Page 61 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

He came out of the shade of the trees as I was getting out of the car. Ricardo. That gorgeous man, hair still damp from his ride over. He gave me a big hug and a bigger kiss right there in the lot. I made myself not look around. Ricardo didn't care who saw. I wanted to be like that.

"Beautiful girl," he said, into my hair.

I laughed, a little, at nothing. At myself, maybe. At the fact of standing in a public lot in the middle of a Sunday because my own body had marched me there.

"What's funny?" Ricardo said.

"Nothing." I shook my head. "Long week. Let's run."

"Sí." He smiled. "A fun run."

He had a little backpack with him. I hadn't noticed it when he came out of the shade.

"You don't need the backpack," I said. "You can leave whatever's in it in the car."

He winked. "I need the backpack."

We ran. The first half mile we said nothing. Ricardo was an easy runner, light on his feet, his breathing even. I couldn't find a rhythm. My hips felt loose, and the fabric of my shorts was rubbing against me in a way I'd hoped the run would take my mind off; instead, it was making everything worse. By the half-mile marker, I was wet through the liner and through the shorts and I had an idle thought, maybe I have a hormonal imbalance.

After a mile, where the trail thickened into trees and curved away from the lot, Ricardo stopped.

"This is a good place."

"A good place for what?" I was still catching my breath. "We've gone a mile."

"Lacey." He stepped closer and took my elbow. His palm was warm. "You know my thing."

"I know your thing."

"I love the dangerous. The maybe getting caught. The public."

I laughed, breathless. "Ricardo. We are not having sex on a running trail in the middle of the day."

He looked theatrically wounded, and a small unwelcome thing drummed in me anyway. My pussy apparently decided that being a problem in public was an interesting variation on the problem.

Stop it, Lacey.

"No?" he said. "Then can we at least dance?"

"Dance."

"Something romantic. I'm feeling romantic."

I looked at his running shorts. "You're feeling horny."

He laughed. Ricardo had never been ashamed of being horny in his life. He'd never been ashamed of anything.

He kissed me. My mouth, then my neck, slow, like he had nowhere to be. The fog came up.

"I'll dance with you off the trail," I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant. "Not where someone can see me. And you're sweaty."

I was sweaty too. I left that part out. He was already smiling at the concession.

I didn't have the discipline to refuse him. I'd used up whatever I'd been issued.

I went off the trail to a small clearing about twenty feet in. I could still see the path through the underbrush. He followed, dropped the backpack on the pine needles, and took me into his arms.

He smelled like sweat and pine and the cologne-ish deodorant I'd teased him about once. The animal in me, the part that had been awake since dawn, decided that today it liked the smell of male sweat.