“You stink.” Emrys’s sleepy voice rolled over me as I groaned and tried to shift on the barely-there mat that was supposed to cushion my backside from the unforgiving ground I was stretched out on.
I did stink. But the balm had helped relax the sore muscles in my legs, and the only way I was going to be able to ride the following day was if I kept smearing it all over myself.
“I know, but you were the one who wanted an adventure in the great outdoors. This is what I smell like when I don’t get to shower every day.”
She laughed lightly and shifted next to me. “I haven’t showered either and I don’t smell as bad as you.”
I laughed until I was gasping and turned my head to look at her. She had her eyes closed and somehow still managed to look as fresh and as perfect as she had when we rode out that morning. “That’s because you aren’t human. You’re some kind of flawless extraterrestrial that makes the rest of us mere mortals look like dog chow in comparison.”
She laughed again and turned her head to look at me so that we were staring at each other. Her dark eyes softened a little as she grinned at me. “I’m really glad you came with me, Leo.”
I returned her grin and sighed as I stretched out, making my joints pop and my muscles scream in protest. “Even though you have to smell me all night?”
“Even then. You’re a good friend, and I’ve missed you.” Her voice got quiet and the affection in it pushed some of those bricks in my newly fortified wall out of place. She always managed to find her way in. She let out a whispery sigh and then her hand curled around mine in the dark. “Do you remember the guy with the Harley from freshman year who was screwing my roommate? The one I walked in on because they were fucking in my bed because it was closer than hers?”
I did remember that. She’d been devastated and almost flunked her first year of college because she was heartbroken and never wanted to go back to her dorm room, which led to her crashing with me more nights than not and solidifying our friendship for the years that followed.
“Or what about the artist from Australia, when I was twenty-one? Do you remember him, with his man bun and constantly bare feet? He wanted to get married so he could stay in the country and when I turned him down, he stole my credit card information and disappeared. It took two years to get my credit fixed and almost that long to get all the paint he spilled on my hardwood floors stripped off so I could re-stain them.”
I squeezed her hand and nodded into the darkness. “I remember. Most of the time he smelled worse than I do right now.”
That made both of us laugh and I could feel her looking at me from her side of the tent. “You told me to stay away from both those guys, Leo, and a few others along the way. You never pretended to like them and you have always told me that I deserved better. I didn’t listen to you. Not because I didn’t trust you, but because there are some things we have to go through in order to know what better actually is. Chris gave you a hard lesson to learn, and you’ve always avoided those, so it hit you even harder than it would most. Now you know you deserve more than a man who will allow you work around him. You need a man who is impossible to move and takes up as much space as he possibly can in your life.”
Immediately, Cy came to mind. He wasn’t the kind of man you could ignore or overlook. There was no working around him, only facing him head-on, hoping he bent enough to let you get by. There was also running right up against all of that solid strength and unbendable power and hoping it didn’t cause you to shatter when you hit it.
“Maybe we should listen to each other a little more carefully moving forward, Em. We could save each other a lot of heartache and wasted time.” I let go of her hand, rolled over on my side, stacking my hands under my cheek, and closing my eyes. I wasn’t very comfortable but I knew I would sleep like a rock as soon as she quit talking.
She shifted and her voice was full of suggestive humor when she muttered, “Well, if you’re going to start listening to me now, then that means you need to take Mr. Broody and Badass for a ride while you have the opportunity.”
I responded with a groan and tried to keep the image of what riding Cyrus Warner would actually be like out of my head. It was a futile effort. As sleep claimed me, it was the vision of a naked Cy, stretched out under me as I worked myself over his rock-hard body with a wanton abandon that I’d never had in my real sex life. It was his graphite-colored gaze, cloudy with passion, as he hovered over me that I was dreaming about when a loud bang and the sound of the rest of the camp scrambling to life woke me a few hours later. I shook Em’s shoulder and clamored over her still sleeping form as I lurched for the opening of the tent to see what was going on.
The horses were nickering at each other, stamping their feet in annoyance as another loud bang echoed through the valley we were camped in. I pushed my completely unruly hair that had long since escaped the braid I foolishly thought would tame it, out of my face and looked around with wide eyes. Both Lane and Cy were stalking around the camp with flashlights bobbing, their faces set in flinty lines. The brothers were clearly aggravated as they attempted to search out the source of the noise in the darkness. The two men who didn’t say much were also out of their tents looking at the thick woods that surrounded us. In fact, they were both fully dressed and didn’t look like they had bothered to bed down for the night at all. The younger of the men even had a flashlight similar to the one Cy held in his hand. As he swept the trees with beam, he muttered, “That was gunfire.”