Page 56 of Eternally Devoted

We surge forward, and my balance is tested as my arms fly through the air and I go tumbling backward, rolling through the dry grass a few times until I’m discombobulated on my ass. Dash turns around, grinning. “I told you to hold on, dummy.”

A smirk sweeps my lips. “I felt stupid holding on to you,” I admit as I get to my feet, swiping my hands down my jeans to get rid of debris.

“You realize we’re cleaning up corpses. Doesn’t matter if you have some grass on you.” He pats the back of the seat again. “C’mon. And don’t feel stupid holding on to me.” He lowers his voice, adding, “I’d hold on to you.”

As my cheeks heat, I clamber on the back and wrap my arms around him, finding his body radiating heat and the faintest traces of soap and cologne. My face tingles as my fingertips sink into his chest, chiseled and defined. He’s one of those guys that looks like a photoshopped model without his clothes on. But I try to think about dead bodies on the bumpy quad ride out to the well, because holding him while envisioning him without a shirt will make the trip too hard.

Standing around the well, the three of us stare at it in silence. I may be the sanitation guy, but garbage is a different beast thanthis.

“There’s a lot of spiders,” I comment, watching one black widow crawl to a fly stuck in its web. Piece by piece, the spider feasts on its prey.Jesus Christ.

I glance over at Juniper and Dash to find them smirking at me. “You afraid of spiders, Sterl?” Dash asks.

“Psh.” The back of my neck grows clammy.

“How do I not know this after two years of living together?” He snaps his fingers. “That’s why you get the extra spider package on our bi-monthly pest control.”

“I’m not afraid of spiders,” I reason, hands on hips as I watch the little red-backed monster polish off the fly. “I just… prefer not to come into contact with them.”

Juniper, who looks gorgeously windswept after riding out here, links her arm with mine, smiling up at me. “I think it’s adorable that you’re afraid of spiders.”

“I’m not afraid,” I whine, “but look.” I point at the black widow. “Who wants to be aroundthat?”

Juniper shrugs. “I don’t mind.”

I bite my lip, casting a cautious glance at Dash. His smirk is more charming than it should be as he sifts a hand through his hair. “Yeah, but, baby, you kill people.”

She laughs. “True.”

“We’re laughing about it?” I ask, swiping my hand over my head, my sights set on that same murderous spider.

“Laugh or shit our pants,” Dash says. “And this is already likely to be a messy cleanup. We don’t need the latter in the mix.”

I get to work unclipping the bags from the ATVs, and once they’re off, I toss one to Dash and we unzip. While unloading rope and other supplies, Juniper explains why she should be the one to go down the well.

“I’m the lightest, and I did this so I should be the one to have to retrieve the remains,” she reasons, watching as I loop the rope around my arm, trying to figure out how much length we’ll need.

I hadn’t thought about who would be the one to descend the well, but I know without question it won’t be her. “No fucking way,” Dash interjects. “You’re not going down there. No way.” He slices his palm through the air with finality. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Why is it too dangerous for me but not for you two?” she asks, bracing her hands on her hips, green eyes flared with heat. I love how passionate she is, though herpassionis what brought us here.

“We’re men,” Dash says, puffing out his chest. He thumps a closed fist to his pecs. “I’m tough. I can handle it.” He deflates a little when Juniper seems unimpressed.

I turn to Juniper, telling her the truth. “Can you do a pull-up, sweetheart? Because I can pull up my own weight and so can Dash, which means if the pulley system fails, he or I will have a chance to scale the well wall to get back up. But if you can’t do a pull-up and we can’t, for some reason, get you up, you’re stuck until we figure things out.”

Dash points at me. “That, too. The man thing and the pull-up thing.”

Juniper eyes him with teasing disdain pinching her gaze. “Fine.”

After dropping the rope until it hits the bottom, I keep my hand secured on where it rests along the rim of the well, and pull it back up, measuring depth. “Thirty to thirty-five feet deep,” I tell Dash, who is working on loosening the safety harness we brought. We’ve had one in the garage ever since we rented a scissor lift to paint the house and trim trees last year.

“Do you have a pocket, for a flashlight, for when you’re down there?” I ask him as I pull my gloves on to have better leverage on the rope. Juniper works on spreading out a tarp where Dash will unload the bagged remains he collects. She puts a rock on each side to hold it down.

Dash doesn’t respond, so I look up to find him staring at me, eyes wide. “I’mgoing down?”

“You’re a man, aren’t you?” Juniper teases from her spot bent over near the ATV, collecting burlap bags from the back.

Her ass looks phenomenal in those leggings, and my dick would stiffen at the sight, normally. But with a corpse needing retrieval, it proves fickle.

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