The first thing I saw was a little brown bird, and then another. They both hopped on the stone tiles, pecked at the dust and then hopped away again out of my sight, chirruping.

I cracked my eyes open a little more and winced as the sunshine hit my eyeballs, brighter than I remembered it ever being. I scanned internally – one entire side of my body was numb, and I felt a strange texture pressing into my back.

Then I remembered.

The car.

The flood.

I bolted upright and immediately regretted it as the numbness became pain and I fell back again. Convinced I wasn’t dying, but slowly coming to understand that coordinating myself was taking more effort than I thought, I waited and took a few deep breaths, trying to piece together the events of the night before. Gradually, I coaxed my eyes completely open and found myself on a wide, outdoor terrace, tiled and guarded on the four corners by some tired-looking palm trees. When I wobbled a little I realized I was on a large hammock, a few little brown birds still busy under my dangling feet and a cool, wide open blue sky above me.

I swung my legs down and onto the tiles, then looked around. There were a few white plastic lawn chairs. Some pot plants, a grizzled looking rag mat and a rustic door leading inside. Though I couldn’t see it, I heard a little traffic beneath me and figured I must be on the roof of a small building, alone. I staggered to my feet and poked around, then made my way through the door and into a cool, dark room, also empty.

I hadn’t killed him.

Dear god, I had wanted to. I was ready to. And I would have. But lo and behold, at the final hour he was swept away from me and now …well, you can’t kill someone who’s already dead, can you?

I wondered if I wanted to throw up or if I was just hungry. I examine my arm to find it tightly bandaged and smelling vaguely of a chemical I thought I recognized. I couldn’t remove it and examine the damage myself without a pair of scissors, so I let it be and resolved to explore the room instead.

I felt the way electronics must feel after you switch them off and then on again. Calm. Blank. Dean would appear soon, I was sure, and explain everything. I combed over my memories again and again to try to sort out where we were, and what had happened. But I couldn’t recall anything after we had clung together on that weird stony ledge and watched the great Jeff Cane bubble down and disappear forever. My world had simply gone black after that. And now it was blue and bright. Were we even in Bolivia anymore?

“Nora.”

I didn’t need to turn to look to see who the voice belonged to. What did it matter, what country we were in, if we were here together? I sighed and closed my eyes as I felt warm hands enclose my waist. I had no idea what day it was, where I was, or what lay under those bandages, but I knew him. The smell of his skin. The way the air sounded as it went into his body and left again. It was as though our bodies were tuned enough to one another that I could almost feel the Dean-shaped space he occupied in the air behind me.

There was nothing to say. So when he extended his hand I took it and followed him wordlessly into the rest of the house, where he sat me down, then poured me a glass of water. The place was sparsely furnished, but cleaned and organized in a way that suggested regular female attention. There were doilies and little candle holders on the side tables that made me think of my grandmother, and nothing on the walls.

“You’ve been sleeping for hours,” he said at last. “I’m so glad you’re awake. How do you feel?”

I took a deep breath and wondered the same.

“I feel amazing,” I said, and he gave me one of his juicy smiles.

“You were really going to do it.” He sat opposite me on a wicker chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.

“But I didn’t, in the end.”

We exchanged a glance that transmitted more information than our lips could at that moment.

“Are you hurt, Dean?”

“No.”

“How do you feel?”

He leaned back in his chair and exhaled loudly.

“I think I feel amazing too.”

“Dean?”

“Yes?”

“What are we doing? Everything’s…”

The room was deathly quiet.

“It does feel like everything’s changed, doesn’t it?” he said.

It did.

“Last night… I feel so… I told you things. And you saw a part of me that—”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said.

“Will they come looking for him? What happens now?”

He gestured to a folded newspaper on the table off to the side.

“I bought that this morning. Seems nobody even knows he came out here. I called Charlie. They’re saying they think he’s still in California, just in hiding.”

“So they don’t… they don’t know we tried to…”

“How could they? It’s not our problem anymore.”

“He’s gone. He’s gone.

My head reeled, and the bandages began to itch.

“After the car sunk into the water,” I said, closing my eyes to try and conjure last night’s memory.

“You fainted. I carried you to the main road, then I found a little village. A guy there spoke English, and said he had a guest house and he could drive us both out there. He and I dressed your wound – it bled a lot but the bullet didn’t enter. You just got grazed.”

“And he’s gone.”

“At the bottom of a dirty river in some dinky town in Bolivia, yes.”

“Do we say anything?”

“Do you want to?”

“I want to… Jesus, Dean this is all so surreal. Have you contacted Maria and the others at the villa?”

“Not yet. I wanted to wait till you were awake.” He looked at me like he knew how hard I was thinking.

“Let’s not tell them. Not yet.”

“They’ll be worried.”

“I know. But we’ll go back eventually. Let’s …let’s stay out here a while longer. Just you and me.”

“What do you mean, stay out here?”

“I mean, let’s… just forget about everything. Let’s just run away.”

“Nora…”

“I’m serious,” I said and stood, although the moment I was on my feet my head pulsed hard again and I reached out for the chair to keep my balance.

“Nora, you’ve been shot. You fainted. You need to heal.”

He was standing next to me now, his warm hands again at my waist. I caught his eye and couldn’t help staring at his lips. And just like that I wanted him, and his lips were on mine, and we kissed urgently, tenderly. My arm hurt as I collapsed into his grasp but I didn’t care, I just needed to be close to him. What had I ever done to deserve such a perfect man? My hands found their fumbling way down to his belt and pulled his shirt free, then slipped onto his naked skin underneath. I loved the fine trail of hair that led from his navel down into his boxers. I loved the smell of soap on his skin, loved how warm he was.

I soon did away with his shirt and pressed myself against his firm, bare chest.

“Nora, wait… are you sure you don’t need to rest?” he said and lifted my chin to search my face. I answered him with a kiss, but this time a deeper, slower one. I loved the chase, the push and pull, the call and response of our tongues. I loved the deep low growl I could hear in his chest as he held me, and his arms caressed up and down my back.

“I’m OK. You’ll be gentle with me, won’t you?” I said after coming up for air.

He tenderly stroked a lock of hair from my brow and brought his lips to mine again. All at once his hands went to my hips, grasped me there and I was hoisted up high, where he carried me over to the sofa and placed me gently down. I smiled at the crown of his head as he delivered a few more random kisses to the rest of my body.

“We have this guest house all to ourselves. Just you and I. We should get Tilly and go back home soon, but until then, you just tell me what you need,” he purred, and firmly pushed me back into the sofa, then spread my legs wide.

“Take me away, Dean,” I moaned as I let my head fall back onto the sofa.

“Away? Where do you want to go, baby?” he said, and his hands soon found their way all over my belly, pulling my shirt aside with one hand and inching down the elastic of my panties with the other, his lips grazing warm against my skin.

“Far, far away,” I breathed, and let my hands flop above my head. My skin pulled and ached underneath the tight bandages, but pain was nothing to me these days. Just one of the colors on an immense, multicolored tapestry that had somehow become my life lately.

He slinked my shirt up and over my head and then wriggled my skirt down low to my ankles. The sound of scooters and chattering outside receded into the background and the sound of his warm, silky breath came rushing to the foreground.

Dean was the quintessential ‘catch’ of a man. He was tall, wealthy, sexy and hung like a horse. But it was in moments like these that I saw what truly made him special – his delicate, gentle attention to the tiniest things. The way his breath hovered over my skin as he kissed me, not as a pit stop on the way to something else, but as though worshipping that little spot was his entire goal from start to finish. When Dean and I made love, he was there with me, and nowhere else. His body, his touch, his kiss filled to the brim each passing moment, filled it to bursting. That’s what made him special to me. All the rest could have floated away for all I cared, so long as he kept looking at me the way he did, kept touching me like that.

My knees found their way higher up and spread apart, and he knelt on the ground before me, tucking each of his hands under my hips and lifting and opening wide that secret spot. Though I had seen those hands do brutal things, and though the veins on the back of his hands made them look heavy and strong, he traced only the daintiest thumb strokes down along the edge of my pussy and up again, framing that slick crescent, admiring it.

“I love your cunt,” he breathed. I giggled.

“It loves you right back.”

He now introduced careful fingertips a little closer in, toying with the wetness there, parting those velvety folds and driving me wild. It was the kind of touch that felt more delicious the lighter it was, the kind of caress that was so slight and fleeting, my body and mind had to fill in the blanks itself and soon I was writhing and wet, aching a little with anticipation of how ‘far away’ he would take me.

“I’m going to make you come, Nora, and when you do, I want to feel it.”

The words sent a naughty jolt of electricity through me. I closed my eyes and zoomed in on the feeling of him teasing me, of his fingers stroking all around but never on that throbbing nub, where he knew I needed it. But he never did. He never placed his tongue against my pulsing clit, never sunk his fingers into that hot little hole, never gave me a second of relief with his lips or his tongue or even his words. When I reached my hand to his head to pull him closer to me, he laughed warmly and pinned my wrist back down again.

“Impatient, are we? But no, I want you a lot wetter before we move on. Can you do that for me?”

I groaned and realized that I was in for yet more delicious torture.

Dean had fucked me more deeply than I used to think was possible. Dean had done things to me physically that took me days to recover from. We had fucked rough and hard and violently many, many times before. But what we didn’t often do was this – this fairy light, spider web sex made of nothing but suggestion and whispers and touches so slight they nearly don’t happen at all. He stroked and stroked, and I felt a furnace switch on inside me. I realized he had pinned both my arms down. I relaxed and let him do it. Who else could I trust like this, to let him do whatever he liked with me?

When his tongue finally pressed down onto my soaking clit, I couldn’t help lifting my hips off the sofa to meet it. The bliss was strong enough to pulse right through to the tingling top of my scalp, and down to my toes. He expertly pressed full, juicy lips against that fiery slit, toying his tongue over precisely those quivering spots I needed him to, as though he could taste my desperation and knew precisely how to answer it, one teasing lick at a time. My own breath became jagged and quick as he stroked me higher and higher up to that sharp point of ecstasy. I loved the idea of coming in his face. I loved the idea of him feeling just exactly how excited he made me, of being as close as possible to my hot, twitching body. Just as I chased that shuddering feeling to what I felt was an orgasm for sure, he pulled back and laughed.

“Ah! Not so fast, my lovely. You’re wet, but still not quite wet enough,” he breathed. I moaned and ground my hips into the sofa, feeling myself back off from the brink of orgasm.

“Fuck I love it when you want it so badly,” he said, and I could hear the smile on his voice. The desperation for him to touch me again was so strong I could barely think straight.

“How close are you to coming?”

I took a deep, cooling breath and tried to gather my thoughts.

“Close. Nine out of ten.”

“Hmm. Good. That’s good.”

This time when his tongue returned to that spot where all my pleasure knotted into one swollen lump, I sped back up to that edge again, sure I’d fall off and into the void for good, but just as soon as I held my breath and braced, he pulled back and left me hanging again. The craving stirring up in me was so strong it almost burned.

“Oh god.”

“Good girl,” he growled instantly, and watched me writhing helpless, close to begging to be released from my torture and allowed to come, and hard.

“Still at a nine?” he said, although he knew the answer perfectly well. I whimpered my response.

“Good. Now, I’m going to fuck you.”

I heard the soft clink of his belt buckle make contact with the tile floor underneath, and without looking I could picture perfectly that juicy, thick cock of his. I knew it better than the back of my hand. I knew the slight curve at its tip, I knew the way it smelled, the way it tasted, the way it pumped and jerked when he came.

Head back and eyes closed, I allowed him to stroke my dripping slit, teasing me, before settling at the slippery pucker of my ass. I gasped. We hadn’t done this since Tilly was born. It sent a dirty little thrill through me. But I suddenly understood why he had wanted me to be this turned on before he started teasing around there. In this state, I was not about to say no to anything. I just wanted to be touched, anywhere.

“You ok?” he said and stroked.

“Uh huh,” I replied and swiveled my hips closer to him.

“Good.”

With a slight but firm shove, he popped the head of his dick into me and paused there, waiting for me to adjust, to catch my breath. It hurt in that wonderful way it always does for the first few seconds. I exhaled and relaxed against him, my body remembering this particular, naughty game we sometimes played. He stayed there and let his hands stroke my body again, down along my flanks, over my hips and across my belly.

“Still at a nine?”

I thought about it. Thought about the sweet pain that was morphing into pleasure down below, of that deep sensation of being opened somewhere forbidden.

“No. A five or six,” I breathed, and instantly his fingers were at my clit, stirring up once more, and soon a hot, wonderful wave of pleasure was flooding through me again.

“I love watching you take it,” he whispered as his fingers moved expertly over my wet clit. “I can’t wait to see you take all of me…”

“Ok, a seven. It’s a seven,” I muttered.

I could tell he liked this. Though his cock remained motionless inside my ass, paired with the bliss radiating from his quick fingertips, it felt like merely expanding to accommodate him was pleasure enough. Down below it was tight and painfully snug, but up above I was soaking, drenching him in my juices and getting desperately close to coming again.

When he slid the next hard inch of cock into me, it took my breath away, but I soon adjusted around him, loving how astonishingly full and naughty it felt to have him violate that secret part of me. He stroked and caressed, and even though my eyes were closed I could hear how turned on I was, could tell how liberally I was soaking his fingers.

“Now?”

“Eight,” I said, my voice laced with desperation.

“Fuck yes, that’s hot.”

I could feel him using his thumbs to part and open my pussy lips, to spread them wide to better access that quivering nub and stretch open that ravenous opening. I wanted to be opened wide and taken. I relished the thought that he could see and touch every hidden part of me. In went another inch, and this one stung.

“Shhh,” he said as I gasped.

“Eight and a half,” I moaned. He stroked my rock hard clit and seemed to send all that desperate pleasure through the rest of my body, till I couldn’t tell whether the bliss was coming from his fingers or from the solid girth of him now wedging further and further into my ass. I didn’t care. I just knew it felt good. Heavy and dark and naughty and thrilling and so, so good.

When he hooked a finger from each hand inside my pussy and spread them wide, opening me even wider still, I nearly lost my mind.

“Nine and a half,” I whimpered and he groaned his appreciation.

“Look,” he said. “Look at yourself.”

I opened my eyes and glanced down, and what I saw surprised me. He was much deeper in than I had thought. His cock was jammed in almost to the hilt, so only a half inch of him remained, ringed with that dark, coiled hair of his. I looked on as he spread my swollen pussy wide open, stretching that aching hole open with two fingers… and the view drove me wild. It was so dirty. Wrong but so, so right. We looked on like voyeurs, unable to tear our eyes away from the sight.

“I want to see you come. I want to feel it,” he said, and I watched as the base of his cock twitched in anticipation. Locked firm into that tight passage, I realized how close to coming he was himself. His fingers still pulling me open, he moved his thumbs to my clit and stroked again, but this time, I didn’t want to hold off. This time he wouldn’t stop me, wouldn’t tease me. I was soon leaping towards that full orgasm, and his fingers worked furiously, rubbing me hard to an orgasm that felt for the first few seconds like I had stopped breathing.

For a moment, everything went white and silent, and soon I tumbled down, coming hard and screaming as the pleasure ripped through me. Anchored against his fat cock, there was nowhere to pulse except against him, and this prolonged those deep, juicy waves, making me shudder and thrash wildly.

“Yes! Fuck, Nora, keep coming. Oh, god yes,” I heard him cry, and instantly his cock kicked and jerked deep inside me, and I knew he was coming too. I threw out my hands to grab his hips and pull him even further inside me, as deep as he would go, and the knowledge that he was bursting his hot load right into my belly was so wildly delicious that I was sure I was starting to come again, right on the tail of the last orgasm.

Locked so tightly into one another, we bucked and convulsed like this, the waves of the one’s pleasure rippling through to the other and back again, in a perfect, intoxicating feedback loop. Something about having him fuck me there felt so primal and raw. We didn’t do it often, but it was this feeling, this sensation of being completely and utterly exhausted afterwards, that made it all worth it. I felt spent, literally fucked, and it was perfect. I loved how he winced and tenderly pulled his still stiff cock from me, before collapsing beside me and gathering me up in his arms like he hadn’t already kissed me so much and needed to do even more.

“You have the most beautiful fucking body in the world, do you know that?” he breathed into my damp hair.

“I love doing that with you,” I said, letting my eyes close and my awareness return to that dull ache in my arm.

“Far enough away for you?”

I turned to look at him and his sweet, open face, beading with sweat at the brow. I loved that he could make me come with only the slightest movement. I loved that I could make him come just by coming myself.

“Oh, it’ll do,” I said with a playful smile, and reached over to peck his cheek.

We cuddled like this for a moment in silence, and then showered together, and then went to sit out on the terrace hammock and watch the scraps of distant clouds pass us by.

Jeff Cane was not only dead, he was beginning to feel like a ghost to me. And life without him in it was looking surprisingly peaceful.