6. CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SIX
He carried the tripod and the second body and she shot the ice-melt patterns in the drainage channel for forty minutes and he watched her work and learned what he was watching.
She moved differently behind the lens. The injured shoulder was not favored when she was shooting, not because she forgot it but because the camera was the more important thing and her body arranged itself around the camera's needs rather than its own.
He understood this. He had had the same relationship with a medical kit in forward operating conditions.
They walked out at noon, slowly, and she did not complain about the pace even when he slowed it for her ribs.
At the trailhead she put the equipment cases in her truck with the precision of someone who had done it a thousand times, each piece in its specific position, and he watched and did not offer to help because she had the system.
She turned around.
The afternoon light was hitting the peaks above the basin, the specific gold of late October, and he was standing in it and she had the small camera on her shoulder and she raised it.
He stood still. He did not ask.
She lowered the camera after a moment. She looked at the image on the screen. She turned it to show him.
He was looking at the peaks. She had caught the angle of his face, the light across his jaw, the specific quality of a person who was at home in a landscape. He looked at it and did not say anything.
"I photograph what is in front of me," she said.
He looked at her.
The trailhead was empty. The afternoon light was doing everything it had. She had her truck keys in her hand and he had his SAR vehicle parked at the other end of the lot and the station was three and a half hours away.
"Come to the station," he said. "Tonight. I will drive you back up tomorrow to get what you need from camp."
She looked at the image on her camera screen.
"That is not your protocol," she said.
"No."
She held the keys. He waited. She did not get in her truck.
She got in his vehicle instead.
He drove. She looked out at the basin as they descended and he did not try to fill the silence because it was not an empty silence, it was the kind that was full of something being considered.
He had learned, in the Army, the difference between silences that needed to be interrupted and silences that needed to be left alone. This was the second kind.
At the station she met the team. Colt nodded at her with an assessment that told her he had already been briefed.
Sawyer shook her hand and looked at her camera bag with the interest of someone who wanted to ask about it.
Knox's Malinois circled her twice and determined she was acceptable.
Chief Brandt looked at Boone and then at her and went back into his office.
She ate at the station table. She answered Sawyer's questions about the telephoto setup with the patience of someone who genuinely enjoyed the subject. She showed Colt the frame of the sow's turning, because she had identified him as the person in the room who would understand what the image cost.
He looked at it a long time.
"That is the moment," he said.
"Yes," she said.
At nine she was not tired. Nine sat with her the way light conditions sat with her: as a fact about what was possible now versus what would be possible later.
She looked at the station around her, at the maps and the equipment racks and the specific organization of a place where people came back from difficult things and put the equipment away correctly and came back again. She thought about coming back.
She thought about what it would mean to be a place someone came back to.
At nine o'clock Boone said: "You should sleep. Ribs need the rest."
She let him show her where. The station had a bunk room, three beds, currently empty. He brought her a clean shirt from somewhere. He did the final rib check without being asked, two minutes, thorough. He said: "Stable. Better than this morning." He turned to go.
She caught his wrist.
He turned. He stood in the bunk room doorway and looked at her and she looked at him and the station was quiet around them.
She did not say anything. She pulled him back into the room and he came, and she pulled the door closed with her good hand, and he was there in the dark with her and the station quiet around them and she kissed him the way she had wanted to at the trailhead.
He kissed her back and his hands were warm on her face and she felt the whole careful quality of his attention applied to her and the wanting behind the care, the thing he held at one remove.
She put her hands on his chest and pushed. He went to the bunk. She followed and put her knee between his thighs and he gripped her hips and she felt how much he wanted her and felt something move in her chest that was not just want.
She kissed his throat. She got his shirt off. She spread her hands across his chest in the dark and felt his breathing change completely.
"Wren," he said. Her name, rough.
"I know," she said, and put her mouth on his collarbone.
She worked him open carefully, which he allowed, lying back with his hands at his sides and his eyes on her and the absolute quality of his attention given to her. She ran her tongue down his sternum. She worked his pants open and wrapped her hand around his cock and his hips came off the bunk.
"I have been thinking about this since the corridor," she said.
"Since you were mauled by a bear," he said, half-strangled.
"Before that," she said. "Since the log. Your hands on my shoulder."
He made a sound. She worked his pants open and her hands found his skin and he made a sound that was not composed at all.
"I have been thinking about this since the shelter," she said.
"Since you were in pain," he said.
"I was in pain. I was also noticing you." She kissed his collarbone. "Both things were true."
She moved down his body with her mouth. He went very still, his hands at his sides, letting her. She worked her tongue down his stomach and wrapped her hand around his cock and stroked him and felt his hips want to come off the bunk.
"Wren." Her name, fracturing.
She stroked him until he was shaking and then she moved back up and looked at him in the dark. He was watching her with the thing that had been under the composure all day and all evening and probably since the corridor.
"I want you inside me," she said.
He moved over her. She directed him around her shoulder, the injured side, which he remembered without prompting, and she felt him push into her pussy and took a full breath to take all of him and felt the stretch of it, full and specific and exactly right.
She moved. He moved with her. She drove some of the rhythm, her good hand at his hip, pulling him where she wanted him, and he let her while his thumb worked her clit in tight circles. She felt the sensation build.
"Harder," she said.
He gave her harder. The bunk reported its opinions. She did not care. She was watching his face in the dark and his composure was completely gone and she was the one who had done that and she felt the power of it move through her alongside the physical pleasure.
She came with his name in her mouth, clenching around him, and felt him follow within seconds: his hips driving, the deep shudder of him, a sound pressed into her throat that was raw and real and nothing he had been containing.
He lay against her side after. His hand warm on her stomach. His breathing evening.
She put her hand over his.
She lay against his chest. His arm across her back. His thumb moving in a slow circle on her shoulder blade, the good side.
She thought about rooms. She thought about reliability.
She thought about the sow in the corridor with the radio collar and the coordination gap that he had identified and resolved as a side task while closing a bear mauling wound.
She thought about what it meant that she was in this room and not thinking about leaving.
She was quiet long enough that his breathing had gone even. Then she said: "Boone."
"Here," he said, not fully asleep.
She put her hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat and did not say the thing she was thinking.
She would think of a way to say it tomorrow.