Page 16 of Four Calling Birds

“Yes, I did…!” he was acting mad, but then he broke into a smile. “After they ate my vegetables.” He leaned back into the enormous couch, getting swallowed in the cushions.

“Ah!” I said, placing the plate of duck on the counter.

“Anyway, I ate a ton of venison last year,” he said, looking back towards the fire and wiggling his toes.

“You were never much of a country boy,” I said with a laugh as I closed the oven, leaving the strudel inside.

I looked at the heap of duck meat, knowing I had made far too much. Still, leftovers were part of the fun, right?

“I’m learning,” he said, turning back to me, and running a hand through his graying hair. “Anyway, Bruce won’t fall for any of the tricks - the scarecrow, the music, the strobes… I swear, that fucker is testing me. He knows…”

“He’s a deer,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “They’re prey animals. They don’t have those kinds of faculties.”

“That fucker does,” he pointed out to the vegetable garden. “You saw him! That son of a bitch was looking at me, and I swear, he was taunting me.”

“He was not!”

“Yes! He was!”

I looked at the oven, and the timer. Then back at Mack. “Are you ready to eat?”

His emerald eyes looked back at me, sparkling with a strange little fire that I had forgotten about until that very moment. It was strange, wasn’t it? That you live with someone for so long, that you forget some of the things that made them so alluring in the first place, until you see it again.

“Fuck,” he said, smacking himself on the forehead as he got ot his feet. “You should be the one sitting down, and I’m making you cook.”

“I swear, I’m fine.” I waved a hand to him, telling him to sit back down. “My injury happened two weeks ago. I can walk, and do all that stuff… I’m not as bad as you think I am.”

“Right.” His voice was suddenly husky. “You can fuck. If… if I can be gentle. Right?”

I froze. Remembering my embarrassing confession from the night before. “Sorry about that.”

I felt the flush on my cheeks, so hot that I was surprised I didn’t completely catch fire.

“Don’t be.” His voice was so low, so gravelly, and so full of something I couldn’t quite place. Was it lust? Or was that just wishful thinking on my part? “Stop blushing like that, Lotte.” Now he was almost whispering. “You know what that does to me.”

God, yes. I did remember. Seeing me blush made him hard. He loved to see my skin red with the flush of passion. He said that’s how he knew I had an orgasm. The skin from my breast to my cheeks would turn something he called “apple red”.

“You know I can’t help it.”

I traced my finger on the dark wood butcher block countertop. It had a dark stain, then treated to withstand the cuts of a blade, and the roll of meat. I wonder if this had been here all along, or if he had chosen to install it. And if he had chosen to… was it for me? No. That was stupid. A lot of people liked butcher block counters. It was a trend, after all. But… there was a chance. A small, infinitesimal chance that he had thought of me while he had it put in place.

And why did my heart grow heavy, with the thought that he’d one day be this thoughtful with someone else?

“Don’t be stupid, Lotte.” When did he stand up and sneak up on me? He was right there. His hot hands traced my bare arms, until they circled my slender wrists. He made me flatten my hands on the counter. “I would build you a house at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.”

I shut my eyes, feeling the words, the memories, and everything flood back with this intimate contact. With the heat of his chest against my back.

“You’re quoting John Wayne,” I whispered, leaning back to close the gap between us. My back on his chest. His muscular arms circled me, pulling me in close.

“You like John Wayne,” he said into my ear. Again, I could feel his breath on my cheek, and the shell of my ear.

“So do you.”

“I missed you, Lotte,” he said, his lips coming down low. Low. So low that I could almost feel the heat of his lips against my bare shoulder. He nipped at the skin there. “I can be gentle.”

I closed my eyes, my thighs rubbing together as I felt the heat pooling between my thighs.

“I didn’t think you wanted it,” I confessed. “You didn’t seem interested…”

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