Stepbrother Made My Wet Dream Real Inside Our Shared Tent novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Headlamp

I unzipped the door.

"Come in," I said.

He crawled in on his knees, and the tent was suddenly half the size.

He'd come in his gray thermal and sweatpants, barefoot, his boots left outside.

He smelled like woodsmoke and cold creek water.

He didn't reach for me.

He just knelt there with his head bent under the low ceiling, waiting.

"I didn't check this one," I said. "It's new. Production pitched it."

"I know." He held up his headlamp. "That's why I brought this."

"You want to check seams. Right now."

"I want to do a great many things right now, Ackley." He pushed his glasses up. "I'd like to do them without an audience."

I turned my headlamp to red so the light wouldn't show through the fly.

He did the same.

We started at the door and worked around.

Every seam, every vent, every inch of binding tape.

He pinched along the ridge line with his fingertips.

I ran my thumbnail down the corner panels where the stitching met the floor.

It was the stupidest thing I'd ever done half dressed with a man I wanted that badly.

It was also the hottest.

Every time our hands met on a seam, he went still for half a second.

Every time I leaned across him to reach the far wall, my breast brushed his arm, and he stopped breathing.

"Focus," he said hoarsely.

"I am focused."

"You're doing that on purpose."

"I'm checking the vent, Denver."

I was.

And under the vent, in the seam, my thumbnail found a hard little bump.

I froze.

Huck brought his light over.

There it was.

A black circle the size of an eraser, looking straight down at my sleeping pad.

The green light on the board was on.

Neither of us said anything for a long moment.

"He pitched this today," Huck said finally. "For me to come to."

"He knew you would."

"He knew I'd want to." His jaw worked. "That's different."

I opened my knife.

I cut the square out, wire and battery and all, so neatly it could've been a pattern piece.

Then I unlocked the bear can, dropped the square in with the others, and snapped the padlock shut again.

Huck pressed a strip of duct tape over the hole in the fly.

We checked the rest of the tent twice.

Then the floor.

Then our own clothes, even though I knew it was paranoid.

He took his glasses off and set them on the bear can.

"That's every camera I can find," he said. "On earth."

"Is that a yes on your rule?"

"That's a yes on my rule." His voice dropped. "The question is whether it's a yes on yours."

I sat back on my heels.

My flannel was open over my sports bra.

The red light made everything look like the inside of a heartbeat.

I thought about the tack room, the band through the wall, his hands on the saddle rack on either side of me and not on me.

I thought about two years of potatoes passed at Thanksgiving.

I thought about the creek and his fingers stopping at my waistband.

"Huck," I said.

"Yeah."

"I'm awake. I know exactly where I am. There's nobody watching." I put my hand flat on his chest. "Don't stop this time."

He looked at me.

"Say it again," he said.

"Don't stop."

He pushed up off his knees and I pushed him the rest of the way down.

The sleeping pad crinkled under his back.

I straddled him before he could get his balance.

The tent ceiling pressed against my braid.

I pulled his thermal up and off in one motion.

The red light made the hair on his chest look black.

I set both palms flat on him.

His stomach jumped under my hands.

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