“I got enough for that,” he said. He nodded while she looked up at him from his chest, which she simply couldn’t get enough of. The man was very nicely muscled, and after having felt the blessings and power of those muscles twice, she really wanted to know much more about them. For the first time in her life, she had a glimpse into what men really got out of looking at and fondling breasts, because she was seriously into looking and fondling his chest for the whole evening.
“I’ve got money,” she said. “I can go half.”
“Never said you didn’t or couldn’t. Is it going to be an issue, though?”
“An issue? You mean will I get to feeling like you don’t see me as an equal if I don’t pay my own way? I hope you never see me as an equal then, and always pay my way.” She smiled, but then she lifted up and looked him in the eye.“Not treating me with respect, though, that’s a whole different thing. I’ll leave you hanging if you start treating me like a second-class citizen, or tell me to service your bros, or any other childish fantasy crap. Is that going to be an issue?”
“No, Bev,” he said without hesitation. “That will never be an issue. I’m sure we’ll find plenty of things to have down-and-dirty battles over, and I even look forward to them with the preview you gave me today, but that, that will never, not once, be one of those things.”
She stretched up and kissed his lips. “Then you can pay all you want. Just let me know if I can help out to make it easier, because all I really care about is spending some time with you.”
She woke him up in the morning and sucked him off before getting coffee started. He staggered out into the living room after her. “So, with game time over, I can get dressed now?”
“Thought we’d take a shower together first. My shower is definitely large enough. It was built for handicap use. In fact, this whole house was redone for handicap use. That’s why the doorways are so wide and there are hand rails around the place.”
He eyed the stove. “And all the knobs are across the front, so you aren’t reaching over flames from your wheelchair.”
She looked at the stove, having never put that together before, but she nodded. “It is a brand new stove. I’ll bet that’s exactly the reason.”
They showered and then dressed for riding. He said their first stop was his place for fresh socks, and she nodded with a grin.
The trail down to his place from the main road was merely a break in the barbed wire fence line, and then a dirt track. The track led down to a small stand of trees, and then went for about two hundred feet up to the porch of a small white house with blue trim and a red shingled roof. It was cute, nearly as cute as hers. Nearly. It did have a great porch that was three steps up from the ground, which had a screen door and was sealed up with light insect netting all the way around. There was a chair sitting out there, a comfortable cloth-stuffed rocker, which looked like it got used almost daily.
“Want a line of coke?” he asked as he went through the front door and headed for his bedroom.
She followed as far as the living area, which was definitely all male. Rural country living all male, no less. Shot guns were racked up on one wall. The head of a coyote and the skin of one were tacked up as well. Stained and varnished wood slates covered the walls of the living room while white paint seemed to be everywhere else.
“Wouldn’t turn one down,” she said.
“Do you prefer crystal?”
“No, coke is good. I’m not fond of the comedown on crystal and it makes me horny as hell. So unless you would enjoy watching me masturbate like a monkey for several hours at a time, I’ll take the coke.”
He came back down the hallway. “Wow, that’s a tough one. Do you make chimp sounds, and the whole bit? That could be real entertainment.” He smiled.
She tossed one of the loose couch pillows at him. “No, and it’s not pretty.”
“Ah, well, then we’ll go with coke and get out of here. We should probably get some things to eat and drink in Lakeside. Fruit and stuff? At the farmers’ market?”
“Sounds good.”
At Lakeside, they shopped at the farmers’ market, picking out things to munch on in their beach cottage. Leo seemed distracted, and she tried to find what was annoying him, but she didn’t spot anything unusual around.
“You alright?” she asked. “The low growling noise your eyebrows are making is a little distracting.”
He gave her a quirky smile. “Interesting description.”
“I make a living reading interesting descriptions. Part of the package, I’m afraid.”
He stopped and searched her eyes, and then said, “This isn’t exactly planned, this thing between you and me, and if it was planned, I would crucify the planner, because it’s horrible planning.”
“Ok, what’s up?” she asked.
“There are things going on right now that you can’t know about. I can’t even curb your curiosity about them. I can’t even tell you why. So, if I say I can’t explain, I really, honestly, can’t explain. But someday, in like the next six weeks or so, I’ll tell you everything, if we make it that far. Otherwise, maybe we should just stop now and try to hook back up in six weeks, when I don’t have all of this crap going on.”
“I don’t like option B, so I’m going with option A,” she said.
“Alright then. So with all that in mind, I need to make a phone call. It would be better if you found some good grapes for us, and maybe a couple of bottles of wine,” he suggested.
“In other words, don’t listen in. Gotcha. Come find me when we can get out of here and back on the road. Will this be a regular event this weekend?”
“No, and that’s why I need to make the phone call now — so it won’t be,” he told her.
Accepting that, she left him heading for the grape display, wondering who was following them.