Sela tilted her head and looked upward, permanently giving up the self-fiction that she was uncomfortable with him for any reason other than the power of her own reaction. She felt almost painfully alive at his nearness, her skin heated and ultrasensitive, her nipples pinched and aching. This was pure physical chemistry, lust on the most basic level. Likely it was one-sided, because he’d never looked at her with even faint interest. Her experience in dealing with something like this was basically zero, because she’d never reacted so intensely to any other man; this was outside both her experience and her comfort zone.
After about thirty seconds he still hadn’t said anything. She wanted to bombard him with questions—Had he been in the military? Why had he moved here? Had he ever been married? Did he have children?—but held them all back. She might be ridiculously turned on by his nearness, but instinct told her that the best way to make him retreat was to push. Normally he avoided personal contact. Just the fact that he hadn’t ignored her, that he was actually sitting beside her, was enough for now. She settled for murmuring, “Thanks for the warning. It made a difference.”
She was still looking up, but by the movement beside her she could tell he turned his head toward her for a brief glance, before he, too, gazed upward. “You’re welcome,” he finally muttered, as if he’d had to cast around for the appropriate response.
Wow, at this rate in a year they might manage a real conversation. She wanted to laugh, but she was exasperated with herself, too, because she wasn’t much better than he was. The unfolding crisis was a safe subject, though, so maybe she should stick to that.
“I keep thinking of things I should have done,” she admitted. There, that hadn’t been agonizing; she hadn’t even really thought about what she’d say, the words had just come out.
“Such as?”
She realized she wanted his evaluation of what they’d done, his advice on what else they could do or improve on. She wanted to know if she’d done the right thing, if she should now concentrate on something else. She wanted to hear his voice, deep and slightly rough, and so masculine it gave her the shivers, wanted to keep him talking even if he didn’t think she’d done the right things. Learning what not to do was important, too.
“We concentrated on food, mostly, canning as much as we could. I bought things that will keep, like canned meats, peanut butter, dried beans. I think we’ll be okay there, though we’ll have to cut back, and be careful not to waste anything. I have extra fuel for the generator, wood for the fireplaces, candles and oil lamps, prescription refills and first-aid supplies—but I almost forgot about water for flushing and taking a bath, so we don’t have much on hand,” she confessed. “Right now I have plenty of bottled water, but it won’t last long. After it’s gone I can handle water for drinking by boiling it, but I should have gotten a rain barrel for the rest. Making trips to and from the creek is going to get old fast. I’ve been trying to think what I already have that I could put under the downspouts to catch the rain, and the best I can come up with is some big plastic storage containers.” She made herself stop talking, give him a chance to weigh in.
When he spoke, it wasn’t about her preparations. “We?”
He’d asked a semi-personal question. She was so startled that she blinked. “My aunt Carol and her granddaughter, Olivia. They live together just up the road. The yellow two-story. You’ve seen Carol in the store, the one with the pink streak in her hair. She was elected valley leader at tonight’s meeting.”
He grunted an acknowledgment. Maybe he’d already known she and Carol were related, but likely not, because she called Carol by her name without the “Aunt” attached to the front. “You should consolidate, move in with her.”
“An elderly friend already has, and taken the spare bedroom. If things get desperate I will, but—I like being alone.”
He made another sound, this one not quite a grunt. She suspected he understood wanting to be alone.
Finally a light breeze began stirring through the night. It felt wonderful on her overheated skin and she sighed in relief. “Anyway, dipping buckets of water out of plastic containers will be easier than hiking to the creek and back every day.” She didn’t specify which creek, because it didn’t matter; the valley was veined with creeks.
“That’ll work,” he commented.
He hadn’t exactly praised the idea, but she was nevertheless pleased. She was thinking, she was identifying problems and coming up with solutions. In the coming weeks she’d be doing a lot of that, and could only pray the solutions would work.
The breeze picked up, and a faint chill ran over her bare arms. After the heat they’d been having it felt nice to actually be chilled, but soon the moving air on her bare feet was too cold and she pulled her legs up and tugged the legs of her pajama bottoms down to cover her toes. Her movement made her arm brush against his; the skin to skin contact, slight as it was, almost took her breath. He was so hot she felt almost singed where she touched him. She went motionless, still touching him because in that second she was incapable of moving away, and all she could do was wait to see if he moved away.
He didn’t. Neither did he increase the pressure, or move closer himself, but he didn’t move away. It was as if he hadn’t noticed something that, though small, had rocked her so off-balance. Tilting his head back, he watched the red aurora that was flooding the sky and with admiration said quietly, “This is something.”
The change of subject was welcome, even though it brought home to her how insignificant the moment was to him. She was overthinking . . . well, everything, rather than simply living in the moment. Realizing that gave her the inner composure she needed to pull herself out of her thoughts and back into the world. “Yes. I’m glad I couldn’t sleep. I’d hate to have missed this.”
More silence. She was becoming comfortable with it, and let herself enjoy simply sitting beside him in the dark. Not having to search for something to say was remarkably freeing, not to mention relaxing. If he’d been expecting to be entertained by her wit and insights she’d have been miserable, but while she didn’t know much about him she did know that he liked silence better than noise, and solitude more than company. For him to be sitting there now, and showing no signs of itching to leave, was like an early Christmas gift and she accepted it for what it was, without wishing for anything more. This was enough.
Holy shit, he could see her nipples—the shape of them beneath that thin tank top, anyway. She probably thought she was safe in the darkness, but it wasn’t all that dark because of the glowing aurora, and he had very good night vision anyway. Her breasts were smallish, and her nipples were tightly puckered from the cool breeze.
After being mostly alone for so long, even by his own choice, being this close to unfettered breasts felt like the erotic equivalent of a naked lap dance. Better; he was as turned on as if he were on top of her, about to slide home—which was nuts, because their only contact was a light brush of her bare arm against his, and all he could see was the outline of her nipples. Not having sex with a woman didn’t mean he hadn’t jerked off now and then, so it wasn’t as if he hadn’t come in three years. He had, just not inside a woman. Which meant he wasn’t so turned on because he was sex-deprived, but because there was something about her that checked all his sexual boxes. He hadn’t known he even had sexual boxes, other than he was hetero, but only a fool ignored the evidence right in front of him.