Feast of Saints (18 page)

“Well, I can’t feel my foot to be certain, but I’m pretty sure it’s not broken.” She tried for a humorous tone, but she was still feeling quite shaken.

Jake’s stormy look had evaporated while working on packing. He looked up and smiled at her. When he did, she felt her lips tremble and tears come to her eyes. For that moment in time, when the bear was right there squaring off with Jake, her always overactive imagination had taken over, and all she could see was them both being ripped apart. That she’d gotten off with a twisted ankle, albeit in the middle of nowhere, seemed too lucky.

“We should move. I looked at your route and it’s the quickest way out, so no sense changing it now.”

After about an hour, the cold had fully worn off, and she could tell her ankle wanted to swell but couldn’t within the tight hiking boot. After two hours, she started to feel that maybe she should stop walking on it. But if she quit, the trip out the next day would take too long and not get them back at the time they said they’d meet Wil. So, she bit her lip and persevered. Jake alternated between taking the lead and taking the rear, making sure the bear hadn’t gotten ahead of them or followed them.

They finally made it to the camping area at dusk, and both gave a sigh of relief. Jake told her to sit while he set up everything. They needed more water, but Jake was hesitant to let her out of his sight.

“Go,” she said. “I’ll scream really loud if I hear even a rustle.”

Looking at her exhausted face, he said, “Stay alert. Don’t fall asleep. I’ll be right back.” Jake made three circles around the camp perimeter at fifty, one hundred and two hundred feet out, before leaving the camp site for the nearby lake.

When he came back, she had her boot off and was lying on her stomach fiddling with the stove. Her bare foot was up in the air, elevated to hopefully keep it from ballooning up so much that she wouldn’t be able to get it back in her boot.

Jake knelt behind her and pulled her foot into his lap to examine it. Pressing his fingers to the side of her ankle elicited a hiss from Lilly, who tried to pull her foot away. Jake held on and slowly turned her ankle in a circle, which didn’t hurt as bad as she thought it would. Examination over, he didn’t let go of her foot but continued to hold it. She could feel him looking at the back of her head as she futzed with the WhisperLite.

Lilly waited for the lecture on foolish risks and how she shouldn’t have gone on this trip. Instead, Jake was silent and broody all through dinner. He was making her miserable. Although he had been infuriating at times, the morning’s hike and dinner the night before had been fun. She didn’t want to give up the joy of being out in nature, despite the near-bear attack and her ankle.

When the lecture didn’t seem to be forthcoming, she decided a preemptive strike was in order. She just wanted to get it over with so she wouldn’t go to bed mad imagining it.

“Can you stop being so broody? That bear didn’t eat us and it was cool seeing one in the wild, so don’t let it kill the mood.”

“Watching someone I’m responsible for get attacked by a wild animal is kind of a buzz kill for me, Lilly,” Jake said quietly.

“He didn’t attack—well, at least, he didn’t actually maul us—and you’re not responsible for me anyway, so stop ordering me around.”

“If I had been successful at ordering you around, we wouldn’t be on this trip.” Jake said darkly. There it was. The scolding she’d been anticipating. It made her madder than she thought it would.

“Well, did you stop to think that maybe things wouldn’t have gone so badly if you hadn’t made me change my plans all around? This trip was my trip, and you butted in,” she huffed.

“Do you think things would have gone
better
for you Lilly, out here by yourself?” Jake shot back.

She flinched, envisioning what would have happened if Jake hadn’t stepped between her and the bear. Their bellows echoed in her ears. She would have been shredded. Of all the ways to die, being eaten alive had to be the worst.

Frightened again, and angry, Lilly pushed herself up to stand, somewhat unsteadily.

“You know what?” she retorted, “I’m done answering to you out here.” Pointing her finger generally in the direction of civilization, she nearly shouted, “I may have to answer to you in that hellish job, but not here.”

Her mini-tirade would have been much more impressive if she hadn’t had to hobble over to the tent, and lost her balance trying to unzip it.

Jake sat outside for a long time. Lilly lay on top of her sleeping bag, feeling the throb of her fast-beating heart in her swollen ankle. As her fury subsided, remorse began to sink in. By the time he unzipped the tent and sat on the threshold to undo his boots, she was feeling quite sorry for her outburst. Particularly the hellish job part. He was her boss, after all, and if it was hellish, she had just firmly laid the blame for that at his feet. Whatever he was, he had saved her professional reputation, and probably her life, in the span of a week.

Speaking to his back, she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I owe you a sincere thank you. It’s just that I was really enjoying myself, and thinking I’d found my equilibrium, and that maybe these next few months wouldn’t be so god awful, and that bear and twisting my ankle really mucked things up.” She bit her lip, wishing she had rehearsed that apology in her head before it left her mouth.

After a long moment, his back still to her, Jake asked quietly, “What do you need to make the next few months bearable, Lilly?”

Lilly didn’t know how to respond. She was afraid to, really. She wanted to say that she’d like to quit, but she knew that wasn’t an option. She had come to realize that her work with Jake was essential to the entire production. If she quit, or worse, failed, it would have a terrible impact on a lot of people. She had obsessed over this fact all the way to Riverton and back the other night.

She wasn’t used to this kind of pressure. As if the horrific content of
Feast
wasn’t enough to induce stress, she felt constantly under water, over her head, sometimes downright incompetent. Her prior experiences working on children’s shows had been totally different; lighthearted, with flexible, reasonable schedules that allowed her plenty of time to plan and react to the fluid, creative process of filming. But on
Feast
, she strived much harder than should be necessary – much harder than
would
be necessary if she were more experienced – to keep up with the work and to avoid mistakes.

She put her arm over her eyes to keep herself from crying, or to hide tears she might not be able to control. She heard Jake zip up the tent, stretch out and turn toward her.

“What can I do?” he asked, lying on his side, facing her.

“Make me a more thoughtful artist?” she said miserably. “And make about three more of me who aren’t so insecure and flighty?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“It’s just that…” and she let it all out. The pressure, the feeling of incompetence, even the silly nightmares about his character that kept her from sleeping and made her jumpy around him. She attributed those to stress, overwork, lack of sleep and feeling like she made him angry because she was always messing up.

When she fell silent, her arm still covering her face, Jake grasped her wrist and gently lowered her arm. He held her wrist, running his thumb over her fast beating pulse, then raised her hand to his lips. He kissed her fingertips, then the palm of her hand, then pressed her open palm against his chest, holding it over his heart, so that she could feel his sincerity.

“You’re not incompetent or flighty, Lilly. You’re a thoughtful engineer and artist. Your work is priceless, the result of your unique combination of precision and imagination. You’re organized and quick-witted. You’re fearless about everything except, it seems, failure – and your own imagination – which frankly frightens me sometimes. When I look in the mirror after you’re done with me, even I wonder if there’s a man or a monster behind the makeup.”

Jake released her hand so that he could stroke her face, running his fingertips along her cheekbone, over her lips, under her jaw. Lilly, soothed by his compliments, warmed by his concerned expression and fascinated by the heat that travelled from his touch to spread out under her skin, stayed mute.

“But I am just a man,” he said. “If it feels like I’m angry at you, it’s not anger. Far from it. I don’t want to put more pressure on you, but if you ask me what is the one thing that would make these next few months bearable, it would be this.” With that, he tipped her chin up and kissed her softly on the lips.

When she didn’t push him away, he lingered there, brushing his mouth against hers. “And this,” he whispered against her lips, and kissed her harder.

Jake pulled back to stare into her moonlit eyes, gaging her reaction. Not wanting him to stop, Lilly slid her palm from his heart up to the column of his neck. Her emotions were completely unguarded after her outburst. She couldn’t hide her fascination, or her desire for him.

A sweet smile played around Jake’s lips. He leaned over and kissed her brow and then the corners of her eyes where a moment ago tears had threatened. He ran his nose alongside hers, breathing her in. He scraped his cheek, with its rough two-day beard, against her soft face. When her lips parted, waiting, he ran his open mouth over hers, stealing her breath.

Murmuring against her parted lips, Jake groaned, “Ah, God, Lilly, and this,” and thrust his tongue into her mouth.

She responded with raw passion.
This
is what she had wanted. This was what had been clamoring inside of her for weeks, months. She met the force of his kiss with her whole body, wrapping her arms around his neck and scooting closer to press her chest and hips against his. Jake instinctively drove his thigh between her legs, thrilling her. The intimacy of his tongue exploring her mouth, the pressure of his leg between hers, inflamed her. She angled her head so that she could better match the thrust of his tongue with her own and pulled him in tighter. Jake threaded his fingers through her hair, reveling in her unbridled response to him. He sucked in her tongue, then her bottom lip, then thrust his tongue back into her mouth, groaning with pleasure.

When their clothed bodies pressed against each other didn’t feel close enough, Lilly pushed her hands under his shirt to feel his naked skin. It was an aching relief just to touch his warm skin and feel his corded muscles rippling under her palms, to let herself want him without a thought for production or paint, unbound by pressures and deadlines. She felt like she couldn’t get enough of him. She felt out of control.

Responding to her unrestrained exploration of his naked skin, Jake pushed his own hands under her shirt, needing to touch the warm softness of her, burning to learn her body in return. He unclasped her bra and slid his palms around to cup her bare breasts. When he ran his thumbs over her nipples and pinched them, then squeezed her breasts, she moaned into his mouth. Jake did it again, provoking the same response, and set about finding as many ways as possible to make her moan again and again, teasing her by stroking the skin along her ribs, between her breasts over her sternum, tickling her clavicles and the hollow of her throat until she was thrusting her breasts at his hands, wanting him to squeeze and pinch her again. When he complied, she would moan again in satisfaction. The tenth time he started his slow tease around her torso, Lilly bit him on the lip harder and harder until, chuckling against her mouth, he grabbed her breasts roughly and pinched her nipples almost painfully.

“Jake!” Lilly screamed in pleasure. Needing him closer still, she wrapped her thigh around his waist. Jake thrust his hips to meet her, driving his erection between her legs, thrusting against her sex, causing her a spasm of sexual pleasure. Her desire at a fever pitch, she ran her hands down his chest to unbutton and unzip him until she could wrap her hand around his penis.

In her haze, she registered the largesse of him, hard and thick. She squeezed his cock and ran her hand up and down the length of him. When she repeated the motion, Jake thrust into her hand and responded to her advance by tugging down her elastic-waist hiking pants and sliding his hands under her panties to stroke and squeeze her bare bottom.

As she continued running her hand up and down his erection, he pushed her panties down, freed her leg from the tangled pants and lifted her knee to wrap her naked leg back around him. His roving palm then slid up the back of her thigh and he reached one long-fingered hand between her legs over the hottest, wettest part of her. Jake swirled his fingers over her labia then up and around her clitoris, causing her another spasm of intense pleasure. Jake felt it, too, and repeated the caress sparking another intense spasm, then eased his middle finger into her vagina, then two, and began to move his fingers in and out of her in time to her hand on his cock.

Lilly broke their kiss to suck in her breath. Jake moved his lips to her neck, biting, kissing and sucking her sensitive throat, and rocked his cock into her stroking hand. He pulled his slick fingers out of her vagina to circle them around her clitoris again. With the spike in pleasure, Lilly tightened her grip on his cock. Jake thrust into her palm and pushed his two fingers back into her, the motion of his hand timed with his body.

As she recognized what he wanted to do, what she had urged him to do, where all of this was leading, a thread of fear broke through her befuddled brain.
He
felt out of control under her hands, the way his muscles moved, the way he thrust into her hand so urgently. With the thread of fear, a small sense of rationality returned. She suddenly felt that this was too far, too much.

As inexperienced as she was, sex in general was still an intimidating prospect. Her hand on his erection, she registered that sex with Jake could cripple her for a few days. It was going to be hard enough to walk out of here as it was. Reality sank in. And then there was the question of condoms….

She pulled her hand back.

“Jake, I can’t. I can’t,” she panted.