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“All right, fine. Will you at least throw me my underwear?”
She lowered the barrel, smiling as she hinged. “Sure.”
But rather than give me the article I wanted, she threw the entire pile, shoes and all.
“Shit,” I hissed, hurrying to grab my shoes before they sank to the bottom. “Goddammit, Poppy. I said I was sorry.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, I am,” I shot, tucking my clothes in my arm and swimming one-handed toward the edge.
She looked down her pretty little nose at me as I tossed my sopping clothes at her feet. “Good. You should be.” A pause. “I’m sorry too. I should have stopped.”
I shrugged and hung my forearms on the stone edge. “I could have stopped it, too. I don’t know if I’m sorry it happened, though.”
“I am.”
I watched her for a moment in silence, charting the planes of her face kissed by moonlight. “I figured as much.”
“It must be nice to have the luxury of considering that wasn’t a mistake. But you weren’t the one who got fucked over, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Never again, Duke.”
“Loud and clear.”
“I mean it.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
She swallowed hard, and I took the pause to haul myself out of the pond, naked and dripping and making no effort to cover myself. When her gaze drifted hungrily down my body, I sluiced the water out of my hair and stepped closer.
“Never again,” she whispered like a prayer.
“Because you hate me,” I reminded her, inching closer.
“Because I hate you,” she echoed, her face tilted up to mine.
I arched over her, near enough that water dripped from a lock of my hair to that naked V between her breasts, but I hadn’t touched her. My hands trembled with the desire to change that, and I balled them into fists to stop them.
“I don’t hate you, Poppy. I wish I could. It would make all this a whole lot easier.”
“If you think that hating you makes any of this easier, you’re out of your fucking mind,” she said breathlessly, her eyes cutting to my mouth as it descended.
“Then I guess we can both be miserable.” I whispered against her lips, my heart thumping in my ears.
And then I stepped away.
Out of my periphery, I saw her sag, heard her exhale as I pretended not to care, pulling on my wet boxer-briefs and gathering the rest up to sling them over my shoulder.
When I rose, she straightened up, training her shotgun on me again. So I held up my hands, one with shoes dangling on my fingers.
“I’m going,” I promised again.
“Don’t come back,” she said, somewhere between a command and a plea. When I met her eyes, I witnessed the war behind them, fierce and bloody. But I didn’t respond.
I offered a single nod and made my way into the woods, wishing I could promise her I’d stay away.
Wishing I could mean it.
13
FROZEN HELL
POPPY
The organ played, the choir sang, and almost everyone in the pews was busy fanning themselves with open hymnals in the oppressive summer heat.
The late June sun cut into the old wooden chapel through the stained glass in shafts. Heat radiated from them, the window units doing their best to cool us off and failing miserably. Sweat rolled between my breasts and to the elastic of my bra, the hymnal in my hand doing little more than stirring the soupy air. I’d pinned my hair up with a tiny pencil from the offering, and the heat had me grateful I decided on an airy sundress in the record-breaking heat.
Duke was a couple of rows ahead and across the aisle from us, his oxford damp from sweat at his neck and clinging to the swells of his muscles. Muscles I’d seen up close and in person just a few nights ago when I’d nearly shot him for having such audacity.
Muscles I’d dreamed about every night since.
Those dreams were fevered, leaving me in a sweat when I woke, remembering the way his body felt against mine. Inside mine. The vision of him in the moonlight, naked and dripping and too close for my willpower, had haunted me every moment of every day, waking and asleep. I wanted his lips on mine again. I wanted him naked and prone and at my disposal. I wanted him with a desperation that made itself known in the pooling of heat between my thighs, the quickening of my pulse at the memory, my breath shallow at the mere sight of his dark hair, his neck and shoulders.
And I hated myself for it.
When I looked up, Jesus was silently judging me from the cross behind Pastor Coleburn. I checked a wave of shame for my indecency, deciding it was too hot to concern myself with decency. I would have stripped out of my dress right then and there if I thought I could have gotten away with it.
