The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

In the end, we had a fuck/wrestling/making love session where he didn’t fight fair, considering he wrung two orgasms out of me, and it was biologically impossible for me to compete.

He lay on his back, I lay flat out on top of him, and he pushed out, “No more heart to hearts. It’s gonna kill me.”

“You bitch about the craziest things.”

“Babe?”

With effort, I raised my head to look down at him.

Big mistake.

He looked fabulous during sex.

After it, all sated and content and big cat got his cream, he was everything.

“I might have to pounce again,” I warned him.

“It’s you,” he said to me. “I had her, but all along, I’ve been waiting for you to get to me.”

Honestly?

I was fucked out.

So I shoved my face in his neck and belatedly agreed, “No more heart to hearts.”

My voice was husky.

He stroked my spine and whispered, “No more heart to hearts, baby.”

Forty-Six

Like the Wind

Megan and I pushed into Aromacobana, and I was unsurprised it was busy.

It was normally relatively busy for one.

It was the weekend for another.

And it was sunny, and the season was upon us.

The Kimmy season.

The Christmas season.

Although I was about to find out that all hell had not stopped breaking loose in Misted Pines. I could report that the town council still made certain the Christmas decorations were out and up by the weekend after Thanksgiving.

The vibe wasn’t effervescent, but people were doing their best to find some cheer and live their lives.

As for me, I’d just gotten back from a long weekend in LA.

I went to see my daughter. I went to shop for Christmas. I went to shop because I didn’t have a lot of clothes for colder weather. I went to shop just because I wanted new clothes. I went to pack up some things from my house and ship them to Washington. And I went to see my stylist, because Celeste was skilled when it came to hair, and we’d had some girlie sessions in her bathroom, and she’d tided me over.

But it was well past time.

I needed Joaquim.

He was complimentary of her, genuinely and to her face, since Bohannan had given her permission to fly down Friday after school to be with me. He’d also pulled some strings so he’d walked her to the gate, and at LAX, a TSA agent had walked her to me.

Another bonus of being with Bohannan.

We’d shopped. Joaquim did her hair too. We had facials and mani-pedis. She’d helped me pack even more things because there was stuff in my closet she wanted to wear. She’d bonded further with Camille and Joan.

And with those reinforcements, I decided to tackle the boys/consent/choice/sex talk.

She did not seem at all uncomfortable with me.

What she seemed to think was that I was crazy.

“I know that, Delly,” she’d said when I got through the consent part, and the inferred at the end of that sentence was a yeesh. “I mean, I know there are girls who really like boys and they’ll do like…anything. But boys who are stupid are just stupid. Everyone knows that.”

Did they?

I glanced at Camille and Joan.

They appeared just as surprised as I was.

I treaded cautiously.

“When you say ‘boys who are stupid,’ what do you mean?”

“I mean like, if you say no, and they don’t stop. Or if you’re like, ‘I don’t wanna drink,’ and they’re all, ‘C’mon, everyone’s drinking. Let’s play beer pong.’ Beer pong is stupid too, by the way. But anyway, it’s like, you know, beer doesn’t taste good, and people act dumb when they drink too much of it. Some people think it’s funny. But me and my friends just think it’s, well…” Big shrug and, “Stupid.”

She proved she got my drift when she went on, a might huffily.

“Will’s not like that, you know. He might drink a beer, but he thinks all that being loud and crazy and obnoxious is stupid too. I never saw him do that before, but he might have done it. Still. I think it has to do with Alice. It’s like, a really crappy silver lining. You know, he’s learned life is too short to act like a moron. Life is serious. You don’t have to act serious all the time. But there’s no time to be a moron. Am I making sense?”

She was.

And this made me feel even better about Will, who was still over a lot, and I’d come to like him.

He was broody (understandable).

He was intense with Celeste (she was very into him, and he needed someone who cared, so maybe he was just soaking it up).

But mostly he was quiet and polite, serious like she said. He studied with Celeste. He went to hockey practice. He played in his games. He took Celeste out to the Double D or the Lodge. He went home to his grandmother. He avoided his parents like the plague.