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“Damn girl, you got some serious sun.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “The desert tends to do that to you.”
He offered me a water bottle from one of the mini-fridges located throughout the office. “The desert, huh?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You wanna tell me whereabouts in the desert you went?” he smirked. “Or were you on some mystery vision quest to discover your true self that you can’t speak about?”
I took a long pull of ice-cold water, then screwed the cap back on the bottle.
“No mystery. No vision quest.”
“A sweat tent then?”
“Ugh.”
“Stargazing?”
I shook my head in awe and agreement. “No shit. The desert has someseriousstars.”
“Yeah well there’s no light pollution,” Aric went on. “I went to a wedding once, outside of Sedona. Dune buggies out to the middle of a dry lake bed in the desert. After the ceremony the sun went down, and the sky exploded with like a billion stars.” He let out a long, wistful sigh. “Second most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh yeah?” I challenged. “What’s the first?”
Aric’s whole smile changed. “Wouldn’tyoulike to know.”
I let him have his secrets as we walked back to my office together. God knew I sure as hell had mine. Aric didn’t press for more details of my trip, and I didn’t offer any. Since arriving home yesterday I’d dropped my bags to the floor, fallen into my bed, and slept like the dead for a good ten or eleven hours straight.
It was strange, coming home to an empty apartment. For the first time in a week I was utterly and completely alone. There was no chance of being walked in on, swept up by a pair of strong arms, or made love to. There were no friendly voices in the kitchen. No one cooking me breakfast in the morning, or sliding me a cup of coffee.
Even more bizarre, my place in the hustling, bustling city no longer felt like home. I’d become too accustomed to the solitude of being in the middle of nowhere. Too spoiled by the idea of being bent over, spread open, and pleasured over every warm, welcoming surface of the cozy desert house.
“M—Ms. Emerson?”
Aric’s assistant stepped in front of us, temporarily blocking our way. She was a nervous little intern with pixie-cut blonde hair and a slight underbite that made her look exotically cute.
“There’s a visitor here, looking for you,” she told me. “He wanted to wait in your office, but I obviously couldn’t do that, so—”
“So you put him in mine?” Aric asked, peering through the glass.
The intern’s expression went from nervous to outright terrified. She nodded anyway.
“I—I didn’t know what to do!” she cried. “He seemed pretty insistent that—”
“It’s alright Jenny,” Aric smiled. “No big deal. We got it.”
From this distance the glass distorted the oversized man pacing back and forth through Aric’s office. It wasn’t until we doubled back and stepped inside that I could see who it was.
When I did, my heart leapt straight into my throat.
“Hello Juliana.”
Devyn was dressed impeccably in a full white Navy uniform, complete with gold-gilted buttons, stripes, and ribbons. The sheer number of colorful bars that dominated the left side of his chest was more than distracting.
“Uhhh… hi!”
I embraced him immediately, wrapping my arms around his thick, hard body. As I did I could feel him staring over my shoulder, directly at Aric.
