Ground Money by Rex Burns

Author:Rex Burns [Burns, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4794-5
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com / Open Road
Published: 2012-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

“YOU ALMOST THREATENED him.”

“He took it that way, didn’t he?” Wager ducked under the water and came up blowing hard from the cold.

They stood waist-deep in the creek behind their cabin, the shock of the water easing into comfort, and scrubbed off the dust and sweat of the long day’s ride. On the shady side of the corral, the horses—rubbed with clean hay and fed an extra ration of oats—stood head to tail, wearily content to switch the flies off each other’s face and to enjoy the dry breeze of a long evening. On the bank, reflecting the clear green of the sunless sky, two wineglasses and a bottle rested half submerged on a ledge of water-smoothed sandstone that the stream had carved into the stony bank.

“Turn around—I’ll do your back.” Jo squirted a palm full of biodegradable soap from a plastic bottle and scrubbed at Wager’s tender muscles. He had expected his legs and bottom to be sore after the day’s ride, but there didn’t seem to be any reason why his back and neck should ache, too.

“OK—my turn.”

He dipped under the current again, a wave of noisy bubbles over his head, and popped up. Jo handed him the bottle, and he massaged the thin foam across the smoothness of her back. Beneath his dark hands her shoulders looked pale and fragile, and the way she arced against his fingers’ pressure made her flesh, despite her toughness, seem vulnerable to some pending but unknown threat. It was a note of vague sadness that seemed to drain some of the remaining light from the grass and earth that surrounded them, and to leave her pale form even more isolated against the coming darkness. Wager’s hand slid down the wet softness of her body, and he rested against her as if to keep her anchored in the current that pulled ceaselessly at them both. He felt himself between the taut swell of her buttocks, and despite the cold water, his own flesh stirred. She, too, felt his throb and pressed back against him; then he reached to feel the flat suppleness of her stomach and the soft rise below that and finally the tangle of warmth that opened to him as she slowly leaned forward against the stony bank and reached to guide him gently into her.

Their sighs were no louder than the murmur of the creek, and overhead, the rustling, liquid sounds of the willows echoed their slow rhythm and rose in the wind and stilled into a crystalline moment that stretched like a high, tense, inaudible note; then they rustled again as the wind stirred to become alive, and the creek—its sound louder under the cooling sky—once more tugged at their flesh.

Their eyes said what neither would speak; silently, they gathered the glasses and bottle, the towels and sandals and soap, and picked their way over the stubbled trail to the cabin.

“I’m cold now.” Her flesh drew into a shudder.

“Let’s get warm again.”

“Let’s.”

Later she murmured, “James didn’t have any marks—you know, from up at Leadville.

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