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  She spread her fingers gently, and the warm white slid slowly away from a bright orange yolk, stretching into a clear drip of slime that reached the ground. She closed her fingers and cupped the naked yolk, like a live thing, in her palm.

  She pulled him close by the arm, so close one of her hips rested against the top of his thigh, and held up the yolk.

  Sam looked at it, shining and deep orange in her wet hand. Dirt clung to the edges of the yolk, and this close, Nina smelled like sweat and like the acrid must of chickens.

  He had a hard-on.

  “This,” she said, “is what a good egg looks like. Orange and firm. This is the kind of egg you should eat.”

  He combed his fingers into her side, feeling that thin top stick to the flesh underneath. He was drunk with his own amazement that she was able to make herself such a part of everything around her, give in to the very center of it.

  She leaned closer and ran her own fingers, firmly, down his side and into the meat of his ass. He rubbed his dick into her hip. She rubbed back.

  Sam was drunk with her willingness to give in to him, to respond to his greedy touches and intensions with her own.

  There wasn’t a moment he couldn’t imagine not wanting to touch her just for that certainty that she would touch back, feel just as crazy as he felt probing through the desire between them.

  She was gorgeous and smart and, except when she caught him out and tried for wisdom, she was easy. She was the summer life promised and never delivered on—hot and sweet.

  When they were just like this, he could tell himself that.

  He wanted goodness and sweetness so much that he would tell himself that this was change, this was new, this was Sam and Nina.

  I want to change my ways. Before my ways change me.

  “That’s disgusting, Nina.”

  She looked into her hand holding the yolk. “Yeah, kinda.”

  “Why does it make me want to kiss you?”

  She looked up at him. “Because you’re disgusting?”

  He leaned into her neck, breathing her in, and then licked, taking in the salt and skin. “Yeah. Kinda,” he whispered.

  She flung the yolk out of her hand and now both her hands were on his ass. He would probably have egg all over his shorts, but he didn’t care when her strong hands followed right into the crease of his ass, massaging in a way that was dirty and slow.

  He thought, Yes, just this, nothing else. But as soon as he thought it, he wanted inside of her, to penetrate her and see her. He wanted to reach across some barrier. He wanted to finally get at something, to hold something in his hands and understand it.

  Right now, he wanted that to be Nina Paz.

  He backed her over to the table they had used to examine the chickens, his face still in her neck, her hands still rubbing and spreading, and reached down and palmed her hamstrings, pulling up until she let him hike her onto the table.

  He leaned in and rubbed his mouth over hers, inexpert, their kiss like shouting to each other over a hopeless level of noise, and the whole world began to ring, too, like a bell, like a bell with big cracks in it, ringing and ringing and vibrating, too, along every place the bell was broken.

  He stepped back then. He wanted to look at her, all sweaty and golden, her thighs spread on the table. She smiled at him, breathing hard, and he could see the lace of her bra through that top, and even the shadow of her poking nipples, dark. He looked between her thighs, and through the gap between looser, filmy short shorts and thigh, he saw the edge of her panties.

  “You look so good, Nina.” He stepped between her thighs. Reached his hand down and moved the seam in the crotch of her shorts back and forth over her pussy. He could feel, through the thin fabric, the folds give and open.

  He could feel her.

  She breathed hard, breathed and looked down, watched his fingers over her, working, working.

  “That’s hot,” he said. “You watching me touch you.” He wanted her eyes to stay on them, what their hands and mouths were doing to each other’s bodies.

  To understand nothing else.

  She put a hand over his, pressed his fingers in deeper, a little lower, slower. Hooked one of those strong legs around his waist, and the weight of it against his hip was solid, good. Her muscles and easy physical power were some of the most appealing things about her body.

  She could take him. What he did to her. It made him lost, it made him float, to know she so easily could. He dug his fingers into the belly of her quadriceps and its answering clench hardened him so painfully his eyes rolled back with the swoop of pleasure down low.

  They touched her together, and she rested her head into his chest. She gripped and squeezed his shoulder, restlessly. He pulled his fingers out from under hers, and rucked her flimsy shorts and panties to the side in a hard jerk.

  She was wet and pink, her straight black hair slick and arrowed over her hood.

  “Sam—”

  “I just want to look at you.” But he ran his thumb right over the swollen heart of it, dipping in. It looked so obscene, his thumb shiny and wet, that he grabbed his dick through his shorts and squeezed, hard, as he pressed and circled his thumb against her.

  There was no friction under his touch, just slippery heat. He had to close his eyes as the pleasure bottomed out and he wanted to rut into her, clean the sweat he could see dripping between her breasts with his tongue. He pressed and unfolded. He squeezed and bucked.

  “Oh, fuck. Sam.”

  He sort of heard her, and then her hands were at the sides of his face, pulling him up to hers.

  Her eyes, this close, had black rays shot through the brown. He didn’t want to stop touching her, but then she angled over his bottom lip and pulled it between hers, drew away slow.

  “Kiss me, Sam.”

  He closed his eyes and let his mouth go soft, she sucked in his bottom lip again, and for a long moment he just bent to her kiss and breathed.

  She was salty; her tongue, where it ran along the insides of his lips, was sweet. He brushed one last time over her soft sex, scraped his nails down her thighs to feel the skin rough up into shivers despite the heat.

  He wanted to hold her face, open her like he had opened her below, and so he did, her neck and jaw soft and small under his hands. He used the same thumb he had swirled into her to draw her chin down, and they met in their next kiss tongues first.

  Her lips were so hot, he could feel every place where they moved against his mouth.

  Her hands found the bottom of his T-shirt, and slid along his sweat and skin, and then curled into the muscles of his chest, pulling hair, the sting breaking just a little sweet tension in his cock so that he could feel a dark, wet pulse of precome seep out. It made him shudder. It made him deepen their kiss.

  He reached under that nothing blouse until he felt the top edge of her bra cup, and then lifted her heavy breast out, used the sweat that had gathered in the soft crease underneath to lubricate his fingers against her nipple.

  Smiled against her mouth when she shook a little with that, and her kiss slowed to a near stop.

  “Sam—” She kissed the corner of his mouth, brushed her hands over his chest, so softly; he leaned in, to increase the pressure of her touch.

  He tested how much pinch she liked against her nipple, and she moaned.

  She pushed at his chest.

  “Wait.”

  She had that serious, serene look about her. But it was better, it was improved, because she also looked wild-eyed and bitten. He leaned in to kiss the spot on her upper lip where a cupid’s bow would be on lips less full.

  He thought about how far away naked was from love.

  “Here’s the thing, Sam.” He closed his eyes. Fought her pushing hands and put his arms around her, squeezing her to him until her arms relaxed and she brought them around his waist.

  He turned his face into her neck.

  Kept his eyes closed while he held her and waited for her to ruin it.

&nbs
p; Ruin what he wanted right now, this summer, these summer days, hot and urgent.

  Waited for her to tell him why there couldn’t just be this pleasure. Held her tighter.

  Tighter still.

  Chapter Five

  Nina ran her fingers through Sam’s bright hair.

  There was dried yolk over her cuticles and knuckles, dirt under her fingernails and ground into old calluses, tattoos of her labor.

  There were so many shades of red and gold in his hair that as she sifted through it, his head pressed against her shoulder, his breath hard and hot over her breastbone, it looked like painted water, except the shades were fire and gilt.

  It was beautiful, he was beautiful, of course, if a little hard-edged, like he was made of the burlap-wrapped rebar she staked her plants with, instead of bone and meat.

  He was warm, though, and he somehow fit every tight muscle of his body into a curve of hers.

  Her body was still humming from his hands, his fingers, the way he lifted and spread her, touched and rubbed through her, her muscles still shaking under her skin, her skin still damp in places, stuck to his.

  Dios, the way he looked at her.

  She squeezed him now, just to feel him squeeze back.

  She’d stopped him, she’d stopped him, their mouths tasting, his hands on her breasts, rubbing, working her nipples in such a sweet and focused way, nothing but the awareness of their bodies, she’d stopped him, gone from movement and heat to this, just the hum, just their arms and breath.

  In the north shade of the chicken house, away from the hot sun of the late July afternoon, he yielded against her body, even if he wasn’t soft. It was as if he wanted her to hold him, which she was, her legs still around his hips, one arm around his shoulders, one hand in his hair, but he had her around the middle almost as if she would hike him up like a child and settle him against the crook of her neck.

  She didn’t know what to do, so she kept her fingers in his hair, holding the short hanks of it one way, and then another in the dim shade to see what color they would turn.

  Butternut.

  Muskmelon.

  Pink Lady.

  Cayenne.

  Vintage wine heirloom.

  Scarlet runner.

  It was everything, everything, she could do to keep from bucking her hips against his waist, dragging her lips down over his neck. She felt it like a heavy load she was losing her grip on, because he’d take it, he’d take some imperceptible hitch in her body for the invitation it was.

  She ran her hands through his hair to stop her hips, her mouth, her back from arching her heavy breasts against him. She held him like a friend would hold a friend in great grief or joy, and her hand shook because she wanted him, but that was okay, as long as her legs didn’t shake and tell him to soothe them with his hands, dig his fingers into her thighs.

  She stopped him because she had promised herself she’d had enough of these invitations from men, when she had wanted something immediate.

  She had wanted men who could exchange a look with her in a bar, and instead of sending over a drink, point his chin at the bathrooms.

  She had burned inside that pretty flash paper, following the bright and hot impulses of her body, easily sated.

  She wondered how many encounters Sam had known like the one they just had—fevered, impolite, rushed, and almost wordless.

  She wondered if he felt her brand of frustration, too, the weight of a life made of decisions and people counting on a future she made for them, or if he just followed the direction of the impulse issued from his body, his body picking up on the willingness in hers.

  His hand at her waist was exactly what she wanted, the pressure of his fingers left no question, his cock against her hip making what he wanted certain.

  And that’s what she used to look for, something without question, something certain, something that she didn’t have to wait for, plan for, decide.

  A single thing, hot and live that was hers for the taking, right now.

  Not long ago, she reminded herself, her hands shaking in Sam’s hair, she had decided she’d had enough.

  Enough of the long glances, the overlong absences from friends’ parties. The fumble for fit and the struggle with clothes.

  When she’d told Sam about Russ, about the men she needed after, and that she used their bodies and their time to escape, she’d told him from that place of enough—not to warn him or to admit shame, because they were adults and she didn’t feel ashamed.

  She didn’t lie, either, when she said she missed Russ every day. She did.

  Even more than the particular fact of Russ, even after building friendships and partnerships here in Lakefield, Ohio, one by one, year by year, she missed the ease of someone who bore witness to every possible intimacy.

  She’d known Russ since she was a girl. They’d watched each other grow up, awkward and stumbling through a hundred different kinds of failures. They had eaten dinners with the other’s families, slammed through the other’s back doors, been each other’s first everything.

  She’d stopped Sam because she had decided she couldn’t bear, anymore, the constant threat of the future broken up by anything she could grab, right now, to obliterate the past.

  More and more she yearned for some awkward stumble through the next part of her life with someone who had some stumbling left to do himself. Someone by her side to slow down the present like Russ had, to walk her through the days, to reassure her that the future was nothing more than a couple of people walking past one day at a time.

  She wanted more than summer, than urgency.

  She was here, far from her original home, because everything that came after losing Russ salted the fields they had planted.

  She couldn’t stand her own grief and the grief of her family, of Russ’s family.

  She couldn’t bear one more hour of that present, of those days, one after the other.

  She’d waited and waited for Russ, planning some unimaginable future with a man who knew her less, who she knew less, with every month he was gone.

  The last time she’d seen him, held him, was on furlough eight weeks before he died.

  He told her he didn’t want to be a farmer when he finished his deployment, he wanted to move to Seattle, go back to school, get an apartment on some hill where they could see the water, start over; then he’d made love to her, his arms braced close, his hips working her slow, his eyes in hers.

  With every thrust he made her promise to leave the fields, more and more urgently he asked her, until of course she had to say yes, she had always told him yes, he was her boy, her sweet boy, and she missed him. Seattle couldn’t hold enough days just for them to know each other again, and they’d plant their love, just themselves, and see what came of it.

  Then he was gone.

  Waiting wouldn’t bring him back this time.

  She discovered, three days after the officer told her Russ would never slam through their back door again, that waiting and grief would bring her a child.

  But she was through with waiting and with grief.

  She didn’t want a child born in grief, or to carry a child grieving. She’d rather face the world alone than worry whatever love she had left wouldn’t be enough.

  Even though the only things she knew how to grow would never thrive in Ohio, she felt that maybe she didn’t know how to grow those things anymore, anyway.

  What she had known was out of season.

  Everything.

  Now she planned. She grew things—her business, people. She waited to see what her dozens of decisions would yield.

  She piled the weight so heavy on the future that it tipped her up higher and higher in counterbalance until she had no choice but to race toward it.

  She wanted some weight right here, right now, and so some time ago she had told herself, Enough. Find her present in friends, or maybe she’d find it in love, but don’t burn it up, don’t let it scatter like husks.

  So she stopped hi
m, this man, heavy against her body, even as her hand shook.

  “What are we doing?” She asked this to his hair, shining through her dirty fingers.

  He tightened his arms around her waist. “Shh,” he whispered.

  “Sam.” She let his hair feather into place and eased back. Every place his skin dragged against hers made her force her breath shallow and silent so he wouldn’t know, wouldn’t sense that he could light them up again, start them up, burn them up.

  She made herself relax slowly away from his body until he had to let go, and she could slide from the tabletop.

  She hugged herself. Felt too light.

  He looked away from her, hooking his hand over the back of his neck. “Look, I know I should back off, and I will, if you want. Though I have to say, it kind of seems like you don’t want me to, at least not in the moment. Either way, I like this. Working with you. Picking tomatoes, seeing the sausage guy, the chickens. So tell me what I have to do so you’ll let me keep coming, I guess.”

  His shoulders were tight again, showing her how much it had cost him to tell her what he wanted.

  “Do you have a couple hours left?” She’d take his hours and see if she could make days out of them. One by one. Steady. No waiting, but no racing either.

  An hour at a time.

  He looked back at her. “Yeah.”

  “Help me get these ladies in for the night and then we’re going on a field trip.”

  * * *

  Out here, away from the city, it was deliciously windy.

  Loud, too, as the wind banged through the rows of corn, making the giant green stalks slap and rattle, turgid as they were from the rain they got this last week.

  She rubbed out the goose bumps on her arms that she always got looking at her fields, the wide sky above them.

  “This is all yours?”

  She smiled at the fields. “Yep. As far as you can see to the conifer windbreak to the north, then just to where you can see the water tower down this easterly tractor road. You can’t see all the way, from here, where my property ends to the south. All in all, almost seventy acres.”