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I cock an eyebrow at her. "Savannah Rose Ashby. I get it. You're an heiress. But baby, you can't be serious right now."

She slaps me playfully. "Just roll up to that hand over there. He'll know where it is."

So I do that. And he does. The airstrip is six miles west of the main house, set down in its own little valley. And the whole time I'm drivin’, Savannah's got her hand on my leg. Rubbin' it.

Not tryin' to get me hard, but I have to fight to keep my cock in a manageable state. I don't stop her though. I enjoy all eight minutes of my little chub. And when we get there, sure as shit, there's a jet waitin', sittin' on that grass strip.

It's all black, shiny, and sleek. Lookin' like it wants to eat someone. I stare at it a good long minute and I think about how many ways my life didn't have to look like this, and how it does anyway.

A couple of people come over and start handlin' the luggage. Savannah takes my hand and we go up the stairs together.

The cabin swallows all that outside noise the second we step up into it. I am greeted with the sight of cream leather seats, glossy wood trim running along the walls, and gold accents on the overhead compartments.

Discount airlines, this is not.

No flight attendant is waitin' with a tray or a smile. Just the pilot. He comes out of the cockpit to greet me, offerin' a hand an introducing himself.

Then I follow Savannah past the first row of seats to the far end of the plane where there are two rows of two, facing each other with a glossy wooden table between them. Savannah takes the window seat facing the rear, I take the one across from her, facin' front.

The pilot seals the outer door shut and then goes into the cockpit, leavin' the door open behind him. He comes on the intercom as the engine whines up. "Should be a little over an hour to get to Jackson, folks. Enjoy your ride."

And I do enjoy that ride.

Because Savannah Ashby takes off her cowboy boot, puts her foot between my legs, and plays with my cock the whole way there. Talkin' about things like moose, and fish, and clean air.

And the whole time I'm thinkin'… I'd like to bend her over this table between us and slap her ass until she squeals.

Next time I ride on this plane… I will shut that cockpit door myself so I can fuck my woman hard.

Punish her properly for playin' with my dick and making me crazy.

Surely, I have finally arrived in heaven.

CHAPTER 6

The ride out to the Jackson estate is smooth and easy in the Range Rover Legion picked up at the airport. It's only a few miles outside of town, so I barely have time to think about where I am before we're already turning off the main road—but it's hard not to notice the difference between the world we just came from and the one we're in now.

Jackson doesn't look real. It looks like someone workshopped the idea of a mountain town in a boardroom and then built it exactly to spec, right down to the weathered wood signs swinging outside every boutique.

Elk antlers are mounted over doorways like trophies, handcrafted benches sit under the covered boardwalk, and hanging flower baskets drip off every log post like the frontier came with a florist.

Art galleries line the main drag with oil paintings of the same peaks sitting right outside their own windows, like the mountains themselves weren't enough without a price tag and a frame.

Tourists wearin' five-thousand-dollar boots that have never touched a stirrup and stiff cowboy hats that haven't earned a single speck of dust wander between shops selling turquoise jewelry and a bar selling the cowboy experience, courtesy of saddle bar stools.

There's a bookstore. A creamery. A wine bar with a chalkboard menu written in cursive I'd bet money took someone an hour to get right.

Drybone doesn't have any of that. Drybone has a Family Dollar with a busted sign that's been flickering since before I left for college, and a diner that shuts its lights off before six most nights, like the whole town gets tired of pretending anyone's still coming through.

There's a gas station on the edge of what passes for downtown that sells nightcrawlers and stink bait out of a cooler right next to the beef jerky, because half the men who stop there are headed to the river and the other half just want something cold to hold onto.

Nobody frames the badlands back home.

Nobody hangs a photo of those red cliffs in a gallery window with a little sold sticker in the corner and calls it art.

I grew up in a town that stopped growing before I was even born. Where the storefronts went dark one at a time and nobody ever bothered replacing the bulbs.

Drybone, Montana, is a place people only ever wanted to forget.