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When she lifted her head they were both breathless, his cock a rock-hard ridge between them. He ran his hands over her length, gripped her ass and pressed her body even closer, groaning a little. This was insanely dangerous, they both knew it, but they were both powerless to stop it, had no desire to stop it…Bryce rested her forearms on his chest and looked down into his eyes in amazement.

“I feel like I've known you before this,” she told him, and he grinned at her devilishly, flashing his dimples.

“Well, darlin',” he said, affecting a slight drawl to match her own, “I believe you have, several times.”

She flushed in a wave across her whole body, and lightly drummed her fists against him. “No, I mean before we met in Oklahoma.”

He was all at once serious, too.

“I know,” he said. “I feel the same way. When you looked up at me on the stairs at that motel…”

“I can't explain it,” she whispered back, tracing his eyebrows lightly with her index fingers, overjoyed to have the planes of his actual face beneah her fingers, and not just a photograph. “I just knew it, too.”

He caught and kissed one of her palms, cupped it against his cheek, marveling at how small and delicate her hand felt inside of his own. She laced her fingers through his and kissed his scratchy chin, breathing the scent of him like precious perfume, and he wanted to be inside of her so bad that he shuddered with the intensity of it. He pulled her mouth back to his, kissed her deeply again, sending a rush of pleasure down her spine and into her very core. Still holding her face in his hands, as though to reassure himself she was real, he whispered, “Don't go, Bryce. We will make this work, I swear to you. I will find a way.”

Matthew loved her. He loved her
. And her body resonated with the ferociousness of her love for him. She heard herself whisper, “I'll stay.”
Just a little longer, at least. A few more days, a week
…

She tried to believe that this could happen in the face of their family, in the face of society.

He promised himself right there he would make it work, a feeling that reverberated down into his bones.

And right then, he really believed he could.

***

They stayed
on the dock for a while after that. Matthew sat up and enfolded her against him, pulling her back to his chest, his arms folded double around her, rested his chin on her head. For long moments they studied the stars, wordless, their hands joined with fingers interlaced.

“Matthew?” she whispered, tipping her head slightly, and he lowered his face and pressed his warm lips to her left temple.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

She pulled his hands even more tightly against her body, whispered, “I want you.”

She felt his lips widen into a grin against her skin, and her heart pounded even harder.

“Where can we go?” she whispered, and he could feel her heart thrumming against his bent arms, arousing him more than he could have ever thought possible. His own heart sent hot blood tidal waving through the channels of his body.

“I'll be right back,” he told her. He rose, lifting her with, and hugged her hard for a moment, then turned and jogged down the dock, creating a small earthquake along the boards. She watched as he disappeared back toward the house, hugged herself around the middle, firmly deciding she would not think about anything but the present. She would hide out here in this moment, forget the inevitable future in which she would surely have to leave for Oklahoma and the collect up the vestiges of the life she'd been living there before last Saturday afternoon…

For a split second her thoughts circled over and landed on Wade and she recoiled internally, grateful that he was more than a thousand miles away, comforting herself in the knowledge that he had certainly been unfaithful to her over the course of their relationship. The thought of him touching her ever again made her stomach shift nauseously, though she understood how ridiculous that was, hardly fair to a man who had spent years touching her…

Matthew came jogging back a few minutes later, and he had a blanket, a big soft flannel one, folded over his arm. He reached her and said, “The work truck is parked just up the path, on the service road. It's not exactly a first class hotel, but
–
”

“That's perfect,” she responded instantly.

He caught her right hand in his left and said, “Come with me.”

The service truck he and Wilder used at the camground was parked on the gravel road that functioned as a sort of shortcut from the Pull Inn to the Sternhagen's private dock, a road secluded from the main one, hidden by the dense pine forest. They ran like naughty children through the smoldering June night, and Matthew cranked open the squeaky metal door and spread the blanket over the long bench seat in the front, impatiently. He turned back to help her climb in, but she was already in his arms, and he pulled the door shut with a soft click.

They kissed with the fervor of two people about to be separated indefinitely, as though tomorrow would never come, and tonight meant everything there was in the world. He took her bottom lip into his mouth and sucked it while she moaned against him, gripping his huge shoulders. He didn't break the contact of their lips as he struggled to unbutton his shirt, and she laughed a little as they reluctantly parted at last while she undid the bottom few buttons, then reached to ease the shirt from his huge shoulders, a small gesture that made her blood boil with its intimacy.

Her belly tightened with an almost aching desire as she pulled the shirt down his body, causing his elbows to lift and his shoulder muscles to bulge. She cupped her hands around them, smoothed her palms along the ridges of hard muscle to his neck, while he waited in a barely-controlled stillness, watching her watch him. When she lowered her hands to grasp her own shirt's hem, he stilled her fingers and lifted it over her head, gently, his hands shaking a little, as though he were 15. She was naked beneath his old sweatshirt she'd been wearing, her nipples dark, rigid circles against the soft pale glow of her breasts. He bent his head and used both hands to bring her against his mouth, loving how her own hands went directly to the back of his head to pull him even closer.

Bryce tipped her head back while spasms of joy spread through her limbs and knifed into her belly. His mouth was hot on her flesh, and he bit her nipples lightly, making a low growl in his throat. Back against her neck he whispered, “You are so beautiful, Bryce,” and then he cupped her cheeks with both hands and studied her eyes intently. “I want you to know how beautiful you are, and how much I wish we were in a big soft bed and not the cab of this old truck.” She suddenly realized his big hands were trembling, and she reached up and slipped her own over them, touched to the depths of her soul. He whispered, “I've never felt this way before.”

“Me, neither,” she whispered back, and moved swiftly to straddle his lap on the seat. She twined her fingers into his hair, smoothing it as he clutched her naked waist with both hands and let her tip his head as she would. She kissed his right eye, closing it, then his left, breathing him in as she did, her nipples skimming against him lightly, and she was thrilled to feel the trembling move into his thighs beneath her. He remained otherwise motionless as she kissed along his jaw, pausing at his chin, dying to kiss his lips but holding herself back, and then traced soft little pecks along his left jaw up to his temple. There she stopped, her heart reverberating like a gong, her nipples hard enough to slice through glass. She could sense his desire like a gigantic coiled spring, and she was heady with her own. She tilted her chin and bit his earlobe, and he groaned softly, his hands tightening on her flesh. In another second the thrumming intensity between their bodies would eat them alive.

She licked the side of his neck in tickling strokes, ran her hands over the huge hard expanse of his chest. When she dared to meet his eyes they appeared black with desire.

“Matthew, I need you inside me,” she whispered, her own limbs shaking now, and he moved over her so fast she gasped, ripping down his pants and her soft old pajama bottoms with one hand, the other tight around her waist. She bit his chin sharply as his fingers sought her and then slid deep, stroked her inside and out, until she was limp and panting, ready to beg him to enter her fully.

But he teased her still, bringing her almost to climax with his plundering fingers, while she clung to his neck, tasting him with the tip of her tongue, until his own breathing was ragged and harsh, and she couldn't wait another moment.

“Please, Matthew…” she groaned, but he held himself back with determination, a small, rational part of his brain making him whisper, “Can we do this without protection?”

She smiled against his neck, her breasts crushed flat against his chest; he was sweet to think of that, and she certainly hadn't given it consideration. His touch was too overwhelming, it blocked out any sensibility she possessed. She looked back into his eyes, reached up and wrapped one hand tightly around the incredible hardness near her right thigh.

“It's okay,” she whispered. “My period just ended, and I'm on the pill. We can most certainly do this.”

His dimples flashed for an instant before he shifted their bodies and slid fully inside with one stroke, gripping her hips hard enough to imprint images of his fingers. She wrapped her legs around him and clung for dear life as he pumped into her, until her body was singing with the intensity of the rhythm, ready to explode, and then he deliberately slowed his movements.

Matthew clamped his teeth against her right shoulder, panting too, and whispered, “Not yet,” but in the next moment he was pounding into her body again. After the third time of taking her almost there, she was crying out against his neck, and he meant to keep going, but the top of his head would surely blow off…and despite nearly seeing stars, he managed to keep the firm pace until he felt Bryce shudder, gasping his name as she came all over him.

Long minutes later he lifted his face and kissed the corner of her mouth. She managed a small smile, cradling his head against herself. And she took that moment as a benediction, a blessing, and told herself it would have to be enough.

***

Later, in
her bed in the upstairs guest room, Bryce curled her legs up to her chest and tipped her face against her bent knees, fully beginning to realize how amputated she felt without Matthew beside her. When he was near, he filled her senses with desire and awe and joy…and when she was without him, she now felt so very alone.

Matthew
, she thought, hugging her knees hard.
Oh God, it can never be enough. Nothing less than the rest of our lives could ever be enough.

Rose Lake, Minnesota – Thursday, June 22, 1995

B
ryce had yet to speak
to her mother or Wade, for that matter, and one of the two, at least, would be expecting her back sometime this afternoon. Erica had been overjoyed at breakfast, as the kids ate heaping amounts of scrambled eggs and cheese, plates of peanut-butter toast, as though to make up for yesterday's dearth. Wilder and Matthew were once again already up and gone before Bryce and the kids ate, giving Bryce time to compose herself and give Erica the news that she would like to stay a little longer. She said at least another week.

Erica grinned, said, “I hope by that you mean at least until our anniversary party next week, or even the Fourth of July!” and Evelyn and Cody whooped. Emma was a little less enthusiastic, saying only, “That's cool, now you can come swimming with us today at the beach.” Erica piled more eggs on Bryce's plate and added, “Honey, you can have a little vacation here. Hang out on the beach, take a few nature walks, let the kids and Matty show you around. Do you have enough clothes? Throw whatever into that hamper by the basement door there,” indicating with a spatula, and things seemed to be out of Bryce's hands.

After breakfast Evelyn asked, “Hey, Bryce, do you need a swimsuit? I think one of mine might fit.”

Evelyn lent her a navy blue bikini bordered with a row of cheerful embroidered daisies, strapless and yet far less skimpy than anything Bryce owned at home. It fit surprisingly well, and she pulled on her jean shorts over the bottom, slung her hair up into a high knot on the top of her head. It was a glistening sunny day, the air hot and sticky, and Bryce felt as though a radiant glow was trying to push out through her chest. Her thoughts returned again and again to the night before, her stomach swirling with butterflies, her lips tipping into joyous smiles, until she caught herself and tried to damper things a little. Besides, there was one other thing she had to do, and the thought wiped her face clean of any contentment.

“I'll just be a minute,” Bryce told Evelyn, who was waiting to drive her to the Pull Inn on the golf cart. “I have to call home quick.”

“Okay!” Evelyn called as she hauled a loaded cooler out the porch door, letting it crack shut behind her. Bryce dialed the familiar number with wooden fingers, praying that Wade wouldn't answer, that he'd be at work right now…

She blew a breath of pure relief when the machine picked up. She said, trying for nonchalance, “Hey, Wade, things up here are fine. I won't be home now until later this month. I decided to stay a while longer and get to know my family here. Okay? You can call me,” she felt compelled to add. And the moment he did, she would make a clean break. Dammit. It wasn't fair to him. She rattled off the number Evelyn had written on the notepad by the phone a moment earlier, then hung up.

She meant to dial Michelle next, but when the ringing phone was picked up in Oklahoma seconds later, Tammy's familiar voice chirped, “Hello?”

“Hey, it's me,” she told Trish's older sister.

“Bryce! Are you home? Trish has been missing the shit out of you.”

“Not exactly…I decided to stay in Minnesota a little longer. Is Trish there?”

“No, honey, she's at work. I'll tell her you called, okay?”

“Thanks, Tam.”

Tonight, I will call Mom tonight
, she promised herself. Wade would have been the one to pick her up at the bus station anyway, not Michelle. She doubted her mother even realized it was Thursday and that the southbound bus she should have been on was even due this afternoon.

“You coming?” Evelyn called from the porch, and Bryce went.

***

The Pull
Inn was bustling, just the way it had been on Tuesday when Bryce had taken the grand tour with Riley. He was currently making what Erica called “trail repairs”: fixing holes, clearing brush or fallen logs from the paths that wound throughout the campground and up into the nearby bluffs.

“We're only technically responsible for our acreage,” Erica explained. “But Daniel always liked to keep the main trails clean, even the ones that meander off of our property.”

“Uncle Matty said to bring you to the beach,” Cody told Bryce after she'd helped Evelyn unload the coolers from the golf cart. “He said you haven't even seen it yet.”

“He's right, I haven't,” Bryce told the little guy, and he was happy to grasp her hand and tug her in the direction of the lake.

“Honey, have fun, relax today,” Erica told her, and blew a kiss as they left.

Cody bounded ahead, but the trail to the beach was unmistakable; the sounds of many people splashing around in the lake reached her ears through the masses of tree trunks that the path curved through. Rose Lake appeared as a glimmering blue jewel, sparkling with sunlight and bobbing with the sleek heads of about 10 thousand kids and the adults trying to keep them in line. Bryce saw Matthew immediately, dressed in bright green swim trunks and a battered hat, nothing else. Her belly tightened, low, to see his lean, muscly torso, his huge shoulders, the perfect tapered V of his upper body and lanky arms. A whistle dangled around his neck, and she thought about how she had pressed her lips against the exact same spot last night, had slipped her legs around his waist and held tight, had scraped her fingernails against his head and…

He looked up then, over the swarming, laughing crowd and tipped his head, giving her that effortless grin. He briefly caught the brim of his hat between the fingertips of his right hand, tipping it at her the way a cowboy in an old movie would, and then he turned back to the family who was waiting to rent a canoe, angling his clipboard so the father could sign something.

Cody was running off to join Emma and a group of other kids about the same age, and Bryce would have walked directly to Matthew's side and surely given in to her desperate urge to bite the side of his neck and press her palm against the slim trail of dark hair that led from his navel and disappeared into the top of his trunks…

“Hey, Bryce!” Debbie was saying, shaking Bryce back to reality. Riley's twin caught her arm in a friendly way and led her to the far side of the beach, where her umbrella stand was set up for business. She observed, “You need a towel, huh?” and proceeded to find one and pass it to Bryce. After spreading it on the sand beside Debbie's, Bryce said, “Thanks. I didn't even think to bring one.”

Debbie, who was blessed with very large breasts and clad in a shiny pink bikini, plopped unceremoniously onto her own towel and indicated the other with her left elbow. She slipped sunglasses from the top of her head to her face, then tipped her chin up into the brilliant sun and opened a white bottle of sunblock.

“This is such a great job in the summer,” Debbie said, smiling at her. Bryce slipped off her shorts and lowered herself to the striped towel, laying back and closing her eyes against the glare. The sun was a warm caress all along her limbs, her belly. She couldn't recall the last time she'd been allowed the luxury of just basking in it, taking a moment for herself in a place that was this lovely. Breathing deeply, she acknowledged, “You're lucky.”

“So, has my brother been pestering the shit out of you?” Debbie asked her.

Bryce cracked one eye and peeked over at Debbie; she was applying a fresh coat of sunblock, rubbing her plump, freckled arms vigorously. Bryce replied, “No, he's been really nice, actually.”

“He's got a little bit of crush on you,” Debbie informed her. “He'd kill me for saying that.”

Bryce giggled a little. “It must be nice to have a brother and sister. I don't have any, but I always wanted one.”

“Oh, it sucks sometimes, believe me. When we were little, Erica used to boss the shit out of us, and Riley and me fought like crazy. And his friends were the worst. Him and Matty have been best friends since we were all little. They used to tease me so bad because I went through a chubby phase in fifth grade.”

“They did?” The more Debbie spoke, the more she reminded Bryce of Stacy back home, and she felt a small, sharp pang for her friends, wishing that they could be beside her on this beach with its sand like granulated sugar and the sound of the lake lapping the shore. “That's so mean. I can't imagine Matthew being mean.”

Debbie giggled then. “He went through it just like all of them. But that was when he was still short…he didn't get big until like the end of eighth grade, so I could still take him and Riley both. And they both had the squeakiest voices! Ah, the good old days.”

Bryce found herself aching for more. She wanted Debbie to tell her every last story about him, the way he had looked and acted, what kind of music and sports he liked and television he watched…but she knew it would seem strange for her to ask too much about her half-uncle.

“Hey there, lovely ladies,” someone said, and Bryce opened her eyes again, nearly blinding herself, and slowly made out a shirtless guy in swim trunks splattered with blue polka dots. She raised a hand to her forehead to see if she recognized him from the funeral as Debbie said, “Nice shorts, Nate.”

He bent at the waist and admired his thighs, then gave the girls a grin and strongly reminded Bryce of someone for a moment.

“Yeah, I know. I actually didn't come over here to get ribbed, Debs, just to get introduced to your friend. Nate Ryan,” he added, and bent to offer his hand to Bryce.

She sat up and shook his hand, scraping loose strands of hair from her neck with the other. Nate was tanned as a leather jacket, with black hair, a black goatee and a firm grip. Debbie said belatedly, “Nate, this is Bryce Mitchell, Erica and Wilder's niece.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Nate went on, holding her hand just a second longer than necessary. Over his right shoulder Bryce could see Matthew at the boat rental shack, talking animatedly with a different family, using both hands, one still clutching the clipboard, to gesture as he spoke. Her heart kindled and glowed just watching him across the beach.

“You, too,” she told Nate, casually drawing her hand away.

Debbie said with affectionate sarcasm, “We're having a conversation here, Nate,” and he shook his head in simulated exasperation and said, “Fine then, I'll see you two around. Bryce, great to meet you. Will you be in Rose Lake for the whole summer?”

“Maybe,” she replied, going for noncommital.

As Nate walked away, Debbie informed her, “There are more Ryans in town than any other family. Nate was a year younger than me in school, and his brother Bailey a year older. Their uncle used to date Rae Taylor, who just moved back to town this week. She looks exactly how I want to look at 40.”

“She is pretty, isn't she?” Bryce mused, picturing the small woman with the yellow sundress and golden-hazel eyes, the color of a tiger's.

“Too bad about her divorce. I guess the asshole was cheating on her, and then ended up getting their condo for himself.”

“Ouch.”

“He wasn't from around here,” Debbie continued, as though this statement explained it all. “Everyone thought she would end up marrying Jeremy Ryan, but then she moved away to Chicago to go to Northwestern and met her ex-husband.”

Bryce considered a moment, then decided,
What the hell
. She said, “I think her older brother used to date my mom back when.”

Debbie sounded genuinely surprised. “Bar, Jr.? No kidding?”

“Yeah. But I'm only speculating.”

“Could be. Bar is married to Nate's aunt Leslie, and they have four kids. But I think they started dating after high school. What's your mom's name again?”

“Michelle. She moved away from here before I was born.” Bryce was oddly comforted to realize that Debbie didn't have this information; probably it was no big deal around here, not after all this time.

“I only know a little, from Erica,” Debbie admitted. “She told me that your mom and Daniel had some sort of falling out years ago, but that no one really knew what it was about, even Wilder.”

Bryce pressed her fingertips to her eyes for a moment, causing blood-red circles to momentarily bloom behind her eyelids, then said, “Honestly, Debbie,
I
don't even know, and she's my mother.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, our mother said once that she wished she had married a traveling circus performer named Kirk, who she met back in the sixties. She said all these years she could have been traveling from town to town and riding horses bareback instead of raising three ungrateful children, or some shit,” Debbie snorted, and both girls laughed.

“Wilder'll want to talk to you,” Debbie went on. “Erica said he talks about Michelle a lot, always wanted to try and visit her, but she never wanted him to come. You're from Oklahoma, right?”

Bryce nodded and said, “Yeah, the shittiest part of it, too. I'd never seen a real lake before this week.”

“Oh, honey, have the kids take you out on a canoe! Or Matty. He knows every little nook and cranny,” Debbie said, and Bryce smiled to herself.

“Speaking of the devil,” she added, and Bryce opened her eyes to see Matthew headed their way now, and her heart sent blood backpedaling furiously through her body. She lifted herself to her elbows and it took nearly all of her willpower to keep a huge, dopey grin from her face. A little one, that was all right…that wouldn't look strange. He didn't take his eyes from her as walked over and then dropped to a crouch near their bare toes, lightly hooked his left hand around his right wrist, balanced his forearms on his bent knees, his huge, sand-dusted shoulders catching the sun and throwing it back in little sparks. His clipboard dangled from his right hand, refracting red light onto the ground at his feet.

“Thought I better come say hey,” he said to them, tearing his gaze from Bryce to include Debbie in the equation. His own lips seemed unable to keep from smiling. Debbie huffed and said, “Sternhagen, go and get over yourself already!”