“Bell, I think you’re lost,” I told him, sighing as I leaned back against a tree. My legs felt like they were shaking.
Admittedly, I’d done more exercising over the past several days than I’d done in the past several years, so my body was trying its best to keep up. Not only were the hikes unexpectedly challenging, but all the sex was giving my thigh muscles all sorts of interesting soreness.
Damn Bellamy seemed completely unbothered by the extra activity. Even though he’d been doing a lot of push-ups if you know what I mean. But, I guess, he had to workout in his daily life to maintain the body he had. And he’d likely had his endurance tested over and over while in the service. He had muscle memory or something.
While my damn thigh muscles felt like they were on fire, and I was sure we were no closer to the stupid lake he’d promised me.
We’d seen the stream.
Water was water, right?
“Am I?” Bellamy asked, coming back toward me, turning his back, and squatting down a bit.
“What are you doing?”
“Hop on.”
“Absolutely not,” I said, pushing my hands into his back.
“Your legs hurt.”
“I’m not a toddler.”
“No, but your legs hurt. Stop being so stubborn.”
“I’m not someone that other people carry around.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, love?” he asked, inching closer.
“I’m not a tiny little slip of a thing. Men don’t carry around women almost as tall as them.”
“Sure they do. I’ve carried you around a few times.”
“Against my will,” I said, but there was humor in my voice when I said it. We’d moved past all that anger about the drugs and the kidnapping. Which would sound insane to an outsider, but it seemed like so much had changed since then.
On a grumble, Bellamy reached back grabbing my legs at the backs of my knees and yanking, leaving me no choice but to grab him for balance as he pulled me off my feet, and wrapped my legs around his waist.
Then he was standing and walking and I had no choice but to hang on as he weaved between trees with a single-minded focus that suggested he knew where he was going. I still had my doubts, though. Bellamy was just the kind of guy who sure-footed his way through life, even if he was walking straight through a minefield as he did it.
Sure enough, though, about five minutes later, he turned around a clearing. And there it was.
“See? Better than the river,” Bellamy said, lowering down so I could slide off of him.
“Okay, fine, yeah,” I agreed, almost a little taken aback at the size of it.
I mean, when I’d moved in with my aunt and uncle, I’d started to be surrounded by water. The ocean. The Navesink River. But ponds weren’t exactly common in the area. I’d only ever seen two that I could think of. And one of those was manmade and full of koi.
This? This was something out of a movie or vacation brochure or something.
The colors even seemed enhanced like they shouldn’t have been able to exist with such vibrance, but did.
“This was worth the sore thighs,” I declared, catching Bellamy sending me a heated look. “That was worth the sore thighs too,” I told him because, well, it was the truth.
I don’t know what had changed in the woods with him. Maybe it was being stripped of all the outside influences or just the intimacy that came with being, for all intents and purposes, the only two people in the world there.
But suddenly, I didn’t feel such a need to deny, deflect, snap, or keep trying to create distance.
We were all we had for the time being.
Isolating myself from him was only going to make the whole situation a hell of a lot less pleasant.
We’d run out of mac & cheese already, so I was at my cap for unpleasantness.
Not pushing him away, though, had created a change in me that I couldn’t have anticipated. A sort of melting softness. I wouldn’t have even thought of myself as capable. People had been calling me hard and cold and prickly my entire life. I would have laughed at them if they even implied I could be something soft and warm and not so dangerous.
That was how I felt alone in the woods with Bellamy, though.
Soft and warm and safe enough not to have to feel dangerous.
That sounded crazy. I mean the man had done more dangerous things to me than anyone else really ever had. On top of that, he was a, well, serial killer. I shouldn’t have felt safe with him. That was exactly how I felt though.
Maybe it was because I was able to let my demons out of their cage. They played nicely with his. He was maybe the only other person on the planet who could truly understand me, who could know me deeply.