I get it.  She’s trying to figure out how she’s being seen right now.

“Holy shit.”  If there was something nearby to punch I would punch it.  Instead I glare at her.  “The cameras.  The motherfucking cameras.  That’s what you’re looking for.  You trying on a pose for the best angle?”

“Shut up.”

“How about you turn to the side?  Give ‘em a profile shot. Suck in your stomach and push out those pert little titties.  Didn’t Gary give you orders?  Sex appeal matters when it comes to ratings.  You know, maybe old Gary should have paid for you to have some work done to enhance your assets.   Need to grab that male eighteen to thirty five demographic.”

“Goddammit, shut up!”

She’s about to lose it but I don’t feel like shutting up.  I take a step in her direction.  Her breathing catches and her brown eyes widen.

What the hell does she think I’m going to do?  Hit her?  I’ve never hit a female in my life.

But she betrays herself when she looks down.  She zooms right in on my cock like it’s just shouted her name.  No, it’s not fear that made her gasp.  It’s something else.

For whatever reason, this girl is deprived as all hell and every inch of her is shrieking for a good, dirty screw.  In truth, I’d be game to give it to her, right here and now, but I’m not going to let her off the hook that easy.

“You know,” I whisper into her ear, “America would probably get off on some hot and filthy incest.”

Her face twists and her body tenses.  There we go.  God, she’s angry.  Shit, it’s hot.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Maybe.  No one’s ever claimed the job though so as far as I’m concerned I’m Mina Savage’s kid.”

“The hell you are.”

“Eh, a moot point at this juncture.  But it’d be good for ratings if we offered the folks at home something to spank their shit around to.  In any case, if you’re unwilling, there are other options.  Speaking of which, I haven’t seen Lita around yet.”

I’m hitting way below the belt now.  The mere mention of Ren’s mother is like a slap across her face.  There’s more than one reason for that.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she whispers.

“If you believed that lying bitch then you think I already did fucking dare so what’s the harm in talking about it after all this time?”

“You bastard, I wouldn’t believe Lita if she told me the desert is dry.”

“The way I remember it, there seems to have been a few questions.  Care to ask them now?”

“No!”

“Fine.  We don’t need to talk.”  I lean in so close I can nearly taste her.  “I’d really rather not hear your voice when we’re getting busy anyway.”

She gives me the coldest of glares but she doesn’t fool me a damn bit.  If I tear her pants open right now and shove my hand down there I know I’d get nothing but a warm, wet welcome as her pussy clenches my fingers like a vice.  But her eyes flash again and she scoffs, keeping up the charade.  “So this is who you are now.  Nothing but trash?”

“I always was, Loren.   Your mother told you so, remember?  Gutter trash that can and did fuck anything with a hole. You knew it. Don’t tell me you didn’t get off on that.  You loved it.”

The way she’s looking at me, she might start swinging both fists at my head.  What the hell is wrong with me that I’m hard as iron right now?   I’m not thinking about what we once had.  Things have gone downhill fast since I walked into the barn and none of that long dead tenderness has any place here.

I want it rough and dirty.  I want to bend her over, spread her wide and conquer the living shit out of her.

And I know she’d let me.

But then just like that all the fight fades from Ren.  Her shoulders slump.  She looks at the ground and bites her lip.

“Loren.”  I reach out to touch her but stop short.  It hurts suddenly because I know she’s no fucking actress.  She looks miserable because she is miserable.

“No,” she whispers, writhing out of my grasp.  “I can’t do this here.”

My hand falls to my side.  “Here’s as good as anywhere else.”

She breathes, slowly, in and out.  There seems to be a pattern to it, like maybe it’s some new age technique that’s supposed to clear her head.   Maybe I was a jackass for barging in here like this, for blindsiding her on this absurd show in the first place.   I’m not sure what I’m hoping for out of all this.   But I’m not going anywhere until I figure it out.

“It’s not going to be so easy to dismiss me this time.”

She nods tiredly.  “I didn’t think it would be.”

She leaves.  I let her go.  I stand there alone in a dusty barn, knowing I’m being watched and unable to make myself care.  I shove my hands in my pockets and my left knuckle is scraped by an object.  I withdraw the rock I’d casually picked up on my morning hike.  It looks completely ordinary, parts beige and pinkish red.  It isn’t valuable.  If you tumble it in a rock polisher for a month it will emerge with a brilliant red color.  I like it the way it is though.  Five years ago I had a rock just like this and then I lost it.  At the time I didn’t even know what it was, just a thing that I’d grabbed as a hasty keepsake because I’d just had the best night of my life and wanted to keep the memory close.

As it turned out, forgetting would have been merciful.  I couldn’t forget the most important parts.  I’ve spent five long years trying.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Five Years Ago: Part 3

“What is that?”

“What?”

“You just swiped something from the ground.”

He holds it up for her.  She squints in the gray light of pre-dawn.

“It’s a rock,” she says, puzzled.  “Why?”

Oscar drops it into his pocket.  “Just because.”

Ren hugs him suddenly, fiercely.  “I don’t want this to end.”

He feels giddy.  He kisses her upturned face, briefly playing his tongue over her lips.  He doesn’t know how he’s going to stand letting her go in a few minutes when they reach Atlantis.  “No night lasts forever.”

A sigh rolls through her, a sad one.  “I didn’t mean the night.   I meant us.”

“There’s no end, baby. Not for us. This is just the beginning.”

The chill of the night desert causes her to shiver, ever so briefly.  The sun hadn’t even dipped over the horizon when they set out hours earlier.  Now it is utterly dark.  He holds her to his side possessively, running every moment through his head.

No one had seen them go.  Oscar is sure of it.  The only question mark is Ren’s brother Spence, who they glimpsed trotting through the valley on his horse.  Even if Spencer had seen them though he wasn’t the type to go gossiping about it.

She’d been asking to see the cave for weeks, the one that had always been rumored to exist around here and which he’d finally found on a solitary early morning hike.  It wasn’t a great cave, barely worth looking at in fact when compared side by side with some of the overwhelming caverns he’d climbed into during his years overseas.

Ren didn’t care about that though.  She was enchanted by the strange, romantic idea of a secret place.   A place that seemed to exist only for them.

The cave was nestled into the side of the mountain with only a shallow outcropping of rock to navigate by.  The entrance was a stretched, round shape, kind of like a yawning mouth.  Oscar had enough sense to stuff some flashlights in the backpack that also carried bottled water.

He’d be lying if he didn’t admit he was making plans during the hike up there.  After all, he’d taken care to swipe a few condoms from Monty before heading out.  The entry to the cave was narrow but short, ending in a small oval room that smelled of rain and wild things.

It was there Ren sank down to her knees without a word.  Enough sunlight filtered in so he could see her, barely.  She lifted his shirt, ran her tongue over the hard muscles of his belly and then searched lower.  He wanted her to, and then he didn’t.  He stopped her before she got further.  He took his shirt off and spread it on the ground, lowering her on top of it.  His heart thudded in his chest even though he wasn’t shy around any girl, not ever.