Deep Woods

I became aware of Cal, beside me. “I never saw them before,” I mumbled, still gazing upward. What I couldn’t wrap my head around—what was heartbreaking—was that this had been there my entire life. It had just been hidden by the city’s glow.

Cal said nothing. But a moment later, he returned with a blanket he wrapped around my shoulders and we sat together on the front step, looking up at the stars, for over an hour.

* * *

Two weeks passed, with no sign of the men from the club. Cal had been right: we were too deep in the woods for anyone to find us. But I was only safe as long as I stayed there and I couldn’t stay there forever...however tempting that was becoming.

After the second week, the temperature started to drop as fall took hold. The nights became colder, the days shorter. But we were cozy and warm in our little burrow.

Cozy...and close. The cabin was small and Cal was big. However careful and polite we were, accidental touching was inevitable. And the more we brushed ass-to-groin while putting away dishes, or turned around and found ourselves chest-to-chest, or went to reach for something at the same time and touched hands, the more the tension rose. We were like two charged particles, bouncing around in a confined space, with every brief contact making us buzz louder and attract each other more.

Sometimes, we’d swap ends of the room, passing in the middle, and as we approached it got harder and harder to stay on course, as if I was caught in his gravity.. As we passed, at the second I got so close to him that I could smell his scent and feel his warmth in the air, the urge to veer off and just press myself up against that huge, hard body was almost overwhelming. It went beyond lust. It felt like I fitted there, like my head’s natural resting place was between his pecs, the softness of my breasts pushed up against the hard muscle of his chest and his arms folded around me. At the last second, I’d control myself and walk on, my steps shaky, my heart thumping. This is crazy, I’d tell myself.

But he felt it, too: I saw the way his hands twitched when we touched, like he was having to force himself not to grab me. Heard how he inhaled, whenever my hair skimmed his face. Most of all, I felt his eyes on me, whenever my back was turned. I’ve never been someone men look at but whenever he got the chance, Cal’s gaze would soak into me, heating and heating me, until I turned around...and then he’d quickly look away and I’d feel that silver guitar string drawn breathtakingly tight. After two weeks of this, the tension was almost unbearable.

I told myself the attraction made no sense: we were as different as two people could be. He lived in isolation; I lived in a city surrounded by millions of people.

And yet...both of us were lonely.

He gradually started to talk more. He still wasn’t a big talker but the words started to come more easily. He still wouldn’t talk about his past, though. All I knew was that something terrible must have happened, to make him want to isolate himself out here. Something that still caused him pain, something that sometimes made him wake in the middle of the night, sweating and wide-eyed. I’d lie there in the bed pretending to be asleep and wishing he’d let me help him.

One morning, I woke to the sound of rain drumming on the roof. I half sat up, nudged the curtains open an inch, peeked out...and stopped.

Cal was out there, standing in the rain. Naked.

He had his back to me and he was lathering himself with a bar of soap. The rain was washing the suds down his body and I followed them, transfixed. They slid over the huge, caramel bulges of his shoulders, then sped up as they slid around the islands formed by the muscles of his back. They followed the V-shaped form of him in towards his waist, then slowed as they crested his ass and trickled down over hard, perfect cheeks loaded with power.

I dragged my eyes away, flushing...and then stopped, my eyes locked on Cal’s upper arm. There was a tattoo there, an eagle curled protectively around a globe with an anchor behind them. I was too far away to read the two words above the image, but I knew what they said. One of my flatmates had once had a boyfriend with that exact same tattoo. The words were Semper Fidelis.

Cal was a former Marine.

23

Cal

WE NEEDED to go to town. Normally, I could have gone another couple of weeks but we were getting through things faster, with her here: coffee, sugar, spices. Plus, she really needed some proper clothes and some boots that fitted. “We need to make a list,” I told Bethany. “And it’s got to be a really good list. Everything we need, and I mean everything.”