Dana Stabenow - Better To Rest

“Will do. You coming back in?”

“No. I’ve got a dinner date with my dad.”

“Lucky you.” She meant it.

“Yeah.” He didn’t.

He hung up and joined Wy on the deck. “Hey.”

She looked up at him with a faint smile showing through the escaped wisps of hair. “Hey, yourself.”

“How was your day, dear?”

She laughed, as he’d meant her to. “Not bad. Got a flight from the U.S. Air Force, a thing that hardly ever happens, since they prefer to fly their own. Not to mention the FBI. We small-time air-taxi outfits just love federal expense accounts.”

He grinned. “I should start taking a commission.”

“Right after you take your first flying lesson.”

“That’ll happen.”

“I can hardly wait.”

A gust of wind whistled overhead and tugged at their clothes. She was in a blue plaid shirt tucked into blue jeans cinched down by a wide leather belt. Her hiking boots were stained with salt, mud and wax, held together by a new pair of shoelaces, red-and-white-striped like a barber pole. It didn’t vary much from what she had been wearing the day before, or three years before. It had to be one of the most unseductive outfits he’d ever seen on a woman of his acquaintance, and he didn’t understand why his first, last and only inclination was to rip it off.

As if he had spoken his need out loud she looked up and met his eyes.

“Where’s Tim?”

Her eyes widened. “Basketball practice.”

“When will he be back?”

“They’re going out for pizza after.” Her knees were shaking. She wasn’t sure how much longer they’d hold her up.

His eyes narrow and intent, he reached out a hand and unbuttoned the top button of her shirt.

“Not out here,” she said, her voice weak, her head falling back.

“Why not?” He unbuttoned the second button.

“In the wind, and the snow, and the cold?”

“I’ll keep you warm.” He lowered his mouth to her throat.

“Someone will see.”

“Let them,” he said, and bit her.

Liam Campbell was a civilized man and an intuitive and generous lover, but that evening something feral had gotten off the chain. He took her down to the deck with hands that were rough and impatient, and he knew it and didn’t seem to be able to control it. He ripped open her shirt and pushed up the T-shirt and bra beneath it and put his mouth on her breast, sucking hard. She made a sound deep in her throat, her own hands fumbling with his clothes, but he would have none of it. He didn’t want her participation; he wanted her submission, and he pulled at her jeans until they tangled around her feet, unzipped his, and pushed inside.

“Liam!” The word was almost a scream.

He managed to hold it together for one frantic, heart-thumping moment. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

“You aren’t. You won’t. You couldn’t.” She pulled one foot free of her jeans and hooked it around the small of his back, tilting up and pulling him deeper. “Do it.”

She screamed for real this time, a sound swallowed up by the wind and the snow and the dark. For a split second he could feel everything as if with a separate sense. The sudden quick flush of heat rising up from her torso. The kiss of snowflakes on his ass. The long, lovely line of her throat as she arched up into him, like she couldn’t bear an inch of space between them.

“Do it again,” he muttered.

Her eyelids fluttered. “What?” Her voice was slurred.

He thrust again. “Come on,” he said, “come again for me, baby.”

“No, Liam, I can’t-”

“Sure, you can.”

And she could.

And then he followed her into the dark.

Neither of them moved for long moments afterward, lying in a stupor of sexual satisfaction on the deck, the wind gusting to twenty-five knots, the temperature dropping another degree every minute, the snow moving from a snow flurry to a snowfall. Liam thought he could stay there, in that position, on top of that woman, forever, and he might have, if she didn’t eventually exhibit some signs of being unable to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and shifted his weight to his elbows.

She smiled without opening her eyes. “Don’t be.”

“Okay.” He nuzzled her neck.

He felt a laugh catch in her breast.

“The only time a man is sane,” he said, belatedly going for a little foreplay with her ear, which he knew she loved, “is the first ten minutes after orgasm.”

She laughed out loud this time.

He raised his head and smiled down at her. “It’s true.”

“Says who?”

“Says Dapper Dan.”

“And who, may I ask, is Dapper Dan? Not that I’m contesting his thesis.” She raised her hips and exercised a muscle or two.

“Oh, man, I’ll give you a week to quit that.” He gave her a hickey, just to reestablish his supremacy. “Dapper Dan was a friend of Damon Runyon’s.”

“Why’d they call him Dapper Dan?”

“Because he was very dapper, and a very successful ladies’ man.”

“Not unlike someone else we might name.”

“The only woman I want to be successful with now is right here. Lying under me, as a matter of fact.”

She raised a hand to trace his eyebrow, nose and lips. He sucked her finger into his mouth. She shivered, and he smiled.

But when they managed to pull themselves off the deck, get dressed and go back inside, the constraint came back. “I’m supposed to meet Dad for dinner at Bill’s.”

“Tell him to come here instead.”

“He wants to talk about that wreck on the glacier, and he doesn’t want civilians around when he does.”

She grimaced. “Okay.”

“Wy?”

“What?”

“You seemed a little out of it when I got home. What’s going on?”

She made a wry mouth. “So much for my powers of concealment.”

“I love you.” He said it simply, without flourishes. “I’ll always see more than you want me to.”

Her eyes softened. “Oh, Liam.”

“There is something, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath. Damn the torpedoes. Remember the Maine. Tora, tora, tora. “Is it about the job John offered me in Anchorage?”

She looked as relieved as he did to finally open up the subject to discussion. “No.”

“All right, then.” He had not spent so many years walking through the fire to get to her to give up without a serious fight. He’d go to war for Wyanet Chouinard. He just didn’t know if he’d live in Newenham for her.

She seemed to make up her mind about something. “I’ll banish Tim to his room the minute he gets back. We’ll talk then, really talk.” A half smile. “Don’t be late.”

When he was gone the house seemed very empty. She checked for messages on the answering machine. A teacher in Togiak wanted a competitive bid for bringing four students and herself into Newenham over the Thanksgiving weekend for the Bristol Bay Academic Olympics. Dagfinn Grant had given her a quote and she thought it was too high. Wy, knowing Finn, thought it probably had been, and called her back. They arranged fares and pickup times to their mutual satisfaction, and Wy filled in the dates on her calendar. She’d been looking for a toehold into business with the various school districts. This was a start.

Ronald Nukwak had called from Manokotak, needing a ride for his family to Newenham for a wedding. That one she let go, reluctantly, because Ronald already owed her for seven round-trips, Manokotak to Newenham and back again. If one of the kids had been sick, she would have rolled out the Cub, but this wasn’t an emergency. She hated losing Ronald’s business, not to mention pissing off the half of Manokotak to whom Ronald was related, but she had bills to pay, too.