Wanderlust (20 page)

My breath began to come in pants, my
vision blurry. He rounded a corner, and relieved to hide my
weakness for a moment, I leaned back against the jagged rockface.
As a testament to how bad off I was, the cool prodding of rock into
my back felt relaxing, massaging out some of the kinks in my
muscles. Even my skin felt tight—parched.

“
Evie?”

I blinked and Hunter came into focus.
He looked worried.

“
Hi.”

“
Shit,” he said. “God
fucking damn it, why didn’t you tell me you were
dehydrated?”

I frowned. “I just had a
drink.”

He wasn’t listening though. He steered
me down from the small ledge we’d been walking and onto the dirt. I
let him lead me beneath a tree and lay me down on one of the
sleeping bags. Sitting down beside me, he lifted my head and helped
me drink.

Nausea assailed me. I pushed the
bottle away.

He produced a washcloth from our pack
and poured water from the canteen.

“
No,” I protested. “There
won’t be enough.”

He shushed me, pressing the cloth
gently on the overheated skin of my neck, cooling me down with
every soft wipe. “Then I’ll be thirsty.”

I smiled weakly. “Sorry I’m a
lightweight.”

He leaned down and kissed my forehead.
“It was my fault. I never should have pushed you so
hard.”

“
I wanted to keep
up.”

“
You will. One day soon,
you’ll run circles around me. It takes time to build
up.”

I blinked up at him in the waning
light. All along, I’d thought Hunter was the hermit in the story,
but as I watched him at ease against the earth, his silhouette a
sleek extension of the ground and sky, I realized it had been me
all along. I’d been the one cut off from society, dangling off a
ledge on a waterfall just to feel alive. I wasn’t used to this
activity…but I would be. He would see to that, and so would
I.

“
How are you feeling?” he
asked, concerned. “I can go ahead and bring back help.”

“
No, I swear I feel
better.”

It was true. Like a colt standing for
the first time, I was wobbly. It would take time and practice
before I could walk and run and gallop on my own.

“
I’ll rest tonight and
we’ll go back in the morning. And I’ll be more careful from now on,
let you know if you’re going too fast.”

At that, he smiled with remorse. “Not
that I’ve done a great job at listening so far.”

“
You will,” I mocked him
gently. “One day soon you’ll be the most sensitive guy
around.”

He laughed, squeezing some of the
water from the compress onto my face. I shrieked and laughed too,
drinking down the drops that fell into my mouth.

He wouldn’t let me help put up the
tent, but that was okay. I was learning my limits, what they were
and how to respect them. He needed to be kind and I needed to
receive kindness.

That night he pulled back the top of
the tent, and we lay in the jumble of sleeping bags and pillows
staring up at the stars. I rested my face on his chest, feeling the
steady rise and fall while the crinkly hair tickled my
nose.

“
Tell me,” I said
softly.

Beating beneath me was a strong heart,
one that had started off pure but tainted now. Poisoned when no one
had believed in him, poisoned when the men in jail had hurt
him.

There was poison inside me too.
Because of what had happened to me with Allen, because of the guilt
from my mother. Neither of us could purge ourselves of it
completely, but we could help each other. Like the way I’d read the
old settlers of this place would deal with snake bites, lancing the
wound and sucking out the venom.

And so the words began to
flow.

“
He was my mentor in
seminary school. The man who gave me that rosary. Norman had
already graduated but while he was working as a missionary, he’d
had a crisis of faith. Some of the things he’d seen…the atrocities
that men will commit on other men. On women.”

My heart swelled with sadness for
him—that man, but mostly for Hunter.

“
We became friends though.
I was starry-eyed, naïve. Idealistic in the extreme. He started off
jaded, but he seemed to calm over the years I was there. Norm
taught me what he knew, and he told me later it felt like he was
relearning it. Neither of us questioned that it was God who had
brought us together as the best of friends.”

He went silent.

“
What happened?” I
whispered.

I already knew the way this story
ended, but I wanted to hear it. And maybe he needed to tell
it.

“
We were lucky. When I
graduated, two positions opened up in the same parish. We loved
that place, the church, the community. At night we would talk over
dinner, debating the same passages over again. It was…” I felt him
swallow. “It was everything I had dreamed of having.”

“
And then?”

“
There was one family
there with a teenaged daughter. The parents were wealthy but both
very busy. The daughter had come to our Sunday school, she joined
the choir. She started having trouble in school. Nothing too
alarming, skipping school and hanging with the wrong crowd, but
they wanted counseling for her.”

This time even I fell silent,
reluctant to hear how his peace was shattered. Nervous to learn of
the woman I’d reminded him of, at least at first.

“
She told me…She said
she’d been waiting until she was of age, she said. It wasn’t the
first time a parishioner had confessed to a crush, but it was the
first time she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was
uncomfortable... embarrassed. I told her I couldn’t speak to her
one-on-one anymore. I considered talking to her parents, but then
she was nineteen and living on her own. She started having regular
sessions with Norm, and I figured the problem was
solved.”

He pulled me tighter, so tight I
couldn’t breathe. I stroked him, running my fingers over the
goose-bumped skin on his chest.

“
I didn’t realize it, but
she was saying the same things to him. Earning his trust. He
thought she loved him. He loved her back. And then she told him
that I’d taken advantage of her. That I’d
touched
her even though I hadn’t.
Not ever.”

“
I know,” I said quietly,
though I was sure he wasn’t listening. He was tense, sweating, back
in the past that hurt him.

“
He called the police.
They showed up to take me away in handcuffs while he watched from
the curb. He wouldn’t listen to me, refused to talk about me or see
me. I was convicted without ever hearing him speak another word to
me.”

“
I’m sorry,” I
whispered.

He laughed. “He left the cloth for
her. I don’t know why, maybe he got suspicious or she just needed
to confess, but somehow she ended up telling him the truth. Did she
think he would stay with her anyway? He got proof to my lawyer, and
they overturned the sentence. In a way, it was too late for me. I
was already so fucked up. So many fights…those nights in the ER…I
didn’t want to be like this. I had to survive. I
couldn’t…”

“
I know. I understand. You
couldn’t let them.”

“
The craziest part of the
whole thing was when I was released from prison. I got it into my
head that he’d be there waiting for me. He would apologize, and I’d
already forgiven him. I knew I could never go back to the
priesthood, but at least I’d have a friend.”

I pulled myself up to face him. “You
have a friend.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind my
head. “I don’t deserve one. You, least of all.”

“
I know I’m pretty great,”
I said blithely.

He grinned. “A saint.”

I rested my forehead against his the
way I had in his truck. It brought me closer to him, like I could
pull the pain from him and take it into my own body. He did the
same for me, really, and we were both conduits for the pain, the
currents between us grounding us together. He was the god of
thunder, retreating from the world that had rejected him. I was the
maiden he’d caught going over the edge, who he’d secreted away in
his lair beneath the falls.

“
Sometimes I think Norm
was a bastard. A stupid, horrible person,” he continued, “and I
curse him to Hell. Then other days…I knew my friend too well. He
believed her. Maybe he was blindsided by her looks or interest in
him. Or maybe he was too messed up by what he’d already seen. But
either way, he truly believed it of me and that hurt the worst.
He’s been out there, somewhere, feeling like shit, and I can’t stop
it. I don’t even want to care about that, but I do.”

I knew the feeling exactly. My mother
wasn’t the best, but she hadn’t wanted me hurt. She hadn’t realized
what Allen was doing to me until it was too late. Like Hunter, too
late.

And yet, here we both were. Two second
chances. Almost a miracle.

“
Forgive yourself. It’s
the only way we can be together.”

His lip quirked. “Are you preaching to
me, Evie?”

“
You know what they say.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, preach.”

“
Do they say
that?”

“
I have no idea. I’ve
spoken to approximately five people my whole life.”

He grinned and kissed me, his lips
curved as they pressed against mine.

It was the first time we had really
kissed. His tongue met mine in a sensual meeting, a languid caress
followed by another and another. He explored me there as thoroughly
as he knew the rest of my body, learning each contour and sweetly
sensitive shadow.

Though I felt the usual heat flaring
between us, there was no urgency, no expectation that it would turn
into more. It touched me that he would spare me sex now when he
thought I was weak, but he still didn’t quite realize that sex with
him strengthened me. It was the most intimate of embraces, a show
of support and desire unequaled.

Anticipation warm in my belly, I began
to kiss my way down his neck, his chest, and lower, lower, but he
stopped me.

Glancing up, I asked, “No?”

He shook his head. “You don’t need the
added salt intake when you’re already dehydrated.”

I snorted, then licked the curve of
his abs. “You’re not that salty.”

“
Not yet.”

My laugh was cut short by the shock of
cool water on my belly. He had found that damned washcloth again
and he used it to full advantage this time, rubbing it along my
body and limbs, over my hardened nipples and down into the soft,
damp valley below. He teased me through the rough cloth, dragging
me higher to a sharp-sweet crescendo.

I shook in his arms, until he released
me and moved downward.

His tongue replaced the cloth, a
caress infused with the absolution we needed in the past, a prayer
spoken against tender, swollen skin. He took me to heaven and then
pulled me back down again with the sharp, swift thrust of him
inside me.

It would always be this way, the
ecstasy and the pain. They twined together in a path we would walk,
unknowing and unseeing, each glad to have found a friend. All I
wanted was to be with Hunter wherever his rig should take us.
Across the country, around the world.

Like chasing rainbows and capturing
each one in the smile it gave us.

THE END

Thank you!

Thank you for
reading
Wanderlust
! I very much appreciate anything you can do to spread the
word including leaving a review or sharing this book through
Amazon’s lending program.

Yours,

Skye Warren

Check out these dark erotic books from
Skye Warren:

HEAR
ME

She doesn’t remember her past, only
her training. She can’t talk, not that a good slave should speak
out of turn. None of that matters when she wakes up in the warm,
rustic room. Her new master is distant but kind. There’s only one
problem: he doesn’t want her.

Longing for the shackles of safety,
she pulls from the last dregs of her will to prove her worth as a
slave. It seems to be working. He responds first to her body and
next to her submission. The secrets of his past haunt the cabin,
fraying the tightening bond between Master and slave, but it is her
own memories that may finally unravel it.

Excerpt from Hear
Me:

Thuds on the floorboards signaled the
return of her Master.

He didn’t have a cane or whip with
him, and that lent credence to the worry that he was getting rid of
her, but she was too distracted by the food. He carried a glass of
water and a plate with fragrant bread. Her stomach grumbled. She
cringed in fear of reprisal and a small amount of
embarrassment.

He set the plate down in front of her
and pushed the glass into her hands. “Drink.”