He licked the seam of her vagina from base to apex and down again. The leather couch creaked under them as he devoured her with deep and hungry kisses. He pushed his tongue all the way into her before focusing his attention solely on her clitoris. He licked it gently, sucked it greedily, and rubbed it until Remi couldn’t stop herself from coming again, even harder this time. Her hips rose a foot off the sofa and as she came in dead silence, every part of her vibrating with pleasure.

  She collapsed in a daze. Julien pushed between her legs again and entered her fast and hard. He went wild on top of her, fucking her as if he’d die if he stopped. Spent and drained she could do nothing but lie beneath him and take his every rough and hungry thrust. She watched his face, studying the beauty of it. His eyes were closed to concentrate better on his pleasure and his dark eyelashes fluttered on his cheeks. His face was flushed with desire, and his skin had pinked like a rose. Quiet breaths escaped through his slightly parted lips and a swath of his unruly dark red hair fell over his forehead. He’d told her that he’d grown his hair as soon as he could in a sort of victory lap against the leukemia that had robbed him of it. She’d promised she’d never make him cut his hair as long as they lived if he didn’t want to.

  Reaching up, Remi swiped the lock of hair off his forehead and grazed his cheek gently with the back of her hand. His eyes flew open and he gazed down at her. He bore down on her and with his eyes locked on hers, came inside her, filling her up all the way to her heart.

  She smiled at him when the last of their frenzy had died down.

  “I love you,” he panted. “I keep thinking I’ll get to the bottom of what I feel for you. And then I do and the bottom’s just a lid and I open the lid and there’s more love inside it. Was that stupid? I can’t tell if it’s stupid or poetic.”

  “It’s perfect. And I feel the same way,” she said, taking him in her arms. She felt his heart beating wildly against her own chest.

  “I guess that’s a good thing,” he said. “Considering.”

  He laughed and the laughter shook her body and his.

  “Exactly,” she said. “Merrick is crazy. This plan of his is crazy.”

  “But it’s going to work, right?” Julien asked.

  “We’ll make it work.”

  Julien pulled out of her and winced.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  “No…just wet. And the couch is leather. And Mom sits here all the time.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Don’t move,” he said. Don’t move? Of course she wouldn’t move. She clamped her thighs tight and waited for Julien. He came back with a box of tissues, and helped her with the cleanup.

  “Six tissues,” he said. “Wow.”

  “Impressive.” They high-fived. “You’ve been saving that up for awhile, haven’t you?”

  “I was very close to taking matters into my own hands. Thank God you showed up and saved me from myself.”

  “I knew there was a reason I did something this stupid. It was all for you,” she said as Julien balled up the tissues. She got up and found her abandoned underwear and pulled them on while Julien opened a side door. She heard a toilet flushing. Good. Smart way to dispose of the evidence.

  “I should go,” she whispered as he came back to her with his jeans now zipped and his hair somewhat tamed.

  “No way. Not yet,” he said.

  “We can’t get caught. And we’re already pushing our luck here.”

  “My parents sleep like the dead. Stay for a little while, please.”

  “Will you show me your room?” she asked, grinning at him through the dark.

  “Upstairs. Now,” he said and he grabbed her by the wrist. Luckily most of the house was carpeted so they made almost no sound as they raced upstairs to Julien’s room. When they reached his room she had to cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing uproariously. Julien’s bedroom was a time machine. It was as if the year 2006 had been isolated and preserved in this one bedroom. A Batman Begins poster hung on the wall. A V for Vendetta poster hung next to it. A large CD player and two foot high speakers sat on a table. She hadn’t owned a stereo system that large in years. An Eminem CD and a Dave Matthews Band concert DVD lay side by side on top of the stereo.

  “Wow,” she breathed. “Am I in the past?”

  Julien locked his bedroom door behind them.

  “Sort of.”

  “I like it. But then again, I had a big Christian Bale crush back then.”

  “Such a girl,” he said rolling his eyes. “It’s about Batman’s toys. And that he doesn’t use guns. Or kill people.”

  “And Christian Bale.”

  “Girl.”

  “Boy,” she said. “Did your mom keep your room like this is a shrine?”

  Julien laughed and pulled her to his bed—a full-size bed, thankfully. She’d worried it would be a twin.

  “No. I was just too sick to care what posters were on the walls. The house has ten other guest rooms so mom’s in no hurry to redecorate. And now I’ve moved out so who cares what’s on the walls?”

  “Have you thought about living with me?” she asked. “I mean, once we go through with this plan.”

  “At your house on your parents’ land?” He sounded dubious.

  “Actually, I have a better idea. Tell you when this is all over.”

  “I’d live on the streets with you, Remi.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m foreseeing much nicer accommodations for us. So you’ll move in?”

  “I love you,” Julien reminded her. “And we’re in this together.”

  “I love you too. And I promise, this is going to work. And no one will keep us apart ever again. ”

  She kissed him so he would know she meant it. And she did mean it. This love had charged into her life kicking up clods of dirt with fierce and flying feet. She’d never expected it, never saw it coming, never knew what hit her. She’d been run over by a team of wild horses and she couldn’t be happier about it.

  “You know,” Julien said into her lips, “I always wanted to have sex in my own bed at home while my parents were sleeping.”

  “You rebel.”

  “Want to?” he asked, pushing her onto her back again.

  “Oh no, anything but that,” she said, throwing her leg over his back.

  Julien slid on top of her and the bedspring creaked loudly.

  And at that moment, someone knocked on his door.

  Remi froze, her heart racing. She looked around wildly trying to find somewhere to hide.

  Julien only rolled his eyes.

  “Great timing,” he sighed and stood up.

  “What are you doing?” she rasped.

  He smiled at her.

  “Show time.”

  He opened the door and Salena stepped inside his room. She had a cup of ice in her hand for some reason.

  “Am I interrupting?” she asked, one elegant eyebrow arched at the both of them.

  “We’re done,” Remi said.

  “We weren’t done,” Julien said, “But I guess we are now.”

  “I got off the phone with my friend at the hospital,” Salena said. “Now’s the time.”

  Julien exhaled heavily and nodded.

  “Okay. Let’s do this,” he said.

  “Open up. Time to lower your temperature.” Salena popped an ice cube in his mouth and Julien sucked on it. “And you should go. This place will be crawling with people soon.”

  “We’ll walk you out.” Julien placed his hand on her lower back. “This probably shouldn’t happen in my bedroom anyway, or they’ll wonder why Salena was in my room at one in the morning.”

  They returned to Julien’s mother’s office and Julien opened the door that led to the back porch. She wrapped one arm around his back and kissed him.

  “No, no,” Salena said. “We want to lower his blood pressure, not raise it.”

  “Oops.” Remi pulled back. With one private smile at Julien she whispered, “See you on the other side.”

  He kissed her forehead, and she left him and Salena alone in the office. The last thing she saw was Salena shoving a needle into Julien’s arm and Julien collapsing onto the floor. No going back now.

  As she drove away from Capital Hills, two ambulances and a police car passed her. She knew exactly where they were going.

  Julien and Salena were doing their part. Merrick would do his part tomorrow. Only one thing left to do now.

  Her turn.

  Mr. and Mrs. Brite

  At dawn, Remi got out of bed like usual, got dressed to go riding, and headed to the stables. She rode often at work. Arden Farms was so large that workers drove golf carts between the stables. She much preferred to ride one of the working horses and ride wherever she had to go—usually one of their three Tennessee Walkers. This morning, however, she picked Benvolio. There wasn’t a horse on the property that could jump like Benvolio could. Perfect.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” she whispered to Benvolio as she tightened the girth. “I’m going to do something very stupid, but I won’t let anyone blame you.”

  She fed Benvolio an apple and stroked his long nose.

  “You won’t get turned into glue for this, I promise,” she said, brushing a tangle out of his mane. “I’m crazy in love with someone and you’re going to love him too when you meet him. So just trust me, okay?”

  Benvolio didn’t answer with anything but a nuzzle against her shoulder. She took that as a sign she had him on her side.

  She stepped into the stirrup and swung her leg over his back. With a twitch of the reins he started down the path toward the practice track. She warmed Benvolio up with a few small jumps. Good. They could do this. As she neared the track she saw her father leaning against the fence like he had for as long as she could remember. Coffee cup in hand, newsboy cap covering his bald spot, and an intense look of concentration on his face as two of their strongest four-year-olds pounded down the practice track.

  They passed the finish line and she saw her father hit a button his stop watch. Finally he looked away from the track and noticed her. She waved at her father. He waved at her. And just as he was starting to look away again, Remi gave Benvolio the signal to break into a canter. With a shift of her weight, he obediently jumped. Well-trained as he was, the horse obeyed. Even though she knew she’d have one hell of a bruised ass from this little stunt, Remi let go of the reins and fell from the saddle.

  She hit the grass with a thud that rattled her teeth. Any other time she’d been knocked off a horse, she’d get right back up again. But not today. Today she was on a mission.

  Instead of getting up, Remi closed her eyes.

  Only seconds later she sensed herself being surrounded by people, nervous and scared. She heard her father’s voice shouting for a doctor. She heard one of the trainers saying they should call 911 immediately. People called her name, patted her face, tried to pry open her eyelids. She lay there as best as she could, pretending to be unconscious.

  Ten minutes later, she was in the back of a speeding ambulance. Her father had yelled he’d follow right behind in his car. As she was being loaded, she pretended to come to just long enough to ask her father to bring her mother too. He promised he would.

  Now it was on.

  As soon as she was alone in the ambulance with the EMTs, she miraculously recovered and started talking. The EMTs said she’d be checked at the hospital for a concussion and monitored for a few hours. Of course she would. She knew exactly what would happen once she got to the hospital. In her twenty-six years she’d fallen off a horse and bumped her head half-a-dozen times and had gone through this routine every time. She hated that she had to scare everyone like this, but she knew Merrick was right—this was the only way to guarantee both of her parents would be away from the farm long enough for him to do his digging. The guilty feeling gnawed at her, but considering her parents had involved the farm in possibly illegal activities, she decided giving their parents a brief scare was a fair trade for the hell they’d put her through.

  Luckily, at the ER she was considered a low priority patient as she was awake, alert, and seemingly unharmed. She was shunted into a side room and semi-forgotten. Every fifteen minutes a nurse would peek in the door and make sure she was still conscious. The nurse asked if she wanted her parents back in the room. She politely declined the offer. Instead she turned on the television and found nothing on but soap operas.

  So this is what Julien went through for years—sitting alone in a hospital room staring at a television and waiting for his life to start.

  Finally, Merrick texted her.

  Got it, was all the text said plus a rocket ship emoticon.

  Get here, she wrote back and just because she loved him a little bit today, she added a smiley face.

  And a banana.

  Half an hour later, Merrick walked through her hospital room door. He had a file folder in his hand, two ledger books, and a sheaf of printed pages.

  “Is that it?” she asked as he sat on her bed and tossed the papers in her lap.

  “All of it.” He wore an ear-to-ear grin. The only thing that made Merrick happier than getting into trouble was getting someone else into trouble. “Read.”

  She read through everything he’d brought her. On the one hand she was thrilled they had hard evidence. On the other hand, she was more furious than ever.

  “I’m going to kill them,” she said once she’d finished reading.

  “We’re in a hospital. Good place for a heart attack,” Merrick said.

  “They might try to kill me,” she said.

  “I won’t let them, Boss. I’d kill for you, die for you, I’d even take a bare bodkin for you.”

  “You’d take a dagger for me?”

  “I thought a bare bodkin was a penis.”

  “It’s a knife.”

  “I’ve seriously been misreading the subtext of Hamlet then.”

  “Come on. We have two sets of parents to freak out.”

  She grabbed the pile of papers and together they found her parents waiting in the lobby. Her father was on his phone, no doubt checking in with the farm. Her mother was flipping through a magazine without making eye contact with any of the pages.

  “Good news,” she said to them. “I’ll live. No concussion.”

  “Oh thank God,” her mother said, and reached out to hug her.

  “You gave us a little scare there,” her father said, stoic as always.

  “I’m about to scare you two a little more,” she said, refusing to return the hug. Merrick’s find had implicated not just Julien’s mother and father in this mess, but both her parents as well. “Merrick, what room is he in?”

  “He’s in 5515,” he said.

  “Who? What are you talking about, Young Lady?” her father asked, narrowing his eyes at her. “And is that my ledger book?”

  Remi took a step back and crooked her fingers at her parents.

  “I have someone you two need to meet,” she said. “I think you’ll like him.”

  The elevator ride to the fifth floor was a bit awkward, but Remi refused to answer any of her parents questions. You’ll see…was all she said. Out on the fifth floor they walked past the nurse’s station. A young nurse demanded to know whose room they were visiting.

  Remi sighed. She was afraid this would happen. That’s okay. She had this.

  “Julien Brite, room 5515.”

  “His parents have requested family only can visit.”

  Remi grabbed a sheet of paper off the nurse’s station desk and scrawled a few choice words onto the paper and handed it to the nurse.

  “Oh,” the nurse said. “Go right in.”

  “Thank you,” Remi said.

  “Remi Anne Montgomery, you tell us right now what is happening,” her mother demanded.

  “Julien Brite?” her father repeated. “Young Lady, didn’t we tell you that you were never to see him again?”

  “You did. I ignored you.” Remi pushed open the door to room 5515. Julien was sitting up in bed surrounded by his family. She nearly teared up at the sight of him in the hospital room. Hopefully this would be his last trip to a hospital for the rest of his life. Instead of crying, she kissed Julien.

  “Excuse me, miss,” came a woman’s voice from behind her. Remi ignored it. She looked Julien in the eyes.

  “Did we get it?” he whispered the question. He could have shouted it if he wanted to. Everyone in the room had recognized each other at once. Her parents were fighting with his parents. A nurse shouted over them all to shut them up. And in her peripheral vision she saw Merrick standing to the side and taking pictures of the melee and grinning.

  “We got everything,” she said and gave him one more long, lush kiss.

  “Excuse me?” Remi felt a tapping on her back. She stood up, turned around and faced Mrs. Deidre Brite. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I was just slipping the tongue to your son,” Remi said with a smile.

  “You were what?” she gasped.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Julien said. “Remi and I are sleeping together so she’s allowed to kiss me.”

  “Julien!” his father yelled.

  “I’m going to need everyone to shut up and sit down right this second,” Remi said. “Or stand. I don’t care. But you all do need to shut the hell up because Julien and I have a few very big announcements.”

  Julien hopped out of the hospital bed and stood at her side. Just then Salena in her white doctor’s coat and blue scrubs entered the room and stood by Merrick. Good. They didn’t want her to miss the show.

  “Announcements?” her father said. “You drag us to a hospital to tell us you’re dating Julien Brite? Remi, what the hell is going on here?”

  “First of all, you should know Julien and I are fine. Neither one of us is sick or injured. We faked it to get you away from the farms so Merrick could do a little digging. He struck gold, in case you were wondering.”

  “Julien, you scared your mother and I to death-” Mr. Brite started but Julien raised his hand.