Page 47 of Holding On

She laughs. “So no sympathy from you, then.”

I stop. Salty nickers, his hot breath against my other hand.

“Not a drop,” I say and grin. She slaps gently with her other hand just as Cory runs up and looks confused.

“She wasn’t hitting me,” I say quickly. “All is good, my man. What do you want?”

Cory dismisses his own concerns that Maya is beating up on me and turns his attention to the real reason he wanted to walk Salty. “Can we ride him? Can I ride him?”

Ever since Claire rescued Salty and let Cory name him, Cory has been focused on one thing: riding that horse.

I let go of Maya’s hand after a quick squeeze. “I’m sorry, my man, but he’s not ready yet. I haven’t even ridden him. He’d be too scared and might buck you off.”

Cory doesn’t like this answer, and I can tell he’s processing.

“What we can do is look for crabs before the tide is all the way in.”

The usual ploy doesn’t work. He dances around in the sand for a moment and then starts to headbang with a fist.

“I see the big dipper,” says Maya. “And the teenie dipper.” She’s pointing at the sky, moonlight now turning her skin a dark, lustrous opal.

Her redirection works. Cory cranes his head to the night sky, and we spend the rest of the walk talking about Orion’s belt, how big Jupiter is, why quiet Mars flickers pale red, and why stars have names.

“Is there a Maya star?” Cory asks shyly, making a move to take her hand and then abandoning his own courage.

She laughs, the sound both light and unburdened. It makes my heart hammer for reasons I can’t understand.

“No,” she says. “I wish. I wish I could look up into the sky and see a Maya star.”

“Maybe all the stars are really Maya stars,” he says before running sloppily in the sand up to the back porch, its lantern lights filling the dark with orange luminescence.

This time, I grasp her hand and pull her gently close to me. I whisper in her ear. “He’s flirting with you.”

“Jealous?” she says, coy and wide-eyed.

God, she’s hot.

Stopping suddenly, she reaches up, cups the back of my head, and pulls me down for a deep, warm, and wet kiss. My prick starts beating in time with my heart against the inside line of buttons on my denim jeans.

When she pulls away, her voice is light. “I’ll walk with you to the stable.”

It’s just another minute up the path. I loop the lead over the top rail and run my hands over Salty’s body, starting at his ears, running both hands down either side of his neck. Then I pivot to one side—his shoulder, back, belly, front leg, flank, then rear—and I come back around in the opposite order, ending on his shoulder and stroking the left side of his sleek, muscular neck.

She watches me do this in silence. It’s not until I’ve let him into the corral, unclipped him from the lead, and shut the gate, that she speaks again.

“Is that to get him to trust you?”

“Yes,” I say, hoping my voice isn’t shaking.

The next thing I know, she’s got me pressed up against the stable wall, in the shadows, a hand on my crotch, and she’s twisting the material so that it strokes my cock. Then she rubs it with the flat of her hand.

My breath comes hard and uneven. “Maya,” I say, my prick hard as steel.

She’s still rubbing—long, slow strokes that make me shudder. Her lips are so close to my chin, her breath is warm on my own. I gasp a little when she gives me a final stroke and steps back, surveying her work.

My mind races. What just happened?

“Next move is yours,” she says.

I open my mouth to offer, but she just waves her cell phone in one hand. “Nic’s giving me a lift.” In a moment, she’s turned to walk back to The Inn. Her “Coffee tomorrow. My place,” is tossed over her shoulder, and then she disappears again into the shadows.

The throbbing in my prick doesn’t slow down. Jesus.