18. Caving In #2
Silence. And pitch darkness. An occasional drip… drip… drip… as time creeps by.
No Walter.
I hear her breathing. A louder drip bounces off the cave bottom somewhere near us.
“It’s colder here than out there.”
“Yeah.” I snug her against me. Her hair tickles my neck. Shit .
“We should talk so Walter can follow our voices. Where are you from? Originally?”
“I grew up in Willow Meade. It’s about thirty minutes outside Chicago. You?”
“Right. Here. College?”
“Northwestern. You?”
“University of Tennessee.”
“On a great big basketball scholarship.” She remembered.
Helen’s a blabbermouth.
Silence.
Drip… drip… drip .
“Brothers and sisters?” she asks.
“Both.”
“Do they live here?” The surprise in her voice hits me, as if she feels like she should have met them by now.
“No. They’re in Florida, where my parents moved, when I went to college. Dad relocated. You?”
“ Only child.”
“That explains a lot.”
She elbows me.
“Hey, lucky you. My brother and sister were pain in the asses. Lovable pains in the asses.”
Silence.
That last wiggle when she elbowed me stroked my fucking cock. Dammit. What was I thinking nestling her ass in between my legs? Where the hell is Walter?
Exhaling a long breath, I try to relax, but my hand slides down her ribs to her waist only to land on bare skin where her sweater has ridden up from her jeans.
Goose bumps lace above her hip bone as my hand flattens across the bare flesh of her side, and my fingers press into her, against my will.
“You should button your coat all the way down around you, to keep you warmer.” There’s a silence insistent on lasting as the palm of my hand stays against her flesh, covering the side of her waist.
We both know there’s nothing warmer than the way we’re sitting right now, and the moment we’re pretending not to be caught in. My dick twitches and fuck if it hasn’t sprung to life. There’s no way she can’t feel how hard I just got. She’s leaning against me.
“Wh—”
“I for—” We both speak at the same time. Our voices anxious to make nervous chatter, but our bodies have not deviated from their position. My head drops down to hers and I slowly turn my lips to her ear. “Why did you come here? Why not home to Willow Meade for Christmas?”
She shivers against me, acknowledging my breath in her ear. I feel her turn toward my face, testing how close we are. “My mother.” She mutters carefully as if she realizes her lips could be close enough to touch any part of my face. They are. I can feel it.
My heart thuds so loud in my chest I know she feels that.
She turns her head back to face away from me.
“It’s just she and I for a while now. She’s got a cruise with her book club she’s been paying out and saving up for.
It’s a two-week holiday at sea over Christmas with her good friends, and she’s really been looking forward to it.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her about work, and that I could come home.
I wouldn’t want her to miss it just to have Christmas with me. ”
“You’re her only daughter. She would want nothing more.” My voice is low, and a little saddened by her Gift of the Magi sacrifice.
“She came up to Chicago in the beginning. Every Christmas almost, but I think she got bored of just me and Archer. Us working through her visit and all our inside jokes. Couldn’t have been a very nice Christmas for her.”
Archer again . “The friend?”
“He’s my Helen.”
My heart thumps triple at the acknowledgement of Helen. She gets it, our friendship. And maybe I just got confirmation that Archer’s just a friend.
“You and your buddy Archer never…”
“God no. Archer’s a womanizer and not in the redeeming—wait until the right girl changes him kind of way. He’s truly arrogant, superficial and the most shallow person you will ever meet.”
“This is your best friend?”
“Well, yes, but I mean all this more to suggest that Archer and I would never be each other's physical type. He likes models. He dates girls that look like Helen in a pencil skirt.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just curious as to what you think you look like in a pencil skirt.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Regardless, Archer would never look at me like that. And I will forever know he has the emotional attention span of a fruit fly.”
She turns her head, and I feel her smile on my chest.
Fuck. She doesn’t know she’s gorgeous or what she does to men.
She stirs innocently in my lap, as if to dismiss the trance we’ve physically been in. But then her hand falls softly to my forearm that’s holding her. I tense a little at the contact and a spark shoots through me.
You’d think we were fresh out of those, sitting this way in a cold damp cave making idle conversation. She moves her hand away quickly.
She has to know what she does to me. I know she feels it.
My throat clears and I shift a little to relieve the pressure before silence falls on us again and I do something I can’t come back from.
“Hey, maybe you could sing like I mentioned before. It won’t really help to yell with the echo, but if you sing quietly, it will carry, and Walter might hear us.”
She turns her head to face me—I feel it—trying to see me looming over her. She’s trying to look into my eyes, in this abyss. “What do you want me to sing, a ‘fucking’ Christmas song? That’s what you called it earlier.”
“You mean when I was hunting you down in a dark cave silently praying neither one of us stepped down a drop off that led to our deaths?”
“Still. It was uncalled for. All Christmas songs are… well… nice by nature of being a Christmas song. They’re sacred.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
How can my dick get this hard when we could both die?
“What’s your favorite?” she whispers.
“Don’t have one.”
It was her ass rubbing my crotch, but now she’s facing me. Walter better get here fast.
Turning back to face away from me again, she drops her head back, resting it against my pecs. “Everyone has a favorite Christmas song, Kourt.”
“No. I really don’t. I like ’em… all. Actually.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
“I know.” That truth stings a bit. “Sing, Erika.”
“And have you chastise me later?”
“Never. I actually like your voice.”
She pauses a moment. Her head laying lethargically back on my chest. And then, out of the dark silence of the cold dripping cave, “O holy night, the stars are brightly shining…”
Her voice is angelic.
I feel criminal holding her so close, my face dropped down smelling the top of her hair.
Remnants of the aroma of cinnamon from the cookies.
Her shampoo smells like fresh linen and sweet berries.
And there’s a hint of a perfume I’ve never been close enough to smell.
It’s soft, but spicy. Sweet, like orange blossom, but intense with amber.
The tempo of my heartbeat stutters as I indulge a deep inhale of her.
“Fall on your knees… Oh hear the angel voices… O night divine—”
“Kourt! Erika!” Erika… Erika… Erika
“Over here!” We yell together.
Here…here… here.
The golden glow of a flashlight sweeps in front of us. No walls in sight.
“Here, Walter!” I’m standing, pulling her up with me. “Hold the light still and we can move to it.”
It... It... It ...
“How in the Sam Hill did you two end up this far back? I told you not to go inside.”
I can’t blame him for being cranky.
“Some people are hard of hearing,” I say as I usher Erika to him, my hand splayed across her back. I look down. My hand covers her shoulders from arm to arm.
“Oh, Walter. It’s my fault.” She rushes to him like a long-lost father, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Thank you for rescuing us.”
Why does she always accept the blame? For everything?
Walter’s eating it up. Just like he did her Christmas cookies.
She’s killing me. I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.
“I can’t believe neither one of you had a cellphone, to use the light.” Walter will be telling this to anyone who’ll listen.
“We left them in the car.”
“Let’s head down.”
Outside, a breeze is blowing, and the December temperature up on the cliff’s edge has dropped.
I grab Erika’s hand. “Watch your step.”
Walter guides our way down with his flashlight. I hope I’m as spry and sharp as he is when I get that age.
“Thanks, Walter.” I nod behind me as I walk ahead to my truck. Erika’s re-engaged in conversation with him about the ceremony.
Opening my truck door, I see half a dozen missed alerts on my phone and snatch it.
“Shit! There’s a fire on Sixth Street. Walter?” My eyes snap to his and he nods to me from where he and Erika stand.
“I’ll get this girl home. Go on, Kourt.” There’s a flickering moment in my chest or mind—hell, I don’t know. It feels strange to leave her. A beat goes buy as I lean into my truck and I almost stall to look back at her.
“Kourt!” Erika calls after me. She makes me look back. Our gazes catch—Confusion paints her face.
And there it is again. Hurt in her eyes. A half smile hijacks my face to acknowledge her in some way or to give myself permission get in the truck. I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this.