She plopped back down on the hood of her car and began a slow, mostly fruitless Internet search for plane tickets on her phone. She was marooned in the middle of nowhere and knew she was lucky to get even a bar on her phone, maybe two if she angled her phone just right and lifted it toward the stars above, as though to prove to them her good intentions. At last, a search result popped up, a thousand dollar, one way flight from San Antonio to Newark that included two layovers and ten hours of travel time.

"Goddammit," she cursed aloud, and then saw the gleam of a tiny light flicker to life in the distant night. Her heart leapt to her throat and she clambered back into her driver's seat just in case it was a redneck highway bandit in search of helpless English teachers stranded at the side of the road in the middle of the night. At least she would be able to lock all her doors and call 911 so the authorities could locate her body, or at least be made aware of her fate so they could let her sister know she hadn't once again skipped out on her responsibilities.

Luckily, it was a familiar pick up truck that pulled up on the shoulder nose to nose with her own car, and she sighed in both relief and a different kind of anxiety when she saw Cam step out and walk towards her. She squinted but couldn't quite tell if anyone was sitting in the passenger seat.

She climbed out of her own car to greet him, grateful for the darkness that hid her inevitable blush whenever she found herself in the presence of a Walker man.

"Hey," she said, "Thank you so much for this. I didn't know who else to call."

She hoped she sounded suitably apologetic. For everything.

"My dad?" he said, smiling bemusedly. He leaned against the side of the car, crossed his arms, and looked down at her with raised eyebrows.

"I didn't want to bother him this late," she replied. It was so much easier to lie when the other person couldn't see your face.

"Alright," he said, his tone inscrutable.

Unfortunately she couldn't get a good look at his face either. A silence fell between them, broken, at last, by the faraway howl of a dog.

"Shit," he said, sounding annoyed. "That's a coyote. I thought we'd run them all off."

"A coyote?" she said in alarm, and put her hand on the car door in case she needed to jump back in to safety. Jesus this place. "Are they dangerous?"

"Only if you're a calf," he replied, and sighed in frustration. She had never heard him sigh like that. Like an adult, run down by life and its challenges.

"My dad and I have been busting our asses the last couple weeks to get rid of them, they keep tearing into the herds," he explained. "They've been costing us a lot of money, but there's no winning with them."

So that was the hunting his dad had been busy doing the other day, leaving Cam to man the business on his own. She thought of the house he lived in with his father, how solidly middle class it had seemed to her; and yet, she realized, their lives were built on the shifting fortunes of Nature, of forces that could barely be controlled and which had little to no effect on her own life. When she was Cam's age she had been busy plotting a backpacking trip to Europe before starting her freshman year at Barnard; she had somehow convinced her parents it would make her "more ready" for the rigors of college and of living on her own in a dorm. An absurd notion and one that was paid for by the combined salaries and upper-middle-class stability of her well-educated parents. Who, out here meanwhile, had the time or the resources to even consider college, nevermind whirlwind European tours, when your ability to provide for yourself and your family depended on the daily fate of your livestock, or tips made tending bar or waitressing at Denny's? She knew that her students' lives outside her classroom had been a mystery to her in this new place, but she hadn't really cared until now.

But now, at last, she was learning, and she would be better going forward. Beginning with this boy who had come to rescue her for the second—no the third—time in the past 48 hours, and who she had repaid with ... well with drunken lechery, among other things.

"That's awful Cam," she said, and meant it.

She heard, rather than saw him shrug it off.

"So what's up with your car Miss Park?" he said. "Can't say I'm that surprised it conked out on you, it's kind of, well—"

"A hunk of shit?" she finished for him. "My dad gave it to me for my 16th birthday and I've held onto it for way too long. Obviously. Anyway, no idea, the engine won't even turn now."

"I can take a look at it, but it's not really my thing to tell the truth," he said, walking around to the front of the car.

She leaned in through the window and popped the hood for him, and for the next 15 minutes he called out instructions to her from behind the lifted hood, doing God knows what with her engine while she obediently turned the ignition key on cue. He had grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment of his truck and flooded her car with his headlights. At least she could see he had arrived alone, the cab of his truck empty. Unless Madysen was hiding out in the truck bed? She rolled her eyes at her own craziness.

Finally he slammed the hood shut and seemed to shake his head in defeat, his figure a blank silhouette against the truck's glaring wash of light.

"Miss Park, let me call my dad, he will know—"

"Please don't bother your dad Cam," she said, her voice flat. "Let me just call a tow truck company."

"Miss Park," he began, but she interrupted him again.

"No Cam, I am serious, please do not call your dad. I'll just call a tow truck," she said, and then had a horrifying thought. "Please tell me there's a tow truck company I can call other than Melvin's."

Her heart sank when he only reply was a low whistle.

"Oh God," she said. "You have to be kidding me."

"Sorry Miss Park," he said, and returned to leaning against the car beside her. "Melvin's is the only one within 70 miles of here."

"Shit," she whispered. "Shit shit shit shit."

She rubbed her forehead fiercely with one hand, uneasiness mixing seamlessly with a growing foreboding that her mother was going to die before she would get to see her. Or what was left of her.

He rested a hand on her shoulder, and when she didn't stop shaking her head and cursing he gripped her harder and stepped in close.

"Miss Park, let me call my dad," he murmured. "He will know what to do, and if it can't be fixed, we will both be here to deal with Melvin."

Before the familiar spell of dizziness could set in, however, she shook his hand off of her and stepped away.

"Cam, no," she said, trying to sound forceful and like the adult that she was. She could still feel the heat radiating from his long, lean body, and she took another step backwards. Away from temptation.

"I know you know why I can't call your dad," she said, forcing herself to confront the elephant in the room at last.

She rushed to push the remaining words out before she lost her nerve; being cloaked in darkness helped some, as did the vivid image painted for her by Kyle of his only son finding his half-dead sister swinging from a rope.

"Look, I am really sorry about last night, about what I did at my house after you were sweet enough to come rescue me from myself. I took advantage of you, and I am ashamed of it. I was pretty drunk, but that wasn't an excuse. And I think you know I was in the house tonight when you came in with Madysen. And I hate that you had to ... experience that. It's fucked up and I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. It isn't going to happen again, any of it."

She exhaled then, her duty done. She felt a much needed lightness settle onto her as she pulled out her phone and began punching buttons.

"I am going to call Melvin and have him bring the car to his shop, and then I have to get home and figure out how to get to New Jersey tomorrow or the next day."

She was finally taking charge and getting stuff done. It was like a mini dose of anti-anxiety medication that would hopefully get her through the next hour if not the next day.

Cam wrested the phone from her grip and threw it carelessly into the car through the open window. Before she could protest he had spun her around and pushed her up against the back passenger door and its rolled up window, and he had a fistful of her hair in his hand.

"Stop," he said.

So she did, her words dying in her throat, so that no sound escaped her parted lips.

She heard and felt, rather than saw Cam unfastening his belt with his other hand, and unzipping his jeans. A tremor shook her to her core, and she grew limp with confusion and desire.

"Cam," she whispered.

She felt his hand reach under her cotton sundress and yank down her underwear until they fell to her ankles. He leaned forward to murmur into her ear, and she arched her back in response.

"I want you to step out of those right now, and then I am going to fuck you Miss Park," he said, and tightened his grasp on her hair so that she yelped in pain. Delicious, forbidden pain. She did as he told her, and before she had a chance to even spread her legs he had forced his hard cock between her thighs and was pinning her up against the car with it, pulling her head back with his grip and devouring her exposed neck with his kisses and his bites. One part of her couldn't believe this was happening, Cam fucking here, here beside the highway, her former student, whose father she had just had inside her not more than two hours ago. Already she could feel the difference between their cocks as he thrust it inside her, Cam's not as wide as his father's, but definitely longer.

It wasn't just that though. It was the way he fucked her. Like a starving man who wanted to devour her whole, his need so strong he didn't care if he hurt her. The small of her back pounded against the car window, the door handle jabbing her over and over in her backside. She thought of the bruise it would cause, and before she could stop herself she was moaning, and crying out things she had never said aloud to anyone, not even her fiance.

This time, she came without warning. It was like an animal attacking her from the shadows, unawares, and she heard herself shouting in ecstasy, so loud she was sure that all the town could hear from miles away, so loud that the stars themselves twinkled in surprise at her explosion.

And when he came, and threw back his head in his own shout of triumph and release, her howls rose in pitch and transformed into a frenzied scream. The fire in her womb contracted and then burst into her veins, her nerve endings, her head, and all she could see, all she could feel and smell, was Cam, his beautiful strong body pushed up against her, his cock buried deep inside her.

Where he belonged. 

https://youtu.be/cncoJB_C-m0

(Author's Note: You KNOW Wicked Game had to come up at some point ... I kind of dig this cover of it, though it was a tough choice, especially since the original still gets mah blood a'boilin'!!)