Chapter Fourteen #2
Him urging her to help with the tarp so he could get out this fabled tent.
I don’t even remember him packing one, she thought.
But after a moment of rummaging, he seemed to find it.
It just didn’t look exactly like one to her.
It was a kind of green, heavy-duty-looking tube that she couldn’t imagine turning into something they could get inside.
In fact, she almost asked him where the rest of it was.
She peered inside the truck bed, looking for a ton of poles and hooks and hammers.
Hoping for them, truth be told, because then there’d be a bunch of setting it up.
She would handle the complicated camping equipment wrong, and he would get all exasperated, and then the whole thing would collapse and they’d have to start again.
By the time they got into the tent, they’d be exhausted.
There would be no time to think about any intense weirdness going on.
Then she turned and watched him just kind of toss the thing, and there was a loud phwoomf, and suddenly there it was.
A perfectly formed tent squatting in front of them.
Zipper at the front, a jaunty little roof, thickly paneled sides—the works.
If she had been standing in front of it in any other circumstances, it would have seemed inviting.
Incredibly practical, and very warm looking.
But as things stood, she couldn’t approve.
Because he hadn’t been lying. If anything, he had been generous.
It was the size of a fucking thimble. She wasn’t even sure how he ever managed to get inside it alone, never mind anything else.
One of his thighs looked bigger than the whole thing was across.
It barely hit his waist in height. If he’d gone about it carefully, he could have probably stuffed the whole thing up his butt.
While it was erected.
Yet he carried on acting like this was going to easily happen.
He grabbed thick, fluffy-looking sleeping bags from the truck, unzipped the tent, and stuffed them inside.
First one, then the other, because of course both couldn’t be done at the same time.
And he couldn’t manage it without really ramming himself in there.
It looked like the entrance was strangling his waist.
For a second she honestly started to panic that it was, and he’d end up on the news the next day. Famous Author Murdered by Tent, Police Suspect Missing Mortal Enemy, she imagined. Though she had no idea how these made-up police thought she could have been involved.
She didn’t have the power to control malevolent camping equipment.
All she had was the ability to stand there, helplessly, as the stakes refused to get any fucking smaller. By the time he was done, and out, and dusting off his hands, satisfied, they felt sky-high. Apocalyptic, almost, and even more so when he shut off the headlights on the truck and locked it up.
He came back to her through almost total darkness.
All she could see were the stars starting to dot the plush velvet sky, the outlines of the trees around them, like soft sentinels standing watch.
The shape of his body, deeply shadowed and yet still so heavy seeming.
Then he switched on some little storm lamp he had apparently snagged from the truck, and somehow that was worse. It made him almost glow.
Though it was the sounds that really struck her.
That soft sense of the forest whispering.
Things rustling in the undergrowth; something crying out in the distance.
And over the top: every single thing he was doing, heightened by the silence to an almost terrible degree.
The shift of his boots against the crackling floor; the purr of his clothes as he moved around.
His breathing, slow and steady, but just a little strangely harsh.
As if he were trying to control it, but the effort made it grate.
Unsettling, but also somehow deliriously good.
Setting the mood, her mind threw up. And after it had she wanted to throw up, too.
I can’t do this, she thought of saying to him.
But thankfully, he cut her off before she could do something that foolish.
“Well, ladies first,” he said, and that made it a little easier.
Or at least it did, when she considered what him going first would have been like.
This way, she wasn’t trying to fumble her way over him to get to her spot in there.
No crushing of his legs, no elbow in his face.
No accidentally touching anything she shouldn’t.
Absolutely no problems, she told herself—and it felt right, too. Until she was nice and settled, on top of the plush sleeping bag on the left, and he started to take his turn.
His hand parted the tent flaps like a lover sliding up someone’s split dress.
Then the rest of him followed, and somehow that seemed even more weirdly sexual.
He appeared to push through shoulders first, and god, said shoulders looked enormous.
They practically filled the tent from side to side.
For a second they were all she could see.
And once he was in he didn’t just unzip and shove himself into his sleeping bag, nice and straightforward and practical.
He began taking off his boots.
Caleb Miller, boot addict.
Removing them right in front of her.
It was obscene. It was terrible. It was like being a trapped patron of the weirdest strip show in the world. No real nudity, no real glamour, not even any sexy moves. He had to kind of crouch, all pretzel-like, just to get it done.
But even that didn’t make a difference.
It just meant she got to see a lot of oddly hot sights.
Like the underside of his thigh when he brought his knee up to his chest. All thick and broad, the muscle there tense enough that it strained the seams of his jeans. But also somehow vulnerable at the same time. Too exposed somehow. And the glimpse she got of his love handles was the same way.
He twisted, and his shirt popped free from his jeans. Then there was that tender curve, the thick and solid start of his stomach. Not the least bit sexy to most people, she would imagine. But she had never counted herself amongst them. Her eyes lingered on it, even when she told them not to.
Though not as badly as they did when he went to untie those laces. They were done up all tight and neat and sharp, obviously. And he had to work them loose, a bit at a time, with fingers that didn’t seem designed for such careful work. They were thick, and blunt-tipped, knuckles like hubcaps.
Yet he did it all so deftly, so carefully.
And slow, too. God, it was agonizingly slow. By the time he had them untied, she felt wrung out. Desperate to look away, but unable to really do it. Like she was transfixed. Like this was something far ruder than it was—a woman taking off her corset, she thought, unbidden.
Then had to stifle a too-sharp intake of breath.
And it wasn’t the only time. It happened again when he slowly eased those boots off.
As if there was something forbidden about seeing his fucking feet—which she supposed in some ways there was.
She was so used to seeing him with everything on.
His uniform, his armor, him in his jacket all the time because even taking that off was seemingly too much for him.
Taking away pieces of it felt rude.
Especially when everything underneath was so soft looking. His socks had stripes on them; the skin above them was smooth. She saw the curve of his ankle as it slid into his heel, and thought of Victorian scandals, holes in stockings, someone touching him there with just the tip of their finger.
Like everything he’d revealed was just a little vulnerable.
Or, at least, it was in some ways. In others, everything was just fucking massive. Just absolutely the biggest feet she’d ever seen in her life. God, I hope the carpet doesn’t match the drapes, she found herself thinking mindlessly.
And right before he had to maneuver past her to get into his sleeping bag.
Carefully, of course. Oh, he did it like she was made of glass.
But that big knee still brushed her thigh. His shoulder came very close to her face. She probably could have poked out her tongue and licked it if she had wanted to. Which she absolutely did not. She didn’t even know what made her think something like that.
But whatever it was, she did it again when he said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Voice all soft and flustered, like it came from someone other than himself.
A gentle dork, she imagined, who didn’t like to be a nuisance.
Then he was finally blessedly inside, stowed away completely from her line of sight, and she was free.
Or, at least, she thought so.
Until she looked at the state she was in, and realized. Now it was her turn to start stripping. Her turn to peel off her clothes and sneakers in this very confined space. And more horrifyingly, she had to do all of it while listening to a super disturbing soundtrack:
Him, going about the rest.
That was the clink of his belt buckle as she tried to get into a good position to untie her sneakers.
The rasp of his zipper while she struggled.
Hell, maybe she was struggling because of those sounds.
They made her fumble-y somehow, distracted.
She kept stopping without her own permission to glance over at whatever he was doing.
And then he was done, and that wasn’t any better.
His jeans were in his hands now.
He folded them right in front of her, and neatly placed them at the far end of the tent where his sleeping bag stopped. While, inside it, his legs were completely bare. Just absolutely nude, right the way up to his underpants.
If he even had any underpants on.