Trespass (7 page)

“Smells good,” he said, trying to keep the growl out of his voice. Woman, bacon. Hard to top that combo.

“How do you like your eggs?”

“Scrambled’s fine.”

“You sure? I worked at a diner in high school. I can make any kind you like. It’s practically the only thing I
can
cook.” She leaned over to pour him a cup of coffee.

“Thanks. Surprise me, then.”

She nodded and Russ let her go. He went to the front, grabbing the newspaper off the porch and settling in with it and the coffee at the table while Nicole cooked. Not bad. Not bad at all. Then the dogs began their morning chorus, and Russ abandoned his brief spell of laziness to feed them and tend to the horses. When he got back inside, Nicole was setting plates on the table.

“Sunny-side up,” she said.

“Fine by me.” Russ took a seat, admired the offering.

She sighed, theatrically annoyed. “Not just
fine
. I’ll have you know this like the holy grail of egg cooking. Sunny-side up with no snotty clear bits, no hard yolk?” She sat with an air of smugness and reached for the salt and pepper.

“You’re a pro.”

“Are you putting me to work today?” she asked.

“If you’re up for it. And it seems like you’ve already put yourself to work.” To illustrate, Russ took a bite of his toast. He looked at her face, remembering with a zap to his nerves the details of what they’d done last night. He hoped he’d keep remembering it all day long, little happy shocks like static electricity keeping him on his toes.

“I think I’m up for nearly anything now,” she said. “Just not super-heavy lifting.”

“Good. In that case I’m going to make you shampoo the horses.”

She laughed then realized he was serious, face going from amused to curious.

“It’s a lot like washing a car. It’s fun. You’ll like it.”

“I’m sure I will.” She looked shy, staring down at her plate, moving her eggs around. Russ didn’t know if he’d ever seen anyone so pretty before. He wanted to reach over and grab her around the middle, haul her across the table and wrap himself around her, mess up her half-dried hair and kiss her for an hour.

She looked up and met his gaze. “What?”

“You look real pretty.”

Nicole bit her lip, looking as though she might deflect the compliment, maybe dash Russ’s hopes and tell him she was feeling different this morning, uncomfortable being flirted with now that the beer and fire had worn off. But all she said was “Thanks.”

Sarah rose first and cleared Russ’s yolk-stained plate. He let her do the dishes and start a fresh pot of coffee, turning back to his newspaper while she puttered. She did an overly thorough job of wiping down the counter, watching him through the open space in the wall that separated the kitchen and den. He had a dab of yellow at the corner of his mouth, sleep-mussed hair glowing gold at the edges from the morning sunshine. She glanced at the pocket watch before her on the ledge and the antique medicine bottle beside it, its thick, cloudy glass the same gray-green as Russ’s eyes.

“Tonight,” she began, gaze still locked on the glass.

He looked up, attentive. “Yeah?”

She remembered how he’d felt when he’d slid in behind her on the couch, that comforting, forceful combination of need and demand. She felt prematurely like a cad. “I need to sleep alone tonight.”

His attention shifted to the window and he nodded. “Sure. Of course.”

She set the sponge down and rinsed her hands, drying them on her jeans as she walked over to him. “I don’t mean I don’t want to…you know. Mess around.”

“No?” That look again—adorable, desperate hope.

She shook her head, stepping close enough to put her fingertips to his shoulders. “No, I’d like that, if you would.”

He nodded, setting a hand at her waist. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“But afterward, I just want to be alone, on the couch, so I can catch up on the sleep I’ve been missing. I told you I’m kind of restless.”

“Yeah.”

“Actually,” she added, as though she’d just thought of it. “You don’t have any sleeping pills, do you? Or even like nighttime flu medicine? I know that sounds pathetic—”

“No, it doesn’t. And I think I do. I’ll check this afternoon.”

Worries swirled around in her head and she fumbled for a way to get the information she most needed from him. “Cool, thanks. I didn’t know if you only had animal sleeping pills lying around…”

Russ laughed. “I’m sure I can find you something a bit gentler than what I’d use on a horse.”

What about a dog?
She dropped the baiting for the time being, too close to sounding suspicious. “Anyway. You know when you want to sleep but it’s just not happening?” She thrust her lip out in a frustrated pout.

“I thought that’s what whiskey was invented for.”

She smiled and ran her fingers through his messy hair, down his stubbly cheek. “Anyhow, thanks. But for now, chores. Then dinner, then who knows.” She grazed a conspiring hand over his neck. “But after that I’m catching up on my beauty sleep.”

Russ looked as if he was resisting the urge to turn that comment into a corny flirtation. Instead he stood and put his hand in her hair the way he seemed to love doing, leaned in and kissed her. Mouth closed, eyes closed, warm lips holding in a faint noise, a grunt or sigh.

He let her go and she stared at his chin, a little drunk from him. She reached up to wipe the yolk from beside his smiling lips.

“Okay. Put me to work.”

An hour later Sarah could confirm that shampooing a horse was indeed very much like washing a car, right down to the hose she was using to rinse the suds from Mitch. She craned her neck, looking to where Russ was standing in the pen, fussing over Lizzie’s gums. He’d ditched his sweater as the sun had risen, and he looked good in his dusty jeans, those strong, tanned arms, shoulder blades flexing under his T-shirt. That hat like a cliché, so endearing.

She chewed her lip, only fretting for a moment about whether or not to be evil to him. She let the hose trigger go, pumped it a couple times.

“Russ?”

He turned. “Yeah?”

“Hose is acting weird.”

His eyebrows rose. He gave Lizzie a pat then left her be, walking over. “What’s it doing?”

“It’s just kind of—” She squeezed the handle, soaked Russ from head to toe and sent his hat flying off behind him. When she finally released it, he blinked at her, hair dripping, shirt plastered to his chest, the front side of his jeans dark and drenched.

“Seriously?” he asked.

She bit her lip. “Yeah.”

Russ smiled, a deadly Jack Nicholson sort of smile, eyes narrowing. He took a step closer. “Seriously?”

She nodded.

“How fast can you run?” he asked.

“Real fast.”

“You better hope so.”

He took another step, and she tossed the hose aside, bolting past him into the pen and ducking between the wooden fence rails. She felt him grab her sneaker for a second, heard his feet hit the ground behind as she took off into the yard. He caught her easily after only a few seconds’ sprint into the tall grass. She yelped as he hooked her around the waist and brought them both crashing to the ground, Russ taking the bulk of the impact. Rolling her onto her back, he pressed his dripping front against her and made her feel six years old, made all the horrors from the past few weeks dissolve until the entire world consisted of just their two bodies, this patch of earth under this exact sky. She began to laugh, convulsive, cathartic sobbing laughs as Russ flipped her over on top of him. She kissed him, square on the mouth with her eyes open, and decided he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen or touched or tasted.

He made the kisses deeper, dirty hands in her formerly clean hair. She locked her thighs around his hips, wanting to stay right here for a month, so filled with good feelings there was no room left for bad ones. She felt Russ grow hard and contemplated a near-literal roll in the hay, then decided the risk of ticks and every other thing lurking in the grass was a mood killer.

She let the kissing linger for another minute then freed her mouth. “You feel like a shower?”

“I feel like you just gave me one back in the paddock.”

“Do you feel like a proper one, with soap and hot water and naked strangers corrupting your cramped little ancient bathtub?”

He smiled, expression shifting in a way she adored. “Yeah, I could go for that.”

She got to her feet and let Russ take her dirty hand in his for the short walk back to the pen. He let Mitch out into the main yard and put away a few things and led them inside. They ditched their shoes at the door and headed for the bathroom.

Russ got the shower running and they watched one another undress. She loved his body…unlike any man’s body she’d been intimate with before. Not skinny, not bulky, strong and muscular but not from the gym. Just exactly what a man ought to look like, she decided. Russ had sexy shoulders, triceps so defined she wanted to bite them. He also had the very start of what would be an inevitable middle-aged belly, a charming flaw flying in the face of his otherwise
too
perfect working man’s body.

Russ shed his shorts, his sudden and complete nakedness pulling her out of her spacey admiration and into darker, curious realms. She undid her bra and let him step forward and push her panties down, his erection brushing her navel. She was about ready to trade a kidney for a box of condoms.

Strong hands took hold of her jaw, and she melted into him, into his forceful mouth and eager body, into the moans humming in his throat, begging to be unleashed. She slid her hand between them and stroked his soft chest hair, squeezed the hard swells of his shoulders. For a few greedy seconds, she explored his back and that textbook-perfect ass, then he pulled away, grinning. Sliding the shower curtain open, he gestured for her to get inside.

It wasn’t the ideal tub for a tryst—narrow and rounded—but with Russ here she couldn’t imagine a better place to be. He climbed in after her, dragging the clear curtain around them and angling the showerhead at her back.

“Jesus.” His gaze slid up and down her front. “You’re gorgeous.”

She bit her tongue, tempted to contradict him. Tempted to say she’d prefer to weigh ten pounds more and be filling her modest B-cups again, lose the ribs, lose the holes in her side and the bruises that peppered her like finger-paint smudges. Instead she let him ogle, let him feast on whatever he saw and whatever made his green eyes narrow the way they did now.

She reached around the curtain for the shampoo bottle on the windowsill, snapping it open and getting her hands full of lather. Russ leaned in and let her wash his hair before he returned the favor, his fingers dawdling well after the suds had disappeared down the drain. They passed the soap back and forth and explored one another’s bodies. Their curious, slippery hands lingered here and there, eyes darting as though they’d invented all this nonsense and couldn’t quite comprehend their own genius.

The hot water waned. Russ stepped out first and grabbed them each a towel.

Sarah squeezed her dripping hair into the tub. “That was way more fun than shampooing a horse.”

“Agreed.” Russ toweled himself off then turned to the sink and lathered his face with shaving cream. He procured a razor Sarah wished she’d known about before she’d settled for his electric shaver the previous afternoon.

She sidled up him as he ran the blade down his cheek.

“May I?” she asked.

His eyebrow jumped up. “You may, if you know what you’re doing.”

“Sure I do.” She knotted her towel between her breasts and took the razor, dragging it gently down Russ’s jaw. She loved this tiny taste of trust, the proximity of his face. Selfishly, she loved every scrap of intimacy she could share with this man before their time together ended. She knew it would end badly, that it would end in such a way that neither of them would want to remember even the good parts. But for a little while longer she could live in the present—the perfection—before she wrecked it.

She maneuvered the blade down the dip between Russ’s lip and chin. “Did you figure out if you have any sleeping pills?”

He pulled his head away a moment to slide open a drawer at his hip. He rummaged for a small, flat box and set it on the counter. “It’s just nighttime Benadryl. Should do the trick.”

“That’s great, thanks.” She scanned the drawer’s other contents before he slid it shut. “You must have to be careful about what you leave lying around. You know, so you don’t get your pills mixed up or if the dogs got ahold of something…”

Russ had a glazed look to his face, clearly distracted by other thoughts. “I’m pretty careful.”

“What would happen if the dogs did get into something like this?” She tapped the box. “Would it hurt them?”

“Not that stuff. It’s got the same analgesic vets prescribe for dogs.”

Relief rose in her chest only to be replaced by fresh anxiety and guilt. A strong urge tugged at her, begging her to get lost in their sexual connection and block out the guilty gray clouds rolling in on the horizon.

Russ’s eyes were locked on the base of her neck. As she traced a finger from his throat to his navel, she caught him swallow, his stomach swelling with a steadying breath. He braced a hand on either side of the counter. She unknotted the towel wrapped around his hips and let it fall away. His cock was ready, standing out thick and stiff from the damp nest of his dark curls. As her hand wrapped around him, he moaned as though she’d burned him. His back arched, and he leaned against the sink, hips seeking more of her touch. Russ made helplessness into the sexiest male quality she’d ever seen, and made pleasing him into the greatest act she’d ever taken part in.

She gave him long, slow, worshipful strokes. He reached for her towel, and she let him free it so he could stare as she teased his cock and made him groan and pant and sigh with pleasure. When she sensed him getting close she dropped to her knees, hand still pumping, and brought her lips to his head.

“Oh God.”

“Come for me, Russ.”

“God, Nicole.”

She shut her eyes against the pain of hearing that name and focused on his taste.