Midnight Magic, page 112
“How about you stop beating up my poor truck so that I can order breakfast from Mabel’s?”
“That’s where I was supposed to meet my dad.”
“It’s my favorite place,” he said.
He had Mabel’s number in his phone, and I heard him ask for “The usual, steak and eggs, no toast, no fruit.”
“Jesus, are you trying to have a heart attack before you hit forty?”
“I avoid gluten.” That was the last thing I expected him to say.
I couldn’t help myself; I rolled my eyes and he saw it.
“What?” He asked.
“That’s just a fad. The overwhelming majority of humans can digest gluten with no problems.” Sometimes I really wish I could talk less.
“Duly noted,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Avocado toast with heirloom tomatoes, microgreens, and a lime wedge instead of lemon.”
“Well, thank God you don’t fall for food trends,” he snarked.
“You have a point,” I admitted.
He repeated my order into the phone and asked if someone could bring the order to the parking lot.
The food was brought to us almost as soon as we got there, and Nate peeled away from the town right after that.
“If you are hungry, you can start now,” he said. I decided to wait until he was having his breakfast too. There was something unsettling about the man’s nearness. I was anxious and worried and scared. I was also crazy attracted to him as he expertly drove the truck on winding country roads.
It was something of a shock to see that it was barely 10 a.m.
“We’re here,” he said. We were at a cabin. This isn’t as odd as it may sound. Wyoming is full of cabins. Lots of hunters, nature lovers, and a fair share of Unabomber acolytes live among us.
The craziness of being alone in a cabin, with someone who knew more about my dad than I did, suddenly overwhelmed me.
I just looked at him with what I’m sure were pitiful, confused eyes. He came around and opened the door. Gently, as if I were a soap bubble, he helped me down from the truck. I started trembling again, and he kept an arm around me as we walked to the cabin.
The porch held the ubiquitous heavy wooden box that would be full of firewood and nothing else. Using a key on his key ring, he opened the door and laughed. “I was an idiot when I built this. Ever seen a cabin where the door opens outwards?”
I hadn’t even noticed. It was snug. One room with a bed at the far end, a table and chairs, and a sink with a water barrel above it on the other side. “You also forgot to put a fireplace in,” I said. “Who has a hunting cabin in Wyoming without a fireplace?”
“Yeah, I’m not a big fan of those.”
“Weirdo,” I teased.
“You have no idea,” he wryly responded.
I sat on a kitchen chair. He knelt in front of me, concern etched on every handsome feature.
“Wait, why do you have a wood box if you don’t have a fireplace?” I asked.
“A friend ordered it as a gift, and I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t need it.”
“Oh.” my fractured brain went back to thinking about my dad. “I don’t care how he got that stuff… I mean, I do, but right now nothing matters except getting Dad home. Are the people who took him smart?” I asked.
“Smart?” Nate seemed confused by the question.
“Yeah. How likely are they to figure out Latin?”
“They won’t. Listen,” he took both of my hands in his, “it’s going to be alright.”
I believed him, and I took what felt like the first deep breath in days. Grateful for something to do, I unbagged the food. “We forgot to get drinks,” I said.
“I’ve got drinks.”
I glanced around the cabin. No fridge, no electricity. It would seem ungracious to be less than thrilled about well water. “C’mon,” he said. I followed him down the stairs and a few yards into the woods to the river’s edge. I looked around; this was not an inexpensive piece of real estate. A small cabin circled a tree, and when Nate yanked on it, a metal cage full of bottles and cans emerged from the water. “Beer? Coke? LaCroix?”
“Coke, please. Do you spend a lot of time here?”
“I do.”
We spread out on the grass, and while I nibbled on my open-faced sandwich, I asked him about his work as a zoning coordinator.
“Basically, I just make sure that everything in the park is supposed to be there.”
“I still don’t know what to think about all of this,” I blurted out awkwardly.
I clumsily rose to my feet. He stood up. When he wrapped his arms around me, I gratefully pressed my face into his shoulder. There was so much that I didn’t know. My world had become much less certain than it had been just 72 hours prior.
But Nate was there, and his strong shoulders were undeniably real. His arms around me made me feel grounded, connected to something solid.
I felt his breath in my hair, and surprising both of us, I pressed my lips against his. The kiss was soft and tender, even as his strong hands slid down my ribs and spanned my waist. Gently his tongue darted between my lips. I had to restrain myself from groaning with pleasure. I grasped at him like a drowning person. I threw my arms around his neck and held on for dear life. Pressing myself against him, I grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and lifted it over his broad shoulders.
“We can stop,” he offered solemnly.
“I don’t want to.” I had never been this desperate for a man’s touch. Lifting his hands up to my breasts, I sighed with pleasure as he circled my nipples with his fingers and buried his face into the curve of my neck. My hands trailed up his back, and I suddenly pulled back from the kiss. “What is that?”
He turned so that I could see the scar that roped down his spine. “It’s just a scar, sweetheart. It doesn’t hurt.”
The kissing resumed, and although I was loving it, I pulled back. “How did this happen? It’s a big scar.”
Taking my hand, he led me towards the neatly made bed. “That story is for another time.”
I was overtaken by a clarity and a recklessness that I have never experienced before. He hesitated; the man sense of honor that precluded taking advantage of crazy women who were probably becoming prone to hallucinations. Looking straight into his eyes, I said, “I want this. I want you. I know what I’m doing, and it is what I want. Please,” I added awkwardly.
“Well, since you said ‘please’,” he whispered. “I can’t resist a beautiful woman with good manners.”
He tenderly pressed me down onto the mattress and slowly began to nudge my shirt upwards. He lowered himself and pressed his lips against my belly. Unsnapping my bra, he pulled first one nipple and then the other into his mouth. My fingers tangled in his hair. His tongue trailed down to the snap of my jeans. I lifted my hips to make it easier for him to tug them down. Lifting his face up so that I could see his blue eyes, he said, “You are something, Clementine Jasper.”
As my jeans slid down, he dropped kisses following them. I gently kicked my feet so he could pull the jeans off and toss them aside. I watched the scar along his spine move as he lowered himself over me.
clearly had a
His tongue parted my cleft, and I cried out in pleasure. His hands cupped my bottom, lifting me closer to his mouth. Rocking against him, my orgasm crested like a wave.
It had never been like that for me. Sex had always turned into a sort of joyless chore while my partners dutifully humped, and I usually tried to find a polite way to say, “Please, go ahead. It’s not going to happen for me today. It’s not you. You are great… It’s me.”
I had never felt like this. This was a kind of pleasure I had never known, simple, animalistic, satisfying.
Gasping for breath, I reached for the buckle of his belt. Whipping the belt through the loops, I threw it dramatically aside. I was laughing when he pressed up against me. I guided him into me and arched my back up so that I could take all of him at once. The power of him as he moved into me was exhilarating. I dug my fingers into his powerful arms.
I had been fucked before, probably even made love to before, but I had never been claimed before. “Deeper,” I whispered, and he obliged. I wrapped my legs around his waist and urged him on. My body took a life of its own, thrusting and begging for more.
He slowed down, whispering, “Touch yourself.”
With no shame at all, I did, and as my fingers brushed over my clit, I came like a cyclone. My orgasm roared through my body, swirling all the colors, all the sensations, and culminating with every cell in my body trembling.
I offered a delighted grin when Nate gave a final thrust deep inside of me and exploded. We lay intertwined, catching our breath.
* * *
He braced himself above me so that his weight didn’t press down on me. Running a finger down the side of my cheek, he whispered, “Oh, my darling Clementine, what in the world am I going to do with you?” His smile was warm and his voice soft. The intensity of his gaze scorched through every fiber of my being.
I stretched out and felt every muscle in my body go loose like warm honey. My words utterly betrayed me. “I could totally fall in love with someone like you.”
Gathering me into his arms, he whispered back, “I guarantee you’ve never met someone like me before.”
THE EXTRASPECIST EXPOSITION
I had fallen asleep. I started awake, with a knot in my stomach. Dammit. I had allowed myself to get swept away by desire with a total stranger. Sunlight still streamed in through the windowpanes. I pulled on my jeans and my T-shirt. The fear and romance hormones that had knocked me off my feet had lifted, and it was time to have some tough conversation. Noticing him opening his eyes, I wasted no time on small talk. “How long have you known my dad?”
He rolled all the way over from his side, reaching for my hand. “About twenty years.”
“So, you must have met around the time he did that dumbass documentary?”
He sighed. “You really need to stop talking about it that way.”
“Why?” I asked, yanking my hand out of his grasp. I stomped into my shoes, suddenly annoyed with him. We had enough calamities happening right now without dredging up old ones.
He sat up and gestured for me to lie down beside him. I stayed where I was and asked, “Why do you care how I talk about that damned documentary?”
He looked right into my eyes. “Because I am the person the documentary was supposed to be about.”
I rolled my eyes. “So not funny.”
“I’m not kidding,” he said without a hint of a smile.
Fury rose within me. “How dare you humiliate me! Before that ninety-minute hatchet job my dad was a hero, and now, like all the others, you want to make fun of his breakdown? What a dickhead,” I yanked the door open.
“I’m not lying to you, and I am most certainly not making fun of you or your father. Here, let me show you.” He rolled off the bed and lifted a box up. He was entering a combination into the dials when I strode out of the door.
“Clementine, wait! Don’t go out there without me!”
“I’ll take my chances out in the woods,” I threw over my shoulder.
Bastard, I thought. Just to be spiteful, I braced myself against the wall and slowly slid the heavy wood box in front of the door. It would take him a while to get out of that cabin. I stomped down the porch steps. I wasn’t precisely sure where we were, but I knew we hadn’t been off the interstate for too long, so I’d get to a landmark and call someone to get me.
Striding between trees, I was mentally kicking myself like I was that glove box back in the truck. How could I have been so stupid? Why did I invariably sleep with jackasses who intended to crush my heart all along?
I refused to wallow. I gave myself a pep talk. I have a great job, I am educated, and I have friends. This will not happen to me again. The same refrain I made after David the cheater, Nick the liar, and Ben the unemployed.
A menacing, low rumble in the thicket stopped me in my tracks. I’d never heard a bear sound like that, but perhaps I was near a den with cubs. It was the right time of year for it. I nearly smacked myself in the head. For the first time in years, I was unprepared. I turned around to get my vet bag out of the truck. It had bear spray in it. A mother bear won’t usually chase you if you turn tail and get away from her home. This early in the year, her cubs would be tiny, and she wouldn't be teaching them to hunt. If I just got away, she’d leave me alone. I heard a branch snap behind me.
A sense of foreboding came over me, and I broke into a run. All those years of telling people to never run from a bear, try and make yourself look big and threatening, dissipated into the ether as I panicked and fled. I was within an arm’s length of the truck when I heard the distinctive, blood-curdling snarl of a fully-grown male tiger. I turned to face it while reaching back and trying to grasp the door handle.
When you are seconds away from a grisly death, you notice seemingly irrelevant things. I should have been focused on the teeth that were about to rip my flesh from my bones; instead, I noticed that the tiger had a long gash on its left foreleg.
The tiger gave another lip-curled snarl, and somehow, in the background of those terrifying sounds, I was aware of breaking glass. The tiger crouched, and I threw my arms up over my face.
The roar literally shook the ground. I sensed the tiger leaping and braced myself for it descending upon me with a gaping maw and powerful claws. Instead, there was a reverberating crash, and the tiger didn’t reach me. My first thought was that Nate had somehow gotten to the truck and hit the tiger with it. Then I realized that I was huddled against the truck. Opening my eyes, I almost shut them again immediately. The tiger was in a fight for its life with a dark-maned lion.
Watching the bloody melee, my vet’s brain switched on. There have been recorded incidents of tigers killing lions. I told my vet’s brain to shut the hell up, clambered into the truck, and dry heaved with my head between my knees. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I promised myself that it would all be fine.
Soon, I would be in a nice hospital, discussing with a psychiatrist why I was suddenly having hallucinations in which I cowered in vehicles away from apex predators that couldn’t possibly be there.
When the fighting cats rolled into the side of the truck, it shook from the impact. I finally snapped to my senses and withdrew the humane killer from my bag. I had three bullets.
OK, I had a plan. I would kill the lion and the tiger, then let Nate out, and we would get out of here. I opened the window just enough to poke the barrel of the gun out, which meant that I had to sort of stand on the seat and crouch with my head in a weird bent position.
Blood covered both animals. The tiger had a gaping wound on his shoulder, and he wrestled himself onto his back, bringing the lion with him. I saw him coil his back legs up to bring his claws into a position where he could disembowel his enemy. I was thinking that it didn’t matter which animal I shot first, since either of them would kill me in a second, when the back of the lion came into clear view in my scope. It bore a long, twining scar that ran the length of its spine.
Gulping for air, I was relieved when the lion was able to leap clear with the tiger in hot pursuit. I fired. The tiger erupted in a frenzy, howling. Dammit, I had hit his flank. The goal is to cause as little misery as possible. Cursing, I frantically began to reload. By the time I had a bullet in the chamber, the beautiful, fearsome tiger lay limply still, his eyelids fluttering.
The lion circled his opponent, lifting his head and roaring. When he shook his head, drops of blood flew off his mane and speckled the truck windows.
I lifted the gun, but the lion ran towards the truck and lay down directly in front of the passenger door. It would be impossible to shoot him from this angle. The only way I could take a shot would be to shimmy over to the driver’s side, get out of that door, and then walk around the vehicle to get him in my sight.
As there was a lion nearby, given the choice between being in the truck or not in the truck, my best option was clear. So not getting out of the truck.
Time seemed to slow down. I saw the tiger’s breathing stop. I had killed an endangered, beautiful animal. Looking at his stiff form, I knew that there was no question that he was dead. The grief raged through me.
I felt the truck shift a little and tried to peer out of the window. There was a slight movement, and Nate rose into my view. There were claw marks on his shoulders and blood was dripping from his hair.
I have always wanted to be one of those dainty girls that faint when things get intense. Alas, I seem to have too robust a constitution.
While I screamed like a banshee, Nate tapped on the window with a finger. “I know you are freaked out, but I’m not going to hurt you. Your dad trusts me, and he wants you to trust me too. At least let me get dressed and drive you out of here. Please.” He had to repeat this several times until I could understand him over my own shrieking.
There was something about him that removed all my rational skepticism and fear, and I shocked myself by alighting from the truck. Walking behind him, I was suddenly aware of just how naked he was, and of the scar that roped down his spine.
He used one foot to push the wood box aside, and it careened off the end of the porch.
I had barely been able to move that box a few inches. I had a sudden vision of him carrying Mama Kitty in a big cage up the riverbank. He had snapped the bars of a metal crate with his bare hands.
Glass crushed underfoot, and only then did I realize that he had broken the one window in the cabin to get out.
He held the door open for me. “I am going to clean up in the shower in the back. Look at what’s on the table.”
He had left the locked box open. A stack of papers bound with leather strips was inside it.
