Page 50 of The Drifter

"Second on the left," he said. "You were right."

And that was all. He never asked.

I stood at my sink and looked at him and couldn’t breathe.

Oh, no, I thought.

Because I had been so careful. I had made a promise in my own lobby with my hand on a leather book, and I had told myself all afternoon that this was a day. It was boots. It was a body. It was a woman taking the first thing she had ever taken for herself, and she was going to take it, and then, she was going to give it back and go to work.

And now, here was a man standing in my kitchen with nothing on, who had opened the door of the room I don’t open, and looked at it, and closed it.

You are not going to survive him, I thought.

"Come here," I said.

And he did.

14

CLINT

"Come here," she said, and I came there.

She was leaned back against the sink with her hands on the counter's edge and her chin up. The last of the light was coming off the harbor and laying itself all over her like it had been given permission. I crossed her kitchen slow. I stopped inside the three feet, because she'd retired the three feet. I put my hands on her waist, and she came up onto her toes and into me like a tide taking back a beach.

We kissed for a long time.

There was no destination in it at first. That's a thing I'd forgotten kissing could be—not a road to somewhere, just country worth standing in. Her mouth was soft and cool from the water. She took her time with mine, and I took mine with hers. Her hands went up my arms and over my shoulders and into my hair like she was learning the whole map of me by feel. I had her face in my hands. Then her jaw, her throat, the long line of her back, the flare of her hips. Every place I touched, she made some sound into my mouth that landed in me low and stayed.

I was hard against her belly and in no hurry about it. She noticed. She grinned against my mouth about it, wicked, and rolled her hips once, slow, just to hear what it did to my breathing.

"You're a menace," I said.

"I'm thirsty," she said, which was a lie, and turned around in my arms.

She opened the refrigerator.

She bent at the waist, unhurried, and put both hands on the shelf inside like she was looking for something in the cold light. She wasn’t looking for anything. Her back curved. Her hips tipped up and back and found me, deliberate, the sweet, full press of her against where I was aching. She looked at me over her shoulder with her hair falling across her face and one eyebrow up.

I have been ambushed by professionals. Nothing ever took me apart faster.

"Sasha."

"Mm." She pressed back again, slower. The cold rolled out of that refrigerator over both of us and did absolutely nothing to help. "Can't find what I'm looking for."

"I believe you can."

"Maybe you should—" and her breath caught, because my hand had come down the curve of her spine, slow, and settled on her hip, "—help me look."

I helped her look.

I ran my palm over her. She was already slick when my fingers found her, swollen and hot. She made a sound into that refrigerator that had no manners in it at all. I stroked her slow, learning her again from this new angle. Her knuckles went white on the shelf. When I finally angled my cock and pushed inside, we both went quiet the way you go quiet in church.

God.

Deep like this. Deeper than the bed, her body angled to take all of me. I slid home in one long, slow press and stood there seated in her with my hands on her hips and my heart going like a horse. The cold air poured over our feet. Her back curved deeper. She pushed back onto me, wanting the last fraction there wasn't. I gave her what there was. She said my name into the cold like a complaint.

Then, I moved. I kept it slow, because slow was the whole point and because fast would have ended me.