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  “Oh, I’m buying, but my tab comes with strings,” he said, watching the graceful lines of her profile, all the way down her long neck to the top of her shirt with her breasts pushed up like flawlessly smooth and difficult to ignore.

  Her eyes didn’t peer into his, but stayed focused on his lips. “I prefer rope.”

  Chapter 4

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  Luci’s place was out of the question, since she lived with Sarah, her fourteen-year-old sister, and her mother. She briefly considered asking the Navajo spiritalker’s grandson if he’d mind meeting her at the motel, so she could run home and have a quick check on her mother, but ruled that out as well. It had been one of her mother’s better days but the phone call this afternoon, that her mother’s brother was up for parole, though unlikely granted, completely canceled out anything good. Luci would wait to tell her in the morning.

  She was grateful, though it wouldn’t last more than a day or two. When she was content, she drank less and didn’t dabble in her use of the opiates one of the doctors at the Indian Health Clinic prescribed like candy. She wouldn’t find solace in one of her dangerous boyfriends, forgetting herself as a mother and sometimes bringing them home.

  In a world painted like dots in a French Impressionist masterpiece, some things were bright, some dark. Some were good, some bad. Very few things were simply black or white. Keeping order of the colors on the painting that was her family’s dynasty was a good thing but difficult to achieve. Prescribing pills to keep her mother’s behavior responsible was one of those grey areas, hovering more on the good side than the bad.

  So she was sitting beside him in the four-door truck he said he’d borrowed from his cousin. Her body hugged the door and her fingers gripped the handle. He had some serious ink, which were definitely not tribal, poking down from his shirtsleeve, even though one of them did appear to look like some kind of feather covering a woman’s upper leg.

  Unexpectedly, he leaned over and grabbed her thigh with his powerful hand and nearly dragged her to sit pressed up beside him. His hand remained, warming the top of her left limb, fingers resting at the juncture between her legs. She knew he was thinking about what to do next. Some of that had to do with her. It was time to step up to the plate or back down.

  She widened her knees and undulated against his palm, slowly and firmly, hearing his inhale. The old crackled leather seats groaned as her slow, deliberate movements shouted her need. But just as quickly as it had started, it was over when his touch evaporated and his hand returned to the steering wheel. Her bud was near bursting like a little ripe fruit. The moisture in her panties added to the heat of her vacantness.

  He didn’t say a word. His heavy breathing sounded like a growl. Her left breast rubbed against the back of his right upper arm as the truck bounced along. He flexed his bicep and her nipples knotted. Could he feel her puckered flesh as the occasional touch ignited her insides? Could he hear the hitch in her breath? Could he feel the bonfire started from the touch of their thighs resting against each other?

  He pulled up to the motel, parked in front of a bank of double story rooms, and stared through the windshield, making her wait for what she hoped was coming next. She could feel he was going to tell her something perhaps a bit harsh. She could read him that well, and it turned her on even more. Luci was familiar with these speeches, and it did nothing to quell the bonfire in her belly.

  “First, you need to know I’m leaving soon and may not see you again after tomorrow, and I want you to be okay with that. I’m not drunk, but a little tipsy. After I go, I’m probably never coming back either.”

  She was watching his wide nose in the moonlight and the way his full lips smoothed as he licked them. His chin had little stubble. His long black hair shone in ringlets.

  Luci decided to continue to say nothing.

  “But I won’t hurt you.”

  Her voice was like a whisper. “So we get to say hello and goodbye all at once then,” she found the energy to say. She watched him turn to her and smile, focusing on her lips. Her insides ached with the need to touch him.

  “Is that such a bad thing?” he asked.

  “In light of other choices, no, not a bad thing at all. We both have something we can take. We both have something we can give. A fair exchange between two people who are—”

  His mouth covered hers, smashing the pillows of her lips, nearly devouring her in his inhale. His kiss was full of need, a place she was all too familiar with.

  His hands traveled up her back, fishing for her bra clasp, making quick work of it. He yanked her top up to her neck, burying his head in her breast and biting her nipple, causing a sharp pain inside her core that sparked a desire for him that was stronger than anything she’d ever felt. The coarseness of his hair scratched against the soft skin under her chin as his urgency increased. He was struggling to get her jeans unbuttoned, trying to get his fingers inside of her panties, making her giggle, which immediately stopped him. He began to pull away.

  “Don’t you dare stop, Dine man. It’s your forcefulness that’s making me shy. I didn’t know I was shy until now,” she said as she removed her top completely, along with her bra. She watched his eyes follow her fingers as they squeezed her breasts for him. Then she shimmied out of her jeans, leaving her white panties as the only article of clothing she wore. She felt the scars in the coarse leather seat of the truck as she moved.

  Nearly naked and exposed to anyone who happened to walk by, she urged him on by looping her thigh over his lap and pressing down against him. The steering wheel rubbed harshly on her back as she slipped down on top of him with no room to spare.

  Rocking from side to side against him, there was no mistaking the large bulge their arousal had created. His eyes sparkled in the light of the moon, clear and honest, begging her to take him some place he didn’t have to orchestrate. She found herself being tender with him and his strong, muscular body.

  She positioned his left palm against her mound, and his fingers scrambled to find her opening, forcing two inside her deeply. She inhaled and pressed her naked breasts against him, listening to the resonance of his breathing. Arching back, she tore open his shirt and shoved it to the sides, buttons flying all around them, finding his warm torso beneath and laying her breasts against him again. The heartbeat they shared in the night mingled as his fingers explored and led her to a partial release. Their eyes did not blink as she bent, covered his mouth with hers, and accepted the gift of his spirit in his kiss.

  She thought she heard a lone singer in the distance, as the stroke of his other hand on her spine made her feel like he’d sprinkled his corn pollen, his seed of protection on her body just as her forefathers had done.

  Do you hear it, Dine man? Do you hear the voices too? What can I take from you and what can I leave in its place?

  Again locking eyes, she adjusted herself to rise up and then back down on his fingers. The scent of her arousal filled the little cab. Their tongues played while her nails dug into the back of his scalp as she pulled fistfuls of his hair and squeezed.

  They were at the threshold where one way would lead to wild monkey sex in the front of the pickup and the other meant she’d have to get dressed for a public walk to his front door. An alternative sprang up when she spied a folded blanket on the bench seat behind him. With her knees on either side of his hips, she rose up, leaned over him and grabbed the blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders. She presented her breasts to his lips before she sat back down in his lap.

  Her forefinger traced the outline of his mouth.

  “These lips are going to tell me lies, I think.”

  She was rewarded with a smile. “Stories,” he whispered. “Not lies. Stories.”

  “So you’re going to make me decide where we do this?” she asked.

  “I’m up for anything right now. You’re not in the driver seat, but you’re sitting on the driver. I kind of like you there.”

  Though it was exciting with the danger of being c
aught naked in the front seat of an old truck by a stranger, she preferred the idea of taking her time with him, and that meant getting to his room. “Let’s go inside.”

  She crawled off him, gathered her clothes and shoes, and followed him as he slid out the driver’s side of the cab. His large callused hand grabbed one of hers as her other one desperately clutched the blanket to her chest. Barefoot, she allowed herself to be led to a flight of stairs and up to the hallway of the second floor. In front of door 214, he inserted a key and waited for her to pass by him.

  She was sure she’d been in this room before. It smelled like all the cheap hotel rooms she’d wound up in; the darkness and the muffled sounds of traffic outside were familiar to her as well. It wouldn’t take much imagination to catch the scent of cheap sex, another thing she had wasted her time on. What was new was the large torso, which pressed against and warmed her backside, the fingers that swept over the outsides of her thighs, and the kisses to the back of her neck, so tender it made her melt. These little things he did as if he understood her body already, could read her pleasure spots.

  With his hands landing on her hips, he turned her to face him. She couldn’t stop the flutter of her heart or the shudder coming from deep within her bones just before she dropped the blanket, stepping out of her panties. Alone and naked, his breathing intensified as his eyes roamed her body.

  He began in a husky voice, filled with the future of lovely things to come. “How about you help me out of my clothes, since we’re pretty much done with yours?” He palmed her breasts before one arm slipped around her waist and drew her to him.

  With her arms up over his shoulders, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “Be glad to.”

  He looked like a man who liked to have his woman undress him. Standing silently and proud in the night, he let her peel down his jeans and remove his shirt, leaving him to finish what she’d started. As Luci slipped under the thin cotton sheets, Danny sat on the bed and tugged his boots off and removed his jeans from around his ankles.

  Luci waited, deliciously watching him, before his powerful body joined her, crawling over her in a moon shadow movement after sheathing himself. Powerful muscles bunched under the smooth skin of his shoulders as he pulled back the sheets and kissed her neck, the line between her breasts, all the way down to her belly button. His thumb pressed aside the lips of her sex, coaxing her ripe bud into little spasms. His tongue traced from her belly button to her stiff peak and beyond, lapping at her opening, gently feeding from her.

  She did not want him to stop.

  She couldn’t help arching backward, giving him full access, but as her fire intensified, she grew desperate to have his cock buried and pounding against her inner walls. Her heels dug into the mattress as he kept up his slow ministrations. She grabbed his shoulders, reaching down to pull at his elbows to draw him up on top of her, but she could see his eyes glistening in the dim light and a wet smile crease his face.

  “There’s no rush, little fox.” He watched her as he dipped his tongue in for another taste.

  Luci was wild with need and understood he was deliberately slowing things down.

  “You thrash like a scared doe in the woods,” he whispered to her sex. “She knows what’s coming next, yet is powerless to stop it,” he said as he scanned the juncture between her legs eagerly.

  Am I scared or excited? It was a totally curious thing for him to say. He had become the hunter of her soul, but was it a death she sought, or freedom from her earthly body she craved? But yes, it was dangerous. Reckless.

  And the only thing she wanted.

  The voices rose in a chant, a chorus of angst and pain, passion and desire, so fierce it would scare off any but the most fervent. As those ancient voices began to screech and crescendo out of control, he climbed atop her, spreading her thighs wide open, positioning himself for unfettered entry. His left hand gripped her chin, forcing her lips to pucker as he covered them, his tongue plunged inside her mouth as his cock found its home.

  Silence followed, the chanting cut off mid-stanza, startling her. She heard the sound of a large bird of prey flying through the sky, as if marking his territory with his calling, his whistle just barely discernable above the rush of the branches in a deep forest underneath. Maybe it was the waves slapping against the shore. Maybe it was the sound of a cloud of black starlings twirling like smoke up through the sky to the heavens. Whatever it was, the silent force of nature hit her in the middle of her chest as she felt him root deep, command her body to rise up out of the ashes of her cold past and come alive. Had she ever felt this way before?

  She gave herself to him with complete abandon, and it scared her. Whatever remained of her previous life was left torn apart and dead like old skin, lying in a heap at the side of the bed. In her new persona, like a newborn, she began to cry.

  Chapter 5

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  Chester Begay returned to his ancestors early in the morning, just as the sun began to rise. Danny knew he’d share the experience with his grandfather, knew that some day he would die the same kind of death, with the rest of the world warming to the light of a new day. Grandfather had taken the shortcut and would be meeting him along the path sometime in the future, if Danny was careful with his time.

  The shard of sunlight from drapes that were hastily, but not completely closed, hit him right between the eyes. He could see the dark outline of a figure standing there, then shrinking and fading. He’d worked to keep his breathing steady, but his adrenaline was pumping as he grabbed the imaginary knife of his People in case the image wasn’t benign. Maybe that action forced the image to dissipate because it disappeared. A cloud moved to block the ray of light, which softened the harshness, and his ears stopped buzzing.

  Where Luci had draped her arm over his chest, the skin was wet with the sweet smell of her sweat. He moved his knee between her thighs, feeling the moist warmth of her private place, and she awoke. When the sun hit her in the face, she covered it with the back of her hand and wrinkled her brow.

  “God, that’s bright.”

  “I’ll go fix it.” Ambling out of bed, he pulled together the inch-wide gap between the two curtains. As he turned to face her, he saw her notice the erection he’d really never lost last night in all their lovemaking. She didn’t look like she minded a bit; nor that she minded him knowing it pleased her.

  He’d used up all the protection packed in his suitcase, as he kicked the empty cardboard box to the side. Instead of climbing under the sheets, as she apparently expected, he sat and patted her left thigh on top of the sheets. “Honey, I’m all out of condoms.”

  She bit her lower lip as her brain wrapped around the problem they faced.

  He continued with the bigger problem. “I should go. My grandfather has probably passed. I should be with the family.”

  “Of course.” She rolled onto her tummy, as she hugged the pillow beneath her and sighed. The sheet had parted, revealing one glorious ass cheek.

  Fuck it. He almost said it out loud. As if to check to make sure the vision before him wasn’t an apparition, he smoothed his palm over her flesh, allowing his fingers to feather into the dark cleft between her buttocks as he smoothed up and then down, barely touching her silky skin. He reached the entryway to her channel from behind as she tilted her ass up, slightly bracing on her knees, exposing her wetness and how swollen her lips were from their joining all night long. When he inserted his forefinger, her moan made him go rock hard.

  Under the sheets, her right leg nearly forced him to move off the bed. Her head turned from where it was buried in the pillow, she peered back at him over her raised shoulder.

  There was no mistaking the fact that she’d given him the permission he needed to continue. Danny tore the sheets back, exposing the length of her body to him as he mounted her from behind, holding her hips as he forced her back against him. He could feel her spasms and the warm slickness of her sex clamping down around his cock, and the smooth friction as he undulat
ed back and forth into her, her juices coating him, turning him into granite.

  From behind, he was so much deeper. He watched the droplets of sweat form in the ridges of her arched spine, heard the slapping of his thighs against the backs of hers. His hands were full of her breasts, which bounced on his palm between thrusts. He reached to her front and pressed his thumb against her nub and felt her jump. She forced herself against it as she pulled him still deeper inside her.

  He would have liked to fuck her all morning long, fuck her until he got that fated phone call, and then fuck her again, but as he held her hips tight against him, spilling his seed deep, he mourned the fact that this would perhaps be the last time. Time stood still as he finished into her quivering sex, as she gasped and moaned in harmony with her internal muscles holding and milking him dry. He leaned forward, ran his teeth along the slender angle of her long neck, eliciting a sultry hiss from her pleasure. He kissed her into submission as he pressed the full force of his weight into and on top of her, collapsing them onto the bed.

  His breathing was long and in tandem with hers. Her fingers clutched and wrapped around his hand as it rested on the pillow beside her head. She brought his hand to her chest, laid her right breast into his palm and pressed.

  In the soft perfumed hairs at the back of her head, he lay his head down, and fell asleep with his cock still buried deep inside her.

  Chapter 6

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  Chester Begay’s funeral was held the day after his death. The Protestant church of Danny’s childhood looked smaller than he remembered. The same organist has played for over thirty years, but they were in between ministers so one of the ordained cousins from New Mexico officiated. It was Chester’s wish that the service be held there, even though he rarely graced its doorway.