“I’ll come with you,” Annie said immediately. “Shopping. We’ll make a day of it.”
Chloe beamed. That had been easy. That had been beyond easy. “Wonderful. Yes. Let’s.”
* * *
Spending the day without Chloe had felt kind of like shaving off his hair. Or maybe Red’s appointment with Dr. Maddox was to blame for that. After two sessions in relatively quick succession, he wasn’t exactly enjoying therapy, but he was enjoying how much more he understood his own head. And, kind of like Chloe ticking shit off her list, he felt better every time he went.
He could say the same about the phone call he’d had with Vik, even though it had been about as easy as therapy. Telling his best friend he was ready to move on, to leap back into the real world independently and leave this safety net behind? That was one thing. Admitting to his boss that he’d been literally sleeping with a tenant? Not quite the same moment of brotherly love. But at least Vik hadn’t driven over to kick him in the nuts. That would’ve made Red’s plans for the weekend a hell of a lot more difficult to accomplish.
Now it was Saturday afternoon and he was standing on Chloe’s doorstep with two duffle bags, already smiling. He’d knocked, which meant he was five seconds closer to seeing her again. To hearing her voice, instead of imagining it as he read her texts. To touching her . . .
She opened the door.
The first thing he noticed was her eyes, bright and excited behind her glasses. Maybe because she wanted to see him, too. Or maybe she was unexpectedly buzzed about camping. She certainly looked prepared: her hair was in one of those fancy-looking braids he didn’t know the name of, and she was dressed in color-coordinated walking gear. Usually he’d miss her pretty skirts, but the leggings clinging to her thick thighs suited him fine.
“Stop staring at me, you pervert,” she said.
He looked up just as she launched herself at him. Between the force of Chloe flinging her arms around him, and the weight of the bags on his shoulders, it was a miracle he didn’t collapse. But he managed to stay upright, and his reward was her mouth: she kissed the hell out of him.
Reality shifted, shrinking to a fine point that consisted of nothing but her hands tangling in his hoodie and her tongue easing tentatively over his. She smelled like rain-scattered flowers and warmth and comfort and mindless fucking lust. He couldn’t hold her the way he wanted to, so he let his mouth speak for his occupied hands. He tasted her like sweet nectar, bit her lower lip, swallowed her soft little moans greedily. Then, after the shortest forever on earth, she pulled away. Broke the kiss. Rested her forehead against his and closed her eyes, breathing heavily for a moment. The sound of her panting made him smile.
She opened her eyes and murmured, “Hi.”
“Hi,” he replied, his voice rough. “I take it you’re excited to camp?”
She laughed and pulled him inside, shutting the door behind them. “Gosh, yes.”
He followed her into the living room, noticing happily that the flat was just tidy enough to suggest that she was feeling okay. “Really?”
“Of course,” she drawled. She was kneeling on the floor by a single enormous rucksack, fiddling with the straps and sliding a pink water bottle into a side pocket. “I’m like a child going to Disneyland. I can’t wait to be trampled by moose in the night, or perhaps eaten by a bear, or chopped up by a serial killer, wrapped up in pieces of the tent and kept in a freezer for the next five years.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “Button. We don’t have to do this. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know it. I want to do something that scares me.”
“Camping,” he said. “Camping scares you.”
“No comment.” She gave him a sphinxlike smile. He wanted to kiss it off her face.
“Well, you don’t need to worry,” he said, finally putting down his massive bags. “I’m not going to let anyone chop you up.”
“Right. Because you’re a big strong man who can fight off seasoned machete murderers with the power of your mighty masculinity.”
He would not laugh. “And we don’t have moose, Chlo. Or bears.”
She turned to look at him. “I’m quite certain that we do.”
“We don’t.”
“We definitely have bears.”
“We don’t. If we had bears it’d be in the news all the time. You know, Fine upstanding British man attacked by a bear, EU to blame, Brexit now.”
“I’m quite certain I saw that headline on a copy of the Daily Mail the other week.”
“You didn’t, love.”
She tutted as if he was being unreasonable. “We’ll see. Do you have bug repellent, by the way? I do.”
Bug repellent? Where did she think they were going, a swamp? “Are you offering to share?”
She sniffed. “You really should’ve brought your own. Two bags, and you didn’t bring your own?”
“I’ve got other stuff in my bags,” he said, sitting on the floor beside her.
“Such as?”
He unzipped his duffel and pulled out a packet of marshmallows that was the size of a child. “We’re gonna make s’mores and shit.”
She dropped the bug repellent and jumped him again. Literally threw herself into his lap. He barely caught her, and then she was kissing him, kissing him, kissing him with the kind of hot, dark determination he felt for her, and it was wonderful. Her hands slid into his hair, her body rocked against his, and he felt as if she’d reached into his chest and squeezed his heart because it was suddenly, blatantly obvious that it belonged to her. He belonged to her.
He blinked, dazed, unsure of what to do with all these intense, impossible feelings. She pulled away, her laughter bright and infectious. “S’mores! I do love a man with a food-related plan. I hope you know we’re going to finish that bag.”
He smiled, but he couldn’t even speak. That divine, Rococo face had turned him on and pissed him off from the very beginning, but now when he looked at her he didn’t see her untouchable beauty so much as he saw Chloe, his Chloe, with that sardonic tilt to her lips and that superior gleam in her eyes. His heart shook. He ran his hands over her body just to remind himself that he could, that she was real and there and his. She felt soft and lush beneath what seemed to be three or four layers of clothing. He grabbed a handful of her arse and finally managed to say, “That’s my girl.”
“Shut up, you misogynistic pig.” She kissed his right cheek, then his left. “I didn’t see you yesterday.”
“No, you didn’t. Did you miss me?”
“Choke, Redford. Just choke.”
He seemed to adore her more every second. This could be a problem. “Come here.” He kissed her again because she was addictive. But then he reminded himself that he had specific and important plans, none of which included fucking Chloe on her living room floor. With a sigh, he nudged her off his lap. “All right. Stop distracting me. We gotta go.”
“Distracting you?” she said, then grabbed her rucksack and stood, hands on her hips. She was moving faster, more easily than usual, even for a good day. “Honestly, I can’t stand you sometimes.” But she was smiling, big and uncontained, just like him.
* * *
Red made fun of Chloe’s driving all the way to the campsite and she couldn’t even bring herself to mind. When he’d learned she actually had a car, he’d feigned deathly shock, which was ridiculous because he must have known already.
“Who did you think was parking in my designated space?” she demanded.
“I had no idea,” he said cheerfully. “Drug dealers. Aliens, maybe.”
On the way to the site he’d chosen for them, a place named Tyburn’s Wood, they got lost three times in a maze of sweet little villages with houses built of stone. After the third time, Red turned off her sat nav and pulled out a bright yellow booklet. She snorted as he opened it on his lap, revealing the kind of massive, multicolored map that made her eyes blur far worse than any line of code ever had. �
��What on earth is that monstrosity?”
“It’s what human beings used to get around for the last couple thousand years. You know, instead of relying on fancy sky computers.”
It was all she could do not to veer off the road. “Fancy sky computers? Why, Redford, I had no idea you were such a technophobe.”
“Not a technophobe,” he said in his lying voice. “Second left up there. No, Chlo, left. You really don’t know your left and right, do you? Maybe I shouldn’t blame the sat nav.”
“The sat nav? Don’t you mean the fancy sky computer?”
“Fuck off,” he grinned.
And so it continued, until they finally reached the campsite.
Tyburn’s Wood was, once you got past the vast open field of expensive motor homes, a literal wood. Behind a series of huge log cabins and the neatly organized holiday park, a dense sea of tall, spindly evergreens stabbed the sky, upright and tightly packed like centurions. There were a few clear paths in and out with big, colorful signs depicting various trails and pitch-ready locations. As they unloaded the car—or rather, as Red unloaded the car while Chloe leaned against a nearby wooden fence—he pointed at one of the signs and said, as if he were talking to a toddler, “Look, baby, a map. You remember maps, right? Nice pictures with lines that show you where to go!”
She bent, scooped up a handful of bark chips, and threw them at him.
“Excuse me!” a brusque voice cut in. “Please don’t throw the bark!”
Chloe looked over, cheeks warm, expecting to see some campsite staff member glaring at them. Instead she found a pair of yummy mummies with about fifty-eight kids between them, some shoved into sporty-looking strollers, some perched on the women’s Lululemon-clad hips, most running around throwing bark at each other and having a fabulous time.
“Erm, sorry,” Chloe said.
One of the mums sniffed as if to say, You ought to know better.
The other mum pursed her lips as if to say, Setting a bad example for the children!
The sniff and the lip-pursing were very effective. Clearly, they were excellent mums. As they herded their broods away, Red wandered over to her and murmured, “How come you’re never so well-behaved with me?”
“You’re not a mum,” she said pertly, ignoring how close he was, how rough his voice was, how his body gave off sheer heat and she wanted to wrap up in him like he was a blanket. “You don’t get to boss me around.”
He dragged his gaze over her from head to toe, slow and sweet and sticky like honey. She wanted him to lick her just like that: thoroughly, everywhere.
He probably would if she asked.
His hands came to rest on either side of her on the fence, so that his arms caged her in, his body crowding hers. His lips hovered over her ear and he whispered, “You’d let me boss you around.”
“I would not,” she drawled, as if the ghost of his mouth over her skin didn’t send delicious little shocks down her spine.
“You sure? Not even if I think you’d like it?” His lips moved from her ear to her throat. He kissed her there, the sweet, subtle glide of his tongue making her body hum with erotic energy. Then he stopped for long enough to ask in a low, rough voice, “Would you let me boss you around if I made it good?”
“Maybe,” she admitted, her voice alarmingly breathy.
He kissed her throat again, hotter and wetter this time. “Just maybe?”
“Yes.” She bent her head, exposed more of her throat to him, her pulse racing.
“Good. Now, listen carefully . . .” His hand caught hers, but he didn’t lace their fingers together like usual. Instead, he gave her something that felt like paper and said seriously, “I want you to read the map.”
He stepped away, his slight smile coming into focus as her dizzying lust disappeared. She looked at her hand and found she was holding a printed-out Tyburn’s Wood leaflet that, according to the chirpy front cover, included a map of the campsites. Caught between outrage and laughter, she bit her lip, sucked in a breath, and said, “Redford Morgan—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll help you with your left and right.”
“I know my left and right!” she spluttered, shoving at his big, annoying, handsome chest.
“Sure you do, Button,” he soothed. Then he wrapped an arm around her waist, dragged her close, and laughed into her hair.
There were sites spread far and wide, but Red insisted they stay close to the edge of the woods. They chose a little clearing where the light filtered through the slender tree trunks like something out of a painting, and Chloe took a minute to fill her lungs with fresh, frosty air, the kind that was just cold enough to seem wet even though it was dry. The setting sun’s honeyed rays were so warm, golden fire just like Red’s hair, but they couldn’t touch the forest’s crisp autumn chill. She liked that. In fact, despite her last-minute misgivings, she liked a lot about this particular list item so far.
But she especially liked her companion. She turned to find him already grappling with the tent and said, “Did you choose this spot because of me?” She knew the answer. Just like she’d known she wouldn’t need to remind him of how far—or not—she could walk.
He gave her a wary look, then returned to fiddling with tent poles. “You don’t know how you’ll feel tomorrow morning. Seemed smart to stay near the car.”
There was no fighting the smile that crept across her face. She wandered over to him and grabbed a few tent poles of her own. “You’re very thoughtful.”
“Yeah. I thought long and hard about all the ways I want to defile this tent tonight, and I decided to factor that into our plans.” He shot her a grin that only widened when he caught sight of her face. “Aw, Chlo. Am I embarrassing you?”
A blush crept up her throat. She felt like she’d swallowed a star: hot, hot, hot, burning and bright and fundamentally unstable inside. “Does that mean—are you finally going to let me—”
“Screw my brains out?” he offered cheerfully.
She choked on fresh air.
“I am embarrassing you,” he said, clearly pleased. “Wait until you see the air mattress.”
“The what?” she almost shrieked.
He gave her an odd look. “Well, you didn’t think I was going to fuck you on the ground, did you? I’m not a complete animal.”
“You, sir, are a menace. A menace to good and decent society, and to noble, chaste women such as myself—”
She might have been insulted at how hard he laughed if she wasn’t giggling too.
Red put the tent up with disturbing speed, produced both the famous air mattress and a foot pump from his magical duffel bag—“I told you I had more important things than bug spray”—and slipped inside the tent to “arrange” things, whatever that meant. Then he came out and showed her a mysterious tin. Eyes bright in the growing darkness, told her, “Time for the campfire.”
She sat in the dirt outside the tent and was very proud of herself for not thinking about wolf poop or grass snakes or possessive, murderous wood fae. “Actually, Red, I’ve been researching, and campfires are illeg—”
He popped open the weird tin and said, “Chlo?”
“Yes?”
“Shhh.” He put the tin into a little well of dirt he’d created and took a silver Zippo from the pocket of his ever-present leather jacket. “No, I don’t smoke,” he said, just as she opened her mouth. She closed her mouth again. Was she predictable, or did he just know her that well? Possibly a bit of both. She watched in confusion, then something like awe, as he lit whatever was in the tin. He sat back beside her, and they let the flames grow.
“What on earth is that thing?” she asked.
“It’s a portable, reusable, relatively safe and eco-friendly”—he valiantly ignored her snort—“campfire. If we want to put it out, we can just put the lid on again.”
“Seriously? And that works?”
“Sure. It’s science, or whatever. Want to toast some marshmallows?”
It was a juvenile, still pr
obably illegal, and definitely unhygienic activity that belonged to the world of silly American films. “Yes please,” she said.
“Good. I lied about the s’mores thing, though. I don’t know what the fuck s’mores are.”
She snorted. “Neither do I.”
Reaching for his bag, he said, “I’ll open the marshmallows, you go and collect twigs to stick ’em on.”
She stared.
He stared back at her with a stressfully serious expression for two long seconds before he cracked, those catlike eyes creasing at the corners as he threw back his head and laughed. “Oh my God, Chloe. Relax. Look, I bought skewers.”
“Oh.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I was really reconsidering this entire thing.”
“Camping?”
“Letting you put your tongue in my mouth again.”
“Shut up,” he grinned. “You’d always let me put my tongue in your mouth.”
“Maybe in secret moments of weakness,” she admitted. “Give me that. I want to put my own marshmallows on.”
“You sure? You don’t want the assistance of a marshmallow-skewering expert?”
She rolled her eyes and took the bag of marshmallows from him. “No. But speaking of that expertise—”
“This feels like a great time to make a joke about penetrating soft, sweet things.”
She ignored him. “—why are you so good at camping-type stuff?”
“Ah. Well.” He stared thoughtfully at the skewer in his hand, his hair falling over his face for a moment. The fingers of his free hand began to drum against his thigh and she wondered, with more than a little regret, how she’d managed to turn camping into a topic that made him nervous or unsettled or whatever it meant, precisely, when he got this way.
Biting her lip, she said hurriedly, “You don’t have to—”
“No, it’s okay.” He looked up at her with a smile, but it was a sad sort of smile. “Honestly, Chlo, it’s fine.” And then those drumming fingers stopped, and found hers, and now he was holding her hand instead. “I just got a little bit . . . ah, you know how I told you about my granddad who died?”