Love in Maine (9 page)

“All set?” Hank asked. She turned to face him and realized he was still standing there
sopping wet and must have been staring at her the whole time.

“Yeah. Did you enjoy the show?” She hoped he did.

“One good strip deserves another, right?”

Maddie caught her breath when she thought he was going to give her a full Monty right
then and there. He must have followed her salacious train of thought. He shook his
head right and left. “Not now, Post. I meant last night when you were watching me
under cover of darkness.”

She smiled and folded her arms across her chest. “You obviously wanted me to watch
if you were going to stand there by the open window and pull off your underwear for
the whole world to see.”

He walked toward her, then bent down to pick up her damp face towel. “May I?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

He began to dry off his neck and then his arms and then under his arms. Maddie was
mesmerized. She loved the way the fabric rode across his muscles. She loved the way
he touched himself with such deft efficiency. She wanted to be the frigging towel.

“You all right, Post?”

“Yes.” But her voice cracked.

He laughed and dried off his insane abs. She kept staring. He reached the towel around
to his lower back, slowing down a bit to give her a little extra time to focus on
his stretched hip flexors. She bit her upper lip and pulled her folded arms tighter
into her breasts.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m sure. Go on.”

He stood there for a few moments, deciding what to do next.

“Yes, ma’am.” Hank snapped the small towel over one shoulder, then slowly unbuttoned
the wet fly of his cargo shorts. The water had tightened the buttonholes, and it forced
him to slow down his pace. Once he’d gotten them all loose, he reached his thumbs
into the waistband of his boxer briefs and pulled the whole wet mess off. He walked
naked over to one of the rocks and bent over to lay the clothes out so they might
be drier by morning. Chances were slim that they’d dry, but he had another pair of
shorts and a larger plastic bag to put this pair in if need be.

When he turned back to face her, Maddie was frozen in place.

“You are really something, Hank.” He looked down at his nakedness, as if seeing himself
through her eyes.

“Not a lot of big lugs like me at Brown?”

She’d decided about ten seconds ago that he could say any stupid incendiary thing
he chose to and she was absolutely, 100 percent
not
going to come up for it. “Oh, there are plenty of lugs.”

Maddie couldn’t really catch her breath. His legs and thighs were so strong and solid.
His hips like some ancient Greek statue. His shoulders—well, she’d seen those already,
she supposed, but they were still amazing. And he was so comfortable in his own skin,
just prowling around the campsite as if it were perfectly normal for him to be buck
naked in the middle of the forest. Maybe it was.

“Do you go naked camping a lot?” she blurted.

“Do I what?” He was crouching by the circle of rocks he’d just finished building for
their campfire and was snapping small twigs and throwing the bits of kindling in.

“Do you come out into the wild so you can roam around like a big old naked caveman?”

“Maybe?” He said it like a question, but he was smiling. “I’m just more comfortable
like this, I guess.” He shrugged, and she watched the muscles in his back shift and
glow in the early evening light.

“Well,” she chuckled, “you certainly don’t need to put on any clothes on my account!”

She walked over to where he was busying himself with the fire. He’d already gotten
a small flame going, and she stared at the flickering light against the planes of
his face. She lowered herself to sit next to him, then reached out hesitantly to touch
the muscles on his back. His eyes closed at her tenderness, and she felt a tingling
sensation in the palms of her hands. She felt like St. Jerome with the lion. Hank
could turn on her at any moment, but when he was pliant like this, it was incredibly
powerful. She leaned in and kissed his upper arm, then rested her head gently against
his shoulder. He leaned his head against the top of hers, and they both stared into
the growing flames.

Maddie heard the steadying pace of his breath and tried to calm her skittering heart.
Despite her possession of condoms and sharing banter about hussies and hookers, the
truth was that Maddie had never quite gotten around to losing her virginity. She wasn’t
saving herself or anything, but it had just never happened. She was always perfectly
happy fooling around and doing what her roommates used to call “any old thing.” But
that next step always felt just too emotionally perilous.

And Hank . . . well, he was probably the most emotionally perilous person Maddie had
ever met. She wanted to kiss him and touch him so badly, but there was no way she
would spend the rest of her life having to confess—if only to herself—that she’d lost
her virginity in a tent with some guy she would probably never see again after this
summer.

Her heart was calming down. She reminded herself that a summer fling and the-first-man-I-ever-had-sex-with
were two entirely different concepts. She needed to keep Hank firmly in the summer
fling department. For both of their sakes.

She took a deep breath and relaxed closer into him.

After a few minutes of what Maddie could only vaguely describe as communal bliss,
he kissed her forehead and said, “I think the fire’s ready for the fish. If you want
to set it up.”

“Sure.” Maddie answered but didn’t move. She didn’t want to break the spell of the
two of them just sitting there next to each other like that, without any banter or
misunderstandings or anything, just being like that. Together. She took a cleansing
breath and stood up to get the fish.

Hank watched her walk barefoot across the pine needles that created a soft bed underfoot.
“You should probably put some shoes on,” he said.

“You should probably put some clothes on,” she volleyed back, without looking at him.

He laughed and rustled through his backpack before finding the pair of sweatpants
that he’d packed all the way at the bottom. He snapped the elastic waist and turned
to face Maddie as she worked on placing the fish-stakes at different angles over the
flames. She looked up and smiled. “You look great.”

“You too,” he said quietly.

The fish was done quickly, and they ate it with their hands, right off the sticks,
like melted marshmallows.

“So, good, right?” Maddie was in the food zone again, relishing every taste that went
into her mouth.

Hank nodded and went back to his new favorite pastime of watching the way her mouth
moved when she chewed. She licked every bit of fish off the smooth spikes she’d whittled,
then tossed the wood sticks into the fire. “Now, that’s what I call a good dinner!”

“You are one cheap date.”

Maddie rolled her eyes at him. “I know it’s probably a lot to ask, but could you try,
for like a few hours, to keep the cheap whore jokes to a minimum?”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” He laughed.

“Sure, you didn’t!” But she laughed, too. He finished eating, then tended the fire
to make sure there were no stray branches that could catch a spark. He’d unrolled
the two sleeping bags earlier and set them into the tent side by side.

“How cozy,” Maddie said as she passed in front of the triangular opening.

She used a bit of water from her water bottle to moisten her toothbrush and quickly
brushed her teeth. When she turned back to Hank, he was in the midst of strapping
up his backpack on a high branch away from where they were sleeping.

“Bears,” he said, in a pedantic, leave-it-to-me tone of voice.

“I know.”

She crawled into one of the sleeping bags and shook her legs down into the end. A
few minutes later, Hank joined her in the tent.

They were only a few inches from one another, the small space not allowing either
of them any privacy. Hank was kneeling awkwardly, trying to get into his sleeping
bag.

“Are we going to fool around?” Maddie asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“You are such a piece of work.” He shook his head.

“Why? I just want to know. Because if we’re not going to, then I’ll just fall asleep
and not lie here wondering.”

“Wondering what?” He started moving again, working his way into his sleeping bag.
The moon was bright and the tent was barely dark. After a few seconds, they could
see each other’s faces easily.

“You know, stuff like: Is he asleep? Is he going to reach over and hug me? Is he going
to kiss me? That sort of thing.” She turned on her side so her face was only a few
inches from his profile. She kept her hands to herself, tucked up to her chest inside
the sleeping bag. When he didn’t make a move, she yawned. “I’ll take that as a no,”
she said, yawning a second time.

“Get some sleep, Post. You’ve had a long week.”

Her eyes were closed and she felt safe next to this strong, caring man. Even though
he wasn’t really touching her, he created this vibe around her that made her feel
totally protected. Maddie fell quickly into a deep sleep.

They both woke up just after five, the sun barely beginning to peek over the horizon.

“Hey,” Hank said softly, touching her cheek.

She opened her glassy eyes, then closed them again, turning her lips to kiss his palm.
“
Mmmm
.”

There was nothing “
Mmmm
” about how much he wanted her, thought Hank, it was more like hell.

She rolled away from him—good, he thought, I’ll be able to escape—then she shimmied
her entire body against his—her back to his front—and made that disastrous “
Mmmm
” sound again. Obviously she felt him against her; how could she not?

“You feel good,” she added sleepily, swiveling her backside into him.

He threw his left arm over her hip and pulled her roughly against him. He’d kicked
off his sweatpants in the night and he was naked against the slippery nylon inside
the sleeping bag. Hank made an unintelligible sound of frustration. Maddie looked
over one shoulder.

Delectable. All half-asleep and willing.

Hank’s heart began to pound.

“What is it?” she asked, without a hint of irony. “Are you okay?”

He pulled her around to face him, then pinned her to the ground with his body, both
of them still in the sleeping bags. She strained her neck up to kiss his hard chest
and felt it deep inside when he gasped in response.

“Maddie . . .”

“Hank, please let me . . .” He was still trying to hem her in with the cage of his
strong arms, but she was slipping around in her sleeping bag and managed to get her
sweatshirt off while they were sort of wrestling like that.

“Oh, Jesus . . .” His voice trailed off when he looked down at her exposed body. She
shook her mussed hair out of her face and arched up to him.

“Please, Hank.”

He dipped his head down toward her, and she felt like he was in slow motion. Like
he was underwater. He would make love like he was in the water. With natural power
and grace.

“
Mmmm!
” She was holding her lips tightly closed between her teeth, trying to silence her
piercing reactions to his kisses along her body.

“I want to hear you, Maddie. No one’s around for miles. Let me hear you.”

She didn’t need any more encouragement to let her voice, and her body, do as he bid.

She was so immersed in his touch, reveling in his exquisite attention, that she lost
her focus entirely. Her fingertips slipped along his back in a dreamy near-touch,
trembling along with his strained muscles. He was methodical. Competent. Thorough.
She almost started laughing when she realized he was going to take her to the heights
of sexual pleasure just like he did everything else: confidently.

And then she was gone, her head flung back, her eyes staring blindly at the seam along
the top of the tent, her body sizzling and heating up higher and higher as Hank worked
his way down her stomach with possessive kisses. When his face reached the edge of
elastic at the waist of her sweatpants, he bit the fabric and tugged it down with
a low growl.

Everything stopped. She gasped.

“Maddie?” There was a tenderness in Hank’s voice that shifted everything. Suddenly,
she wasn’t sure she wanted him tender. Tender was complicated. For all her talk about
being opposed to some two-dimensional hook-up, Maddie realized she didn’t want to
have an emotional quagmire on her hands, either. That’s what she kept telling herself,
at least, because the alternative—that she was already starting to care way too much
about the mess of feelings that swam behind this man’s eyes—was not an option. She
needn’t have worried.

He yanked her sweatpants all the way off and drove all thought from her mind, kissing
his way up her thigh.

When her final piercing cry reverberated through them both, Hank slowed down his pace,
drawing out her pleasure. He softened his hold on her hips and caressed the inside
of her petal-soft thighs with his thumbs, then kissed his way back up her rising and
falling abdomen.

“Good morning,” he said with a smile of arrogant satisfaction.

Maddie panted and smiled back with a little nod.

“Good. Speechless. I like it.” Hank trailed his palm back and forth across Maddie’s
bare stomach, watching the skin pebble and ripple in the wake of his touch. “Amazing
skin.”

After one long exhale, Maddie finally started to come back to earth. “Hey.” She stared
at his buzz cut and the two-day growth of whiskers and the tiny scar on his left cheek.
She touched the scar with the tip of her index finger, just to feel it. She had no
mind for curiosity. Everything had been reduced to physical sensation. Starting with
the contact of that one fingertip, her body began to wake up to the possibilities
of Hank’s entire body at her disposal. She pushed him onto his back and straddled
him.