This is fucking insane.  I ran my sweaty hands over the steering wheel.  Cold air blasted from the little vents in the dashboard, drying out my eyes.  Refusing to rub them, to blink, to miss her, I felt around the controls until my fingers found the knob to turn down the AC.

The sun was a murky beacon being snuffed out by grey clouds.  Wind whipped and shuddered the stocky palm trees framing the front of the courthouse.  A perfect day to embarrass myself, a perfect day for rejection.

God help me.

“She’s fearless on the stand,” my mentor Kumar said over drinks a week ago.  “No problem with eye contact, posture, dress, stammering, emotion, or language.  Just states the facts with enough poise that even the rednecks forget she wasn’t born female.  They hang on her every word.”

To anyone in the legal system years ago, Lane Moore was the sex worker that fought hard against her attacker, slicing his forearm to mark him for others.  But she’d been beaten so badly she’d barely survived to warn anyone.

Then refused to testify.

It pissed off some detectives.  Pissed off the DA.

I didn’t get it.  I visited her myself in the hospital multiple times, checked on her at home.  It frustrated her, and she let her vernacular slip.

It was the smallest thing, a couple of full sentences in perfect English, the street language dropped.  But it was a cracked window, and I wanted to know everything about her.  For the case.  For my job.

She was so much more than I expected.

My attraction was so overpowering, I couldn’t fathom she didn’t see it.  Or that anyone couldn’t see it.  Unable to be objective and unwilling to have my feelings jeopardize her case, I’d given it to Kumar.  And when we found the piece of shit who'd assaulted her, I made sure she heard it from me.

Then, drugged by ridiculous daydreams and hope, I brought her back to my apartment and devoured every beautiful inch of her skin.

She left while I was sleeping.  With my credit card.

I deserved it.

I loved her.  And she barely knew me.

So, so stupid.

As the first prosecutor of her case, I’d forever be attached to it in her mind.  Yet somehow I thought it was my place to tell her her attacker had been caught and she wouldn’t have to testify.  Then I invited her to come home with me.  Let alone the fact that the first thing I wanted to do was give her a bath.  It was supposed to be romantic, but what if she thought I was implying she was dirty?  What if I’d actually made her feel dirty?

I’d never felt like a worse person.

Years had passed.  I’d almost convinced myself I was over it until Kumar mentioned her name.  He told me she’d finished her education and became a victim advocate, both in the court system and on the streets.

My body felt like it was vibrating.

From the bottom of my soul, I needed to see her that way.  To see her speak and move in full control, knowing she’d earned the life she wanted.  But I couldn’t go into a courtroom to witness it.  Couldn’t live with myself if her seeing me somehow messed up one of her survivor’s trials.

A flicker of white-grey caught my eye, the reflection of the grey clouds swooping across the glass doors of the courthouse as they opened.  I leaned forward.

Hulking white pillars stood on either side as a man in a black suit walked out.  He turned and held the door open for a woman in a pink dress suit, then a string of others, who filed onto the sidewalk and huddled together in little groups.

Exhaling, I and sat back.  Watched them with sadness.

It never mattered whose family it was, victim or perpetrator.  Pain didn’t pick sides.

The door flashed open again and a woman stepped through.  Dark hair slicked into a flawless bun.  Black slacks, black pumps, and a sleeveless black blouse that rippled in the wind.  Slim but rounded in faint curves of muscle.  Feminine but not diminutive.

My lungs felt like wet wood, my bones wobbly.  It was everything I could do to keep my eyes open, on her.

Lane.

She slid something in her handbag and headed toward the man in black and woman in pink.  Turned to the side, offering the profile of her pouty lips and sharp, boxy jaw.  Squinting in a stray band of sun, her brows knitted at the top of her upturned nose.

I ripped my gaze away to stare at my dashboard.  Focused on the little flecks of dust that’d fallen sometime in the last week and made myself breathe.  Think.

It’d been years since we’d spoken.  Years.  And it’d been one night.

This was stupid.

Crazy.

My fingers twitched, ready to throw the truck in reverse before she could make an even bigger fool of me.  I curled them into a fist, looked up at her through the windshield again, and clenched my teeth until I felt my jaws burn.

Head slightly bowed, her lips moved and I knew she was murmuring.  Her hand lifted, then lay on the man’s shoulder as daintily as a sparrow’s feet on a branch.  His eyes closed and even I could feel that the knife ravaging him was softened by the healing of her humanity.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.

My voice broke my spell, as if I’d been somewhere else and now dropped back in the driver’s seat of my truck.

At any moment she’d gracefully go her separate way and be gone again.

Now or never.

Pushing the button to turn off the truck, I shoved the door open.  Stepped out under the white-grey sunlight and put on my aviators.  A small breeze offered a relieving chill to the sweat already clinging to my skin.  I pinched the shoulders of my shirt up, peeling it from my lower back, then rolled my head side to side to stretch my tense neck.

The man in black’s face was pinched, lips pressed together.  Taking Lane’s hand, he said a few words and ended with what looked like a thank you.  Then he walked toward the other side of the parking lot, his expression lost.  Everyone else trailed after him, breaking away as they walked to their cars.

Lane watched him go for a moment, brows drawing until her eyes closed.  Her shoulders dropped.  She took a breath, chest rising, then opened her eyes to watch the man get into his car.

The woman in pink murmured to her, pressing in close and held up her phone.  The openness in her expression dropped into a harsh focus.  They backed into the corner of the sidewalk under a blowing palm, hovering over the cell and leaving the red bricked walkway open.

It was like the universe was giving me time.

“Okay,” I muttered, then started forward.

Fucking insane.  I’m fucking insane, I berated myself with every step.

But I had to know.

I stopped on the cracks of uneven pavement and watched her interact with the other woman.  The twitches of her mouth, the tight draw of her brows.

We were six feet apart.  Six feet, but it felt like two.

“Lane.”  My voice sounded more accusing than I meant, but she looked up immediately, her green eyes locking with mine.

The breeze fell away from my skin, stealing my words and leaving me in a hot cocoon of humidity.  I shifted my weight onto my right leg, the good side.

“Would you excuse me,” she murmured, guiding the cellphone back toward her friend without breaking eye contact with me.

I felt the stranger’s intrigued once-over.  It could’ve been a second, but it felt like hours under the quiet of Lane’s gaze until the woman slipped the phone in her purse and pushed past me without touching me, toward the parking lot.  A blur.

Lane smiled, the stretch to her cupid’s bow making a tiny line just above.  “Logan.  I always meant to thank you, but I never knew how.”

Her voice was warm.  Inviting.  Even. Somehow alien to the Lane I’d had in my head for years.

“Thank me?”

“Yes.”  Her eyes cast down at my feet, her deep breath cleaving a shelf into the meat of her collarbones.  She turned.  Crossed her arms over her chest and looked at the traffic coming from the hill, but her eyes weren’t tracking them.  Her body was eerily still.  “Thank you for that night, when you questioned why I wasn’t doing more with my life.”

I felt my brows furrow, her words gutting me.  “I don’t remember…”

Her wrist flicked, fingers waving off the rest of my sentence.  “You didn’t say it like that, but it was the gist.  I was in a place in my life where I felt like I had no options.  No choices. Just… living out a death sentence.  You were the catalyst for change for me.  You acknowledged my good points and encouraged me to follow them.  Thank you.”

Words.  All it was, was words.  Normal.  Innocuous.  Something anyone would say to a colleague or a sound bite.  Or something on the stand.  Nothing brutally honest or vulnerable, or even caring.

It sounded rehearsed.

Lane looked back at me, the web of her gaze giving me all the pain and mystery and vulnerability her words hadn’t.  “Have you eaten?  Can I interest you in dinner?”

Boring.  Plain.  Curbed.

“Who’s paying?”  The words were out before I could stop them.

She flinched, nose flaring, fingers gripping dents into her upper arms.  Swallowing, she nodded.  Offered a tight smile.

“Me.”

****

Lane thanked the hostess for the menus, smiling and making direct eye contact.  It didn’t seem familiar, but still personal.  Gracious and effortless.  She was the type of woman who made people feel seen and comfortable, no matter who they were.  Beautiful, down to earth, and kind, with no glimmer of the hard edged woman I’d met years ago.

I didn’t trust it.

When the waitress left, Lane settled back into the seat in the polished wooden booth.  Stretching her arms under the table, she looked around the restaurant, then looked at me. Gave a little nod.  “I’d like to explain myself.”

Explain what?

I nodded for her to continue, my hands in my lap.  As far across the table as I could get from the woman I’d loved.

“So, that night, our night…”

An impulse shot from my head to my toes.  My lax fingers tightened on the back of my other hand.  The restaurant noise faded away, everything hingeing on her voice.

“I wasn’t working the street because I had some errant urge.  I’d been staying with Boots for free while I recovered and when I was healed, I didn’t feel like it was fair to her to continue like that.”

Bullshit.

“She was fine with you staying there for free.”

She narrowed her eyes, a glimpse of the woman I’d loved breaking through.  Then her lips turned up at the very edges.  Her head cocked to the side.  “Know something funny?  I heard a prostitution case against her was dropped a few years ago.  You were the ADA.  Interesting how stuff like that happens.”

“Life’s weird sometimes,” I answered.

“Yeah.  Real weird.”

The waitress came by, dropping off waters.  Lane morphed into the gracious woman again to thank her.

“What?” she prompted after the woman had left.

“Nothing.  Just watching you.”

“Watching me.”

I shrugged a shoulder, refusing to let emotion run across my face.  No other telltale movements.  Sipping my water, I focused on the ice cold liquid slicing down my throat and into my belly, the uncomfortable comfort of something sharp and real.

What was happening in that head?  Who was she now?

Her nails tapped her plastic cup, but I kept my eyes on the table.  Followed the narrowing lines of dark wood under its gleaming sealant.

“Okay listen.  Logan… I’m sorry I took your credit card.  It was an impulse and it was the only time in my female life I’d slept with anyone for any reason other than money.  I was too weak to understand what it really was.”

“And what was it?”  I felt my body still.

She shifted in her seat.  “You were attracted to who I am now, the person you somehow knew I’d be, before I even knew.  But I was still living that other kind of life, and it’s all I thought I could be.”

“So.”  It came out hoarse.  I cleared my throat.  “What changed your mind?”

“You did.  I told you that.”

I met her eyes and held them.

“You… did.  Just maybe not immediately.”  She swallowed, played with the napkin in her lap.  Her lips pursed, thinned, and parted again.  “I dropped into a deep depression.”  She looked up.  “You know, everyone talks about PTSD and the event that happens to people.  No one ever talks about everything afterward, how you figure out how to fucking live again because you can never go back to who you were.  Not me, not Susie church chick.  No one.”

Empathy cleaved the pit of my stomach.  I’d been so excited to lock away her attacker, to give her closure.  But she was right.  It followed you.  Putting him away was just a part of the issue to fix.

The rest had been up to her.

And she’d been alone before that, she’d been alone afterward.

We weren’t doing enough to help them.  These people, all ages, races, genders, socioeconomic stations.  It was never enough.

“Anyway.  I don’t think Boots knew how to help me, so she threatened to kick me out.  I think she was just trying something, anything to jar me out of it.  I was lost, I don’t know.  So that day I sat on the front stoop in the ‘hood and watched the day unfold.”  She reached up, fiddling with her hair until it came down in a twisted roll and shook it out, bold waves crashing over her bare shoulders.  She glanced at me, then back at her hands in her lap.  “You know, I’d lived there for years but that day I saw everyone as a whole.  Drugs, prostitution, beatings, all those things.  Next to children.  Elderly.  Ministers.  Immigrants who came here to live the American dream, only to scrape away at every day in the ghetto.

“In that moment, I just felt like… there is no American dream, because we’re all damaged.  There is no pulling out of anything and making your life better.  It was all fucking bullshit.  For all of us.”

Her voice vibrated as she spoke.  She took a breath, reminding me to do the same.  She sipped her water, then ran her hands through her hair, separating and dropping the shimmer of waves over her shoulders.

“I got mad at the world and whoever was supposed to do something about it. Then I realized I was sitting on that stoop, watching it all and doing nothing. And I remembered you telling me there is a choice.  There I was, sitting my ass down and doing nothing while my community suffered.  People and situations I’d ignored for years.

“The college credits you’d mentioned?  They were a part of some guy’s life, not mine.  The life I’d led under a male, the person I couldn’t continue to be.  But then I wondered if I didn’t want that career, or did I just not want to be a part of that body that I was in, that life that I’d been living?

“Yeah.  Anyway, you know the rest.”  She flipped her hand in the air as if the rest was insignificant.

“Assault advocate for crises, helping at risk-people afterwards and being a matriarch of the streets.  Of the neighborhood you never left,” I recapped.

Lane stilled.

“Your address may have changed on paper but you never left.”

“I couldn’t.”  Her tongue dug in the back of her teeth, then her lips shut, canceling my view.  She rubbed her arms like she was cold.  “Logan… I don’t think about myself.  I think about other people.  You… you see me so intensely.  You feel so intensely, it’s all in your face.  You force me to dial myself up into a whole human being, when everything I do is compartmentalized.  I appreciate it, I do, but be patient because I’m so far behind how you think.”

I stared at her in the aftermath of her quiet, measured words.  The strength that seeped from every pore.  Beautiful, full pink lips.  Deep olive skin and green eyes that popped from her earthy makeup and dramatic liner.  I wanted to devour her, mind, body and soul, and steep her in her own beauty.

This.  This was the woman I loved more deeply than I knew myself.

She signaled the server, ordered a tray of chicken nachos.  When the woman left, Lane met my eyes again.  More composed.  “Your parents are Dan and Midge Marsh, right?”

My eye twitched.  I’m not the only one doing research.    

Nodding, I took a sip of water.

“I met them once.”  Her voice was soft, low.

“Oh.”  Images of all the fancy parties at the house went through my head.  All the catering to bullshit and bullshit people.  Everything less than real, everything I lived my life against.  “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.  I met them when they came into the women’s center and made a big donation.”

“That doesn’t sound like them.  Unless they put their names on something.  Or were trying to impress people.”

She shook her head, looked at me funny.  “No.  It was an anonymous donation.  They said they did this every year, to a cause that their daughter would’ve appreciated.”

I fell back in the booth, the hard wood catching me as it knocked the wind from my throat.

Lilly.  My big sister.  The one that introduced me to the real world and showed me the truth and the bullshit.  Stepped me outside of our parents’ grasp to see the rest.  Find empathy.  Find humanity.

And then she died.  Twenty years old.

I’d put her death in a box deep inside and here Lane was talking about her as if she knew things.

She leaned forward, clasping her hands on the table. “I couldn’t hide the things that happened to me, much as I wanted to.  But you can.  Your parents have.  Why hide? What are you hiding from?”

Rubbing my face, my stubble scraping my palm, I looked around and tried to figure out my life.  Find words.  I picked at my fingers and thought about my sister, my family, the army and everyone I’d lost.  Images, horrors I didn’t want to unpack.  Things I’d done I’d never forgive myself for.

But I’d put her through the exact same, forced her to reconcile it all.  I owed her an answer.

Maybe I owed it to myself.

“Grief,” I said through shaking breath.  I exhaled.  “I’m hiding from grief.  And from… the potential for grief, I guess.”

She reached further, the tips of her fingers curling over mine.  Dainty and delicate and sweet.  “I don’t have the potential to cause you grief?”

Her nails gleamed under the light.  I remembered them trailing down my forearms that night in my bathtub, years prior.  Bright pink and blazing against my skin.  Intoxicated with her, I’d almost dropped the loofah and forgot to be sweet and sensual and just devour her.

I hadn’t, and yet I’d still lost her.  If I’d ever had her anyway.  Like we were in the same boat for a night, but stepped off on different currents.

She was still, I realized.  I looked into her eyes.  Focused, unafraid.

“My grief has no place in your life,” I said.

“What does that mean.”  The only muscles that moved were the ones it took to speak.  Her voice was ominous.

Chest heavy, I pulled my hands away to fold them on the edge of the table.  My limbs felt like rigid boards.  “I pursued you in the aftermath of your trauma.  It was unethical and I should have known that, but I pursued you anyway.  I deserved the sting of your absence, and I’d known it’d had been a possibility.”

Sure.  I knew.  So prepared.  As prepared as anyone would be to fall in love with a tornado.

Lane’s eyes shut and she sat back with a soft sigh.  Swallowing, she nodded.  “I appreciate you saying that.  You didn’t deserve it, but you wouldn’t be the person I believe you to be, the person who’s inspired me to push forward, if you didn’t say some shit like that.  So thank you.”

Laugher belted out of the unsure vibrations of my blood and the surefire of my heartbeat.  “There,” I pointed at her.  “There’s the woman I knew.”

She smiled with me, shoulders sagging a bit.  “You’re the only one who’s ever called me that all the time, you know.  Woman.  Not trans woman or he-she or any of that shit.  Just what I am, truly, inside.”

“I am?”  And in our line of work?  “That’s… crazy.”

Lane looked at her nails.  “As a whole, people have difficulty with change.”

“Most people are idiots.”

“You’re a person, so you’re not exempt.”  Her lips turned upward, eyes meeting mine.  An expression I couldn’t read on her face.  “Would your sister have liked me?”

Lilly?  My mind flashed blank at the shift in subject before the core memory of my sister snapped back.  So serious, so quiet until her teenage years.  I’d always messed with her, forcing her out of that headspace long enough to smile.  But she pulled me further into hers when I was older.  Opened the world.  Then neither of us held back.

“She’d have liked you very much, Lane.  Very much.  We were a lot alike.”

Lane swallowed.  Slid her finger down the beads of condensation on her cup.  “I always wondered why you became a lawyer, if you didn’t like your father.  I figured you wanted to be a prosecutor to make him stew.  But I wonder now, knowing you and your compassion for right and wrong and the grey areas… do you do it for Lilly?”

All the blood in my vessels jolted.  I felt naked, exposed.

Was that what it’d felt like for her when I told her her own story and wondered aloud why she didn’t take her life in another direction?

“Something like that maybe,” I said.

She nodded.  Pressed her lips together and took a deep breath through her nose.  Her shoulders rolled forward at the end of her inhale.  She sat back so hard in the seat, her exhale stuttered.

“What are you thinking?”

Lane shook her head, glancing at the people in tables around us.  Jumping from face to face.  “What did you think would happen today, coming to see me?”

“I don’t know.”  I looked at my fingers, spotted a snag beside a nail and dug at it.  “I’d see you happy.  Healthy.”

“And?”

“That’s all I expected.”

“Then what do you want?”

“What do I…” I looked up at her.  “What did you expect when you invited me out to this restaurant?  What do you want?”

Her mouth opened, but went slack.  A perfectly arched eyebrow raised, eyes wide as she stared into nothingness on the table.

The moment seemed to permeate, muting the noise from the other customers.  A plate of nachos came but the server had no face, just a slow dribble of words I nodded at without hearing and he was gone.

“Lane?”

She shook her head and her eyes met mine, crisp and focused.  “Years ago, I got lost in worrying about what the world might think at the two of us, reactions you haven’t even thought of.  I was born a man, which you sweetly ignore but I can’t.  It didn’t cross my mind to ask myself what I want with you, or that I could really have it.”

“What do you want?”  My lungs felt heavy, working to suck in a breath as my heart pounded.

“I want to be fucking happy.  I fucking deserve it,” she snapped, a snarl touching her upper lip.

Warmth burst in my chest and shimmered down my arms and legs, my heart swollen.  All I could do was nod.

“What do you want, Logan?” her voice was measured, low and trembling.

“I want you happy.”

“Do you want me?”

“Yes.”  My crotch warmed and hardened as I said it, my fingers pinching the edges of the wood between us. I would smash this fucking table to get to you. 

“Do you have many friends?”

I felt my brows raise.  “Goading me?”

Her bare, sculpted shoulder raised.  “Curious.”

“I keep the number of people close to me small.”

“How small?”

My older brother, sometimes, with and without his family.  Kumar.  An old marine buddy.  A cop from the 23rd precinct.  Everyone else was just noise.  “Four people.”

The air was as thick and sweet as honey and I couldn’t help but feel like we were slowly melting into one, even before the clutch of her lips broke.  “Four.” 

She smiled.

“There’s room for a fifth.”

“Oooh, exclusive.”  Her voice was low, teasing.

I chuckled.

“Marsh—Logan… I never loved someone before.  Not deeply.  I never felt seen.”  She leaned forward, clasping her hands on top of the table.  Licked her lips and took a deep breath.  “You scared me, years ago, and you scare me now.  You’re a like fucking fairy tale.  You here now… life is telling me a trans ex-sex worker can have a sane, successful, white collar… partner?”

Smiling, I nodded.

She smiled back.  “You’re a three dollar bill, Logan.  I can’t figure out the long term yet.  But I’ve always wanted money.”

I laughed.  Shook my head.  “You’ve been reserving that one.”

Lane’s smile faded, her eyes round and fervent.  The air was heavy and the rest of the restaurant disappeared.

My heart flipped in my chest.  I stopped breathing.

“I…”  She cleared her throat, shook her head by a mere inch.  Glanced at the table, up at the ceiling, then back at me.  “I wish I could say all the right things, but that’s just not who I am.  I talk well, sound good in the courtroom, but you remember who I really am.  I’m not that shit.  I’m rough around the edges, Logan.  Really fucking rough.”

“I know.”

“You sure?   ‘cuz…”

Oh fuck this.  I stood and quickly scooted into the booth next to her.  Cupped her delicate jaw, taking a minute to process her smooth, warm skin and those beautiful doe eyes before hashing my lips down on whatever it was she’d have said.  Her mouth pillowed mine and an immaculate, succulent, other worldly feeling rose the heat of my body and mind.  I moved closer.  The swell of her breasts teased my chest.  Her leg pressed against mine.

She broke away first.  Ducked her head to breathe, but I pulled her tight.  Rested my head on hers and held her as my body felt like it might explode.

“Years ago I’d have let you fuck me right here, for fuck all to see.”  Her body heaved with breath in my arms.

My cock was full, needy.  I shut my eyes and bowed my head until I felt the bump of her ear on my lips through her hair.   “It’s not my town.  I’ll do it.”

Pulling away, she met my eyes.  Lips ajar, just an inch, her exhale escaped.  She glanced at my mouth, swallowing before meeting my eyes again.  “You can’t be saying shit like that to me.  There’s a hotel around the corner.”

“Mmm.”  Every part of me burned to be with her, inside her.  But those words… “It can’t be a one night stand, Lane.”

“I know.  I’ll even let you keep your credit card this time.”

****

I caught up to Lane’s little red Honda at the stoplight.  Couldn’t help but to look into her rearview mirror at her until she glanced up.  Her eyes crinkled at the sides and I knew she’d allowed herself to smile.  I smiled back, happiness beaming from every pore in my body.  It felt like we were finally in sync, like we were exactly where we were supposed to be.

Then her eyes suddenly rounded, open.  Vulnerable.  Brows tweaked.

Her gaze shifted somewhere past the front windshield.  Straying somewhere near the traffic light.  Her shoulders drooped.

Everything in me needed to know what she was thinking.  I picked up my phone, and realized I didn’t have her number.

What…

The light turned green.  She pulled forward and I followed her a quarter mile to a hotel around the bend.  Tan stucco sides.  Semi-circle terra cotta shingles.

She pulled under an overhang and was out before I could throw my truck in park.  She held up a finger to tell me to wait, then jogged over to the entrance.  Pulled the glass door open and strode inside.

Every line that built me as a man demanded to go after her.  Ask her what she was thinking or just be her partner, stand next to her as she waited.

But what she wanted was the space to do this on her own.  The control.  And I wanted her to have it.

I drummed the steering wheel, watching the cashier notice and smile at her, then continue to tap away at the computer.

Like she was any other customer.  A face that meant nothing, another customer to take care of.  No idea who was in front of her.

Insane.  But I’d been the same when I’d met her, careful and professional.  Until I looked harder and everything I knew about myself fell apart.

Lane played with her hair for a moment as the desk clerk tended to her booking.

Why?

Lane rarely did anything thoughtlessly.  She didn’t have nervous habits, even Kumar had bragged about that when she’d been testifying.  So why now?  Why….

Her gaze remained on the desk clerk, her body faced solely on her.  Even though she knew I was out here.

Was she intentionally not looking at me?

After a moment, the clerk smiled up at her and handed her key cards.  Said a few things.  She lingered longer than necessary before facing the exit and walking through the door.

When she rounded the car, she finally looked at me, her brows flashing and up and down.  The hint of a smile teased her lips.

But she got right into her vehicle and turned it on.  The taillights flashed then dimmed, the car pulling around.

I put my truck in gear and followed her along the backside of the hotel.  She pulled into a parking spot, I pulled into one nearby.  Shifted into park and took my foot off the break, the truck settling.

AC still on full blast, I looked into the little field in front of me.  Light green grass and weeds, forked shoots trembling in the breeze.

What was she thinking?

What were we doing?

I thought about the last few years.  The solitude.  The remorse.  The pining after someone I didn’t think I could’ve ever had.

What was this going to cost me?

But what was I gonna do, leave?

I chuckled.  Shaking my head, I turned off the truck and kicked the door open.  Got out and shoved it shut, then looked at the back of the hotel.  None of the hotel doors were ajar.  No one waited.

Where…

My gaze drifted to her car.  No lights, but a form still sat in the driver’s seat.

“Babe,” I murmured, and walked over.  Saw my shadow brush over her knees and knew she had too.

She was looking at the key cards she held in her lap.  Just looking.

Stray raindrops hit my skin.

I waited.

Reaching forward, she pulled the keys from the ignition.  Slowly turned toward the door.

I stepped back and it opened.

Head bowed, looking at the ground, she got out.  Stood, tugging down on her shirt and pants to straighten them.  Stepped away and shut the door.

“Talk to me,” I said.

Tiny wrinkles gathered in the corners of her eyes as her lips rose.  “It’s weird.  Shouldn’t be.  But it is.  I don’t know how many dudes I’ve fucked, but this is… “  She looked up, searching my face, and something in hers made my stomach flip.  “It’s like when I transitioned.  Like the slate was wiped clean somehow, whoever I’d fucked was a past life.  That’s how it feels now, another past life.  Like I’ve never done this before.”

She and I were another life?  I felt my body still, my heart steeled against her.

“Don’t do that.”  She touched my forearm, trailed her hand down to mine.

Unclasping my fingers, I allowed hers to twine in mine.

Her head moved to the side, eyes pleading.  Then her eyes pressed shut.  “My… my mind is full of a thousand thoughts.  I don’t know what I should say.”

“Say everything that matters.”

“Oh fuck that, everything matters.  Don’t act like you have nothing that haunts you.”  She slid her fingers up my sleeve, resting on my right deltoid.  The one with my corp number tattooed on it.  And another, in much smaller print.

Eleven.  The number of men, women, and children I’d killed in the war.

I flinched.

“You joined so you wouldn’t have to live under your parent’s thumb, didn’t you?  To make your own way, be your own person, figure out who you were.”

Emotions roiled inside me.  Humidity beat on my skin.

She shook her head.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have… It’s second nature. I lash out when I’m scared.  You know me.  But I… I haven’t slept with anyone after you.  I’d never even had sex as a woman, sober, until that one night with you.  I feel like… I don’t know.  I feel like a virgin.  Or, I don’t know.  I don’t…” she scoffed, “know what I’m doing.”

Biting back a smile, I tucked a stray hair behind her ear.  Fear melted from my bones.  Joy ballooned in my soul.

She rubbed her forehead.  “It’s stupid.  I know that.  As many times as I’ve… it’s ridiculous.  I was a fucking whore, for Chrissakes.”

I felt my shoulders pinch as I remembered rubbing her with a loofah, sudsing her shoulders with warm water years ago.  I’d wanted to treat her like a queen.  Had I?

“Do you remember?  The bath?”  I asked.

For a moment, she said nothing.  But then her arms slid up my back, tightening her body to mine.  “Yes.  I could never forget.”

Why did she murmur that?  “Was that okay?”

“You were so gentle.  Like I’d break or something.  Like I was delicate.”  Her voice broke and my heart broke with it.  “I’ve never forgotten it.”

“Did you feel comfort?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Validation poured through the marrow of concern and shame that had eaten away at me for years.  Her words were the sun to my dreary days, infiltrating the air I breathed, expanding my lungs down to the bases, infiltrating every molecule of my blood with joy.

I’d loved her exactly the way she’d needed then, and I would now.

Steadying my body, trying to calm my breaths, my heart rate, I stroked her smooth cheek with the back of my fingers.  She trembled under my touch, her eyes closed.  “What do you see when you look at me?”

“Besides a cis white guy?”  She smiled and so did I.  When her eyes opened they were focused on mine.  Sure.  “You’re haunted.”

I felt joy ebbing but as we looked at each other the world changed.  The smell of saltwater, the hint of car exhaust, and even barbecue etched in my memory.  The pitch of tourists laughing, the flow of their voices louder through the alley between us.  The sun finally escaped the clouds, turning the wayward stands of her hair gold.

Lane’s fingers drew lightly over my deltoid.  Over my shirt, covering my tattoo.

“But aren’t we all a little haunted?  Who gets through this life unscathed?”  Smiling, her palm rested on my stomach as the sun melted in the sky, embers clinging to her skin.

“None of us,” I murmured.  Leaning down, I pressed my lips to hers and everything changed.

She made up the molecules in the air, the sweetness that accompanied the world.  She was heat.  Warm, ready, and inviting.

I broke our kiss, leaning my forehead to hers.  Unable to flex my eyelids enough to open.  “This… isn’t my town.”

Her giggle was feminine but husky.  “Let’s go inside.”

Breaking away, she slipped the hotel card from her pocket and headed up the sidewalk.   I followed her to a door with gold numbers, glinting with rust, embossed the side of a red door.  Watched her tap the card to the black space above the handle and let herself in.

Surreal.

Again I followed.  Her servant.  Her bodyguard.  Her lawyer.  Friend.  Lover.

All that.

But more.

I shut the door.  Locked it and turned around to see her just in front of me.  Her scent, clean without frills but so perfect and inviting.

I was intoxicated with her skin, her heat, the way her mouth parted to breathe, the way her collarbones protruded on inhale, her breasts pushing against me.  Pinching the edges of her top, I pulled it up over her head to expose her tits.  Perky, full, with dark nipples.  Crouching, I met their peaks with my mouth, closing over them and flicking my tongue over the tight little knots.

“Logan…”  She clutched my hair tight, pulling me into her as she leaned into me, and I sank to my knees.  Ran my hands over her smooth skin, the tiny curves of her torso to her tapering waist. Pressed my cheek against her pelvis, my nose and lips brushing the tiny bulge in her pants.  “It’s been too long.  It never should’ve been so fucking long.”

Her words were like gasoline to fire.  I felt them with every fiber of my blood.  Needed to possess her, have her possess me.

I looked up, found her eyes hooded.  Her mouth parted, a shadow in the meeting of her collarbones.  Vulnerability and lust poured from her body, more powerful than anything I’d seen or felt before.

“Take me,” she murmured.

I felt like I was standing on quicksand.  I needed to give her everything.  Everything I was.  But if she left again, who would I be?

“Be there after,” I whispered fiercely.  “I need to give you everything.  Give me this.”

“Give me everything, motherfucker, I’ll give you the same.”

If my dick didn’t get harder.

Leaving her, I walked to the sink.  Stripped off my shirt and tossed it on the dresser on the way.  Found a little bottle of lotion nestled in a towel fan and bought it back to her.

“Always the gentleman.”  Eyes on my hands, she shimmied out of her pants.  Smiled as she looked up at me.

I unzipped my pants.  Shoved them and my boxers to the floor, felt my cock bob free.  “Not always.”

“Mmm.”  Her fingers drifted to her breasts, trailing them over her peaks and down her curves.  “I’d like to see that.”

“In sex?”  Stepping out of my pants, I noted the small bump at her pantyline.  Not a hard dick…  My brain kicked in.  “Lane… is there anything I should know?”

“About?  Oh.  It’s still there.  I’m soft, but I’m plenty turned on.   I’ve started HRT.”

Chuckling, I squirted the cold lotion on my cock and began to stroke.  “Baby, I don’t know what that means.”

“Not important.”  Sitting up, she wiggled out of her panties and flipped over on her hands on and knees.

I stared down at her ass, the balls and limp dick dangling below, then her face.  That long, dangling brown hair as she looked back at me over her shoulder.  I stroked myself.

“Fuck me.”

Demanding.  And so breathlessly female.

Leaning forward, I cupped her shoulder with one hand, her hip with another, and flipped her onto her back.  Her eyes and mouth flew open, breath catching in her throat.  Before she could say a word, I gripped her hips and pulled until her ass was just over the edge of the bed.

“I’ll fill that pussy, baby.  But I want to see your face when I do.”  Hand encircling my cock, I stroked it next to the crux of her body.  “I want to read you.  No fucking bullshit.  I want everything you have to offer, and I’m gonna give you everything I have.”

One hand on her nipple, the other fingered the lip of her clit-dick.  “Do it then.”

I pressed my cock against her little hole.  When it seemed to go nowhere, I nearly grabbed the lotion bottle again, as I’d forgotten to lube her, but then I felt the hot warmth of her kiss my cock.

Lane bit her lip, her fingers stable on her clit-head.

She was tighter than I remembered, with the warmth of my wet dreams.  A tiny moan peeped from her lips and I pressed further until my cockhead was past her ring.  My balls tightened, and I about blew my load right then.

She looked at me.  Her mouth open, just a bit.  Searching for something?  Trying to figure me out, tell me something without words?

Don’t spin out, I told myself.

And in that moment, I lived in the forest green of her eyes.  Something pulled me, something stoked the fire of everything I was.  I was lost and found in the same instant, and something primal in the fiber of my being told me she was too.

She clenched, rippled.  Kneaded my cock as I pushed deeper.  When my balls finally rested against her ass cheeks, it was a wake-up call that my dick had ended.

Friction.

I pulled back, pushed in.  Back and in, until her whimpers turned into moans and her asshole allowed me full motion.

The full thrusts were magic.  Warm, tight.  My cock harder than I could remember, a badgering piston with no end.

Then she came.  Her ass clamped on me, her balls tight on top of my cock.  But I saw the first stream of cum like a pearled stream, kicking from her nearly flaccid clit-dick to her flat stomach and straight in the middle of the swell of her breasts.

With that, I was an animal.  Scooped up her cum and painted her full, fragile lips, then kissed her, closed-mouthed, as I rammed into her.  Tasted her hot, salty cum as my balls surged and shot my own deep into her ass-pussy.

“Fuck,” I moaned onto her mouth.

My cock beat inside her, feeding her more and more cum.  More than I thought I could have.  Her hips writhed, as if they were begging for more length, more width.  Every drop of sperm I had left in my being.  And I’d give her all of it.

I raised up, committing every glisten, every curve, everything to memory.  Then collected more of her cum from her stomach, wiping her clean, and popped my fingers into my mouth, needing every last drop of her inside of me.

She laughed breathily.  “You might be kinkier than I remember.”

I leaned down, brushed my cheek against hers.  Comfort settled into my skin.  My lips brushed the shell of her ear.  “I filled you with mine.  I want to be filled with yours.”

Another whimper.

Sidling my hands beside her lower back, I pushed up until my palms were flat under the sides of her ribcage.  Lowered until our bodies touched where we weren’t joined.  Her nipples to my chest, her hips to my abdomen.

She tensed and I held on.

It felt like the entire world held its breath.  Everything we were to everyone else, gone.  The only important things were right here, in this shady hotel room and on these rough sheets.  So warm.  So comfortable.  Like waking up in a cozy blanket in a cabin on a rainy morning.  I didn’t want to move.  Didn’t want to breathe.  Didn’t want to do anything to ruin this moment.

“I’m waiting for you to say something poignant.  Sum it all up or something,” Lane whispered.

I buried my face into her collarbones, my spent body still tight.  Her arms circled my neck, her chest heaving with breath.

“Listen, you crazy bitch.  To sum something up means it’s done.  Over.”  I kissed the strip of skin between her cleavage and rested my face on the plush hump of her breast. Moaning, she arced her hips on my dying dick and I ground everything I had left inside her. Her body writhed, searching for more.

I snuck my arms behind her, gathering her body to mine. Her breath was loud in my ear, tits pressed hard against my chest, her heartbeat thudding against me. Her body shaking. Weak, vulnerable, needy. And fuck, so was I.

Because despite every motherfucking thing, we were free.