"The blankets are wool. They smell like the truck."
"I do not care."
"All right."
We get out.
I drop the tailgate. I pull the toolbox open and I take out the two wool blankets I keep there for fires I drive to in winter. They smell like canvas and oil and pine. I lay one flat over the bed liner and I fold the second one in half at the head end. I lift her up onto the tailgate with both hands at her waist. She lets me. She has let me lift her every time I have lifted her.
She lies back.
She lies back on my blanket in my truck bed under a sky that is going from gold to red, and she puts her hand up over her head and she rests it there, and she looks at me.
I climb up.
I close the tailgate. I crawl up the bed to her on my knees. I put one knee on each side of her hip. I bend over her. I put both hands on the blanket on either side of her head.
"Are you sure?”
"Yes."
"All right."
I bend.
I kiss her.
The kiss is the slow kiss. The kiss is not the kitchen counter kiss. The kiss is the kiss I have been holding off all day in a meeting room and a truck cab and a porch step. I kiss her until her hand comes up and finds the back of my neck and her fingers sink into the hair at the base of my skull, and then I kiss her another count, and then I lift my mouth.
"Pants."
"Yes."
I reach for the waistband of the sweats she is wearing. I pull the sweats down. I leave them at her thighs. I leave the boots on. I leave the coat on. I leave the wool hat on. I am not undressing this woman in forty-degree air. I am putting my hand under the coat and inside the henley and on her stomach, and I am kissing the side of her neck where the pulse is, and she is making the small sound she made at the kitchen table.
I put two fingers between her legs.
She is wet.
She is wet from the road, from the wind in her face, from the kiss, from sitting in my passenger seat with my hat on her head watching me drive. She is wet and warm and ready, and I press the flat of my hand at her and she rolls up against me with a small sound, and I kiss the small sound out of her mouth.
"Tell me what you want,” I whisper.
“I want you inside me,” she breathes.
"How many fingers?” I ask. Because I care and I want to please her.
"Two."
She is sure. And I like sure.
I press two fingers inside her.
She is hot and tight and she gives as I enter her. The blanket scratches under her shoulder blades. The sky is red. The pines are black. The wind is cold on the back of my neck. I curl my fingers inside her and I find the place that is not new to me anymore, the place I learned Tuesday and re-learned last night, and I press it. Her G spot. Beautiful and highly responsive. Perfect.
She arches into the press of my fingers.
She moans loudly and I wish I could hear that sound forever.
