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He let his fingertips drag from her thigh to her hip, where her skirt was skill hiked up, to where she was pressed against
his
thigh.

His thumb found her through her panties, soaking wet.

He brushed her hair back from an ear with his free hand, because she had stilled.

“Please,” he asked, because he didn’t know what else to ask for, not yet, “this one time, let me make you come.”

She had called him, certain he could help her, could do something for her and for her friend.

That’s all he wanted. Was to do for her, to do what was for him, easy.

This. Right here.

Nina was vibrating all over.

There was only one answer to a question like that, wasn’t there?

When a man pleaded to make you come, a man who felt as good as Sam did, a man who had gray eyes that never stopped looking for answers in yours, who had red hair that was always sticking up from where he rubbed it in worry, a man who despite his muscles was a little too lean as if he didn’t know what it was to indulge himself, when this man wanted to indulge himself with
your
orgasm,
Dios
, you let him.

Because maybe your coming all over his square, elegant hands and moaning into his perfect mouth, against his hot and desperate kisses, maybe the decadence of your slick bucks as he eased in a finger, maybe two, as he stretched you out while you tightened up with every bang of your heart, maybe all of that would make a man like this loosen, make him fat with satisfaction.

She felt like she could feed him with her coming, if she really let go, if she really let him feel how he made her body undone and wound-up all at the same time.

How he made her want him, without the emptiness she’d been feeling for so long.

So she said,
Yes
, and she said it against his mouth, and she moved his hand that wasn’t busy just where she wanted it to her breast, and she smiled when he pulled up her T-shirt and pulled down her bra so he could kiss her there.

And
there.

“Nina,” he said, his breath hot on her pinched nipple.

“Yeah,” she said, stroking her other one and closing her eyes because he’d done something with his thumb that put unending, deep pressure against her clit and if he wiggled his thumb, even a little, it would be all over.

“You’re so fucking pretty,” he said, his mouth back at her neck, his thumb just pressing, his fingers still, letting her work herself on them how she needed, which was just a little, just small circles that worked the pressure of his thumb against her, his fingers as he slid two inside her.

He wasn’t moving much at all, actually; he’d put his free arm back around her so she’d have something to lean against while she rode his hand, and now his cheek was against hers, his red-blond scruff almost invisible against his freckles until it was rubbing shivers over her skin.

“Sam,” she said, and she didn’t know why, except she wanted some part of him in her mouth.

“Yeah.” And she felt him smile, heard the smile in his voice, and it was that smile, which she didn’t even see, that brought her arms around his shoulders to pull him tight against her, that untied the last little knot in her chest and let her go, and go, forward and back, rubbing and bucking while he held steady for her, his body around hers, his forearm banded across her shoulder blades.

“Nina,” he said again, just as the first pulse made her feel heavy and slick all over and she followed the sound of her name to his mouth, and as she came, as he gave her this orgasm, as she gave it to him, she kissed him.

He kissed her back, and then, when she gathered tight with the last of it, he eased his fingers from her body, and brushed, softly, where she felt swollen and sensitive, slid her panties back over but kept kissing her, all of it, every small movement of it said,
This was for you.

But she did it for him.

Because he asked for it, because he wanted it, because she could do that, let him see her so vulnerable, not because her loss of composure gave him an advantage, but because such vulnerability was an extravagant gift, and he needed spoiling more than anyone she could think of, and he’d asked to be spoiled by her coming.

She knew she would be tempted to give him more of what he wanted, and what he asked for, particularly if his thanks was always so naked in his face, the way he grinned at her, the way his flush blended the freckles over his cheekbones into a color so beautiful she wanted it to rub off onto her own skin.

“We should do that all the time,” he said, twisting up her hair into his fist, off her neck, exposing the sweat there to the cold air in the office.

“We’d never get anything else done.” Her voice sounded rough, and now she didn’t know if it was from tears or feeling so physically good.

“There isn’t anything we’ve been doing before that could be as noble as that was.”

He said that seriously, and it seemed like he meant it. She had no choice but to take it at face value.

“I’m worried about Tay.”

Sam looked behind him, at a digital wall clock. “She’s likely in recovery, maybe still snoozing, or maybe up enough to try some fluids. I’ll walk with you and ask about when she can make an appointment to talk about the results.”

Nina felt her mind come into her body, where before, there had only been her body. It made her feel tight, queasy.

“Would they tell you anything?”

He looked at her, reached back to play with her hair again; it made her eyes feel drowsy, if not her body. “They might give me some idea, but they’re restricted from telling me anything. Please don’t count on it, though I’ll try to make sure she can go in and hear the results as soon as possible.”

“Okay.” She looked at him closer. “How are you?”

“Horny,” he said. Not hesitating. “You’re so pretty when you come. It’s the best thing I’ve seen in forever.”

How he made that sound remotely conversational was a mystery. “Look—” she started.

“I know.” He grabbed her hand. “I know you said we should be friends, and work together, and if I thought about doing all the dirty things I want to do with you, I should eat pie or something, but Nina,
come on
.”

“That’s the woo you’re gonna pitch?
‘Come on’?
”

“I already told you you’re pretty.”

“When I come.”

“All the rest of the time, too. I didn’t say that? I must have been too distracted by all the noises you were making while your tongue was in my mouth.”

“Jesus.”

“I think you were saying that, too, it was hard to tell with all the wiggling and heavy breathing.”

She felt the smile soak into her facial bones but schooled it back before it surfaced. “I know you like my legs, and the way I wiggle and breathe and look when I come—”

“And say my name,” he said.

“Say your name?”

“I like how you wiggle and breathe and look and say my name when you come.”

Then she didn’t feel like smiling. Something was getting in the way of it.

Hope, maybe.

“Okay, but besides all that. What do you like about me, Sam Burnside?”

“How I feel,” he said, again without hesitating. She wondered if he ever hesitated. At anything.

“How’s that?”

“Like I’m doing something right for once. When I’m around you, that’s how I feel. It makes me want to give you things, not just help you or fix something, but give you things. Things you don’t need, but that you might want.”

“Like orgasms?”

“I want to give you orgasms, Nina Paz.” Sam grinned. “About a million different ways, all of them filthier than the next.”

“And that makes you feel like you’re doing the right thing?”

“No, that makes me feel like boning you and getting naked with you. I feel like I’m doing the right thing just by being with you.”

Nina had to look away then.

“Look, Nina.” Sam took her hand. Stepped close. “Let me do the farmhand thing this summer, whenever I can. Let me help you with this stuff with Tay, as much as I can. Let me hang you with you, talk to you. I’ll eat your pie, and I’ll clean my plate every time, but don’t make me try to be just friends.”

“I don’t know why I tried to insist on it.”

“Well,” Sam said, “I don’t know either. I know why I went along with it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because this stuff going on between us, the stuff we have going on ourselves, it’s scary.”

“It is.”

“Also, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty good at fucking things up.”

“So you’ve said.”

“It’s true.”

Nina looked at Sam, and what she thought of, looking at his gray eyes, noticing the dark flecks through them, was when they took care of Kate’s black-and-white chickens. How he was as out of his element as he could possibly have been but had seriously and gently checked a chicken over for lice and then held it, petted it like a cat, unselfconscious.

He was someone the entire world would assume shouldn’t have anything to do with chickens, and yet he had taken care of one and charmed her easily.

Sam, eldest of four, a doctor, opening a clinic for a whole neighborhood, a man who would drop the work of a whole day to hang out with a woman and her friend to be as helpful as he could—he was
underestimated.

He thought he was a fuckup.

He wanted to be with her because she made him feel like he was doing the right thing, though as far as she could tell, he was always
doing
the right thing, though she bet that his smart mouth kept him from
saying
the right thing, saying what was really going on in his heart, in his head, most of the time.

“What if we just told each other?”

“Told each other what?” he asked.

“Told each other when the other one was fucking up. Straight up, and then that person had to do something else, without arguing about it.”

“What’s something else?”

“Just whatever is not what you’re currently doing.”

“Does that work?”

“Calling someone on their bullshit and them actually listening?”

He laughed. “Yeah. Because I’m pretty sure that’s some kind of magical unicorn myth.”

“We’re fully grown adults. We’ve both been through a lot. We’re going to go through more. Depending on each other to see us for what we are, and to be the friend to help us avoid more bullshit seems like it’s worth a shot. I’d say we don’t have anything to lose, but that’s the thing, isn’t it, Opie? We both know exactly how much we could lose, all the time, and that’s why we’re so scared. So this doesn’t work, we lose each other. Maybe we’ll learn something?”

“Now I feel like you’re talking me into what I’ve been wanting all along.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m in. Call me out. Whenever. I’ll try whatever I’m screwing up a different way. Probably screw it up more, but I’ll try. Because what I want is you. And I’ll take your terms.”

“Even if this doesn’t work?”

“Even if. It wouldn’t be the first time, and all the other times started out with a lot less than what you’re offering.” Sam grabbed her around the hips and it felt good.

“We might not work. We might work for a while and break up. We might work for longer than that and the breakup would much harder, and we’d be much older.”

“Also,” he said, “it could work. Without the other stuff.”

“Maybe.”

Nina didn’t think now, ten years on, that she couldn’t love again, that she was so active in her grief that loving another felt like turning her husband away.

But the state of her own heart made her wary, even as she felt the same way she had standing with Sam in her field: that she liked him, and that she felt hopeful about him, and that he woke up something in her heart that made her want to believe there was something ahead, with so much heartbreak behind.

Right in the middle.

A middle age.

Joy and pain behind her, surely the same in front of her, and now she was about to do something that would either add to one or the other—be more joy, or more pain.

“Nina,” Sam said.

“You’re impulsive,” Nina said, and didn’t resist touching his hair, the color so bright it should be a taste, a smell. “Every one of your actions follows right along with the first thought in your head.”

“I know.
You
know. I don’t think you’re so different, at least not with some things. You said there was a time, after your husband died, that you got involved with men to deal with your grief.”

“Not involved. I didn’t get involved. Sometimes, Sam, I didn’t even get their names.”

He didn’t even flinch, just held her closer. “Well, we’ve got more than that, more than our names, in the
bank.”

“You still have to work hard.”

“On the farmhand stuff?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen these guns, right? You think I can’t work hard, farmer?”

Sam let go of her to yank up the sleeves of his T-shirt and flex his arms. He managed to look perfectly serious, as if she really needed to consider how cut his freaking arms were.

“I don’t know. You’re a little scrawny.”

He didn’t hesitate; he pulled his shirt up right over his head and started flexing everything on display, bending at the waist, even, to harden his pecs into freckled humps. “You wish you had another farmhand this built, Paz. I’m like five of your others.”

“They all look like Tay.”

“Then I’m like
one
of your others, but you can’t tell me the others are better-looking, and if they are, I’m the best at first aid. I have muscles, I am at least comparably good-looking, and I would not panic if someone’s part got stuck or amputated by your farm equipment. If I’m incredibly lucky, I might even save the person or the amputated part if all extenuating circumstances happened to be nearly perfect and there was a good cell phone signal.”

“You know what, Opie? I think that’s good enough.”

“Yeah?” He pulled her back in close. His skin smelled wonderful, soapy and human. His freckles were dense over some places, and scattered over others, and she followed the islands of them with her fingers, combing through the auburn hair that arrowed down his chest, over his belly. “Should I take off my pants?”