Authors: Carmella Jones
V.
“Well, you might as well make yourself useful,” he said, rising up from the breakfast table a few days later. “Come on.”
It wasn’t a particularly warm form of address, but it was in stark contrast to what I had gotten used to as being our form of interaction. We hadn’t gotten my car with horses, but with a Ram 350 diesel truck that he kept under a tarp in the barn. We’d towed the car back to the house and into an empty stall in the barn. He’d gotten it up on blocks and crawled around underneath it for about an hour and then, got up and walked out without saying a word. When he didn’t come back for quite a while, I wandered out to try and figure out what had become of him. He was swinging a leg over the saddle of the horse we’d ridden in on earlier and then he was gone for a couple of hours.
I’d rummaged around the place, looking at equipment, tools and implements that I had absolutely no knowledge or understanding of. At one point, I had considered taking the truck and going back to civilization, but quickly put that idea out of my mind, because, if I did that, he probably would hunt me down and kill me. Not sure where he went or what he did while he was gone, for all I knew, he’d gone out to send up a smoke signal, he came back and announced that he’d have the part he needed to fix my car by the end of the next week. Not much other conversation had gone on between us after that, nor did he seem to stick around long enough for a conversation to have a fighting chance to get started, so the fact that he had told me to “come on” was a pretty big deal. In fact, from that point forward, what happened changed both of our lives forever.
Dan led me to the corral where a half-dozen horses that I hadn’t seen before were standing along with the three that had been there when we’d first arrived. I’d acquainted myself with the others and found them to be quite charming and peaceful to be around, but that had been the extent of my interaction with them.
“You ever ridden?” he asked as he took down a bridle and started out into the corral.
“You mean a horse?” The question had caught me off guard.
He just glared at me in response. Yeah, it was a stupid question.
“Does summer camp or the Grand Canyon count?”
“Not really,” he replied.
“Then, no.”
“Guess you’re about to learn, then.”
It hadn’t been pretty, at first, but I finally got the hang of it. I have to admit that I was scared, but I kept that hidden. It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of him, but more that I felt like I needed to stretch myself to meet whatever challenge he presented to me. I’d stood up to him without getting killed and I’d tried my best to put up the appearance that I could match him in whatever way he wanted. Basically, I was determined not to back down.
After I’d gotten the basics down, we started riding out onto the ranch each morning. We rode through the cattle, even out onto the desert to some hidden streams and oasis where green grass and cottonwoods replaced cactus, rocks and sage. Oddly enough, whenever we were out riding together was when he would actually open up and talk to me. Why he opened up to me out there when he couldn’t say two words to me at the house was another of the mysteries that continued to haunt me. However, with things thawing between us, I finally came around to asking about the first mystery; the existence of my not so fashionable outfits.
“I don’t mean to pry into things,” I led off.
“That’s what people say right before they start prying,” he muttered.
“It’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while, but I guess it can wait.”
“You might as well ask it,” he said. “You’ve already started it.”
“Where did the clothes come from? You know the ones…”
“Yes,” he interrupted with a whisper. “I know which clothes you’re asking about. And yes, you’re prying.” The pain on his face was in complete contrast to every other side of him that I’d seen up until that point. He didn’t snap at me or glare at me, which was sort of a new thing for us. For the first time, I began to see his human side.
“I’m sor…”
“Don’t be,” he cut me off again. He gazed off across the desert toward the shimmering horizon and started out slowly. “They belonged to my sister. We inherited all of this when my Dad died a half-dozen years back. My Mom had gone on some years before him and, well, it hadn’t been the same, even for him after that.”
He was quiet for a few minutes, but I just watched him and kept my mouth shut. I could tell that he was struggling with some pretty intense feelings.
“She got thrown from a horse and broke her back on one of these damned rocks.” His deep voice was barely above a whisper. “God only knows how long she laid out here.” He walked several paces away from me and turned his back. I saw his shoulders shaking and knew what was going on, but I just let him be.
After about ten minutes, he came back and stretched himself out under the shade of the cottonwood tree, but continued to gaze toward the horizon. The sound of the horses stomping and switching their tails as they cropped grass and fought flies blended with those of the bubbling spring, dragonflies and cicadas. It was then that my entire attitude toward him and toward the Southern Arizona desert began to change. I suddenly understood the isolation and the peace that the desert and especially the oases that we frequented provided. I understood why he’d wanted to be left alone and why he’d been such an asshole. In that moment, I wanted to apologize for the thoughts that I’d had about him, but I wasn’t sure how to start.
“You know, Sara,” he began. It was the first time, maybe the only time; he’d ever used my name to address me. He looked directly at me as he spoke; another first. “I used to hate this place when I was a teenager. I was so damned ready to get the hell away from here and go see the world. I had a chip on my shoulder and was ready to prove how much of a bad-ass I was. When Dad died, I didn’t want to lose the place, so Emily came out here and held the place down until…” He turned away again.
With the ice melting away so quickly, I felt the urge to reach out and place a hand on his shoulder, but I had enough sense not to speak. He didn’t shrug away from me or push me away. When he spoke again, he was rising up from the ground. The words were barely audible as he strode away from me toward his horse.
“She died holding onto this place for me.”
Following his lead, I went to my horse, stepped into the stirrup and swung my leg into place. There wasn’t much conversation on the way back to the ranch, but I could feel that an enormous change had taken place between us. Ironically, it was the sensitivity and humanity rather than his muscles and bad boy charm that attracted me to him again.
VI.
His strong, rough hands upon the skin of my stomach sent tingles radiating throughout my body and I quivered slightly. I remembered that when we were together in Vegas we were like insatiable animals, but when he invited me into his bedroom the night after he’d finished fixing my car, there was something completely different about him. He was intent on pleasing me rather than taking what I was willing to offer.
While his fingers caressed my skin, his lips planted tender kisses around my lips, torturously near, but not quite on them. They wandered to my ears, behind my ears and down my neck before traveling back up to my face. He was lingering, seeming to admire and memorize every inch of my face. It was such a complete turnaround that I was afraid to open my eyes and see that it had all just been another one of my fantasies.
When his lips finally found mine, he kissed me tenderly, probing softly with his tongue, but not trying to force himself upon me. Every nerve ending in my body was tingling at that point and I was beyond intoxicated by his touch, his breathing, his scent; every part of his essence that was lingering over me, surrounding me and enveloping me.
The iciness between us had melted away slowly and then disappeared entirely after the day that he’d told me about his sister. From that point forward, though we had slept in our designated rooms, we’d begun to warm up to each other and converse much like friends or partners. Since I’d begun to learn how to do a lot of the chores around the place, we’d started working as a team and discovered that once we’d let down our guards and started to communicate, we were actually pretty well suited for each other.
Grins, glances, giggles and lingering touches had begun to follow, but we’d steered clear of any other physical interaction. Instead, we started telling each other about our childhoods, where we’d been, what we’d seen and done, and what we hoped for the future. As we talked about those things, sometimes late into the night, a new attraction grew between us. It wasn’t an attraction based on lust and aided by shots of tequila, but a true respect and admiration for each other. Consequently, when he had invited me into his room, I had been only too eager to accept.
When his kisses left my mouth and began to travel lower, my body quivered under each touch of his lips and my nipples stood erect; inviting him to linger over them. He nibbled on them with his lips and traced around them with his tongue while his hands cupped the fullness of my breasts and pressed them together so that he could pass between them with ease. The sensations that were flowing over my body began to gather together under the soft mound between my thighs; aching to for him to continue downward.
It took an eternity for him to abandon my nipples and work his way down my stomach with his kisses; each of them driving me nearly out of my mind with anticipation. His arrival at my sweet spot down below was explosive. I don’t want to say that I saw flashing lights and had bells and whistles going off like a slot machine, but, well, yeah. He knew what he was doing and I lost count of the number of times that he took me over the edge.
I was so turned on that I was about to turn into a savage. Visions of the rough, animal passion that had engulfed us in Vegas were returning with a frenzy and I was out of control with wanting to feel him take me that way again, but he slowed things down or kept things slow, I don’t know, I just know that the next several minutes seemed to last a life time as he worked his way back up my body with kisses.
For as long as I’d known Dan, which wasn’t a long time granted, there had always been a shadow inside of his crystal blue eyes. At first, the shadow was mysterious and dangerous, but as I was around him more, it was sorrowful and full of regret. When he hovered over me that night in his bed on the Arizona ranch, they had become deep, clear pools without any sort of shadow. I was frozen in time and lost in those deep pools when he gazed down into my own eyes and entered me.
“Oh god,” I gasped. The moment had so much intensity to it that I became suspended somewhere void of time and space; somewhere inside of those deep crystal blue pools above me. It wasn’t the same rough, primeval passion that we’d had in Vegas, but it had an even more ancient and raw essence to it. I clung to him as though letting go would send me plunging into a dark pit.
Our eyes stayed focused on one another as he moved inside of me. It was though our eyes completed a circle between us and I could see and feel myself in him. I felt each of his long, slow strokes and each of them gathered together a thousand tingles from all parts of my body. Those thousand tingles grew into an enormous ache between my thighs and finally drove me well beyond the edge. I’m pretty sure they heard my screams echoing all over the desert and they were just beginning to die out when Dan let go as well.
I started off saying that that night in Vegas was the most incredible night that I’d spent with a man, well, that wasn’t exactly true. It was pretty awesome, no doubt, but it was nothing compared to Dan and I’s first night in the desert of Arizona. I think that when they do wedding vows they say something about two becoming one flesh. That night, Dan and I became one.
“Your car is fixed,” he said in the early hours of the morning after we’d pleased each other numerous times. His fingers continued to caress me and the heat of his body insulated me against the coolness of the desert night.
For a moment, his statement confused me. I had sort of thought that what we had just done communicated something other than his desire to be rid of me. “Does that mean that I have to go?” I asked.
“I did tell you not to get comfortable,” he muttered.
Had he just returned to his asshole state again? I turned to look into his eyes, which were sparkling like diamonds. “Do you seriously want me to leave?”
He shrugged, “I suppose we could make an arrangement.” The corner of his mouth twitched upward slightly. “You don’t really like it here, do you?”
“About ten days ago I would have rather been boiled in oil,” I responded. It was true, the Arizona desert had been hell. It was rugged, isolated, hard and dangerous, but it had begun to grow on me. Once I’d gotten past that outer shell, I began to see something peaceful, comforting and homey about it. “It’s grown on me,” I replied. “And, for your information, I have already made myself comfortable.”
“You don’t take orders very well, do you?”
“I’ve heard that they say the same about SEALs,” I countered. He didn’t reply, which was okay with me. The continuous caressing of his fingers on my skin were speaking volumes to me and the lingering silence no longer bothered me like it did before.
“Do you remember the day that you told me that you were pregnant and then stood up to me when I said that it could have been any of the other half-dozen men?” That question had come out of the blue.
“Yeah,” I giggled. “I was pretty sure that you were going to kill me.”
“Nah,” he replied. “I admired that, but that’s not why I brought it up.”
“Then, why?”
“I need to apologize for saying that. I know you’re not that way.” He rolled over so that he could look into my eyes. “Can you forgive me?”
It wasn’t easy, but I forced him onto his back, pinned his arms to his sides and began giving him the same slow, torturous treatment that he’d given me earlier. That bad-ass, trained killer who was the father of my little baby SEAL was forgiven.