilled cheese on the woodstove, a can of tomato soup. She stands at the counter and butters bread. I stand beside her at the stove. We do not say much. It feels like a thing we have been doing for years.
The afternoon goes quiet. I do the things I need to do. Move the truck to face the gate. Fill the jerrycans. Clean the rifle. Put the laptop in the drybag. I do them slowly. In between, I come inside and sit with her for ten minutes and then go out again. She has stopped asking what I am doing. She trusts me to come back inside.
At four o'clock I come in and she is asleep on the couch. Her book has fallen shut on her chest. Her bandaged hand is curled up near her face. I sit in the armchair across from her and watch her sleep for a while. She snores, very lightly. I did not know that about her. I am going to have to hold on to it, because I will not be able to check again for a long time.
Dusk. She wakes. She makes us food. Eggs, toast, the last of the potatoes fried in the cast iron. She is not a cook. She has told me. She has cooked tonight anyway.
We eat at the table. She tells me a story about a professor she had in grad school who pronouncedamortizationthree different ways in the same lecture. She is funny when she is safe. I have not heard her be funny very often. I suddenly know I am going to miss it.
When we are done she stands up from the table. She does not clear the dishes. She holds out her hand.
"Bed."
I take her hand. I follow her.
She's pulling her shirt off before I've closed the bedroom door.
I stop and watch her. She doesn't perform it — just reaches back and pulls it over her head and drops it on the chair, then unclasps her bra and sets it on top, and turns around, and the lamp is on the low setting and it catches the line of her shoulders and the curve of her waist and the way she's looking at me, direct and patient, waiting for me to stop standing in the doorway like an idiot.
I have seen a lot in my life. I have not seen anything that looked like her in this light, in this room, looking at me like that.
I cross the room.
I get my hands on her face and kiss her and she makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight through me, her fingers curling in my shirt, pulling. I walk her back to the bed and she sits on the edge and gets her hands on my belt without being asked, working it loose with that small focused frown she gets when she's solving something, and I stand there and let her because watching her take me apart with the same concentration she gives everything else is something I want to look at for as long as she'll let me.
Belt. Button. She pushes my jeans down and looks up at me and her eyes are dark in the lamplight and I am a dead man.
I push her back onto the bed.
She goes easily, arms over her head, and I get her jeans off and my hand between her thighs and she's already wet and hot and I feel the groan building in my chest and swallow it. I work two fingers into her and her hips come up off the mattress.
"God," she breathes. "Yes."
I know where. I learned her last night. I crook my fingers and stay exactly there and work her until her thighs are shaking and she's making noise she doesn't bother to muffle, and then I put my mouth on her pussy and she grabs my hair with both hands and holds on.
She tastes like something I want more of. I take my time with my tongue, slow and deliberate, fingers still working inside her, and she's rocking against my face and saying my name in pieces and I could stay here all night but I want to be inside her, so I take her apart fast — seal my mouth over her clit and suck and feel her come hard, her whole body locking up, my name coming out of her broken and loud in the small room.
I don't let her come down.
I'm moving up her body before she's finished and she reaches for me immediately, getting her hand around my cock and stroking once, and my jaw goes tight.
"Now," she says. Her voice is wrecked. "I mean it, Rafe. Now."
I line up and push in.
