Chapter 15 Inga
INGA
The day drew into a fresh spring evening, and the first tint of sunset began to paint the sky. While Luke was out getting a bucket of water from the spring, Nita took Inga aside.
“Okay, tell me seriously, what’s going on with you two?” she whispered, glancing wildly at the door every two seconds as if she thought Luke was about to burst through it like the Kool-Aid Man.
“What are you talking about?”
“You just happened to meet this handsome hiker wandering the coast? Come on, spill.” Nita waggled her brows. “Have you been keeping a secret outport boyfriend? Am I crashing your romantic tryst?”
“What? No!”
“You can tell me. I won’t be offended. I’d be happy for you. I can even sleep in the boat as a seal. Jo-Jo loves sleeping in boats. The waves put her right out.”
“No! There’s no—” Inga lowered her voice, glancing at the door herself. Luke really should be back anytime now, unless he’d stopped to gaze at the sunset or something. “There’s no secret relationship. We really did meet by chance, I swear.”
“You expect me to believe the two of you have been sleeping in this very small cabin with no—”
The door opened just then, Luke edging in with his broad shoulders and a bucket of water that actually looked small next to his large frame.
“—with no sign at all of the missing boat, that’s right,” Inga said loudly. “And we did look. I’m so glad you showed up; we could have been stuck here for weeks if you hadn’t. When did you say you were planning on heading back?”
Nita sighed deeply, and her expression promised the conversation wasn’t over. “Tomorrow, probably. It’s difficult to be gone for too long with Jo-Jo. And I really do feel as if I’m crashing—”
“Crashing is exactly what we hope to avoid!” Inga said brightly.
Luke cleared his throat. “So, I don’t know if you ladies have thought about sleeping arrangements at all—”
“Oh, we have,” Nita said, with another eyebrow waggle that Inga tried to ignore.
“—but I’d be completely comfortable sleeping outside. I can just take a blanket or something.”
Nita’s mouth opened in dismay. “I absolutely am not kicking you out! I was just telling Inga I can sleep in the boat.”
“Which I was telling Nita,” Inga said between her teeth, “is completely unnecessary.”
“You can’t sleep in the boat with a baby when there’s a perfectly good bed up here,” Luke said, horrified.
“Thank you. That’s what I was telling her.”
Nita snorted. “Well, if everyone agrees that at the very least I’ll be sleeping up here, I’m going to make a bed for me and Jo-Jo on this bunk over here, and you all can do whatever you want with that one there.”
Inga felt her face growing hot. And her next actions were not going to cause Nita to drop her innuendo at all ... but she really needed to talk to Luke without her friend around. She collected a blanket from the other bunk.
“Luke, can we take a walk? I was just going to watch the sun set and I thought you might want to come watch it with me.”
Nita stopped making even a pretense of fixing the bed. “I really can sleep in the boat.”
“Do not sleep in the boat,” Inga ordered her. “We’ll be back soon.”
She went outside. Luke followed her, turning back to give Rogue a quiet command, and the dog stayed behind.
Inga set a leisurely pace up the hill, and Luke fell in just behind her. There was still a lingering warmth from the day, with a growing chill beginning to set in as the sun fell behind the island. The sky was turning purple.
“You know she thinks we’re—well—you know,” Luke said. “And this isn’t going to help.”
“I know. But I wanted to .... be alone, I guess.” Inga stopped at the top of the hill, looked around, and found a relatively rock-free place to spread the blanket in the lee of some boulders. If the helicopter came back before it got dark, they would have at least some cover.
“For ...?” Luke said, his voice rising in a question. He stayed at the top of the path, making no move to join her when Inga sat on the blanket.
“Just to watch the sunset,” Inga said. “Look, it’s occurred to me that when Nita leaves tomorrow, one way or another, I’m going with her. I really hope you’ll come, but—if you don’t, this might be our last chance to ... anyway, do you want to come and sit with me?”
After a long pause, he came over and sat on the blanket next to her. He wasn’t touching her, but if he moved a little, his hip would be brushing hers.
They sat together for a little while, as the purple shadow of dusk moved up the western sky.
“That’s the shadow of the planet, you know,” Inga said, pointing to the sky.
“I’ve always loved knowing that. I love that about the ocean in general.
You can actually see the curve of the world.
It makes me feel like I’m connected to the whole universe sometimes, living where the sea is so much a part of my life. Does that sound strange?”
“Not at all,” Luke said quietly. “I wish I had that.”
Inga glanced at him. His arms were resting over his knees, and he seemed relaxed, more so than she had seen him since Nita showed up.
Just very there in the moment. This was a thing Inga had noticed with other shifters, that they were present in the world in a way that many humans weren’t.
Simply existing in the moment, as it seemed.
Luke didn’t have that quality very often, which made sense now that she knew more about his past. But he was like that now, quiet and calm and present.
“I think you do,” she said. “Or I mean, you could. If you want to.”
“How?” He glanced at her, his blue-green eyes reflecting the luminescence of a sea at dusk. “I’m a fugitive. I have to hide everything about myself.”
“Not with everyone,” Inga pointed out quietly. “Not with me. In Westerly Cove, you’d be around people like—well, okay, not exactly like you, but people you don’t have to hide your shifter self from.”
He huffed out a sigh. “You’re still trying to convince me I’d be safe there?”
“Not necessarily. I’m not naive enough to think they’ll stop trying to find you. But you could be—”
“Surrounded by people who would be in danger because of me?”
She reached out a hand and cautiously covered his fingers with her own. “Maybe you could stop worrying so much about other people, and think about what’s good for you for a change.”
For a tentative moment his hand turned and began to take hers in return, then pulled away. “If I’m wearing out my welcome at the cabin, you can tell me. I’ll leave at your word.”
Inga sighed softly. “Luke—you’re welcome here for as long as you want. If you’d like to stay when I go back with Nita, that’s fine with me. But is that what you want? Out here alone, on the edge of the world, just you and your dog? Haven’t you had enough of that?”
Luke started to answer, then let out a sigh that sounded like it was coming from the bottoms of his feet.
“I ... haven’t been able to think about what I want.
It didn’t matter. There was just the next thing in front of me, for what feels like as long as I can remember.
I don’t think I’ve really had choices in a very long time. ”
“Well, now you do.” She reached for him again in the growing dusk, but this time he moved first, taking her hand in his.
He ran his fingers lightly across the back of her hand, and she shivered. Then Luke raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
His mouth was soft and deft, with a slight tickle from his couple of days’ worth of beard. He turned her hand over and pressed his lips to her palm. Inga leaned toward him, and he kissed her hand again, then transferred his attention to her mouth.
They kissed and kissed, as dusk softly stole the light and color from the world.
Inga was barely aware that at some point they had laid back on the blanket.
Luke’s hands were under her sweater, running across her belly, and then he stroked his hand over the top of her jeans and hooked a finger under the fastening.
Inga touched his hand. He stilled instantly. “Not—right now.” Her entire body was thrumming with need. Saying no felt like the hardest thing she’d ever done.
Luke pulled back a little, gazing at her in the starlight. “We won’t if you don’t want to, but is that a nice way of saying no, or—”
“I don’t want to risk—well—Nita’s situation. And I don’t have birth control with me.” She laughed a little, trying to claw her mind back from rampant lust. “Also, I haven’t had a proper shower in days.”
Luke bent down and nuzzled against her neck. “There are other options, you know.”
He took her hand and drew it to the tented front of his pants. When she kept it there, he moved his own hand to the waistband of her jeans and began to undo it.
“Stop me if you don’t want this,” he murmured.
For answer, she began to run her hand over the hot bulge that filled her palm. Luke worked his hand down inside her underwear. She inhaled a little as his fingers touched her mound.
“Good?” he murmured.
“Good,” she gasped back.
She got her hands on the fastening of his jeans, wanting more, needing more. Meanwhile he had slid two fingers down, moving slowly with light, maddening brushes against her wetness and her clit.
“Ugh—Luke, I want—”
“Me?” he murmured, kissing his way up her jaw to her lips.
She finally got his jeans open, and her hand met his firm, silky length. He was uncut, thick enough to fill her hand, gliding wetly as she got a rhythm going.
Meanwhile, his fingertip had found her opening. He caressed it lightly, not quite going inside. She groaned with pleasure and need.
His finger continued to tease her until she gasped and bucked her hips in the grip of a climax that rippled through her entire body. Luke came in almost the same moment, and he twisted to the side so that he splashed the rocks instead of her leg.
Luke settled beside her and she continued to hold him as his erection slowly faded. He kept his hand on her mound through her quivering aftershocks, then withdrew it carefully.
“See?” he murmured, and kissed her. “There are ways.”
Inga leaned against him, soft and pliant with afterglow.
This had to work out, she thought. Whatever she and Luke were to each other, she already couldn’t stand the thought of him staying behind, and never seeing him again.