Kissing Fire (20 page)

“I’m so sorry babe, but I think you’re going to be
very sore tomorrow.”

“Hmm, probably. But it will be so worth it.”

She rolled over right into my arms and snuggled down
next to me. It felt like she was molded just for my body because
she fit perfectly into my side.

“You know what?”

“What?” she answered.

“I know we were supposed to be out here for another
two nights, but I think I want to take you back to the cabin so we
can have a night in a real bed and get in the big bath tub
together. What do you think?”

“You must’ve read my mind,” she answered. I could
feel her lips kissing my chest and her breath against my skin. God,
I loved this woman.

“Avery, you know I won’t ever let you go.”

“Preston?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a good thing because I don’t want you to let
me go.”

*********

Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard Avery
fumbling around in the tent. I sat up and switched on my head lamp
to find her trying to unzip the tent opening.

"What's going on?"

"Um, I have to pee."

"Here, let me get that for you and I'll go with
you."

"You don't mind?"

"Of course not," I assured her. I knew how
frightened she was to be out there alone.

I unzipped the tent and told her to get her flip
flops. "Should I put some clothes on?" she wanted to know.

"No one will see you so it's not necessary."

"Okay."

We went outside and she grabbed my hand tightly.
"It's really spooky out here, with the mist and all."

"Well, I think it's sort of beautiful. Mysterious
looking."

"You would. You're a lot braver than I."

I chuckled at her. We got to a good spot and I
turned my back to give her a bit of privacy. Suddenly I heard her
yell, "Shit hell mother fucker!"

It wasn't like her to curse like that and with such
intensity. "What's wrong?" I asked, concerned.

"Oh God! I just peed all over my foot! Shit! What am
I gonna do?"

I broke out into fits of laugher. I couldn't
stop.

"Would you quit already? What the hell am I gonna
do? I can't go back to bed like this?"

"It's not a big deal." I eked out between my peels
of laugher.

She gave me a nasty look. "Easy for you to say.
You're not the one with tinkle all over your foot."

"Tinkle?"

"Yes, tinkle, damn it!"

Grabbing her arm, I pulled her into me and hugged
her. Then I told her, "Look, we'll go down to the stream and you
can wash your foot off. Okay?"

"But we don't have any soap. It's up in the
tree."

"I have some unscented stuff in the tent you can
use. It's all good, honey. We'll get you all tidied up."

"Okay."

We went back to the tent to grab the soap and then I
took her to the stream so she could wash her tinkled up foot. I had
to bite my lip the whole time to keep from laughing at her. When
she was all nice and clean again, we headed back to bed. The best
part of all was when she snuggled next to me, kissed me and said,
"Thanks for taking such good care of me Preston. I love you."

"I love you too, Tinkle Toes!"

She popped me in the side for that one.

********

We made it back to the house much faster than I
thought possible. Laughing, we ran up to the master bath, stripping
our clothes off along the way. I bent over the tub to turn on the
water and Avery sneaked up behind me and said, “I don’t want to
startle you, but don’t move.”

Her hands splayed across my back and I felt her
fingertips sink into my muscles right before her lips touched my
skin. She massaged my muscles as she kissed my heated body moving
lower as she inched along. Firm hands gripped my hips as her cheek
brushed across my lower back and then she was licking every curve,
indentation and raised surface of that word that was cut into me. I
threw back my head and groaned out of sheer pleasure. Her hands
kept moving, sliding along my body, as if they knew exactly what I
needed and when I needed it, but when they wrapped around me and
held my erection, I couldn’t contain myself any longer.

“Sweet Jesus, Avery,” I breathed. I spun around so
fast, the surprise was noted on her face, but I couldn’t help
myself. “I need you. Now.” I reached for her and pulled her up to
me, feeling for her sex to ensure she was ready. “So wet for me,
and tight. You feel so damn good honey,” I murmured into her mouth,
as I entered her.

Her nails raked my back and that always set me off.
It was hard to rein myself in during these moments with her, but I
wanted to make sure she was satisfied before I was. Her tongue was
on my neck, doing things to me that made it difficult to maintain
my control.

The way her breathing changed coupled with the way
she arched her back always jerked a response from me unlike any
other.

“Harder Preston, harder.”

I backed her up against the wall and lifted her leg
around me as I pumped into her. It was impossible to make love to
her without watching her. Her expressions...her eyes were so
fucking gorgeous. Everything about her was amazing. I could feel
her tightness around me begin to change. Grabbing her hand, I
raised her arm above her head and pressed it against the wall.

“Good?” I asked, as I thrust into her.

“Ah yeah, Preston, that’s so good.”

I inched away just enough so I could roll her nipple
between my fingers. She squeezed my shoulder in response as she
cried out for more. I took my other hand and cupped her ass so I
could move her to increase the friction where she needed it the
most. When I did, she rewarded me with the sexiest moan I’d ever
hear.

“Is this good Avery?”

“Oh yeah Preston. More. I want
more. And harder.”

I rolled my hips and then pumped into her again and
again, and then I felt it coming on. Grabbing the back of her hair,
I pulled it so she had to look at me. It was those eyes of her I
always longed to see. There was so much love and lust shining in
them, I couldn’t let an orgasm slip by without looking at them.

“Oh yeah Avery. Come for me baby.”

And she did as she cried out my name. I felt her
spasms all around me as they went on and on and I loved every
minute of it, especially since I got my own out of it as well.

I still pumped into her, even when we both were
finished, just because it felt so damn good. But the best part of
all was having her rub her cheek against mine and then say those
words.

“God, I love you Preston. Damn,
that was some kind of great sex, wasn’t it?”

“The best ever,” I answered her as I kissed her.

All of a sudden we heard water running and I looked
over at the tub and yelled, “Oh hell!”

We’d forgotten about the water and the damn tub was
overflowing!

“Turn it off,” Avery yelled.

“I’m trying!” I still hadn’t pulled out of her. We
both ended up on our asses on the floor, sliding all over the
place.

“Shit!” she screamed.

We scrambled over to the tub, still slipping
everywhere when we finally got the water turned off.

She started to get up in search of towels and I
pulled her back down on my lap.

“What are you doing? We have to get this water up or
you’ll have a mess!”

“I have a drain in here. See? It’s all good honey.”
I pointed to the drain on the floor near the tub so she could see
all was well. Then we both started laughing our asses off.

********

She knew everything about me, all the gruesome
details about my prison term. When I told her, she cried for me and
held me as she tried to comfort me. I bared my soul to her as I had
done to no other and it was freeing for me. Unlocking those
memories I had kept buried inside for so long was so liberating
that it was strange at first. I hadn’t felt so unfettered in such a
long time that it took some time for me to adjust to the
feeling.

We sat around the fire one night and I couldn’t stop
myself from asking her, “Why did you not ever judge me?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you found out about me being in prison? You
knew what they’d done to me?”

“Well, yeah, but it wasn’t like you wanted it
Preston. Why would I judge you for that? It was forced upon you.
You were raped. You said yourself once that if I had been raped,
you wouldn’t hold that against me.”

“But Avery, it’s different because you’re a
woman.”

“What difference does that make? Rape is rape, no
matter who it happens to.” She picked up my hand and kissed the
palm of it. “I’m not sure where this double standard of yours came
from, but I believe you need to get that notion out of your head.
I’d like to ask you something. A while back, you wondered why I had
such a tough time with my body...why I was so shy and all. Well,
I’d like to ask you why you feel so inferior about something that
was forced upon you.”

She looked at me with those not blue not green eyes
and I knew I had to be honest with everything I told her.

“Because like I told you before, everything they did
to me made me feel so damn dirty and disgusting. It doesn’t matter
that it was forced; it still makes me feel that way. I’ll always
feel that way Avery and I’ll never feel like I deserve you.”

“We’re quite the pair then, aren’t we? Neither of us
feel like we deserve each other,” she whispered, right before she
kissed my mouth, running her tongue across my lips.

“I need to tell you something else, and I pray you
don’t hate me for this.”

Giving me one of her million dollar
smiles, she said, “Like I could ever. What’s so damn important that
you’ve interrupted a kiss? You know how I love to kiss
you.”

“I’ve been less than honest with you.”

She pulled away from me and still had a half smile
on her face. “What do you mean?”

“About our situation here.”

“I’m not following.”

I looked down and then back at her eyes. Taking a
deep breath, I plunged in before I lost my nerve. Hurting her was
the last thing I wanted to do, but I was afraid I had gone too far
and there was no stopping it now. “We’ve been out of danger for
quite some time now.”

“You mean with the cartel?”

“Yes.”

“How long is quite some time?” she wanted to
know.

“Since a couple of weeks after we got here.”

Dead silence. Nothing. No movement, no yelling or
screaming, nothing at all.

“I see,” was all she said. And she responded in a
very small voice, quite unlike the Avery I was accustomed to.

“It that all you’re going to say?”

I watched a thousand different expressions drift
across her face, but none of them settled down long enough to stay.
Her throat worked feverishly, as she tried to swallow, whether she
was attempting to hold back tears, I couldn’t tell.

In a strangled voice that drove a knife deep into my
heart she whispered just one tiny word. “Why?”

“I was selfish and so in love with you that I wanted
to have time with you alone to see if you could even love me. I
thought if we had sufficient time together perhaps we’d have a
chance. When I saw how much you loved it here, I thought that maybe
we could make things work. I was wrong and I know that now. I’m so
sorry.”

“Is that supposed to make it all better? Is that
supposed to make me feel good or something? You lied to me. You
falsified things. You made me think my life...your life was in
danger. For weeks I lay awake at night and worried about you. I
worried about Justin and Caroline. You destroyed my life. My job. I
have no home now because of what you did.”

“Oh Avery, I’m so sorry. But you’re wrong. You do
have a home. With me. I’ll take care of you. Always.”

“Is this some kind of a twisted joke? Because if it
is, it’s a poor attempt at one. I don’t want to be taken care of. I
never wanted to be taken care of. I want to be self sufficient. I
want to earn my own way in the world and not be dependent on
others. You stole all that from me Preston. And you didn’t even
bother to tell me. You made me believe you loved me and then you
made me fall in love with you.”

With the subtlest of movements, I watched her
stiffen her spine and I flinched as her eyes came to rest on
mine.

“I want to leave this place.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

She walked up the flight of stairs
and if her heart was hurting anywhere near as badly as mine was,
I’m sure she felt like she was dying.

Chapter 19

Avery

Crack
. Did
I hear it or was it simply the pain his words caused when my heart
reacted to them? But it wasn’t just my heart that was cracking. My
entire body and soul were splintering apart. How could he have done
this to me? A lie this colossal that had destroyed my life. How
could he have been so selfish? Was it worth the price?

My tears blinded me as I ran for my room...the room
that wasn’t mine any more. I fell to the bed and tried to collect
my thoughts. All of my belongings were in Preston’s room. We’d
moved them in there together, after we returned from our camping
trip.

With resolve, I stood up and stomped across the
hall. Opening the only two drawers I had any items in, I piled my
things in my arms, hauled them back to the other room and dumped
them on the bed. I scanned the room, looking for something to stuff
my things in. Finding nothing, I decided I would be bold and headed
back across the hall. Jerking open the closet door, I rifled
through Preston’s things until my hands landed on something
suitable. It was a backpack that would fit all of my clothing and
other items. Making my way to the bathroom, I dumped all of my
toiletries and makeup into the darned thing and hurried back to my
room.