I would have laughed off the concern, but now that she’d mentioned it, I was starting to wonder if its existence was possible. Wet panties and shorts rubbing against that vulnerable and sensitive part of my body sounded like hell.
“Oi, you ride on horses,” Sadie suddenly said, spinning to look at her. “Do you get rubbed raw when you do that?”
“No,” Santana replied slowly, “but my clothes and panties aren’t normally soaking wet when I do it.”
Leaning in, I winked at her. “That’s only an issue when you’re riding out with Remy, right?”
Not giving her a chance to reply, Sadie clapped her hands together loudly. “Okay, kids, let's get crack-a-lacking. Roasty toasty sun and underworld hot heat, wet knickers, wet clothes, and vagina chafeage aside, at least I got stuck doing this with you two. If it’d been anyone else, I’d have gone bonkers.”
She stopped and frowned. “Well, not anyone. My sister would drive me tonto, and Elijah probably would as well, but aside from that, I think it’d be okay.”
Sharing an amused look with Santana, we began walking in the direction of the ranch. Not one of us said a word for roughly ten minutes, but that all ended when Santana called my name.
“Do you think your relationship with Marcus progressed too quickly?”
“Not really,” I shrugged. “Sure, we fell into the category of ‘us’ quickly, but the physical side took time to happen, which helped me feel more firmly rooted in the relationship. I think if I’d have just had sex with him that first night, or even the first night after we found each other again, I might have had some security issues.”
A glance at my friend showed she was deep in thought as she watched the ground. Finally she spoke what was on her mind. “I think that’s how I’d want a relationship to go, too. I don’t judge people who fall into bed with each other on the first night, that’s their choice and their business, but I’d want there to be an established base for us to build on that led to doing that, you know?”
“That’s how me and Elijah did it, too,” Sadie told her, kicking a rock and then swearing under her breath as she limped for a couple of steps. “I can’t just shag someone without there being something there. Unfortunately, I also got him to show me how to give him a bob-a-job when we were drunk, and I ended up with his penis going into my eye.” She chuckled and smiled fondly at the memory. “Ah, good times.”
The situation we were in wasn’t funny, but I couldn’t help it when I burst out laughing. Fortunately, my new friends had similar senses of humor to me, and they did the same thing.
I can’t say the hour we spent walking toward the ranch until we bumped into Liall, who radioed in asking for a truck to come and get us, was the best of my life, but being able to laugh and talk to them while we did it made it so much easier.
That was until I saw Remy and Marcus’s faces when I showed them the crop we’d found.
Chapter Seventeen
Marcus
“I don’t know how much longer I can put up with this shit,” I growled at Remy and Elijah. “I get Jayden wants to deal with it when he gets back, but there’s only so much I can fake it.”
What our friend had asked us to do wasn’t fair, but given his current predicament, both of us felt like our hands were tied. The guy was deployed and could only answer his emails once a week, which told us he was busy and not in a quiet area of the world. Distracting him with his sister’s bullshit didn’t sit well with me, but neither did turning a blind eye to it until he got back.
The radio on my desk crackled, and then I heard Liall requesting assistance. “—truck needed—girls in east field—now.”
Pulling out his phone, Elijah sent off another text and then stared at the screen like it’d make it ping to life. “Why the fuck does nothing work out here?”
“The masts don’t cover the whole ranch, and the radios work, but they can be funny fuckers when they want to be,” Remy explained, picking up the handheld radio on his desk.
Radioing back to Liall, he checked the girls were okay, and then made sure a team went to pick the ATV up.
Toby was out cold in the swinging chair we’d put in the office, and I had to admit I was jealous of the little guy. That thing looked the shit.
“Marcus, Remy, have y’all been in the lab? The samples for Harlem and Lassiandra were on the top of the table, and all the ones for Asaliah Delaney’s group are missing the coverslips,” our geneticist, Baxter, said as he came out of the lab. “That contract’s being signed tomorrow, and she was very clear there weren’t to be any delays. I’ve got the initial results, but the report on the computer isn’t showing all of the data we need.”