29. Casey #2
“I know.” My fingertips glided over his face, memorizing the rugged features I had missed so desperately. Just a little bit longer in his arms.
Adam seemed equally reluctant to move, but eventually we had to break the spell.
“We can’t sit here all day, omega, as much as I would like to.
” Right. He had to work. My legs refused to move, and it had nothing to do with the fact that they were still trembling.
Adam carefully disentangled our bodies and reached into the glove compartment for something.
Before I could pull my pants up, he was wiping me clean, front and back.
It was hardly the first time he’d ever done that, but in his car?
? And he was already prepared with wipes and napkins?
??? He glanced at my shocked expression and slid my pants over my hips once I was clean.
“You’re gonna have to get used to me doing this.
Now go sit in your seat and put your seatbelt on. ”
I obeyed, a little too eagerly, and his pants were zipped by the time I clicked my seatbelt.
He’d driven us to an empty parking lot, using a cluster of trees to hide us from the street.
It wasn’t fully out of sight, but no one had seen us, at least. He put the car in gear and moved forward, one hand on the wheel, the other reaching for mine.
He held my hand as we drove through town, giving everyone that passed a friendly finger wave from the steering wheel.
We drove for a few minutes before he pulled over beside a brick building.
Bandle’s Insurance, the sign said. The lawn outside was littered with bags of potting soil, tools, and piles of dirt.
Adam got out and pulled the truck tailgate down as I jumped from my seat to the pavement.
The disarray of supplies at the work site was chaos, but underneath, I could see little sticks in the ground that plotted out where things would go.
I wondered what they were for. Green sticks for plants, maybe?
Grey for gravel. There was a worn path in the grass leading to the store, and another that led to a cluster of trees nearby.
Cedars, I think they were called. My plant knowledge was laughable.
With a low grunt, Adam hoisted a heavy wooden crate out of the truck bed and carried it to the shade tree beside us.
The crate had large, square stones inside.
Pathing, just as I’d guessed. I followed him back to the truck and pulled out a crate of plants.
It had flowers of different colors and sizes.
The rest of the truck bed was filled with bags of gravel, more crates of plants, and two potted shrubs.
“I’ve got it. You don’t have to…” I’d already walked away with the crate before he started complaining. “Casey.” Ooh, don’t growl at me like that in public.
The big, burly man who had just rearranged my insides gave me a stern look as we both carried crates to the sidewalk.
As soon as I’d set mine on the concrete, he gave me a swift spank right on the ass.
I stumbled forward, but his arm caught me around the waist and he gently set me on my feet.
Our bodies pressed together under the shade of the tree.
The mere touch of his hands, and the feel of his chest moving against my back relaxed all the tension I’d built up over the past few months.
“The trees here smell just like you,” he whispered, his lips against my neck.
“Does that mean you’re always hard at work?”
Chuckling, he kissed my neck, breathing deeply of my rain and cedar scent. “Always.”
We’d never been out in public like this, openly touching each other where anyone might see. It was everything I’d imagined it would be.
Once the truck was unloaded, he passed me a pair of work gloves. The fabric looked almost brand new, and every stitch was still intact. Did he even use these?
“This,” Adam started as he stood over the area, “is where the Juniper shrubs will go, right next to the building. We’ll put some orange and yellow flowers around them.
And then…” He turned slightly and pointed his finger along the worn trail in the grass.
“We’re replacing this path with stepping stones.
It will lead to the store from here, and split off to a bench under those red cedars back there.
We’re getting the bench next week. Mr. Bandle wanted people to have a place to sit.
” Taking my shoulders, he shifted us to face the shop, his arm reaching past me to point at the various sticks marking each spot in the ground.
“You’ll walk from the parking spots to the stones, and there’ll be some Butterfly Milkweed along the path, and Anise Hyssop.
They’re for the bees and butterflies. We’ll mix ferns in with the flowers. ”
He pointed to each plant as he spoke so I would know which ones he meant.
His vision began to form in my mind. I’d never thought of landscaping as art, but that’s exactly what he was creating.
Art with plants. The passion in his voice as he explained everything to me was exactly how I sounded when I talked about painting.