Thirty-Six

CORA

I don’t like camping. The way I see it, my parents didn’t immigrate from a province in the Philippines for me to cook my meals over a fire.

…which makes it even more absurd that it was my idea to go camping.

I’m dick drunk. Dick hammered, more like it. Everett merely mentioned offhand, Shenandoah is mind-blowing this time of year, and there I was, brushing his beautiful brown hair over his forehead and saying, We should go sometime. Rookie mistake. I should have known that a guy like Everett, a twenty-eight-year-old with two Ivy League degrees, who will almost certainly become the second-youngest person in Congress, would interpret “sometime” as “right fucking now, princess.”

And apparently I’m so supremely dick wasted , I stood there and watched him load up his car and didn’t stop him.

I may hate camping, but god, I like this guy.

The Shenandoah Valley is a one hundred fifty-mile expanse of protected wilderness known for its unruly greenery and winding trails set between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains. And because Everett Logan is, first and foremost, a lawyer and a policy analyst at the EPA, he spends fifteen-minutes of the drive describing the 1964 Wilderness Act nonstop.

“Nineteen sixty-four,” he muses while shaking his head, eyes on the road. “Can you believe that? World War Two ended nineteen years before and the population was exploding alongside transportation expansions. There was so much post-war growth, and nobody was considering the environmental repercussions.” His hand grips the wheel. “You’ve got to read the text of the Wilderness Act one day, princess—promise me you will. There’s this line in it: ‘A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.’ I mean, that’s just…” He shakes his head and exhales slowly, the way most people do when they watch the season finale of their favorite television show.

I’m caught up in the little smile on Everett’s face until he glances at me and his expression tightens.

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

“For what?”

“I do this thing. I’ve always done it. I go on these tangents about the environment, and I don’t even realize I’m rambling.”

“You did this the night we met,” I mention, recalling Everett standing in the bar and stopping mid-sentence while he was talking about a meteor shower.

Everett nods. “I was going on about the Perseids—”

“No, you apologize for loving something,” I clarify before I shake my head. “Don’t do that, Everett. Don’t ever apologize for loving something.”

His eyes train on the road and stay there, and we’re quiet for a few minutes until he glances at me and says, “The Wilderness Act made me want a career in politics.”

“I always assumed it was your father.”

“Nope. It went hand in hand with learning about photography in the sixth grade. This professional photographer took pictures for my dad’s campaign, and she let me hold her camera. I was hooked, but Dad thought it would be a waste of time. He refused to get me one.”

“Fucker,” I mutter.

Everett chuckles. “That’s what Alyssa said when she gave me the exact camera I wanted for my twelfth birthday. I used to sneak it in my backpack and go on bike rides, which meant I was mostly doing nature shots. The more time I spent taking pictures, the more grateful I was for national parks and wildlife preserves.”

“That’s beautiful,” I murmur, facing him and frowning. “Everett, that’s incredibly beautiful. Why haven’t I heard this before?”

“I don’t know. Habit. My father told me to ‘tone down the environmental shit’ a long time ago,” he replies, grimacing. “He says people might assume I’m anti-business.”

“How did he react when he finally found out how much you like photography?”

Everett pauses before he says, “I haven’t told him.” He reaches over and places his hand on my thigh, grip familiar—and possessive. “He still doesn’t know.”

***

When we get to the campsite, a dim layer of cricket chirps accompanies the gentle tremor of the valley’s breeze. Late afternoon sun grazes the clearing in splashes of marigold and honey. It’s lovely, truly.

We’re surrounded by trees, but there’s a clearing for our tent near the fire pit, and after a quick survey of the site, Everett gets to work.

He’s borderline unrecognizable as a congressional candidate, dressed in faded flannel and heavy brown hiking boots. I’m about to comment on it, but I don’t get that far because Everett turns his baseball cap backwards.

I can say with total honesty: I have never been this close to orgasming without being touched in my entire life.

Preppy rich-boy Everett is hot. Maniacal politician Everett is obscenely hot. Outdoorsy, backwards hat-wearing Everett is utterly ridiculous .

Like, what the actual fuck. How much hotter can he get?

He’s too busy hammering a tent stake to notice me salivating over him. His brow tightens as he works, and there’s a familiarity to the way he situates the stake, angling it just so. He grabs another and flips the heavy piece in his hand, catching it like he’s done it a hundred times before—and maybe he has.

And if he has pitched hundreds of tents before today, I wonder how many people have observed this version of Everett. I wonder how many people have seen him lackadaisically unroll a tarp while dressed in old jeans, humming while he works.

The coils of muscles underneath his skin shift, emphasizing a body well-adjusted to the outdoors—to being physical. His big hands are steady, dusted with dirt. And most profoundly of all, there’s a half-smile on his face when he hammers in the last stake.

It takes him tossing the mallet to the side for me to realize I may be seeing Everett Logan for the first time.

He finally notices me and chuckles. “I know that look.”

“What look?” I roll back onto my heels, shifting away from the pile of tent poles I’ve been assembling. “I’m not giving you a look.”

“And here I thought you never lied. You’re eye fucking me so hard that I should ask for a tip.”

I clamber to my feet. “ Please . You give it up for free every time.”

Everett doesn’t respond though. His gaze has drifted down to my knees—my dirt-covered knees.

“Ugh,” I mutter, bending to dust them off.

“Leave it.”

When I see Everett’s eyes still locked on my legs, I frown. “Is this turning you on?”

He bobs his chin. “You thought you could stand in front of me in your slutty little cutoffs, knees covered in dirt from kneeling, and I wouldn’t want it?” He clicks his tongue. “I thought you knew I was a sick fuck. Unbutton.”

“Unbutton what?”

“Everything.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You’re asking me to get naked in the woods?”

“I wasn’t asking,” Everett answers before he flicks his chin.

Goosebumps immediately rise on my arms, but I go with it. Once I’m naked, wearing nothing but my piercings, Everett’s eyes take me in.

“Oh, princess,” he murmurs.

I’ve been in the business long enough to know what a guy needs to get off, so I know what Everett is going to say before he does.

It’s no surprise to me when he whispers, “Come here,” while cocking his middle and index fingers back, beckoning me.

And because I know what happens next, I slide my boots back on before I walk over. When I’m standing in front of him, his hands start at my shoulders. He cups them with sure palms before he drags his hands down my arms, skimming the raised skin on my scar before he stops at my elbows.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, hooded eyes flicking over my face. “You’re always so good for me. Better than good. You’re enough .”

I inhale, letting the gravity of his words sink in. Praise is foreign to me. It was always withheld when I was growing up, so I don’t quite know how to ask for it—or accept it. Everett is the only person who knows this about me, and inherently, he knows how much I need it. I nod.

“You’re enough and you’re everything to me. Everything.”

Everything .

I nod again, letting the silence speak for me. I let him know I can stand here and take his pretty words—and ask for more.

“All I want is to show you off.” His thumb caresses my skin, doting and gentle. “I’d give anything to show the world how special you are.”

When my lips curve into a small smile, he gets it. He knows I see him—understand him—and what I need is something only he has ever given me.

And because he gets it, his next words don’t surprise me at all: a whispered, “And such an insatiable slut,” while he drags the backs of his fingers against the side of my bare breast. “A little cum dumpster, waiting for it.”

Words have always been the pinnacle of importance to me, a weapon I could wield better than anyone I knew. They were the closest thing I had to an equalizer in a world that expected me to be diminutive.

I nod again, basking in Everett’s words—in his degradation and his praise living alongside each other. Nobody expects these words to fit, but they do. They truly do.

“I’m going to fuck you senseless,” he whispers, speaking into my ear now. “I’ll have you begging for a hand on your neck. My fingers in your pretty mouth. My spit on your pussy. I’m going to make you claw the shit out of my back. I’m going to have you pleading for more because nothing is ever enough for such a needy whore, is it?”

“Everett.”

“You’ll scream for me. Sweat for me. You won’t recognize yourself—or me. We’ll both do the ridiculous, nasty shit we never thought we could do with another person.”

“Show me,” I request, placing my hand on his forearm, touching his skin. “Give me what I need and take what you need too.”

“Take what I need?” His eyebrows rise. He blinks. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” And both of us know exactly what’s coming.

Smiling, Everett nuzzles his nose in my hair. He inhales, sighs, and murmurs, “Then, princess…” before he kisses my forehead and whispers a command he’s given me before: “ Run .”