Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (30 page)

fingers.

“Off,” she said. She was surprised when he did as she said,

standing and facing away from her. He stripped off his pants

and underwear in one quick movement. He had dimples in his

ass that matched the ones in his face, only bigger.

She giggled.

“What?” he said. He turned to face her. She was going to tell

him about the dimples, but his cock was in front of her and she couldn’t say anything. Usually she thought cocks looked kind of
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funny, the way they stuck out. But on him, it seemed perfect. It wasn’t long, but it was thick, with a perfectly shaped head. The skin was a beautiful golden red, darker than the rest of his body.

A drop of come shone at the tip.

She scooted forward on the couch and gave one small lick at

the end of him. He tasted like clean and salt and musk. God,

she wanted him in her mouth, wanted to suck him to the back

of her throat until he was so deep she couldn’t breathe. Instead, she forced herself to go slow, to keep licking around the smooth skin of the head, to savor the taste and smell of him. His breathing quickened and he moaned, low and deep, a sound that Dul-

cie thought she could listen to forever.

Outside, Agate whined, too, echoing them. “Poor guy,” Tra-

vis laughed. “Doesn’t even know what he’s missing.”

He put his hands in her hair. Not moving her head, but twist-

ing his fingers in the strands. She loved the ridges of him, the way he seemed to stretch even as he was in her mouth. With

one hand, she cupped his balls. With the other, she made a firm circle around the base of him. Holding him like that, she could lick him from base to tip. She watched his face as she did so,

waiting until his brown eyes opened and met hers.

“Wait, wait,” he said. He moved back from the reach of her

lips. “I want to . . . I don’t want to come just yet.”

“I don’t have a condom or anything,” she said.

“Cold shower it is,” he said.

“Let’s just go outside,” she said. “I’m frying up anyway.”

“You’re also naked,” he said.

“So are you.”

“Well, okay then.”

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She felt suddenly, belatedly shy again. “You first,” she said.

“Fine, I see how it is.” He got up and walked toward the door,

flexing his butt muscles so that Dulcie had to laugh.

“Show off,” she said.

And then he was out the door. She followed, prepared for the

blast of cold from outside, but it still rocked her back, started her body shivering.

“Holy shit,” she said. Agate ran up to her at the sound of

her voice and licked her leg. She knelt, rubbed his soft ears.

“Where’s your daddy?” she asked. “Off peeing, likely.”

The snowball caught her right in the side of the hip, spread

snow over her and Agate.
“Ouch!”
she said. “Jerk, that had ice in it.”

Travis was still hiding, but she could hear his laugh from be-

hind the syrup shed. “You’re so dead,” she said. She bent down

and started her own snowball. She packed it hard in her bare

hands. Travis might have had the advantage of surprise, but she’d always had better aim. She’d sworn up and down the pitchfork

bit was an accident, but the truth was, she’d caught him looking at that cute girl down the road, and the pitchfork was the first thing her hand had come into contact with. She hadn’t meant

to hit him that hard, just to poke him, but he’d moved toward

her at the same time. Her grandma had teased her forever. “All

strength and no finesse,” she’d said.

Dulcie came round the shed fast and ran smack into the

face full of snow that he was holding. This time, he hadn’t

packed it at all. Powder went up her nose and into her eyes.

She could feel it melting along her eyelashes. “Goddamn,” she

said. She chucked her carefully made snowball at him, but he

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was already pulling her into him and she was too close to do

any damage.

He tightened his arms around her until she couldn’t move

and then licked the snow from her face.

“I learned that from Agate,” he said.

“Um, ew?”

“Well, you weren’t saying that when I was doing that other

trick with my tongue,” he said. “Agate taught me that, too.”

“That’s a serious
ew,
” she said. She tried to smack him, but he still had hold of her too tight.

“So, what did the note say?” he asked.

“Oh, you know, the usual. Something about how I never

wanted to see you again.”

“Really?” His mouth thinned out, and he still held her, but

not as tightly.

“I’m sorry, that was stupid,” she said. “That’s not what it said at all. It wasn’t anything.”

He just looked at her.

“Fine,” she said. “I said that I’d love your help with the syrup.

That I’d gladly trade you whatever you wanted if you’d be will-

ing to help me. I thought that’s why you’d shown up today.”

He let her go. For the first time, she felt how cold the snow

was beneath her feet. The wind made her shiver and cross her

arms around herself.

“Is that why you let me . . . do that? So I’d help out? In

return?”

She could only stare at him. “What? No.”

“Never borrow, never burden, never beg, right?” He must have

seen the surprise on her face. “Yeah, I know. Ada’s philosophy.

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Passed it on to you, right? You thought that’s what I’d want in return for helping you out? That that’s what I’d ask for?”

Travis turned away, started walking back toward the shed.

“Wait, Travis, it isn’t like that.”

He was already inside the shed. Dulcie shivered in the snow.

Maybe she hadn’t realized how much she’d hurt him, going

away the first time. They’d just been kids, though. It wasn’t fair to hold it against her. She had to think, had to figure this out.

Even Agate was no help this time—he just sat in the snow, look-

ing at her, his tongue hanging out.

Travis came out of the shed half dressed, pulling his

T-shirt on.

“What the hell, Travis?” she asked, and then instantly regret-

ted it. “What are you doing?”

“The syrup’s finished,” he said. “It’ll be good. And I helped

you and you, well, you
helped
me. Now we’re even.”

He whistled for Agate and then looked at her again. “Put

some clothes on before you freeze,” he said. And there was so

much softness in his voice that it nearly broke her heart. She

could fix this, then, she thought. She could make it okay. And

then he said, “Be seeing you. Sara.”

Dulcie spent three days swearing at him. Swearing at herself,

and then at him again. She unpinned the note from the tree

and bottled the syrup, which, Travis was right, was good. It

was almost as good as her grandma’s. The weather had changed

enough that the sap flow was going strong. She should have been happy. But even as she thought that, even as she set up a new

fire for the second batch of syrup, she kept running it over in
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her mind. The way Travis had reacted. She wasn’t sure it was

rational; was there something she didn’t know? Something that

had happened while she was gone, or something between him

and Ada?

She was down on her knees, ready to light the next batch,

when she stopped. This time, she was going to deliver him a

note that made sense, that made it clear exactly how she felt. She wrote it quick before she could change her mind, on the back

flap of one of the books, and then grabbed a quart container of the syrup. Never borrow, burden, beg be damned. Dulcie loved

her grandma, and she’d do her best to keep the syrup business

from going under, but that other bit, she didn’t think she could live with anymore.

His house was quiet and just as she remembered it. He’d lived

there with his parents when they were kids, of course, but Ada

told her they’d moved to Florida a few years back.

She slipped onto the porch and set the jug of syrup on the

rug with the note tucked under it. As she turned, she saw Agate watching her through the window from his perch on the back

of the couch, his tail going a mile a minute.

“Shhh,”
she said.

Of course, as soon as she did that, Agate let out a series of

quick, short barks. Not “I see a raccoon” barks, either, but the ones that suggested he really, really wanted to come and play.

“Shhh!”
she said again and then laughed, because it had obviously worked so well the first time. She turned and slipped back off the porch.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “If you were any earlier, I would have met you with my shotgun. As it is, I’ve got pretty good aim with

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one of these kindling sticks. Not as good as you, of course. Your shots tend to hit home, don’t they?”

He was standing at the edge of the house, his arms loaded

with firewood, and she realized he’d been outside the whole

time, watching her. His tone was light, but his face was closed, his mouth set into a thin line. Agate barked again, once, and

then was quiet.

“I was just,
uh . . .”
God, how could her face get so hot when it was so cold out? “Listen, I just wanted to bring you some syrup.

To say thanks.”

He moved past her without touching her, dumped the load of

firewood into a box on the porch. “Does that mean I owe you

now?” he asked. He folded his arms across his chest and looked

at her.

She wanted to kiss him, and she wanted to punch him. Why

was he being so stubborn?

“Travis, I know I hurt you when I left. Or, well, I don’t know

that, but I think that. And honestly, I wouldn’t take it back. I learned a lot while I was gone, namely how and who I didn’t

want to be.”

She thought he’d tell her to breathe, like he’d done before, but he didn’t. Just stood there. She inhaled on her own and realized her hands were shaking.

“I loved Ada. She raised me, but I had to leave her—and

here—to become who I am. I’m not her. And I’m not the me

that I was when I left, either. And, neither are you. I’m okay with that. Can you be?”

Dulcie waited to see what he’d do, if he’d react, but he didn’t.

Only his scar gave him away, the way it grew whiter. She waited
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until the snow wet the shoulders of her shirt, and then she turned in the snow and left, determined not to look back.

For once, she heard him coming before he arrived. She was

gathering sap near his property line. It was running strong, and she’d filled her two buckets almost as full as she could and still carry them home. She was nearly done with the season—soon, it

would be too warm, and the sap wouldn’t run. There was no way

she was going to make all the sales she needed, but she was close, and she’d talked the bank into giving her a business loan.

Everything should have been good. Except that she couldn’t

stop thinking about Travis, about how he’d stood there, just

watching her, arms crossed.

And, now here were his footsteps and the jingle of Agate’s dog

tags coming toward her. Her instincts were telling her to turn

and run. She’d left her note, she’d offered as much as she could, and he hadn’t come to her. Running into him in the woods was

the last thing she wanted. But she couldn’t leave the buckets here and she couldn’t run with them, so she kept pouring, pretending that she couldn’t hear him at all.

“Did you mean it?” he asked.

“What?” she said. She didn’t turn, not even when Agate came

up and sat beside her.

“In the note? Did you mean it?”

She bent down and rubbed the fat of Agate’s back. He wig-

gled beneath her fingers, his whole hind end going when his tail did. When she stood, he scampered off into the woods, nose

buried in the snow.

“What note?” she asked.

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He moved to her fast, pulled her by the shoulders, and pressed

her back against the bark of the tree. “Do not fuck with me,

Dulcie,” he said. His dark eyes seemed dangerous and far away,

as though there were things in there he was trying not to let

out.

It wasn’t very cold, but his touch made her shiver. He took her chin in his hand and kissed her, so hard the bark dug into the

back of her head. He parted her lips with his tongue, not wait-

ing, not asking. After a second, she met the hard-thrust tongue, drinking in the taste of him. He bit her lip before he let her go.

Not hard, but enough to make her wince in surprise.

“Now,” he said. “Did you mean it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.” His fingers worked her jacket zipper as he spoke,

and she moved forward to help him get access. He pulled her

jacket open, and slid his hands beneath her T-shirt. His hands

were cool, but not cold.

“I . . .” His fingers were at her nipples now, not soft like they’d been the first time, but pulling, twisting. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t remember how to make her tongue move. When he let

go of her nipples, they burned, a low dull ache that went right to her belly.

“Tell me,” he said again, his fingers at the buttons of her