TWENTY-FIVE
The whole way down the mountain, I walked like an automaton, watching my feet in the moonlight to make sure I didn't trip. Red kept having to stop and wait for me, and at one point, he told me to hold on to the belt loops of his jeans as we shimmied down an embankment. I could feel his awareness of me, and when we stopped at the head of the trail, he was breathing hard.
“You okay?” I put my hand on Red's jaw, to make him meet my eyes, but it was all false, completely false. I knew he was going to kiss me, and I knew I wanted him to. Not to make love to me. But just to kiss me. I hadn't ever had this before, this sense of someone's fierce and specific wanting of me.
“No. Not okay.” His hand covered mine, and for a moment he looked at me, a long, steady, unabashed appraisal. “My Irish granny would say this is the night the spirits go out walking.”
“Do you believe that, too?”
“Northside's the kind of place that makes you believe. Did you know there's a big cavern running underneath the cornfield on the east side of town? We don't advertise it like some of the other places do, and there's a reason. This place is a crossroads between a lot of different worlds. Let me tell you, being an animal removal operator here is a hell of a lot different than in other locations.”
“I don't believe in that sort of thing.”
“Then why are you still holding my hand?”
I snatched my palm from his and we resumed walking. Well, he resumed walking, and I resumed tripping. “I can't see anything.”
“So take my hand again.”
“And feed your ego? I think not. You'll have to beg me before I hold anything of yours.” Ouch, that didn't sound quite the way I'd planned.
“It's not my ego that's bothering me, Doc. But you're married. So stop flirting.”
“I didn't mean …”
“Yes. You did.” Red stopped and turned to face me. “And I am so damn hungry for you that you have no idea how little it would take to break me down. But if I were to take you, come inside your body, your husband would kill me.”
I looked at the ground, where unseen things chirruped and whirred. “Hunter's not like that, okay? Besides”—my voice was surprisingly steady as I said the words out loud—”I think he's in love with someone else.”
Red's hand lifted my chin up. “Then leave him. Leave him and come to me.” He grinned, his weathered face almost boyish with it, all sharp hazel eyes and sharper white teeth. “Stay up all night with me—I don't sleep much either.”
“How do you know I don't sleep?”
“I spend a lot of time watching you when you're around, and a lot more time thinking about you when you're not. You let things slip, and I pay attention.”
“I don't know what to say …”
“Well, that says it.”
It seemed a long time before we reached my car. I climbed in and started the ignition, and after a moment Red opened the door to the passenger's side.
“I guess I'd better see you all the way home.”
“Red, listen—I'm not asking about what you were doing at Jackie's. I'm not ready to get into all this … complexity right now. But I will think about—”
“Just drive.”
“Want me to take you home first? I know you live close by …”
“I can walk from your house.”
In the enclosed space the smell of him was suddenly strong—male sweat, sharper than I was used to. But not unpleasant. Healthy. I rolled down the windows to let in the night air and as I started the ignition, the sky flickered white in the near distance.
“Storm's coming,” I said, but Red was looking out the window, focused on something I couldn't see. His skin was still beaded with perspiration. “Red?”
The rain came suddenly, a few drops, a downpour, then a solid sheet of water. The windshield wipers could not keep up. The headlights could not illuminate anything beyond the rain. The sky rippled with thunder, flashed with light. I didn't know if I was on the main road anymore. I tuned the radio into the weather band.
“… and a severe weather storm warning is in effect for northern Dutchess and Columbia counties,” intoned the computerized voice. “High winds and lightning and the possibility of large hail. Tornadoes a possibility in the Upper Hudson Valley region around Cooperstown, Milltown, Cedar Plains, Northside …” Red shut off the radio.
My teeth began to chatter from adrenaline. “Red? What do we do?”
“Just keep going. You're doing fine. Only another two miles to your house if we take this shortcut.” His hand came up to cover mine, and he guided the wheel toward an unmarked dirt road. Thunder rumbled again, and a jagged line of bright white pierced the road, so close to us that I tried to remember how you were supposed to count the distance. I felt that strange disorientation you feel in acute distress, as if you've left the rational world behind, entered some strange new twilight zone where, impossibly, it is suddenly possible that you might die.
Something bounded out into the road, a huge shadow, and I slammed on the brakes and the wheels screeched and skidded and we moved in slow motion toward a tree. I had a flash of how the local papers would report it and then Red turned the wheel sharply and we were back in control, and then we were heading toward another tree, more slowly. Red brought my head down into his chest and shielded me so at the moment of impact I was crushed between the sudden billow of air bags and his skin.
For a long moment we sat there, huddled.
“Abra? Doc?”
I looked up and Red was already unlocking his door and turning to pull me out. “We need to run for it.”
But I found myself unable to move. I stood there, staring at the carcass of the deer we'd hit, a stag with a great rack of antlers, his gold hide darkened with rain and blood. No, not a carcass. I brushed the water from my eyes and saw more clearly that his hooves were still faintly flailing, his nostrils dilated with fear.
“Abra.”
“We can't leave him like this!”
Red went down on one knee and the deer, panicked, began rolling its head from side to side. With one hand on either side of its antlers, Red yanked the deer's neck savagely to the right. Then he just sat there, chest heaving.
“Red?”
He looked up and his eyes were full of regret and something darker, wilder, more excited. He started to stand, stumbled, and caught me against him. Definitely excited. Despite the driving rain and the dead stag, maybe because of them, I felt an answering heat, a sudden stab of arousal.
Red saw it in my eyes and suddenly he was holding me too hard, his fingers painful against my upper arms, his hips grinding into mine. And I gasped and then his mouth was covering mine, one of his hands moved up to cup the back of my head, the other braced at my waist to keep me from falling over. His teeth were sharp on the inside of my lips, on my tongue. I couldn't catch my breath and I had to cling to the solid strength of his shoulders to keep from going down. And then we were both going down, sprawled in the mud beside the stag's corpse, and I couldn't get enough air to tell Red to stop, please wait.
“Abra!” He drew back, his expression anguished, and before I could think I found myself pulling his head back down to mine, my hips rising to meet his thrust for thrust, thrust for thrust. I was mindless with it. I felt his hands move up under my shirt, covering my breasts, his callused palms abrading my nipples, his mouth slanting sideways, nipping at my throat. Yes. I was tugging at his jeans, trying to get at him, mindless and hungry and acting from some primitive, animal part of my brain.
“Hey now, easy, girl, slow down a minute—oh, Christ.”
I couldn't understand why Red seemed to be fighting me, but suddenly the fighting kicked something in me into overdrive, and I was biting Red's neck, licking my way down the delicious muscular indentations of his chest and stomach, my nails raking down the lean length of his spine, finding the surprising furriness of him there too, but I wasn't turned off by this, not when I could hear the rapid thunder of his heartbeat, so fast I knew he'd dreamed about this.
“Abra, wait.”
But I was hungry for him, ravenous, my body sliding down his, my face at the bulge in his crotch, my mouth on him through the sodden fabric as my fingers worked at the buttons, he was a Levi's man and there was an ungodly row of buttons to contend with, ah, there, free, the dry heat of his erection in my hand. I heard him shout, Jesus, and his hands convulsed on the back of my head, then released and held me with perfect tenderness as I inhaled the clean, male scent of him, a scent of wood smoke and salt, a drugging, intimate scent of cave and fur. I took him in my mouth.
“What are you doing to me?” His voice broke off, the last word a choked gasp.
What was I doing? This was something I had done for Hunter only a few times, done to please, not something I actually enjoyed. But here with this unlikely man I was out to please only myself, this strange self with strange appetites. Under my fingers, I felt the muscles of his back ripple in a way that seemed both strange and familiar, like something remembered from a dream.
“Stop, Abra, please, before I lose control.” He had tangled his fingers in my hair, forcing my head up.
I looked at him. His eyes were no more than shadows, but I could still read him: surprise, desire, and regret, and a steady glow of tenderness that made me smile.
“Take off your pants.” I tugged on them, wanting him completely naked, for reasons I didn't completely understand.
“Doc, I can't—you don't want to …”
I unlaced his hiking boots, pulling them off. “Now the jeans. Lose them.”
“I don't suppose I could just keep my socks on?” He sounded almost desperate.
“Very funny. No.”
“Um, the thing is, if I'm entirely naked …”
I stood up, folded my arms, and just looked at him, knowing that in the end, he would do exactly what I wanted, because for once in my sexual life, I was in control.
Red swallowed hard. “Oh, f*ck it.” He was naked in two seconds, his compact body muscular and hairy and surprisingly tanned, as if he had spent time outdoors in the buff. I couldn't help but notice that he was not smaller than Hunter in all respects: Who would have guessed that such a slender man would be so well-endowed?
I went up to him, fully dressed, and kissed him. Our heights were similar enough that I could feel the hard length of him pressed against the vee of my thighs, and then Red groaned and bent his knees, his hands reaching down to cup my bottom and press me more firmly against him. Then he stilled, panting hard, his fingers clenching and unclenching on my hips as he struggled with himself.
And suddenly, I knew that he was too close to losing control, and that I wanted him in my mouth before it was too late. I slid down his body, pressing kisses to his mouth, his muscular chest, his belly. Red's hand's caught in my hair, pulling gently.
“Ah … no, sweet girl, that's not … a good …” His voice trailed off as I bent my head and licked the rounded tip.
“You were saying?” I glanced up and saw that Red's head was arched back, his eyes tightly closed. So I took him in my mouth, tasting the first salty-sweet prelude to his release.
Red made a low, rumbling sound, his fingers still tangled in my hair, but no longer trying to pull me away. Now his touch was a dragging caress, and oh, God, the feel of his hands, combing mindlessly along my scalp, coiling the length of my hair around his wrists. His touch said more about what he was feeling than any words could have. I felt the bone-deep hunger in him, the hunger fed by the fact that it was me doing this. I raked my teeth delicately along his length, his desire became my desire, his ecstasy a wave gathering force. He was moving with me now, faster, his lean hips pumping, and I could taste more of that salty sweetness now, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to swallow a lover down into me with cannibal desire.
“Abra, stop!” I felt his hands trying to pull me away, but it was as if I had become him, as if it were my orgasm crashing at the gate. I could feel his pulsing between my own legs and I was clinging to him, wanting to finish it, and then he groaned, a sound of utter surrender. Suddenly I was flung backward. Shocked and stung, I watched him gasp, hunched over, his face nearly purple.
Oh, God, he couldn't breathe. I'd killed him. “Red?”
“Aaarggh!” Red folded over at the waist, clutching his middle. Was he dying? What was it? Heart attack, asthma attack, epileptic fit? I couldn't think.
“Are you in pain? Red, look at me. Can you look at me?”
In response, he threw back his head and howled, a sound of such primal anguish that it ripped through the storm.
“Oh, God, Red, are you—”
Like all impossible things, it happened quickly. Red collapsed onto his hands and knees, shook his head, and then looked up at me for a long moment. There was no humor in his gaze this time, no challenge, no wink. But by the time he reached the trees, he wasn't a man anymore.
I was so shocked that it took me a moment to realize that he wasn't running away. Another moment for me to realize he wanted me to follow him.
It was only when I saw the bulky shadow of my house that Red stopped as if at some invisible boundary, his four-legged posture alert and watchful as I stumbled down the overgrown old cow path up to my back door.