Page 48 of Sundowners
“I like your tricks, Nurse Creed. I do.” He pulled away. “And I want more of that, but let’s get to the part where you seem so sad.”
I had that sensation like when you’ve just recently fallen asleep and you feel like you’re walking along all fine and dandy and you miss a step. My whole body jerked as I fell.
“Hey, you okay?”
I sighed. That moment of bliss that had been so close was now dangling from a precipice.
“Yeah, I am. Things were good, hard but good, until they weren’t. Some of the other Learners at the commune didn’t agree with the way the Leaders ran things, and they staged a little mutiny, I guess you’d call it.”Muse, I’m so sorry.“People got…hurt. Those of us who could, fled.”
“That’s awful,” he said, his hand cupping my cheek now. “Were the police involved? I don’t remember hearing anything—”
“No, I don’t think anyone reported anything. It never made the news.”
I had to tread carefully here because knowing Roman, he’d be curious and he’d go look, but back then the Santa Cruz mountains were wild and there was a lot of unincorporated territory. A lot of shit went on and the hippies who’d moved out there wanted away from The Man. They’d had enough of the police throughout the years of protests and the Summer of Love.
“We were all a bunch of runaways, throwaways from society. No one was looking for us and the Leaders kept things really under wraps. The two years I was there, no one new started, and we didn’t have any contact with outsiders. I had another year to go before I could have tested to become a Leader, and I thought that was what I wanted, but then I noticed that they often let some bad behavior slip, said it would be worked out naturally—”
“What, like karma?”
“Hmm. Something like that. I think if they would have acted, maybe expelled the bad apples, then maybe the uprising wouldn’t have happened, but it’s over now. I never heard from anyone after that, so I don’t know. The group isn’t there anymore, I know that much. It’s a church campground now, so someone must have bought the place or maybe the commune was renting it. Beats me. I went by when I came back to the area and no one I knew was still there.”
“Where did you go?”
I laughed. “Wheredidn’tI go? I traveled around, worked for a bit. Finished my nursing degree, got my license, and that’s what I do. I take care of people.”
Roman observed me for a long time, perhaps taking it all in. His dark eyes were so kind, not judgmental like those of some of the other people I’d tried to talk to over the past fifty years, and the sorrow I usually felt pouring from him was gone. In its place was empathy. Admiration, maybe. And he still wanted me, that was clear, and not just from the bulge in his pants that pressed into my thigh.
“And you’re good at it. But who takes care ofyou?” he asked, and then he smiled. “You askedmethat once.”
“I did.” Instead of me using my pheromones to ease him, his were doing a powerful number on me. He was broadcasting clearly what he wanted to happen. And while I hadn’t told him everything, I’d told him enough for me to not feel like an evil man for taking what he so desperately wanted to give.
“Let me. Let me be the one for you,” he said, sliding his hand from my face, down over my chest that was barely keeping my pounding heart contained, over the front of my jeans… He hooked his fingers in my fly and yanked the buttons open, one at a time. “Fuck, these are hot. No one wears button flys anymore. It’s a shame.”
“Shame, yes.” I sucked in a breath. “I—”
“Yes?” he asked, sliding his hand inside my boxers.
His touch was too good to deny, and who was I fooling? I’d known that if I ever got him alone, we’d end up horizontal, pheromones or no.
We were horizontal now, and alone, and it had beensolong…
“Yes, Roman. All the yes.”
He paused with his hand wrapped around my dick. “Here or the bed?”
“Bed, please.” If I was going to be weak, why not enjoy it to the fullest?
He stood quickly and then held out a hand to pull me up. Rhonda lifted her head, stood, and then hopped onto the couch where we’d just been.
“She okay on the furniture?”
“She’s yours. She can do whatever she wants.”
He led me down a short hallway past a bathroom and into a dark bedroom.
“I kind of like it dungeon dark when I sleep,” he laughed. He pulled off his shirt and crawled into bed, waiting for me.
“You’ll get no complaints from me.” I yanked off my Harvard hoodie and slid my jeans down my legs, but I left on my boxers in case…well, in case Roman got cold feet.
