And yet, people were moving around outside the tent, near the campfire. They were surely making breakfast, and the camp would be struck soon.
She whispered, drawing out each syllable, “We should go.”
“No,” he whispered back, also elongating the word as he breathed.
She giggled as quietly as she could and started to untangle herself. From the strong sunlight and their warmth, the air inside the tent wasn’t as biting cold as the night before. She changed her clothes quickly and laid out her ski suit.
“Oh, come on,” Max said, grasping the air where she’d been. “Don’t leave me. I have something for you.”
“Yeah, you sure gave me something last night,” she said, struggling with the little buckles and straps and Velcro on the ski suit. “We’ve got to get going this morning, buster. I’ll bet you’ve never had a girl screw you and leave you before.”
He chuckled while staring at the top of the tent with his bare arms folded behind his head. His thick biceps and shoulder muscles bulged under the pale gold of his skin. “All of them, actually.”
The buckle finally slipped open. “Nah. A guy who looks like you?”
“Looks have little to do with it, I’m told.”
She looked up. He almost sounded like he was joking, but not quite. “But, you’re exquisite. I mean, you’re the most beautiful human being I’ve ever seen up close.”
He shifted a little in the sleeping bag, frowning a bit, maybe in embarrassment. “Let’s not discuss this. Vanity is one of the seven deadly sins.”
“Well, not vanity. Pride, because it’s PEWSLAG, right?”
“Pewslag?” he asked, frowning but silly.
“Yeah, the initials of the seven deadly sins spell PEWSLAG: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, lust, avarice, and gluttony.”
He chuckled. “I guess they do. Father Booker was right to have adopted you as an honorary religious sister.”
“Lots of my aunts and cousins did a couple of years with one of the sisters’ institutes. I could’ve.”
“You don’t see many women religious standing up in a bar and announcing they are going to fuck every man in the place.”
She shrugged. “I was going to feel guilty about it.”
“I suppose it’s all right, then.”
She dropped one of her boots. “I can’t believe any womaneverleft you. You seriously look like a movie star.” He had that otherworldly male beauty that didn’t seem to happen to ordinary people.
He shook his head, and the black curls of his hair danced. “I’m not. I’ve never acted or modeled.”
“You could.”
He shook his head, his nose wrinkling. “I don’t have the temperament for it.”
“There isn’t a temperament for acting, unless it’s just being weird and a little crazy.”
He turned on his side, holding his head up with one spectacular arm. “There is. It’s a willingness to please, and patience for endless retakes are essential. I have been assured I’m entirely unsuited for it.”
“You don’t seem impatient to me. Who told you that?”
“My grandmother. Her name was Grace. She did some modeling and a bit of acting before she married my grandfather.”
“Oh, a friend of mine’s grandmother did that. She modeled in New York City for a year before she got married. She was a secretary for a big law office there and could type over a hundred words a minute. No one in my family ever did anything interesting like that. I’m the first person to have been east of the Mississippi River in over a hundred years. Some of my cousins went to Disneyland in California, but I’ve never even done that.”
Maxence was still smiling at her. “We should have gone to Disneyland in Paris.”
She cracked up. “I can’t even imagine telling my family, ‘I went to Disneyland,in Paris.’They probably wouldn’t believe me. Some of them would be mad at me for putting on airs.”
