“Well . . .”
“I didn’t think so,” he said, his mouth tilted into a smile. He disappeared into the shadows. She knelt by the fire.
“I’m not that prissy, you know. I grew up in the hills, too.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, his deep voice resounding from the distance. “Kentucky, right? If I hadn’t already read it somewhere, I would have known it from the accent that creeps into your voice once in a while. They always made out that you were a rags-to-riches story. Do you really know anything about hunting or preparing game in the wild?”
“Well, no. I actually lived in a subdivision and my father was an accountant. But the hills and woods were just a stone’s throw away,” she added quickly. “I ran around in the woods with my friends every day, and I knew plenty of people who did eat things like rabbits for dinner.”
“Yeah, you can get a real mix of people in northern Kentucky,” he said, surprising her by not laughing at the truth behind the sensational allegations that she’d gone from hillbilly to Hollywood princess overnight. Jennifer had corrected the press ad nauseam. The public seemed to adore that particular trope, however, and the media had perpetuated it.
She sat for several minutes in silence. Despite her assurances that she wasn’t unused to the ways of the woods, nausea swelled in her belly when she considered what John was doing at the periphery of the cave. A vision of shockingly scarlet, spattered blood flashed into her mind’s eye.
“Couldn’t we just eat the protein bars?” she called across the expanse.
“We should save them. Who knows
how long we’ll be down here? Enzo might not be so lucky hunting tomorrow. The meat won’t keep forever.”
Jennifer frowned as she stared at the flickering little fire, realizing he was right. After several moments of silence, she couldn’t refrain from asking, “Is there really such a thing as Porn for the Blind?”
“Yeah,” he said, grunting slightly as though he’d answered in the midst of doing something effortful. She heard water splashing from the darkness. “Does that surprise you?”
“No,” she admitted slowly. “I was just trying to picture it.” She looked up at the sound of his low laughter emanating from the shadows. He had a nice laugh. She understood his amusement. Picturing porn for the blind?
“I just meant I was trying to understand what it would be like,” she said.
“It’s all audial.”
“You mean you listen to people having sex?”
“No . . . well, not primarily. You listen to someone describing people having sex. The voice is like a camera.”
“Oh . . .” she mumbled, thinking. “Do you like it?”
He didn’t answer immediately. She heard more vigorous splashing. A moment later he emerged from the shadows. She was relieved to see that his hands and clothes were completely free of blood. In fact, she saw no signs of the rabbit at all until she looked inside the plastic box he carried. There was the rabbit meat, cleaned and cut into chunks.
“I was born blind,” he said as he crouched across from the fire from her. He picked up a twig and skewered it with two cubes of meat. He held the stick over the fire. “When I was thirteen, I used to masturbate repeatedly over the memory of my seventh grade English teacher saying, ‘It’s so hot my clothes are getting wet. My skirt is sticking to my legs.’ She had a fantastic voice—deep and throaty. Just that brief, off-the-cuff comment that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a scalding-hot September day and no air-conditioning was prime fuel for my adolescent fantasies for I don’t know how long.” He seemed to consider and then gave a little shrug. “It still sounds pretty hot in my memory, to be honest. So, yeah, to answer your question. Porn for the Blind is bookmarked on my computer.”
She broke out in laughter. She loved his frankness. “I get that. It’s no different than a thirteen-year-old sighted kid getting all hot and bothered catching a glimpse of his cute teacher’s little panties when the sunlight strikes her skirt and makes the fabric see-through.”
He smiled. “You really are a natural,” he murmured.
She smiled back at him, feeling no break in their strong connection because he couldn’t see her. A drop of fat from the meat fell into the flames, making them hiss. He turned the stick. The delicious aroma of the cooking meat entered her nose, making her stomach rumble in hunger.
“So what kinds of illicit things get an adolescent girl all hot and bothered?”
“We’re not as . . . prolific in our adolescent sexual fantasies as males.”
“Strike what I asked. I don’t give a crap about what Psychology Today says typical female adolescent fantasies are. I want to know yours.”
She gave a disbelieving sound. “When I was thirteen years old? Are you kidding? You want to hear about my Leonardo DiCaprio obsession? Or maybe you’d find my Backstreet Boys fantasies a little more entertaining?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Definitely, if the fantasies included all of them.”
She snorted and they shared a laugh.
“I’ve never entirely bought the common logic that girls aren’t avid sexual fantasizers,” he murmured after a bit. “You never were titillated by anything remotely dirty back when you were in school? Nothing still lingers in the adult Jennifer?”