Poppy

When my grumpy white knight said he had a place in the bayou, I assumed he had a hunting cabin. Possibly one of those super cute, terribly picturesque shack-like buildings that occasionally pop up on the water’s edge. I’ve boated by more than one of them. They’re small, modest, and relatively weather-beaten. I figured he had four walls, most of a roof, and maybe a solar-heated shower—or a hose hooked up to a cistern.

This place… is something else.

I mean, it’s not even in the same zip code as a hunting cabin or your usual bayou property. Not only does he own the island, but he has a bona fide McMansion sitting on it. Two palatial stories high, his I’m-richer-than-God house looks like something straight out of Gone With The Wind but on a slightly smaller scale just so it fits on the island. If it were any bigger, it would need its own state or possibly a continent. It screams money. Age. Those columns lining the front of the house and the wraparound verandahs? I’m in love with them already, and Mother Nature’s idea to giftwrap the place in Spanish moss was downright inspired. This place isn’t what I’d imagine a biker would go for. First of all, it’s on an island—so roadways and biking and riding free are severely limited. Plus, the more I look around, the more it feels like I fell off my boat and into a fairytale. It’s possible I hit my head and I’m totally delusional, but I love it. It’s beautiful in a wild, overgrown way.

Just like the owner.

Previous Me picked a big authoritarian man who found fault with everything—and our love life didn’t end well. He thought he knew best, and at first the orders were kind of sexy. He looked out for me, just wanted what was best for me, and how could that hurt? It’s tempting to let someone else take the wheel. Not forever, but just for a few minutes. Hours. Days. You see that slippery slope my ass is sliding down? The crash landing that’s about to happen? I never do until it’s too late. One order always leads to another like paper rings in a construction paper chain.

I didn’t let Mr. Ex hit me. Not ever. But there are so many other ways to hurt. To hit back. No spanking games or kink for me. No bondage, no ropes, no handing over control—because my ex turned out to be an asshole extraordinaire and what should have been fun and games ended up hurting. He ripped me apart verbally until I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.

My not-so-white knight, however, doesn’t look like the kind of guy who plays games. He’d be all about the action. Domination. Pleasure. Sex with him would be straight up raw and gritty, and he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d get off on telling me off. Still, I have to stop thinking about him naked. Of course, my other problem is that I have no filter. I just blurt out whatever I’m thinking and I don’t know how to make nice. I suspect we have that in common.

Apparently, Mr. Not-So-White Knight’s fancy place doesn’t have a suitable bathroom on the first floor, because he steers me up a sweeping staircase that makes me want a crinoline and one of those big puffy Scarlett O’Hara dresses. Or maybe that’s just me wanting something, anything, that’s not soaking wet and covered in mud. Mud itches when it dries, as I’m finding out fast. I sort of trail behind him, indulging my curiosity as he stalks past door after door. There are lots of rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and big soaring ceilings—and not much furniture. The place is practically empty.

Okay. So maybe he spent his money on the house.

Maybe he’s really, really minimalist.

He stops when we reach the end of the hall. More long windows look out over an impressive sweep of bayou. I try to play it cool, but check this place out. How does he walk around like it’s no big deal? The view at my place is of next door’s brick wall.

“Fuck,” I announce way more loudly than necessary, coming to a dead stop in front of the window. I think there are two herons getting it on down at the water’s edge, or maybe those are swamp iris? I need my spare glasses stat.

Mr. Not-A-Knight just looks at me. And because he’s probably now thinking that was an invitation to have some dirty sex with me (literally, seeing as how I’m still wearing half the bayou on my body), I clarify. “Not literally. I have a problem. With my mouth.”

This time he’s definitely checking me out. His gaze runs over me, leaving stupid tingles in its wake. I like having him look at me.

“Seems fine,” he grunts. I can’t help but notice that he’s not big on talking.

So I clarify, partly to fill in the awkward silence. “I don’t think before I speak.”

And then I keep on going, when really I should shut up. “It scares guys off,” I admit. “Gals too. Although I definitely prefer a penis. But my ex is a douche.”

And hello verbal diarrhea…

My companion jerks his chin in my direction, which has to be some kind of acknowledgement, right? Tacit permission to speak because this guy’s just so goddamned fascinated with all the painful, private details of my life? Even I know I’m stretching this, but I keep right on going anyhow.

“My ex was a professor. Is one. He was my professor. The chair of my thesis committee for my MS in biology.”

Can you date your professor? Absolutely. On a scale of one to ten, however, the idea is a solid negative million. Believe it or not, I dated the man for his brain and not his dick. He was the Biology God, the best at what he did, and my hormones decided that meant he could rock my world in bed. My hormones need to take a nice, long vacation or possibly even grow up because they’re zinging to life again around today’s noble rescuer.

“Didn’t work out?” Mr. Tall, Dark, and Aloof reaches around me, flattens his palm on the door at my back, and pauses. See? Maybe he does want to hear my story. Maybe he’s listening and his own hormones are doing some zinging—or stiffening—and he’s wondering what it could be like between us. We could do our own reenactment of Gone with the Wind in this place because he definitely looks like he could haul my not-so-small ass up the stairs and still have enough breath left to make me come twice. I’d just lean into him and he’d slide those big muscular arms under my legs, and we’d be off.

A big hand brushes the side of my face. Shit. My cheeks heat up.

“You gonna answer me?” Humor threads through his dark, rough voice. I think he might be laughing at me. With me, hopefully, because I’ve been the butt of enough jokes already, thank you very much. I’ve moved on.

“The sex worked out fine,” I tell him. “We did it—in the library, his office, his car, and even occasionally in his bed—and it was actually pretty good. Sure, he was fairly normal in the orgasm department, but he got me there and we had secretive sex for six months. Until someone found out.”

“You like sex in public?” That rich note of laughter is back in his voice. I probably shouldn’t be oversharing about my sex life because obviously now he has to be thinking about me naked and doing it, and that’s just going to make things even more awkward between us.

“Babe?” He sort of growls the word, his head dipping toward mine. It’s not the Scarlett O’Hara moment I was going for, but he certainly sounds like he doesn’t give a damn.

I shrug automatically. It’s not that I like or dislike semi-public sex. Nathan wouldn’t acknowledge that our relationship was a serious one, although he was happy to fool around with me. I thought he was just being cautious, but that his public kisses meant that he was okay with all of us going public. I took what he gave and thanked him for it, which in retrospect is both infuriating and cringeworthy. Hindsight would make the best kind of birth control. If I’d known then how I feel now, I’d have kept my clothes on and my hands off Nathan.

“People guessed that we were sleeping together. It was sort of an open secret by the end.” I can’t help but notice how close his mouth is to mine. Like, almost kissing close. But his eyes are watching mine. He’s not checking out my face, my mouth, or my tits. He’s just watching—me.

“Sucked?” He doesn’t waste any words. I like that.

“I got winks and nudges when I started applying for jobs about just what I’d done to earn my letter of recommendation. My published articles were treated as if they were love letters or our own personal porn. Why else would he have published me in the journal he edited?”

He doesn’t say anything, and honestly I’m not looking for his input, feedback, or sympathy. I just need to tell someone, and he’s been elected. I blame him for dragging me back to his place. And if that isn’t one hundred percent fair of me? Too fucking bad. Life isn’t fair. Ask me how I know.

And shit wasn’t all rosy at home, either. Turns out my professor thought he should provide feedback about every aspect of my life—how I dressed, walked, talked, breathed. He took over, took control, took me. And I let him.

“So we broke up, and now I’m done with men.”

“Uh-huh.” I’m pretty sure that’s his hand I feel stroking over my hair. Probably feels awful, what with all the mud and bayou water drying in there, but I’ll take it. I sort of lean into his touch before I can stop myself. I’m so pathetic.

And I’m lonely.

So fucking lonely.

I don’t miss the sex or the drama, but this? I miss this. The little touches, knowing that I’m not alone and that I literally have someone to lean on. Not that Mr. Not So Knightly and I have anything other than an hour in a boat and some shared swimming time together. But… he’s here.

I’m here.

My rescuer doesn’t comment on my over-share. He just shoves the door open behind me, cutting off my flow of words. I don’t even stagger a little because somehow he’s got a hand on my shoulder and he steadies me. He turns me around gently and steers me through the bedroom to the bathroom.

Right. The shower. Because I’m covered in God knows what from my dip in the bayou and I’m sure I stink. And look like hell. And anything more from me—like dirty, sexual kind of more things—will be the last thing he wants or that I should be daydreaming about. It’s just because I’m lonely and he’s here.

“Six and a half minutes,” he says. Those words bear absolutely no relationship to our previous topic of conversation. My personal life, while cut short, could be measured in longer than minutes, so color me confused. Maybe it’s code?

“And then what?” I have an active imagination, and I use it. I imagine all sorts of Mountain Man fantasies. I’ve never understood the whole lumberjack fantasy. Now I do. I’m totally onboard with the flannel shirt and jeans thing. Maybe I can get him to pose with an ax for me.

“Water runs out,” he says gruffly.

Well… shoot. His practicality pricks a hole in my fantasy balloon and pops it. There’s nothing like a dose of reality to bring me back down to earth. Still, it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How he’s even got running water of some sort way out here in the bayou? It’s like I just woke up in the pages of Little House on the Prairie—or one of those coffee table books where people are living off grid in some fabulous, I-built-it-with-my-own-hands house. I suspect those lives look better in print than they are in reality, but what do I know? The closest I’ve come to living in the bayou is my occasional overnight in my wolf blind.

I turn to him because surely he has to know the answers to my questions. “How does it work?”

I don’t think the look on his face is flattering at all. “You take your clothes off,” he says. “And then you get wet and soap up. Let me know if you need a demonstration.”

Okay then.

I wonder how rescuing idiot me from a possible watery death has turned into dirty shower time. At least on my part. Because he’s just standing there, arms crossed over his chest, glowering at me, and he doesn’t look like he wants to kiss me. At all. I fight the urge to shrink back into myself or to launch into apologies. If Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships, I’m the woman who drops the starting flag on an armada of I’m sorries. And since I’m turning over a new leaf, discovering a new, better, stronger me… that woman has to go away. I swallow my apology.

“Gator,” he bites out.

“Excuse me?” I glance around, hoping that’s just some weird comment and not an announcement about incoming wildlife.

“My name is Gator,” he says impatiently.

Oh.

I totally suck at this whole people thing. It’s why I do so much better alone in the wolf blind than working in a lab where I have to actually interact with other human beings. I’ve somehow skipped entire introductory chapters of the relationship book and plopped myself down in the middle. Or maybe I was so busy making up nicknames for him that I never noticed I hadn’t actually been introduced to the guy? Forward, I remind myself. All I can do is go forward—even if I kind of wish I had a time machine so I could step backward and have a do-over.

“I should have started with that, shouldn’t I? That’s what normal people do,” I tell him. Although I’m not sure either of us is normal. Given the scars on his face and his arm, the name Gator explains a lot.

He gives me a look. “Sometimes names don’t matter so much,” he says.

I nod energetically. See? We’re on the same page. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re both clearly loners, even if I hide in a lab rather than on an island.

“It’s the shit you do,” he continues.

And I just know that he’s seen and done things. I’m not sure how I feel about that, so I duck into his bathroom. And then I realize I probably should have introduced myself but didn’t. Too late now. I scoot into his shower because I need to get this mud off me stat. I can’t help but notice that the door doesn’t have a lock. I’m out here in the middle of nowhere with no phone and no back up. I should be scared and yet… I’m not. I’m… hopeful. Who knew Stockholm Syndrome could set in so fast or apply to surly white knight rescuers as well as kidnappers?

There’s a hard knock on the door.

I ease it open cautiously. “I’ve still got about six minutes and twenty seconds.”

Big hands shove a stack of clothes at me. There’s a pair of navy blue boxer briefs on top. Is he naked? Is this some kind of weird come on? I risk a look down, but Gator’s legs are still covered with denim. And mud. And probably half of the bayou. God. Why is he being so mostly nice to me?

“Clothes,” he growls, shoving his load at me again.

I nod cautiously. Maybe he’s crazy? Maybe that’s why he lives out here all alone on an island in a ginormous mansion?

He kind of growls his next words, sounding like a cross between a really angry wolf and a woman-eating bear. “Not a fucking Neiman Marcus, babe. Wear this or go naked. Either works for me.”

Oh.

A stack of towels lands on top of the briefs. “Towels,” he says pointedly. I don’t think he has a high opinion of my cognitive skills.

“Got it,” I babble, clutching my loot closer to my chest. Which is probably just going to mess up some perfectly clean clothes, but honestly? I need to put something between me and Gator, and that door isn’t going to be enough. “This is great. You have awesome towels and a really great place. It’s amazing. You must love it out here.”

We’ve covered that ground already. I know that. Maybe. But my mouth babbles on and on, trying to fill up the silence because if I’m talking, he can’t. He can’t say something hurtful or scary. And I won’t have to figure out what to say back to him if he announces that the words coming out of my mouth are dumb as fuck. I need him to like me, and, I admit it, I’d like to see him smile. Just because then I’ll know that he’s not entirely pissed off at me for invading his space and KOing his silence.

He reaches out and gently nudges my shoulder. “In.”

Right. The bathroom. My much-needed shower. I bet I stink. Bayou mud is particularly fragrant, and I’m wearing an enormous quantity of it.

I can’t keep the dreaded S-word in my mouth any longer. “Sorry,” I tell him.

And then he gives me that smile I’ve been craving. Not a big one—his lips barely crook up at the corners, but there’s humor in his eyes, a warmth that’s way too seductive. He looks way more human when he almost-smiles—much less like some kind of angry grizzly bear and more like the white knight I absolutely, totally do not need in my life ever again.

“Not a problem,” he rumbles in a low, raspy voice.

“You sure?”

“Fuckin’ certain,” he agrees, and then he turns me around and points me toward the shower. “You go take care of business.”

Alrighty then. I shut the door behind me. It still hasn’t grown any kind of working lock, but somehow… I think I’m okay. Gator’s not a white knight, but he did rescue me. If he’d wanted to hurt me, he’s already had his opportunity, so maybe I’m free and clear. Maybe I can relax.

I mean, this is the place to do it. The bathroom is as amazing—and empty—as the rest of the house. It’s all white marble, with a big claw foot tub smack in the center of the room. I’ve lived in apartments smaller than this place. In order to get into the tub, I have to scale the Mount Everest-worthy lip, and even then it’s still a stretch to reach up to grab the showerhead. The previous occupants of this house were apparently giants. Or really, really into yoga. Big windows let in all sorts of light from the bayou—and hello… there’s zero privacy. Gator apparently isn’t big on curtains. Of course, he also doesn’t expect company, either, so it’s probably not a problem. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s going to tear down the stairs and stand out there in the yard just to watch me shower.

But just in case… I’ll shower fully clothed and strip afterwards. Maybe. Getting naked still seems like a bad idea, plus I can’t quite wrap my head around wearing Gator’s borrowed clothes. I climb into the tub, hit the water, and reach for the soap. Of course he has a single green bar. The Irish Spring is as blunt and frill-less as my host.

I cast around, just in case I’ve missed something.

And come up empty.

No shampoo. No conditioner. Just a whole lot of nothing. So I’ll make do with the soap—that’s something, right? I could have nothing. I could be swimming to Baton Rouge right now instead of using up all of this guy’s hot water. When I get back, I’ll run down to the store and buy the biggest bottle of wine I can find and an even bigger bag of chips. Maybe ice cream too, and strawberry Twizzlers. That has to cover at least two major food groups (dairy and fruit, I’m looking at you), and eventually everything will look better. I’ll find the wolves. I’ll keep my grant. I’ll get my do-over and second chance at living happily ever after, even if it’s just with myself.

Yeah. I’m not kidding anyone.

I give up and slide down into the bottom of the tub. Pretty sure that’s not just water sliding down my face now.