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Cedra
We probably clocked ten minutes of sleep between kissing, touching and making love in the wee hours of that morning. Twyla was like a curious little kitten, exploring my body in a way no one had ever expressed interest in before.
Before dawn, I’d gotten used to her nose, lips and tongue in the oddest places. She made me laugh with her loving nature and I felt my heart swell when I glimpsed her in my arms, her breathing now soft in sleep.
I tried to extricate myself from the tangle of our limbs before the first rooster crow, but she held on tight, murmuring something that sounded like go later.
When I managed to wriggle free, however, her eyes blinked open.
“Do you have to work today?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“Yes, the ranch won’t run itself,” I said ruefully. I felt deliciously sore from last night, muscles aching in places I hadn’t known possible.
She reached out to touch my arm in a soft caress.
“I thought this was a farm.”
“A little bit of both, really,” I explained, plucking my discarded clothes from the side of the bed. “I plant crops in the spring but I also have about three hundred head of cattle and a few horses and pigs.”
“That sounds like a lot of work for one person. Can I help?”
She was already reaching for her clothes when I stopped her.
“Most of it is mechanized now, so don’t you worry about me, ’mara,” I said. “Besides, if I needed any extra help, Frowh—that’s Ella’s husband—would usually come over. Like during harvests, for example. His father used to work for my father about twenty years ago.”
“Well, all right, but I’ll get your breakfast started anyway.”
Just as she was about to leave the bed, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down onto it. She let out a little squeak of surprise as I pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“You know you don’t have to do those things for me, right? Especially now that we have, um...”
She reached out to touch a lock of my unbraided hair. “Either way, I want to do those things for you. It makes me feel... I don’t know, grounded, I suppose. Plus, I kinda like the routine.”
She gifted me with a smile, using my hair to tug me down for a proper kiss. “And because you thought that I’d take advantage of the fact that I’m sleeping with you to skimp out on chores, I’m going to kiss you with my stinky morning breath.”
When I started to protest, she wrapped her legs around my hips. “Take your punishment like a woman!”
I was still laughing later that morning when Austy came by to collect the day’s fresh milk.
The Burkett family ran a processing plant a few miles from my land, and they helped pasteurize milk from my farm and bottled it for the community. They also made artisanal cheeses in the winter.
She called out a greeting as she hopped off her solar cart with the attached five-thousand-liter wheelie canister. She plugged it into the side of the barn where the milk expression machine was and I keyed in the security code before the filling process started.
Austy took her cap off and flung it into the passenger side of the solar cart, running a hand through her close-cropped dark hair. It seemed like every time I saw her, her hair just kept getting shorter and shorter. She’d be bald by next week.
“Good night?” she asked, leaning against the side of her vehicle. Never one to stand still, she busied herself by carefully rolling up the sleeves of her thick flannel work shirt.
“What?” I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly over the gush of milk filling the canister.
“You have...” Austy tapped her own throat, “bites on your throat.”
My fingers automatically rose to the sore bit of flesh on my neck and heat suffused my cheeks. Austy was just a kid, barely out of her teens. Was it appropriate to talk about stuff like this?
“Just a rash,” I said instead, clearing my throat.
“Yeah?” Her expressive eyebrows rose. “I wish someone would give me a rash like that.”
“Austy...”
