3. Beth
BETH
Flint is waiting outside my apartment at five forty-five with two bottles of water and enough rope to lower a truck into the wash.
“Planning prevents disasters?” I ask.
“Preparation saves me arguing with you.”
“You brought me gloves.”
“Your work gloves have a hole in the right palm.”
I take the leather pair he offers because this isn't the moment to examine why he noticed mine. Dawn has started to gray the eastern sky, and the air is cool enough to make me appreciate my canvas jacket. By noon, the desert will bake every metal surface it can reach.
We leave through the rear service gate and follow the motel fence south.
The wash cuts toward the abandoned strip through mesquite and brittle grass.
Flint walks beside me rather than ahead, adjusting his pace to the loose ground without offering a hand I don't need.
His quiet company feels familiar, and that gets under my skin faster than the attraction.
“What did you tell Rook?” I ask.
“Knell wants the strip for an exchange, you refused to close and I'm staying on-site.”
“Did you tell him you kissed me?”
“Rook has enough responsibilities.”
“Coward.”
“Selective privacy.”
“A polished phrase doesn't improve it.”
“I haven't lied to him. If it affects club business, I'll tell him.”
Rook was there when Ash, Flint and three other men formed Dead Lucky from the survivors of a collapsing club. He watched Flint carry my brother's death for years. I don't need whatever is happening between us becoming chapel discussion.
We reach the strip where weeds split the old asphalt. The operations building is a low rectangle of concrete block with most of its windows boarded. A rusted windsock frame leans behind it. Tire marks curve around the south wall, and fresh scrape lines score the threshold.
Flint crouches near them. “Heavy crates. Two men carried each one.”
“How can you tell?”
“Paired boot prints. Gouges start where they lost their grip.”
He tests the door. A new padlock hangs from an old steel hasp. Flint takes two slender tools from his pocket.
“Do vice presidents carry lock picks before breakfast?”
“The good ones do.”
The lock opens in under a minute. Inside, our flashlights find a dusty office, a broken radio console and a storage room with fresh plywood laid over part of the floor. Six rectangles in the dust show where cases rested recently. A torn strip of foam lies beside one wall.
I pick it up with my gloved hand. Oiled metal has left a dark stain.
“They staged a sample,” Flint says. “Buyers inspected here, and Knell moved the weapons back out.”
“Why use the motel Saturday if they've already met?”
“The buyers get neutral ground without seeing where Knell stores the rest. Your courtyard blocks the highway view, and the strip gives them two ways out.”
I point toward a set of muddy prints near the interior office. “One of them came from my side.”
Flint follows the track to a warped rear door. It opens toward the wash and the Sundown Court fence. Knell has walked this route recently, maybe more than once.
“He could watch the motel from here,” I say.
“Yeah.”
I don't like that. Flint sees it and gets straight to the point.
“We change your routine today. If you're cleaning an occupied room, somebody knows where you are. I put a radio in your cart. We add motion lights near the back wall.”
“That works.”
Thunder rolls far to the south.
I turn toward the open doorway. A brown line climbs the horizon, broad and fast, while the wind pushes dust along the runway.
“We have ten minutes,” I say.
Flint closes the doors and checks the plywood covering the windows. By the time we secure the last loose panel with rope, dust strikes the building in hard sheets. The light outside turns orange. Grit slips through cracks and skates across the floor.
We move into the interior radio room. Flint spreads his canvas overshirt across an old desk and nods toward it.
“Storm may pass in half an hour,” he says. “Could take two.”
“The Hensleys don't leave their room before eight. The crews are at work.”
“Your desk phone forwards to your cell?”
I check the signal. One bar flickers, then disappears. “Usually.”
The wind pounds the south door and fills the room with a steady roar. Adrenaline fades, leaving Flint a few feet away in a dust-streaked black T-shirt. He removed his cut before we entered the wash and carries it folded inside his pack.
His attention settles on the small tear in my jacket near the elbow. “Did you catch yourself?”
“On the door frame. It's fabric.”
He checks the skin beneath anyway, using two fingers to turn my arm. No blood. His touch lingers after he confirms it.
“Last night was a mistake,” I say.
Flint releases my sleeve. “Do you believe that?”
“I believe it complicated an already bad week.”
“That isn't the same answer.”
“You've had nine years to get good at answers.”
“I've had nine years to understand one bad decision. The rest took longer.”
I step around him and inspect the boarded window. Dust hisses against plywood. “You decided I'd be better without you.”
“Yes.”
“Then you came back to town wearing the patch my brother died in and acted as if courtesy could erase what happened.”
“I knew it couldn't.”
“Did you think I'd ask why?”
“I hoped you would. Hated myself for hoping.”
His honesty pisses me off because it removes the easy version of this conversation. Flint isn't defending the silence. He's just owning it.
“Tell me now,” I say.
“Ash asked me to end it before a run. I'll tell you everything when we get back, where you can walk away if you want.”
“You think I'm trapped in here with you?”
“The storm took the door away for a while. I'm not using that.”
I face him. “You think very highly of your power over me.”
“I know exactly what I did.”
“And what do you think last night's kiss means?”
“You wanted me for a few minutes. I've wanted you since before I rode through the arch.”
The roar outside hasn't changed, but I barely hear it. “You're still good at that.”
“At what?”
“Saying the one honest thing I can't dismiss.”
His gaze settles on my mouth. “I can stop.”
“I don't want you to.”
Flint waits without pushing me for an answer.
I walk up to him and pull his shirt free of his jeans.
“Beth.”
“I know this place, who you are and what happened between us. I want you now.”
He cups my face and kisses me slowly until my hands reach his bare waist. Then his control starts to go. His mouth turns demanding, his tongue sliding against mine while he opens my jacket. I shove it from my shoulders and find his belt.
“Tell me what you like now,” he says against my lips.
“Your mouth without nine years of silence attached.”
A rough laugh leaves him. “I can fucking manage that.”
Flint lifts me onto the desk. The canvas beneath me smells of clean cotton and desert dust, and his hands slide under my shirt, spanning my waist before moving higher.
I pull the shirt over my head. My bra is black lace, chosen for myself this morning and suddenly worth the extra thirty seconds.
He opens the clasp and bares my breasts to the cool room.
His mouth closes over one nipple while his fingers work the other. Pleasure tightens through me, immediate after years of denial. I hold his head and spread my knees around his hips. The pressure of his erection through our jeans makes me rock forward.
“More,” I say.
He kisses down my ribs, opens my jeans and drags them with my underwear past my knees. I toe off one boot, then the other, impatient while he gets the clothes out of his way. Flint kneels in front of the desk and looks up.
“You want my mouth?”
“Yes.”
He hooks my legs over his shoulders and licks me from entrance to clit. The first pass sends my hand to the edge of the desk. He repeats it slowly, then finds the rhythm that makes me move against him.
When he slides two fingers inside me, I tighten around him. His tongue circles my clit as his fingers curl forward. Sensation gathers hard and fast. I brace one foot against his back and move with him while the storm beats the hell out of the building.
“Flint.”
He presses exactly where I need him. My orgasm builds without mercy, pulling a cry from me as my thighs tighten around his shoulders. He keeps going until the last tremor passes, then rises and kisses me. I taste myself on his mouth and feel the hard line of him against my open body.
I reach into the small inner pocket of my jacket and retrieve the condom I put there after last night's kiss.
He looks at the condom, then at me. “You planned ahead.”
“Preparation prevents disasters.”
“Come here.”
I open his jeans, free his cock and roll the condom over him. He's thick enough to make my body clench in anticipation. Flint puts one hand beside my hip and guides himself to my entrance with the other.
“Still yes?” he asks.
“Fuck me.”
He pushes inside slowly. My body stretches around him, pleasure edged with the ache of a long absence. Flint watches my face until I take all of him. Then he kisses me and starts moving.
The desk shifts beneath us. I grip his shoulders and meet each thrust. I don't want careful. He drives deeper, one hand supporting my back while the other cups my ass. The pace turns hard and hungry, and I bite his lower lip.
That breaks whatever control he had left.
“You feel so fucking good,” he says. “I remembered. Wasn't close.”
His words push me toward another climax. I slide my hand between us and rub my clit while he thrusts. Flint changes the angle and that does it. I come around his cock, clamping down as he buries his face against my neck and follows with a rough curse.
For several seconds, neither of us moves. The storm is still loud. Flint's breathing slows against my skin.
He withdraws carefully and disposes of the condom in an old metal bin. I dress without embarrassment. The feelings are harder to deal with once my hands have something ordinary to do.
Flint sets my water within reach and stays in front of me. He doesn't make a joke or offer me some big promise.
“I don't know what this repairs,” I say.
“Nothing by itself.”
“Good.”
“It matters to me.”
“It matters to me too. That's why it isn't forgiveness.”
“I know.”
That answer gives me room to breathe. I put on my jacket and listen as the wind begins to ease.
“When we get back,” I say, “you tell me why Ash asked you to leave me.”
“You have my word.”
“All of it.”
“All of it.”
The dust thins outside. Our footprints have vanished from the runway, and the motel emerges through the brown haze, solid and waiting.
I walk beside Flint toward it. I want him again. I don't trust him again yet, and I'm not confusing the two.