The Witness

more a bend in the river than a pool, but it worked fine.”
    Taking her glass, he set them both down on the counter as he moved her through the kitchen.
    “Water’s cool. The color of tobacco, I’d say, but clear. Russ and I and some others used to ride our mountain bikes up there on those long, schoolless days of summer, strip down and cool off. The first time I skinny-dipped with a girl was there, at what we locals call Fiddlehead Pool, because there’s fiddlehead ferns thick as thieves up there. I’ll take you sometime.”
    “That sounds very interesting, but right now—”
    He’d managed to get her into the bedroom, began to back her toward the bath. “You need to get naked and wet. Let me help you with that.”
    “You appear to be very determined,” she commented, when he pulled her shirt over her head.
    “Oh, I am. I am.” And flicked open the catch of her bra.
    “Then I suppose there’s no point in arguing.”
    “No point at all.” Reaching behind her, he turned the shower on, then flipped open the button of her fly.
    “Then I should cooperate.”
    “That’d be the sensible thing.”
    “I prefer doing the sensible thing.” She drew his shirt off, let it drop.
    “Hallelujah.” But he started to hold her back when she would have moved into him. “Let me rinse some of this sweat off first.”
    “I don’t mind it. It’s basic and natural, and …” She pressed her lips to the side of his throat. “Salty.”
    “You about kill me, Abigail. That’s God’s truth.”
    She wanted to, wanted to make him want and yearn and quiver as he made her. She embraced the musky scent of him, the good sweat of physical labor as she stripped off his pants, as he stripped off hers.
    And the water ran cool over her head, down her body.
    “It feels good,” she murmured.
    So good when his mouth took her mouth, when his hands took her body. When she tasted his hunger for her, felt his need for her.
    She imagined them sinking into cool, tobacco-colored water in the bend of a river where fiddlehead ferns grew thick and green and moonlight shimmered in rays through a canopy of trees.
    “I want to go to your swimming hole.”
    “We will.”
    “In the moonlight,” she said, as her head fell back, as his lips skimmed over the column of her throat. “I’ve never been romantic, not before you. But you make me want moonlight, and wildflowers and whispers in the dark.”
    “I’ll give you all of it, and more.” He slicked her wet hair back, framed her face to lift it to his. “And more.”
    “Promises and secrets, and all the things I never understood. I want them with you. I love you so much. I love you. That’s already more than I ever had.”
    “More still.” He drew her into the kiss, long and slow and deep, as the water showered over them. He’d have given her the moon itself if he could, and an ocean of wildflowers.
    Promises. He could give her those. A promise to love her, to help her find peace of mind, a safe haven.
    And moments like this, alone, where they could tend to each other, pleasure each other. Shut the world and all its troubles, its pressures and its demands away.
    She washed him, and he her—inch by inch. Arousing, lingering, prolonging. Now the scent of honey and almond rising up, the slick, slippery slide of hands, of bodies, the quick catch of breath, the long, low sigh.
    So when he braced her, when he filled her, there was moonlight and wildflowers, there were whispers and promises. And more.
    There was, she thought as she surrendered, everything.
    T HE SENSATION OF CONTENTMENT stayed with her as she stood in the kitchen, contemplating doing something interesting with potatoes—Brooks liked potatoes—to go with the steak and salad. She glanced, a little guiltily, at her computer as she poured wine for both of them.
    “I should try again, now that we’ve had our break.”
    “Give your big brain a little rest. Let’s sit down a minute. I’ve got a couple updates for you.”
    “Updates? Why didn’t you already tell me?”
    “You were involved when I first got home,” he reminded her. “Then I was distracted by shower sex.”
    He sat at the counter, and since she’d already poured it for him, picked up his second glass of lemonade.
    “I guess we’ll take them in order. I had a talk with Roland Babbett. The cameras I borrowed from you did the trick, caught him going into the Ozarks Suite using B-and-E tools to do it.”
    “You arrested him?”
    “In a manner