Page 43 of The Drifter

Outside, the heat had its shoulder against the whole street.

"How far?" I asked.

"Over the bridge. Mount Pleasant. We'll need my car—it's back at the hotel."

We walked. We didn't hold hands, and we didn't talk. The whole way back toward the Palmetto Rose, some old sentry in me stood watch for the words I was sure were coming—I should get back to work. This is a bad idea. I don't do this. I'd have honored any of them without a word. I kept a space open for them, block after block, the way you keep a chair open for someone you expect.

They never came. She walked beside me with her chin level and her hair moving, across the town she owned, and led me in through the front doors of her own hotel and around behind the counter, easy, like a woman crossing her own kitchen. Missy was on the desk. Sasha said something low to her and got her tote handed across, and Missy's whole face did a thing she was going to answer for later, and Sasha ignored every bit of it and walked me back out into the heat with her bag over her shoulder.

Her car was in the garage. She drove us over the bridge with the windows down and the harbor going by huge on both sides and her hair coming loose in the wind. Neither of us said much. I watched the water and the city fall behind us and a whole other town come up on the far side.

Then, a building on the water. Up in an elevator where we stood on opposite walls and didn’t touch and didn’t look away from each other. The number ticked up. My heart went with it like I was seventeen.

Her door. Keys out. The dish inside where the keys went—I heard them land in it.

Then, the door shut behind us. Neither of us moved.

That's the part I didn't expect. I'd braced for collision. Instead, we stood in her front hall, three feet apart, one more time. The whole world came down to that distance and the question of who owned it.

She did. She'd always owned it.

She crossed it.

One step, unhurried, her eyes up on mine the whole way. She put her hands flat on my chest. I felt my heart introduce itself to her palms.

"There," she said, quiet. "That's settled."

Then, I kissed her.

Slow. That was the surprise of it, after hours of flood building behind the dam—when the dam finally opened, it opened easy. Her mouth was soft and sure, and she tasted like coffee and peach jam. She made a low sound into me that I felt in the soles of my feet. My hands found her face, her jaw, the warm column of her neck. I held her like something a man carries across a creek. Her fingers curled into my shirt.

We stood in that hall and kissed like we had the deed to the afternoon. No clock on it. Her hands mapped my chest, my shoulders, learning the size of me without hurry. I walked her back, one slow step at a time, until her shoulders met the wall. Even then, I kept the weight off her, braced on my forearm, giving her air, giving her room, taking nothing that wasn't handed to me.

She handed me plenty.

"Clint," she said, against my mouth.

"Right here."

"I want to take our time." Her eyes came open, dark and close. "I haven't—it's been a while. And I don't want fast. I've done everything in my life fast. I want⁠—"

"Slow," I said. "Sasha. Look where I'm from. Slow is the whole religion."

Her laugh came out against my jaw, warm. Then, her mouth followed it, down my throat. My eyes closed on their own.

I found the hem of her red top and asked with my hands. She lifted her arms. I drew it up and over and off, and folded it over the back of a chair without thinking. She watched me do that—watched me take care of her clothes—and something in her face went soft and undone in a way the kissing hadn't managed.

"You folded it."

"It's a good shirt."

"Come here."

We shed things slow, down that hall, a piece at a time with long stops in between. My shirt, and her hands spending real time on what she found under it. Her jeans, which took both of us and some laughing. The laughing was the part I'd remember. I've had heat before. I had never once had fun, not like this, not with the light coming through the big window and a woman grinning against my mouth with her jeans stuck at her ankle.

By the time we came through her bedroom door, she was down to skin and I was down to nothing, my cock standing ready. The harbor lay out beyond the glass, wide and shining, minding its own business.

I laid her on the bed like laying out something owed.