Page 78 of Exit Strategy

“Survival is what I like to do, is what I’m passionate about, I guess.”

“I’m sorry?” I blinked and felt like my eyes maybe went crossed, I thought about it so hard for a moment.

“You know,” he said. “Hunting, fishing, foraging, and living off the land and the like. You want I should teach you?”

“Me?” I asked a bit incredulous.

“Well, yeah!” He nodded, palming my hip beneath the waterline, and massaging it gently. “Why not?”

I laughed a bit. “You and me in a cabin in the woods somewhere, what foraging for mushrooms and shooting?” I sputtered, looking for the right word for it failing and falling back on my childhood with “Bambi’s mom?”

He laughed outright the. I mean threw back his head andlaughed. Deep from his chest – no, lower from his belly. He laughed and laughed, the sound rich and joyous like a fountain of chocolate cascading around me, warmer than even the water we sat in.

I smiled and waited for him to calm down and answer me.

“Well, yeah,” he said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye and it almost mollified me. I don’t think I had ever seen him so relaxed and just,happy,and it struck me…

You. You are what makes him this happy.

I bit my lips together, overcome with emotion at that.

The two of us honestly couldn’t be more different and yet, and yet somehow our love was finding its way.

I shifted, laying my hand against his cheek, resting my forehead against his and closed my eyes asking softly, barely audible above the bubbling jets, “You really think I could? That I could master it?”

“Oh, Love,” he said, bringing his hands out from the water and cupping my face in his hands. He pulled my forehead from his and replaced it with his lips, kissing me soundly and I melted.

“You can do anything,” he said, bringing his forehead back to rest against mine and holding me close. I shifted and put a knee to either side of him on the stone bench beneath the frothing white, blue waters, and my arms around his neck. I was taller now like this.

I kissed him then and he hummed out. I could feel he was growing hard between us, and I loved that whenever he and I were alone like this, he almost instantly grew hard for me. It was almost as though I could think his erection into being and it was an honestly powerful feeling.

I loved that I was beautiful to him, and that he believed in me, and I knew it when he looked at me, that it wasn’t my face that he found lovely. That Kurt loved my mind, and my spirit such that it was, before he loved me for my looks.

“Hey, you two! Can you hit the pause button on this fuckery for just a minute?” I jumped and turned. Kyle and Sadie strode toward us in… in forest camouflage tactical gear.

“Oi, what’s that?” Kurt asked and I loved that the longer he spent with his old captain, the more pronounced his British accent became.

“Need the keys to your cabin if it’s all the same to you. We’d like to post up,” Sadie said with a grin bordering on feral.

“Red Queen over here hasn’t had any action in a minute. She might be a little too excited,” Kyle muttered into his wrist.

Sadie rolled her eyes.

“What White King said, Black King. Now shut up.”

I turned back to Kurt whose eyebrows were raised and he was trying not to laugh.

“Key is on the ring with my truck keys up in our room, bedside table. It’s the one with the green rubber gasket, brass key. If you don’t mind, take just the cabin key, and leave me the rest, yeah?”

“You got it,” Kyle said with a smirk.

“Enjoy yourselves,” Sadie sang out and they turned and went back toward the house.

“Why do I think I should be scared of them?” I asked.

“Because you should. Everyone should.”

“But Sadie is so nice to me—”

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