I tighten my grip. Press my face into her hair. Vanilla and sugar, even here, even under the blood and the dust and the monster ichor. Vanilla and sugar.
"Not yet."
Her mouth finds mine first.
She climbs me like I'm a ladder, both hands fisting the torn collar of my vest, hauling herself up me with that ridiculous baker's strength. Her legs wrap around my waist and the cracked ribs scream and I swallow the sound whole because her tongue is in my mouth and she tastes like adrenaline and cinnamon and I will die before I stop this.
I stagger backward. My boot catches a chunk of slag and I correct hard, one arm locked under her, and she doesn't flinch. Doesn't loosen her grip. Just bites my lower lip and pulls.
"Van."
She breathes the word into my mouth. I'm already moving.
Three steps to the rear doors. I yank the handle with my bad hand and white light explodes behind my eyes from the shoulder but the door swings wide and the cargo bay opens up, dark and warm and smelling like flour and diesel. Scattered baking supplies cover the ridged metal floor. A fifty-pound bag of breadflour. Stacked sheet pans. A heavy canvas tarp she uses for farmer's market setup.
I set her on the bumper. Pull the tarp down flat with one sweep of my arm, scattering aluminum pans across the van floor with a tremendous clatter.
"Your arm."
"Don't care."
"Your ribs."
"Don't care."
"Your—"
I drop to my knees on the hot gravel. The movement puts my face level with her stomach and she stops talking. Her hands sink into my hair. Her fingers curl. Grip.
The dress is already destroyed. Crawler blood, fountain water, powdered sugar, slag dust. I push the hem up over her thighs and she arches her back against the van floor and lifts her hips and the fabric bunches at her waist.
Simple cotton underneath. White with tiny blue flowers.
I press my mouth to her hip bone. She gasps. Her thigh twitches against my cheek and the muscle is warm and impossibly soft and the size difference hits me like a fist to the sternum. My hand spans her entire thigh. My palm covers her hip to her navel. She is small and breakable and fierce and she drove a delivery van into a rock crawler for me.
I hook my fingers into the cotton and pull.
"Dash—"
My name. Just my name. But the way she says it strips the calluses right off my soul.
I drag her to the bumper. She yelps, fingers scrabbling against the tarp, finding nothing to hold, settling on the back of my head again. Pressing down. Directing. Commanding. Baker hands. General's hands.
I follow orders.
The desert wind snaps against the open van doors. Sand hisses across the slag. She arches off the tarp and the van rocks on its shot suspension and in the distance the stunned crawler lets out a low moan of confusion and I do not stop. I grip her hip with my good hand, pinning her in place, and she bucks against the pressure and the sound that tears out of her throat echoes off the canyon walls.
"Inside. Get inside. Now."
She's pulling at my vest. I shrug out of it and the tactical harness drops and I crawl into the van after her, and the entire chassis groans and sinks three inches on the left side. She laughs. Wild. Breathless. Scoots backward over the flour bag, dragging me by my belt.
The van is too small. Every van is too small. I bang my head on the roof and she laughs harder and yanks the belt free and I brace one hand on the ceiling and the other beside her head and lower myself over her, blocking out the desert sun that streams through the open doors.
She runs her palm down me. Over the scars. Over the fresh wounds. Over the cracked ribs. Her touch is light where it needs to be light and firm where it needs to be firm, reading my body the way she reads dough, knowing exactly how much pressure before something tears.
"Careful."
"Shut up."
