Page 52 of Brewbies
It was a dream he was finding he couldn’t give up just yet.
Planting his boots on the ground, he stopped swinging. Her next push brought her body in front-to-back contact with his.
The imprint branded on him, immediately.
The smart thing—the right thing—to do would be to hop off the swing like she’d cattle-prodded him in the taint, sprint to his truck, and peel out of there.
But the two perfect breasts pressing into his shoulder blades, combined with the honeyed breeze of her exhalations tickling the wisps of hair at his nape, froze his tush to the swing.
“Thank you for this,” she murmured against his ear. “The swing is really lovely.”
He swallowed, hard, doing his best to douse a warm glow trying to ignite behind his breastbone. “I didn’t hang it for you.”
“Doesn’t matter. I still love swings. Always have. Check this out.”
His shoulders missed the warmth of her body the moment she left, but she returned right away, pressing her shoulder blades to his.
“What the—?”
“Hold still and keep your boots planted,” she ordered him before seizing the ropes above her head and doing little hops as she counted, “One. Two. Three. Hup!”
Through some kind of bendy magic and a miracle of biblical proportions, she flipped her entire body upside down. Using only the strength of her toned arms, she stretched her legs up the ropes of the swing and then hooked her ankles to secure herself above him.
Ethan looked up, astounded to find her face smiling down at him, her hair creating a lush pink curtain around them both. He couldn’t bring himself to break eye contact long enough to wonder about the kimono’s location.
“What the…” he repeated poetically.
Strong as he was, he probably couldn’t even do that.
He checked the way she’d splayed her legs against the ropes, soles of her now bare feet to the sky.
Correction, he could most definitelynotdo that.
No one did that.
No one in his life hung upside down at one a.m. on a swing with her fragrant fuchsia hair pleasantly feathering over his upturned face. Setting nerve endings on fire. Blocking out the illusions of the past and the opaque, unsteady path to the future.
Five days.
In five days she’d be compelled to wander away. To find the next place that called to her restless soul. To set up this caravan of coffee and carefree sensuality to a community in need of her.
And he would be the one who’d driven her away.
Something like regret reared in his gut, tinged with a frenetic note that might have been panic.
Five days, and he might never see her again.
That was the fucking plan all along. It was what he dearly wanted.
Wasn’t it?
“You’re thinking too loud,” she accused him with a grin, her voice raspy by the effort it took to remain inverted.
“Oh yeah?” he murmured, his voice thinned by the arch of his throat. “What did you hear?”
“You were thinking about how you can’t wait to be rid of me,” she guessed blithely, adjusting her hands on the ropes to slide a little closer. Her eyes were dark, but he knew what he would read in them if he could see into the depths.
“You a mind reader, too, huh?” he rumbled, the spell cast by the night and her scent, by the brook and the waft of her sweet breath, threatening to carry away the last of his rationality.
