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She laughed. “I can see I’m going to get good work out of you today.”

“I provided excellent bedside comfort to my chicken, I’ll have you know.”

“
Dios
, I’m sure you excel at bedside comforts.”

He reached over and traced her eyebrow with his index finger all the way to the spot he wanted to kiss. She kept her eyes on her chicken, but he watched her close them, just for a moment.

She let her chicken go. “Kate’s one of the egg producers I have a commission with.”

“That’s what you said. She’s on vacation?”

“Yes. This week, I look after her ladies and can take the eggs to the café for free. Did I tell you how I met her?”

“No.”

“Kate was in my grief support group.”

Now Sam closed his eyes, but not in pleasure. When Nina had told him about her husband, tried to make
him talk or see something, he wanted to tell her to stop.

Just stop.

That he would never be the right man to talk about any of that with. If she wanted him to fuck her, he was good for that. He would make it good, so good, for them. He would grab her strong, sleek hips and enter her body in rocking thrusts. He would slip his finger over where she was stiff and swollen and press and worry and rub through the slick wet of her until she tightened hard around his cock.

He would brace himself over her and he would run his mouth over her neck and he would work their eager bodies rough and fast and make it
so good.

He would give her that.

If she wanted.

“Her husband had been feeling tired, but they thought he was just adjusting to retirement. Turned out he had lymphoma. After working nearly every day of his life, he died sixteen weeks into his retirement. All the plans they made together, for all that time, gone.”

He ground his back teeth.

Closed his eyes.

Her eyes were there waiting for him when he opened his. Her face so serene he wanted to
shout
at her. Break it into anger or tears. Slam his fist on the table between them. Make her flinch, recoil.

Kiss her.

“You like eggs?”

He made a sound; he didn’t even know what it was. Something caught between frustration and incredulity. He had to look away, because he didn’t know what was on his face and didn’t want Nina to see it. “I don’t eat them,” he answered.

“Why? Are you vegan? Allergic?”

“My dad died of heart disease this winter. Never watched his diet, smoked.”

“Do you smoke?”

“I quit two years ago.”

“I guess you do look a little soft. Probably good you’re watching it, then.”

He looked at her then. “You drive me fucking nuts, Nina.”

That massive dimple started to break in her right cheek. She reached her hands out and, to his shock, suddenly grabbed his sides, under his ribs, and dug her fingers in. He jerked, so surprised by her touch that it tickled. She started pinching, hard. “Right here, I think. There’s a little excess.” He tried not to laugh, but his stomach muscles jumped and his dick pulsed in quick, fluttering pleasure. He grabbed her wrists.

“Quit.”

She looked up at him, her eyes dark. “You just haven’t had a really good egg.”

He yanked on her wrists, harder than necessary, “Oh yeah?”

“I’ll show you.” She grinned all sly and slipped out of his grip with a yank of her own. She walked around to a door on the coop and creaked it open. Shooing away a chicken from a plastic box zip-tied to the wall of the coop, she reached in and pulled out an egg and came back to stand in front of him.

“These chickens have the run of the yard, and scratch for their own protein, insects, and eat a lot of green things. They get feed to round everything out, but the extra protein and the carotenoids in the greens contribute to eggs with better flavor and—” Nina knocked the egg against the chicken house and Sam watched with surprise as she broke it into her palm.

She spread her fingers gently, and the warm white slid slowly away from a bright orange yolk, stretching into a clear drip of slime that reached the ground. She closed her fingers and cupped the naked yolk, like a live thing, in her palm.

She pulled him close by the arm, so close one of her hips rested against the top of his thigh, and held up the yolk.

Sam looked at it, shining and deep orange in her wet hand. Dirt clung to the edges of the yolk, and this close, Nina smelled like sweat and like the acrid must of chickens.

He had a hard-on.

“This,” she said, “is what a good egg looks like. Orange and firm. This is the kind of egg you should eat.”

He combed his fingers into her side, feeling that thin top stick to the flesh underneath. He was drunk with his own amazement that she was able to make herself such a part of everything around her, give in to the very center of it.

She leaned closer and ran her own fingers, firmly, down his side and into the meat of his ass. He rubbed his dick into her hip. She rubbed back.

Sam was drunk with her willingness to give in to
him
, to respond to his greedy touches and intensions with her own.

There wasn’t a moment he couldn’t imagine not wanting to touch her just for that certainty that she would touch back, feel just as crazy as he felt probing through the desire between them.

She was gorgeous and smart and, except when she caught him out and tried for wisdom, she was
easy.
She was the summer life promised and never delivered on—hot and sweet.

When they were just like this, he could tell himself that.

He wanted goodness and sweetness so much that he would tell himself that this was change, this was new, this was Sam and Nina.

I want to change my ways. Before my ways change me.

“That’s disgusting, Nina.”

She looked into her hand holding the yolk. “Yeah, kinda.”

“Why does it make me want to kiss you?”

She looked up at him. “Because you’re disgusting?”

He leaned into her neck, breathing her in, and then licked, taking in the salt and skin. “Yeah. Kinda,” he whispered.

She flung the yolk out of her hand and now both her hands were on his ass. He would probably have egg all over his shorts, but he didn’t care when her strong hands followed right into the crease of his ass, massaging in a way that was dirty and slow.

He thought,
Yes
,
just this, nothing else.
But as soon as he thought it, he wanted inside of her, to penetrate her and see her. He wanted to reach across some barrier. He wanted to finally get at
something
, to hold something in his hands and understand it.

Right now, he wanted that to be Nina Paz.

He backed her over to the table they had used to examine the chickens, his face still in her neck, her hands still rubbing and spreading, and reached down and palmed her hamstrings, pulling up until she let him hike her onto the table.

He leaned in and rubbed his mouth over hers, inexpert, their kiss like shouting to each other over a hopeless level of noise, and the whole world began to ring, too, like a bell, like a bell with big cracks in it, ringing and ringing and vibrating, too, along every place the bell was broken.

He stepped back then. He wanted to look at her, all sweaty and golden, her thighs spread on the table. She smiled at him, breathing hard, and he could see the lace of her bra through that top, and even the shadow of her poking nipples, dark. He looked between her thighs, and through the gap between looser, filmy short shorts and thigh, he saw the edge of her panties.

“You look so good, Nina.” He stepped between her thighs. Reached his hand down and moved the seam in the crotch of her shorts back and forth over her pussy. He could feel, through the thin fabric, the folds give and open.

He could feel
her.

She breathed hard, breathed and looked down, watched his fingers over her, working, working.

“That’s hot,” he said. “You watching me touch you.” He wanted her eyes to stay on them, what their hands and mouths were doing to each other’s bodies.

To understand nothing else.

She put a hand over his, pressed his fingers in deeper, a little lower, slower. Hooked one of those strong
legs around his waist, and the weight of it against his hip was solid, good. Her muscles and easy physical power were some of the most appealing things about her body.

She could take him. What he did to her. It made him lost, it made him float, to know she so easily could. He dug his fingers into the belly of her quadriceps and its answering clench hardened him so painfully his eyes rolled back with the swoop of pleasure down low.

They touched her together, and she rested her head into his chest. She gripped and squeezed his shoulder, restlessly. He pulled his fingers out from under hers, and rucked her flimsy shorts and panties to the side in a hard jerk.

She was wet and pink, her straight black hair slick and arrowed over her hood.

“Sam—”

“I just want to look at you.” But he ran his thumb right over the swollen heart of it, dipping in. It looked so obscene, his thumb shiny and wet, that he grabbed his dick through his shorts and squeezed, hard, as he pressed and circled his thumb against her.

There was no friction under his touch, just slippery heat. He had to close his eyes as the pleasure bottomed out and he wanted to rut into her, clean the sweat he could see dripping between her breasts with his tongue. He pressed and unfolded. He squeezed and bucked.

“Oh,
fuck.
Sam.”

He sort of heard her, and then her hands were at the sides of his face, pulling him up to hers.

Her eyes, this close, had black rays shot through the brown. He didn’t want to stop touching her, but then she angled over his bottom lip and pulled it between hers, drew away slow.

“Kiss me, Sam.”

He closed his eyes and let his mouth go soft, she sucked in his bottom lip again, and for a long moment he just bent to her kiss and breathed.

She was salty; her tongue, where it ran along the insides of his lips, was sweet. He brushed one last time over her soft sex, scraped his nails down her thighs to feel the skin rough up into shivers despite the heat.

He wanted to hold her face, open her like he had opened her below, and so he did, her neck and jaw soft and small under his hands. He used the same thumb he had swirled into her to draw her chin down, and they met in their next kiss tongues first.

Her lips were so hot, he could feel every place where they moved against his mouth.

Her hands found the bottom of his T-shirt, and slid along his sweat and skin, and then curled into the muscles of his chest, pulling hair, the sting breaking just a little sweet tension in his cock so that he could feel a dark, wet pulse of precome seep out. It made him shudder. It made him deepen their kiss.

He reached under that nothing blouse until he felt the top edge of her bra cup, and then lifted her heavy
breast out, used the sweat that had gathered in the soft crease underneath to lubricate his fingers against her nipple.

Smiled against her mouth when she shook a little with that, and her kiss slowed to a near stop.

“Sam—” She kissed the corner of his mouth, brushed her hands over his chest, so softly; he leaned in, to increase the pressure of her touch.

He tested how much pinch she liked against her nipple, and she moaned.

She pushed at his chest.

“Wait.”

She had that serious, serene look about her. But it was better, it was improved, because she also looked wild-eyed and bitten. He leaned in to kiss the spot on her upper lip where a cupid’s bow would be on lips less full.

He thought about how far away naked was from love.

“Here’s the thing, Sam.” He closed his eyes. Fought her pushing hands and put his arms around her, squeezing her to him until her arms relaxed and she brought them around his waist.

He turned his face into her neck.

Kept his eyes closed while he held her and waited for her to ruin it.

Ruin what he wanted right now, this summer, these summer days, hot and urgent.

Waited for her to tell him why there couldn’t just be this pleasure. Held her tighter.

Tighter still.

Nina ran her fingers through Sam’s bright hair.

There was dried yolk over her cuticles and knuckles, dirt under her fingernails and ground into old calluses, tattoos of her labor.

There were so many shades of red and gold in his hair that as she sifted through it, his head pressed against her shoulder, his breath hard and hot over her breastbone, it looked like painted water, except the shades were fire and gilt.

It was beautiful, he was beautiful, of course, if a little hard-edged, like he was made of the burlap-wrapped rebar she staked her plants with, instead of bone and meat.

He was warm, though, and he somehow fit every tight muscle of his body into a curve of hers.

Her body was still humming from his hands, his fingers, the way he lifted and spread her, touched and rubbed through her, her muscles still shaking under her skin, her skin still damp in places, stuck to his.

Dios
, the way he looked at her.

She squeezed him now, just to feel him squeeze back.

She’d stopped him, she’d stopped him, their mouths tasting, his hands on her breasts, rubbing, working her nipples in such a sweet and focused way, nothing but the awareness of their bodies, she’d stopped him, gone from movement and heat to this, just the hum, just their arms and breath.

In the north shade of the chicken house, away from the hot sun of the late July afternoon, he yielded against her body, even if he wasn’t soft. It was as if he wanted her to hold him, which she was, her legs still around his hips, one arm around his shoulders, one hand in his hair, but he had her around the middle almost as if she would hike him up like a child and settle him against the crook of her neck.

She didn’t know what to do, so she kept her fingers in his hair, holding the short hanks of it one way, and then another in the dim shade to see what color they would turn.

Butternut.

Muskmelon.

Pink Lady.