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  “Oh man,” Cam whispered, the image of his sweet wife like that swelling his manhood against his tight underwear.

  THERE WAS no denying what the thing thrusting against her was. It was Ryan’s penis. And it was formidable, to say the least.

  She felt the girth swelling out the material of his pants, and when he would push it into her, lift her butt with it, she would bend over just the slightest amount, nothing too vulgar, but enough that he would press the hump of it against her cheeks. She almost felt it touch the one spot where it never should.

  What the hell did Cam mean have fun? Making it sound so devious. She was having fun. But now those words he’d uttered had her doing things she should never do. Was this too far? She was letting another man who danced with her press his manhood against her flesh. She wasn’t denying him, just letting it happen. Have fun, he said.

  This was fun.

  Perhaps, though, it was racing her heartbeat just a little too much. She was getting sweaty from dancing, and there was a rising dirtiness to her thoughts. A premonitory sort of arousal that she recognized. The rapid breaths, the raised heart rate, these things could be attributed to her physical activity but she knew it wasn’t. Her resting heart rate was too low to get this worked up mildly grinding her booty to some quiet Latin music. Another bad sign: she was pretty sure that there was a certain interior sweating as well. Not a hundred percent sure, but were she to check it’s not like she would be shocked to find a certain slipperiness.

  Now Ryan’s hands came around her again and she pressed her shoulder blades to his chest, felt that thing pressing into the small of her back above her tailbone. Was it getting harder?

  God, that was enough.

  She turned to face him, looking to put some distance between them, looking for him to take her hands and maybe spin her around again—and he did, though, instead of spinning, tugged her toward him and now she felt the full size of that thing pushed right against her tummy. And with it, she was pinned by his sparkling blue gaze.

  She had the greatest reaction: she giggled. Well, that was cool. Giggled so girlishly that she cupped her hand over her mouth in embarrassment. He knew. He knew why she was giggling. This man knew that she had felt his arousal.

  “You have a sexy laugh,” he said.

  With her hand flipped away, she said, “Just my laugh?” then closed her hand over her smile again.

  He cocked his head and made a low, male sound of appreciation then flexed his hips so that huge thing he had pushed against her stomach again. “A lot more than your laugh.”

  She squeezed herself to him, pressing back against his erection and looking in his eyes. “I can tell,” she whispered, taking her hand away and wrapping her arms around his waist.

  Cam and the other two guys laughed loudly outside and it broke the spell; she glanced over her shoulder, a wash of shame splashing up her back, given the strange moment that had just passed between her and a man who wasn’t her husband.

  Ryan’s hips moved with the music again and she responded, still looking to see Cam, but then Ryan spun with her, sent her out for a twirl, brought her back and when she pressed to him again, he lifted her off her feet, spinning. Her body weight rested her stomach fully against his hardness and she kicked her heels up.

  Then she was down, bare feet thumping on the stone, stepping backward, laughing, meeting his gaze but putting some safe distance between them, her eyes wandering between his legs, looking to see his arousal but his black pants hiding the shape in the dim room. Her eyes darted up to Ryan’s and found him watching her, registering where this married woman’s eyes traveled. Knew then that this young wife with whom he’d danced all night, had also pressed his cock against and not been rebuffed, also had her worked up enough that she wanted to see the bulge it made against his pants. Her cheeks and ears went red hot and Ryan laughed. She covered her face with both hands, peeking at him around her fingers.

  Behind Ryan, Cam was approaching her, coming in from the balcony, Sasha and Lawson still out there drinking beer. She tried to stifle a weird giggle, dropped her hands and gave her husband a serious face—but he just passed her by, only mildly acknowledging her.

  Did he know what just happened? Her eyes returned to Ryan, still smiling deviously, her own mirth wiped from her face; she opened her mouth to say something to him, but no words came out. She fled.

  “Hey, wait,” she called after Cam, but he made his way into the kitchenette without stopping.

  She caught up and joined him on the other side of the counter, the two of them together in a separate space from the other three men.

  Cam was bent over, pulling a bottle of beer and a no-sugar vodka drink out of the mini-fridge. He plunked them on the counter, smiling at her. “I hope you’re having fun.”

  “I am,” she said looking at him suspiciously. “I’m having lots of fun.” He didn’t sound mad.

  He said, “I want you to have fun.” He narrowed his eyes on hers.

  She said, “Why are you being so cryptic?”

  “I think I’m being quite clear.”

  “Really? Because I think you’re trying to pretend you’re implying something, but I don’t think you are. You’re being weird.”

  “You’re being weird.”

  “That’s mature,” she said.

  He twisted off a bottle cap and tossed it into the sink. “Here,” he said handing the vodka to her. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Say what it is you’re dancing around.”

  He smiled. “You want me to say it, don’t you?”

  “Say what?” she said with exasperation.

  “Say what you want to hear.”

  “And what do I want to hear, Cam?”

  He cracked open his beer and knocked the mouths of their bottles together, then winked at her. “Just pretend I’m telling you what you want to hear.” He smirked and walked away.

  She hollered at his back, “I don’t want to hear anything.”

  But maybe she did.

  THE MIRTH he took in teasing his wife was borderline malicious. He snickered as he walked away, took another swig of beer. Ryan, done dancing with his wife now, sat on the leather, cushioned chair near the fire. And coming in from the patio Sasha and Lawson were joining them.

  As he walked past Ryan he patted his shoulder and said, “She thinks you’re a great dancer,” and smirked to himself again. Now he turned his back to the fireplace and put his butt down on the mantle, felt the warmth of the flames flickering at his back.

  The two other men joined them, coming in and sitting on the couch. Amberly still stood in the kitchenette with a puzzled expression. She took another swig of her vodka and looked at them, her expression hollow, her face drawn. He waved her to come join them.

  As she joined them, padding over in her hot pink dress, bare legs and feet, he toasted her, saying, “There’s the love of my life. To Amberly, for absolutely fucking smashing life.”

  Lawson laughed and held his beer out. The others did as well.

  “Smashing life?” she said, giving him a cynical smirk.

  To the sitting men, he said conspiratorially, “Do you know the amazing things she does? Never mind the business, her designs ... You know she was almost an Olympian?”

  “An Olympian?” all three of them said, out of sync.

  “Not really,” she said.

  “She was close,” he said.

  “There’s a lot of people that are close,” she said and took a sip of her vodka.

  He continued: “Then in the last ... What?—eight months, she just decides to turn her whole lifestyle around.”

  She clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes, and he watched as she put one bare foot over the other, his wife being bashful.

  “She was hot before, I gotta tell you, but she went keto, and went hard. She lost thirty pounds.”

  “Don’t,” she said, “seriously, you’re embarrassing me.”

  “Sorry,” he said, putting his hands up—m
aybe he was. So he decided to get to the point: “She always had muscle, always had shape. Amberly, turn around and flex those calves.”

  “What?” she said, practically a squeal.

  “Turn around and show us your calves.”

  There were grumbling chuckles of agreement from all of the other men.

  “You guys are gross,” she said. And yet she complied, setting her vodka down on the coffee table and turning her back to them, the beautiful shape of her body so undeniable, the swoop of her ass, the heft of her muscular ass cheeks, the narrow breadth of her waist; she put one leg slightly farther out behind her and raised herself to stand on the tips of her toes. The muscles flexed.

  The sight of his wife tensed his heart. She was truly breathtaking. So breathtaking it would seem that she had aroused quite the interest in Sasha. He sat on the couch between Cam and Amberly, his head turned toward her, his eyes shooting up and down her body. Between his legs, his hand rested, and Cam could clearly see he had palmed his own cock, the thing going sideways across his lap. He was hard and he was squeezing it.

  Now Cam stood up and clapped his hands, said, “Time to fire up that hot tub. What do you say?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EIGHT MONTHS AGO IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

  TWELVE GALLONS OF GAS, two bundles of firewood, beef jerky, a box of granola bars, twenty-four cans of Busch, a bottle of Jack, and the old man behind the counter at the general store had been nowhere near as frightening as she thought he might be, and seemed glad for their exorbitant purchases.

  Then it was only twenty-two minutes down a narrow dirt road heading east off the Trinity Highway. It curved and went down, rose then fell between towering spruce and pine, until they felt almost closed over. But finding the spot that she had reserved was straightforward. Part of a private reserve, there were about a dozen campsites and she’d booked the largest. Since it was June, the place wasn’t empty but not at capacity, and they passed only a few people hiking along the sandy strip that led from the dirt road through the private campground, Cass chewing on a beef jerky and waving at everyone through the window.

  Their camp site was about an acre, wooded, on the perimeter and bordering the very edge of federal land. So just beyond the edge of their campsite you could probably hike for days without seeing civilization. The center portion was sandy and that was where she parked the chaperone, coming into the lot and driving in a full circle before stopping. They unpacked, her two models actually quite helpful and kind of getting into this. They really didn’t have any camping experience—they weren’t joking about that—but they certainly were enjoying themselves, though sometimes Cass expressed a certain fear of the forest perimeter and the things she imagined may be beyond. Amberly did her best to placate her, let her know everything was going to be okay.

  She parked the Sprinter next to a rustic looking circular arrangement of stones that rimmed a fire pit, an old barbecue grate propped up in its middle, black and charred from years of use. She got that out of the way because it would ruin their pictures, but the stones looked nice. While she crossed her fingers and trusted that the two Cassidys could unpack her camera equipment without breaking anything, she set about getting the fire going.

  Down on both knees, arranging a teepee, years of bush craft and camping with her father sprouting out flames from her kindling structure in about five minutes—much to the excitement and acclamation from her two models, though she’d done it with paper, a lighter, and store-bought kindling. She’d done it in the mountains with gathered wood and flint before and didn’t really even think that that was too impressive. Nonetheless, she took their accolades then helped them organize the inventory of Stroud fleeces and shells for the photo shoot.

  The fleece zip-ups came in three different shades: mango, avocado, and blueberry. Printed on irregular panels were geometric patterns in complementary colors. The shells came in matching colors, the geometric print that she had designed—looking somewhere between Keith Haring and biochemistry—printed on panels that ran from the hood down the shoulders, becoming a wide stripe that ended at the cuff of the sleeve. Only problem was, though it was June and they were in high country, it was almost eighty-degrees today.

  Cassidy, holding up one of the fleeces by the shoulders admiringly, was the first to say it: “It’s, like, eighty today. And we’re going to sit by the fire?”

  “We can take breaks,” she said. “And, I think if we follow that main trail farther down you’ll find a creek somewhere. We can go swimming, cool off.”

  Cassidy nodded.

  Cass asked: “Should I just take my top off?”

  Cassidy responded, “Yes,” before Amberly even had a chance to consider the question. Cass swatted at him, but she was smiling.

  Cass said, “You won’t see this peasant top anyway. Just the fleece,” then directly to Cassidy, “my bra…” then back to Amberly, “... and my shorts.”

  Cassidy said, “Yeah, I can take my shirt off. We’re going to make your clothes stink though.”

  Cass said, “Speak for yourself.”

  Amberly told them: “Stink ‘em up. They’re prototypes. I just want pictures of them. Actually, you can keep the ones you wear.”

  “Really?—sweet,” Cassidy said.

  Cass and Cassidy stood at the open side door of the Sprinter, and he tossed the fleece he held onto the van floor and pulled his T-shirt up over his head, throwing that then into the van as well. Cass watched him from behind.

  Amberly caught herself, too—staring at this handsome guy baring his torso for them—shook her head with a laugh. “Hey, let me get the lights set up first.”

  “Need help?” Cassidy asked, turning now to face her. His body was lean and hard, his skin bronze. He wasn’t packed with too much muscle but he was defined; tight stomach with no fat, muscles that moved below; his carpenter jeans hung low on his waist and on either side of the trail of dark pubic hair crawling above his belt buckle, she saw angled lines of muscle where hips met abs. Blazed on the center of his chest, big and bold, wings stretched from shoulder to shoulder, was a stylized Aztec eagle in black, blue, and red.

  She was drawn to it, walking around the fire to join him, saying, “Nice tattoo.”

  Chest thrust out, he tucked his chin down to regard it, running his own fingertips over its lines.

  “Let me see,” Cass said, touching her shoulder and turning him so she could take a look. She touched it now, too. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Let’s see again,” Amberly said, getting him to pivot so she could take a closer look.

  Cass said, “Are you Mexican?”

  “Peruvian,” he said. “My mom is. My dad was just plain American.”

  Amberly said, “Yeah, I like it. Let it show a little when we shoot. Leave the fleece unzipped a little, you know?”

  CASS POSED in the camera’s viewfinder holding up a gray card so Amberly could adjust the white balance later when she edited the photos. Big white smile, hip cocked, she was downright flirtatious with the camera. She had a free-spirited charm. Maybe she could find bigger work as a model.

  “That good?” she asked Amberly now, clenching the gray card between her teeth and giving a tiny but fierce head-shake like a dog with a toy.

  “I got it,” she laughed, putting the camera down and reviewing the pictures she’d just taken.

  Behind Cass: Cassidy’s bare muscled back and long hair, their two skin tones together in this light made her stomach tighten suddenly and unexpectedly. She wasn’t into porn, but she’d flicked herself a few times through the years while watching on her laptop. It was that same tightness.

  “Jesus,” she whispered, and laughed at herself. The heat, their skin tone, their good looks—just fucking getting away from it all—were having a weird but not unwelcome effect on her.

  The camera she used was fixed with a ring light and other than that she opted for one LED fill in a box and a single reflector on the other side that bounced back the sunlig
ht coming off the white Sprinter. Plus the warm color from the campfire up lighting them …? She already liked what she saw.

  Now Cassidy was putting his arms into a fleece and Cass stood behind him, gray card still in her mouth, pulling off her peasant top. She tossed the card into the van next to Cassidy with her top, and he turned to face her, zipping up his Stroud Kestrel. Cass folded her arms behind her back and unhooked her pale pink bra. Cassidy watched, still without expression, as she tugged it off and flung it into the van, her very pretty and nicely sized breasts swaying.

  Cassidy gave a friendly and admiring, “All right.”

  “Pass me my fleece,” she asked him, and when he turned away she cupped and coddled her own breasts, like they were sore and itchy from her bra. She gave Amberly a funny grimace, like the two of them knew that feeling. She took the picture.

  As Cass put her arms into the fleece Cassidy passed to her, he unabashedly watched her bare breasts and it was somehow not lecherous. When she zipped up, he asked: “You ready?”

  SHE SHOT them for more than twenty minutes before their skin took a slick sheen from sweat, but it put color in their faces that the camera loved. They started with some standard hanging-around poses then some set up camping activities. Candid things that looked great—both of them had great unhindered spirit that shone through in their expression as they laughed and joked. She’d encouraged them to play around as though they were a couple and they had fun getting into it—trying to top each other with outrageous terms of endearment, trying to make each other laugh.

  Her 6D was wirelessly tethered to both her iPad and her MacBook Pro. All the shots transferred to them automatically, and she could keep track of how the shoot was progressing on the bigger screens better than with the camera’s small display. On a short break, she sat in the lip of the van’s open side, feet in the dirt, laptop on her thighs.

  Cass and Cassidy sat by the fire, crosslegged and side-by-side, hair clinging to them wetly, their backs against the log laid there as a bench. Cass asked her, “Does my Pop Tart look handsome?”