Hidden Summit

“More. Come on, harder.”
    He chuckled. “Not yet. I want you to let it build. Slow and easy. Try to lie still and let me get you there, from the inside, let it build.”
    And she groaned. She couldn’t do it. She tried moving her hips against him, but he wasn’t allowing it. He held her still and took his time, pumping, kissing, sucking.
    It wasn’t long before she began to lose control and pant, squirm, dig her heels into the mattress and lift against him, slam against him.
    “Okay, baby,” he said. “I guess it’s time....” He covered her mouth, accepted her tongue into his, grabbed her hips, fixed the friction just right and pounded into her, fast and rhythmic, hard and even, deep and perfect. And she rose, cried out against his mouth, wrapped her legs around him to hold him and erupted into a liquid heat that sent him out of his mind, clenching in the most delicious spasms. He tried to wait her out, let her finish before he gave it up, but he could only do so much, and he went off like a rocket, a beautiful rocket.
    “God,” he said. “God. Les…”
    She eventually collapsed beneath him, panting. He buried his face in her neck and tried to even his breathing, but it was as if he’d run a sprint.
    She played with the hair at his temples while she floated back to earth; he liked that part. When he could finally lift his head, he looked into her hot, dark eyes and said, “Do you have any idea how much I love you?”
    She smiled at him and said, “I think I do. About as much as I love you.”
    He smoothed back her hair. “We’re going to be all right, Les. We’ll just get through the next few weeks and then we’ll get on with our lives. New lives for both of us.”
    “Here?” she asked.
    He gave a little shrug. “This is as good a place as any. And if the time comes, we can take care of your parents.” He grinned. “The fun couple.”
    She was momentarily stunned into silence. “You’d do that for me?” she asked in a whisper.
    “I’d do anything for you.”
    Conner spent the weekend. He went back to his cabin for a change of clothes, but had all day Sunday with her. They went to a movie and brought home Thai food Sunday night, watched the sky turn lavender again and went to bed together. Early.
    When Conner lay beside Leslie, he found it difficult to sleep. She felt so good against him, and he didn’t want to miss a second of it. Everything in his life had changed in the past couple of months. Everything he wanted for his life had changed.
    Witnessing a brutal crime was a helluva way to have an epiphany, but that’s probably where the changes began. When it had first happened, his resentment for his circumstance had been so enormous it had almost been suffocating. When his store had burned down, when the threat had come, hatred had risen up in him, and he’d felt like killing someone himself. When the D.A. had decided the most reasonable and safe thing to do was separate him from his sister and nephews for at least a few months, it had felt like a small death.
    Slowly his perspective began to change. It was so slight at first he’d barely noticed, and he certainly hadn’t understood what was happening to him. He understood now. He’d been a slave to his business; there hadn’t been room for much else. It hadn’t been unusual for him to put in sixteen-hour days. When he had spent time with Katie and the boys, he’d often done so during a work break. He’d leave work to go to their preschool program or T-ball game or birthday party and then go back to the store to clean up, to lock up. He would have dinner with them and then go back to the store. He had rarely taken days off; he’d even built the boys’ race car beds at the store in the stockroom and then delivered them in one of his trucks. It had been all about filling up the days and making things work.
    When he’d lost the store, the shock almost broke him. He’d had nowhere to go, nothing to do. When Katie and the boys had moved away to their own hiding place, he hadn’t been sure he’d ever sleep at night again. “Just a few months,” he’d told her. “Just to be safe, and then we’ll get it all back the way it was.”
    Now he realized he didn’t want it the way it had been. He wanted to be able to give quality time to the people he loved. He wanted to teach the boys to fish, to camp, if he could even remember how himself. And while he’d always told himself he’d be okay with the idea of not living