Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Clementine
I’m on livestock duty at the Ponderosa Ranch. It’s mostly horses with a couple of goats and llamas thrown in. Or maybe they’re alpacas. I can never tell.
Anyway, I spend half the day telling people where their animals are. Then I spend the other half looking at animals and trying to figure out where their owners are.
The animals and the people are about equally helpful, to be honest.
When it’s over, it’s already evening. I wolf down a sandwich that the Red Cross gives me and head to Jane’s for a quick shower, because I smell like animals and B.O., and it’s gross.
Jane’s already there when I unlock her door with my key, standing at the counter and eating a bowl of cereal. She gives me a long look up and down, spoon in mouth, and looks irritated.
“You know you have an entire stash of your own clothes here, right?” she says.
“Sorry,” I say, looking down at myself. Then I look back up. “Wait, I do?”
“Yeah, you leave something here practically every time you visit, dumbass,” she says, and walks out of the kitchen and into her bedroom.
Jane rummages through a couple of drawers before finally pulling out a couple of t-shirts, an old pair of corduroys I’d completely forgotten I had, a knee-length jersey skirt, and several pairs of socks.
“Pants-stealing jerk,” she says, and walks back into the living room.
“Thanks!” I call after her. “Can I use your shower?”
“Knock yourself out,” she calls.
I shower fast, and I’m pulling on the pants I found, wishing that my stash included underwear, when I have a thought.
It’s Hunter, pressing me against the sink this morning, me sucking on his thumb.
I pause for a second, heart pounding, heat gathering below.
Then I take the pants off, grab the skirt, and pull it on, sans underwear.
I hesitate again.
Really? I think.
An old memory: Hunter and I, eighteen, at the county fair. I’m saying something but he’s just staring at my chest, not hearing a word I say.
I skip a bra and pull on a t-shirt. My heart’s going a mile a minute.
This is trashy as hell, I think. Who the fuck waltzes into the hospital without panties so they can get laid easier?
Besides the hooker in that one episode of the Sopranos. It’s you and her, Clementine.
I stuff the rest of my clothes into a bag, then grab my jacket and put it on, hiding my nipples at least. I’m not going in there completely slutty.
“I’m gonna go visit Hunter again before I head home,” I say, walking back into the kitchen.
“I can’t believe you’re dating Hunter Casden again,” Jane says. “You guys were so gross. Did Mom tell you she had to throw out that couch because it was practically—”
“Yeah, she told me,” I say.
“You know you have to tell me how the hell you got back together someday, right?” she says. “Like, I get that now isn’t the best time, but damn, Minty.”
I shrug my bag over my shoulder and think.
“He was staying next door with the hotshot crew, we made out, then we had a bunch of sex in a lookout cabin, and voila!” I say, waving my hands in the air.
“Definitely not good enough,” she says.
“Bye,” I say, laughing.
I walk through the hospital, and somehow, no one looks at me. No one stares, open-mouthed, as I walk by, even though I feel like there’s a big neon sign over my head that says SKANK, and the knowledge of what I’m doing has me wildly, insanely, incredibly turned on.
I take the elevator up. I head for the nurses’ station and wave at them.
They wave back. I keep pretending that I have underpants on and walk into Hunter’s room, shutting the door behind myself.
The lights are half-off, and he’s propped up in the bed, watching TV, looking bored, and he grins when he sees me.
“I get out tomorrow,” he says.
I put my purse on a chair, my heart thumping, and lean over the bed to give him a kiss.
“What then?” I ask.
“I’m gonna stay with my parents for a few days, but my fire season’s over for this year,” he says. “I can just start looking in Lodgepole, because for some reason they don’t want guys with burns and fucked up lungs tagging along.”
He grabs my jacket and tugs me closer. He’s got the bed tilted a little higher than forty-five degrees, so he’s basically upright.
“And I can take up residence in your bed and start convincing you this is a good idea,” he teases.
I kiss him again, then sit on the bed, one hand on his chest.
“I don’t need convincing,” I say quietly. “I think it might work this time.”
“I want it to work,” he says, and puts his hand top of mine.
“I want it to work too,” I say, and squeeze our fingers together.
“I think I’d have fallen for you even if I just met you last week,” he says, his voice still quiet and serious.
Then he grins.
“I mean, your ass looked great in that skirt at the spaghetti dinner,” he says. “I got at least thirty percent hard watching you walk up to that microphone.”
“Only thirty?” I ask.
“It was a fast walk,” he says. “And your ass looks good in this skirt, too.”
“Should I walk around and see what percentage you come up with?” I ask.
Hunter grins and puts his hands behind his head, so I stand up and shrug off my jacket. My nipples point outward like arrows, and Hunter laughs, pushing the sheets off himself and sitting up.
“Clem, I swear to God—”
I put one hand on his chest and push him slightly backward, even as he cups one breast in his hand, his palm rough on my nipple through my shirt.
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” I ask, grinning.
“I can rest later,” he says.
I push harder, and he lets me move him backward.
“You’re an invalid, you know,” I say. “You’ve got an oxygen tank and everything. I wouldn’t want you to have an episode.”
I push him back onto the bed, and I pull the covers over his legs. He’s pitching a massive tent already, and just looking at it makes me a little wetter.
Hunter sees me looking, so he gathers the blankets around his cock in one hand and then just holds it there, leaning back on the hospital bed, grinning at me, and it’s fucking sexy as hell.
“Okay, I’m an invalid,” he says, his voice deep and raspy. “Let’s watch your ass in that skirt.”
I slide my shoes off, then turn my back on Hunter and walk slowly to the foot of the bed, swinging my hips. It’s not very tight or very short, but I can still feel the soft fabric whispering across my ass as I move, and besides that, I swear I can feel Hunter’s eyes.
When I get to the foot of the bed I put one hand on the railing there and look over my shoulder, sticking my ass out a little.
Hunter’s pushed the blankets off himself, and when I look back he grabs his dick through his pajama pants, grinning. For a second, I’m breathless with desire, and all I want to do is crawl onto the bed and jump on top of it.
“Eighty-seven percent,” he says.
I blow my bangs off my forehead.
“That’s it?” I tease. “What’s a girl gotta do?”
“That was a pretty good start,” he says, stroking himself slowly, through his clothes.
I swallow, because as much as I want him, I also have the wild urge to show off for him. Hunter makes me feel like the bad girl sexpot in an old movie, and dear God do I like it.
The sink is across from the foot of the bed, so I walk to it, grab the edge, and arch my back, pushing my ass back. I look over my shoulder at Hunter, wiggling slowly from side to side.
“How about this?” I ask, lowering myself to my elbows on the sink.
He’s got his cock out and he’s stroking it slowly.
“You’re not wearing panties, either,” he says, his voice low.
“Oops,” I say, grinning.
I move one hand to my ass, and rub it, like I’m checking for panty lines.
“Guess I forgot,” I say.
Hunter growls.
I pull the hem of my skirt up the back of my legs, slowly, dragging it with one finger just to tease him. I’m so turned on it almost hurts, and his eyes following the hem of my skirt as I raise it are only making it worse.
“Keep going,” he says.
I bite my lip and pull my skirt the rest of the way up so it’s around my hips and I’m bent over at the waist, totally exposed and vulnerable and desperately, desperately horny.
“Touch yourself,” he says.
Something’s changed, just slightly, and this has gone from me asking him what percentage hard he is to him telling me what to do, half-naked in his hospital room. It’s new, but I think I like it.
I reach behind myself, look over my shoulder at him, and slide my fingers over my lips, just barely parting them before I circle my clit with them. It’s a little strange to do it backwards — it’s not like I ever reach over my butt to masturbate — but the strangeness of it feels good, too.
“Like this?” I whisper.
I’m so slippery that my fingers slide over my clit by accident. My eyes close and I make a soft grunt.
“Just like that,” Hunter murmurs.
I keep going, my slippery fingers sliding over my clit. I’m beyond turned on and so sensitive that I have to bite my lip to keep myself from making too much noise, because it’s a strange new angle, and because I know Hunter is watching, hard cock in hand.
“Don’t come,” he growls.
I want to. I’m surprisingly close, and I want him to watch what he does to me without even having to touch me.
“You don’t want to watch?” I say.
“I want to make you come myself,” he says.
Reluctantly, I move my fingers off my clit and back over my lips. Hunter’s still watching, so I push one finger inside, then two.
I gasp and move my hips, trying to find the right spot, but my own hand is a bad substitute.
“Jesus, Clem,” Hunter says.
I bite my lip and look back at him, pushing my fingers deeper as I gasp.
“Like the show?” I ask.
Before he can answer, the doorknob turns.
I spin around so fast I nearly fall over, and before the door’s fully open, I’m leaning against the sink, arms crossed over my chest, in the most affectedly casual pose I’ve ever managed.
“Hello,” says the nurse. “Sorry, I just need to check his chart real quick.”
“No problem,” I say.