That's all it took, all it had ever taken. His hands slid up and there was nothing but the taste of her mouth, nothing but the feel of her breasts against his palms, nothing but the sound of her breath coming in short, hard pants, of the little moans she gave as she strained against him. He felt the earth come up against his back with a solid thump. The material between his hand and her skin was suddenly intolerable and he ripped the front of her shirt open and shoved her bra up and took her nipple into his mouth. He wasn't gentle but she didn't want gentleness, tearing at the front of his jeans and thrusting her hand down the front of his shorts. “Oh,” she said, when he filled her hand. “Liam, please.” She knotted a fist in his hair and pulled his mouth from her breast. She bit his lower lip, and pulled one of his hands down between her legs, pushing up against it. “Liam, please!”
Her face was flushed, her eyes wild, and every instinct he had screamed yes. It would be fast and furious, hot and supremely satisfying, it would fulfill every dream he'd had in the last three months, hell, in the last three years. The heat came off her in waves, scorching him. She shoved him down and straddled his body, and it was his turn, eyes closed. “Wy…” He felt her hands tugging at his jeans and heard something halfway between a growl and a groan rip out of his throat.
“Shut up. Just shut up and let me- Jesus, Liam.” Her hand closed around him and she leaned down.
He felt her breath on his skin and nearly came right then. “Wait,” he said. “Wy, wait.”
“What?” She sounded dazed.
He took her upper arms in his hands and sat up, sliding out from under her.
“Liam?”
He climbed to his feet, turning his back to fasten his fly. It wasn't easy, and it didn't help that his blurred vision couldn't seem to find the zipper tab, and when it did, that his fingers couldn't seem to hold on to it.
Behind him he heard the rustle of clothing, and knew she was putting herself back together, too. He took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. When his vision cleared the first thing he saw was his cap lying on the ground where she had thrown it after pulling it off. He swept it up and turned to face her.
The pulse was beating in her throat, hard enough to cause her collar to flutter. She was trembling, and she wouldn't look at him, fussing instead with one of the buttons on her shirt.
It would have been so easy to have taken each other then and there, on the rocks of the riverbank. He remembered in detail the clasp of her warm, wet flesh, the sound of the hitch in her breath, the salt taste of her tears, the smell of her sweat and that elusive, sweet-tart fragrance that was all her own. The way she arched up when she came, the surprise and pleasure in her voice when she cried out. And he remembered what it was like to kiss and touch and talk his way through a night with her, to come into her, to come inside her.
But one night was not what he wanted. One quick rutting on the deserted bank of a river was not what he wanted. Before, he had settled. Now, he wanted more, more than a hasty coupling in the front seat of her truck, or on the side of a deserted airstrip.
She finally finished with her shirt, but she still wouldn't look at him. She turned and took a step toward the plane. He caught her arm and pulled her to a halt.
She didn't try to pull away. He could feel the faint tremor in her body. “Why?” she said, her voice husky. “Why, Liam?”
Liam took a deep breath and expelled it. He pulled off his cap again and ran his hand through his hair, trying to choose the right words. “Because this isn't all I want,” he said at last. “I want it, mind.” He tried to smile. “Pretty hard to hide that.” His smile faded. “But it isn't all I want.”
Her voice was almost inaudible when she spoke. “What if it's all I want?”
He set his teeth and took his time resettling his cap on his head. “I'm a domesticated man, Wy. Okay”-he held up one hand- ”maybe I wasn't always. I had my share of fun. But I liked being married. I liked waking up in the same bed every morning. I liked coming home to the same house every night.” He hesitated. “I loved being a father.”
He met her eyes straight on. “I want it all, Wy. All or nothing. Marriage, kids, starting with Tim, so long as we both shall live. For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer. Till death do us part. I know what the words mean now, Wy. Take it or leave it.”
And then, with as much dignity as a man with an erection straining at the front of his jeans can muster, he turned and limped to the plane.
When they rolled to a halt in Newenham, he said, “You said Prince went out to the dig in your Cub?”
She nodded.
“You can't get a Cessna in there, can you?”
She shook her head.
“Can you scare up another Cub?”
She nodded again.
“Okay, I have to make a few phone calls. I'll meet you back here in about an hour?”
She nodded.
Fine. “Okay, see you then.”
He walked away, cursing himself for ten different kinds of fool.
“Oh come on,” Moses was shouting over the noise of the smoky bar, crowded with fishermen getting an early start on the evening. “There was nothing noble or tragic in that kid's death. This country has the potential to kill me six different ways before I get up every morning, but at least I know what I'm up against.”
He drained his bottle and smacked it down on the counter and fixed the poor unfortunate who had incited his wrath that afternoon with a beady and, Liam noticed for the first time, very ravenlike eye. “This kid gets some half-assed idea, probably from Thoreau, who hasn't gotten half the kicking around he deserved, to wander out into the woods and live off the land. He has no survival skills, no woodcraft and he starves to death.”
“Still-”
“He was on a road, for crissake!” Moses bellowed. “He even had a goddamn abandoned trailer for shelter! All he had to do was step outside and turn right and he could have hitched a ride to the nearest burger!”
Bill brought him another Rainier and he snatched it from her hand and took a long, steady swallow that drained half the bottle. “Frankly,” he said, after a long, loud burp, “I'm grateful he died before he could lower the I.Q. level of the gene pool by procreating. I'm just sorry he left a diary so that yo-yo could write a book about him and inflict it on the reading public.” Moses drained the other half of the bottle with another long swallow that everyone hoped would cool his choler. It didn't. “Make a hero out of him, you want to. In my book, he was just a dumb kid who literally didn't know enough to come in out of the cold.”
He surveyed the bar in search of someone to disagree. Prudently, no one did so. Not only an elder, not only a shaman, not only a government-certified, Grade-A Alaskan Old Fart, Moses was a man it was unwise to cross when he got himself on the outside of a few beers. From the level of belligerence Liam could read in his attitude, it was evident that Moses had started drinking early this morning.
The shaman turned and caught sight of Liam. “Our man in Newenham! You didn't do form this morning.”
Liam looked and felt guilty. “I'll do it tonight, Sifu.”
“No, you won't, you'll be visiting with your dad.”
Liam froze in midstride. “Excuse me?”
“Your dad, he's here, he wants to see you,” Moses said. He surveyed Liam with eyes as shrewd as they were bloodshot. “You can run away to Newenham, but you're still in the world, boy. Didn't you know?”
Liam looked at Bill, who had her arms crossed on the bar. “Say it isn't so.”
Bill nodded.