[9] Physical Anthropology

Evie barked and leapt off the bed, racing into the RV’s family area. Emerging reticently from the blissful haze of heavy dreamless sleep, Teri sat up groggily, a vague impression of noise in her head, though Evie now was quiet.

Yawning, she rubbed her fingertips in gentle circles at her temples. At least her earlier headache was reduced to a weak dull pressure and the nausea she’d felt during lunch with Johansen was gone.

Still wandering dazedly at the edge of dreamland, Teri gave a startled cry to a knock at the outer door that sent Evie erupting into another brief frenzied round of barking from the other room. Outside, she heard a voice call her name.

Jim.

An unadulterated confusing mélange of thrilled pleasure and raw fear bubbled up inside her.

What was I thinking? Why? Why did I do this to myself? Why did I text him? Much as it disgusts me, I could have all the answers I have now without ever contacting Jim again. And then I agree to this! What possible good can come of it? Especially after the ridiculous fiasco last night! What kind of masochist am I?

Struggling upright, Teri stood, attempting to straighten her sleep-rumpled clothes as she went to the door and doing a poor job of it. Her fingers felt like they were stuffed inside oven mitts and her brain refused to drag itself into full consciousness. What is wrong with me? Exasperated with more than just her clothing, she unlocked and opened the door for Jim.

“Hello, Gorgeous. May I come in?” At her nod, he beamed, taking both small steps up into the RV in a single stride. She’d been all that was in his head since he’d walked up behind her at the restaurant the night before and a static shock zapped through him to be near her again.

Masada. Tactical Dispositions and The Art of War, Jim reminded his hyper-excited brain and body. Tread carefully. Look for strategic opportunities. Avoid direct conflicts. Don’t sleep with the enemy.

In her case, that last one rankled a bit. Particularly since the instant he was within ten feet of her, immediately his mind returned to those delightful little moans and whimpers she made when his hands or lips grazed her velvety skin or cupped those perfect breasts or when his seeking eager tongue blundered into hers.

Jim’s eyes raked Teri from head to toe, taking in the rumpled clothes, mussed hair and drowsy expression. She had never slept during the day. “You were napping. Teri, are you alright?”

Waving his concern away, she wandered drowsily into the bedroom, lifting her silk blouse, pulling her arms from the sleeves as she did and leaving a bewildered Jim to close the RV door.

Lagging a bit behind her, he froze, uncertain her intentions and unable to take his eyes off the graceful curve of waist to hip, the creamy smoothness of her back, the silken tumble of chestnut hair as she tugged at the neck of the shirt. He remembered all too well from their time together B.C.E.—before the common era— the paired sacral dimples at the sensitive base of her spine and where the right caress over them could lead.

“Would you help, please?” Teri’s voice carried a hint of frustration. “It buttons down the back.”

Jim stepped behind her, slowly brushed her hair over one shoulder revealing the neck of her blouse bunched near the collar. Sputtering fire crackled from nerve to nerve like a lit fuse as he stroked the backs of his fingers over her exposed flesh from her shoulder to the small of her back.

Her whispered sigh as her attention shifted to him didn’t go unnoticed. From the meager sparks, hot licking flames leapt to joyous life inside.

So much for The Art of War.

Attempting to focus, if for no other reason than now he wanted the blouse off her too, he tugged at the fragile fabric carefully, searching for whatever fastening held it so close around her neck. Finding the finished collar in the gathered silk at last, his fingers followed it until he found the dainty buttons. “How did you get this on this morning?” Jim’s fingers fumbled to slip the three tiny pearled beads from their loops.

Reminded by his question, Teri faced forward again, her mind at last clawing its way towards full consciousness and clarity. “I must’ve put it on around my neck backwards.”

“Clever.” With the last button released, the collar slipped open and Jim lifted the blouse forward over her head.

As the silken fabric fell into her hands, Teri clutched it self-consciously to her chest, suddenly fully awake and aware. Though he wasn’t touching her, Jim’s heat radiated like warm sunshine on her back, the path of his fingers a moment before a deliciously tingling wake. Her heart beat a rapid staccato. Her chest heaved in shallow pants with the high-voltage current of anticipation racing through her.

Heedless of his mind’s warnings, Jim reached for her hips, pressing against her back, his warm breath stirring the fine tendrils of hair at her ear. “I dream of you, Teri,” he whispered. “Never stopped.” In profile, Jim watched her whispering ‘oh’ pucker her full lips now flushed with high color. He pressed small kisses down her exposed neck to the gracile curve of her shoulder.

Teri’s head fell against his chest, eyes closed, refusing to dilute his touch even for her other senses. Jim had owned her heart and soul from the minute she’d found him waiting on her leaning against her car all those years ago. He was the first person who’d been her whole world.

This is why there was no denying him. This inexorable draw that kept her in dancing orbit about him like a satellite and always had. With Jim, it wasn’t want. He was need. Like the atmosphere she required to survive. She’d been a fool to think otherwise. Over her shoulder, she threaded the fingers of one hand into his hair and the tingling pleasure of it zipped along her nerves. Her other hand rested on top of his at her waist, guiding the smooth caress over the curve of her abdomen Teri so desperately desired.

Jim tugged the blouse free from her hand, dropping it to the floor. Her hair smelled of lilac and warm honey, unforgettable. Enticing. Feminine. Her skin was satiny as water through his fingers.

Through the light fabric of her bra, his thumb stroked the tightening tips of her breasts and she melted more, yielded the way he’d wanted her to last night. The visible signs of her arousal stimulated his, and he bit gently at the tender flesh in the crook of her neck, thrilled at the tremors it sent through her.

“Did you love him? Zoe’s father?”

The caressing whisper at her shoulder was like a searing hot knife shoved inside her, with the same vicious weapon that sliced into her, cauterizing the exposed edges of the wound closed. Mercifully, the simplest answer would do.

“Yes, I loved her father.” She faced Jim, her hands tracing swaths of heat down the hard lines of his chest. “But it was always you.”

Me, he thought. Me she loved.

With a warm hand at the back of her neck tightened to the point of almost pain to hold her and deepen the kiss, and his other at the base of her spine, the tips of his fingers stroking a fiery figure eight over the delicate nerves there, Teri couldn’t tell if the soporific stupor insidiously taking over her brain was a deliberate effort on Jim’s part or benign happenstance. She only knew she didn’t want it to stop.

Distracted and confused, she stumbled against Jim’s broad hard chest and felt his grip tighten on her, holding her against him and on her feet. Between them, nestled against her body, his manhood stood at attention, hard and demanding even through their clothes and the realization made the throbbing heat in her core clench, warm wet fluid seeping out to slick her body in keen anticipation of their inevitable union. Her hands sought feebly for purchase, trembling wildly, their uncoordinated grasping only intensifying his hold and sending her already reeling senses further awry. Overwhelmed, Teri surrendered and let herself be swept in and carried along in his landslide.

When he relinquished his hold on her mouth, her head fell back and she gasped for breath, the cold air filling her lungs a stark contrast to the seething heat Jim had aroused inside. Sucking in huge gulps, she tried to clear her befuddled mind, losing more ground than she’d gained when his hot lips found her neck, his teeth catching and holding the tender flesh while his tongue taunted and teased it, the overstimulated nerves shooting conflicting signals of pleasure and pain both north and south, further confounding her brain but leaving her aching feminine core desperately clear. It screamed to be opened, stretched, filled to its capacity with everything—anything—Jim would give.

With Teri all but dangling limp in his arms, Jim pressed his advantage, conforming his body to the arched curve of her trapped in his strong arms, his pulsing sex between them achingly hard and straining towards her. He wanted inside her, to feel her rippling wet heat enclose him, but that wasn't something that happened quickly with her. No matter how much he might want to ram the full length of himself inside her, to sate a decade's worth of need, he didn't want to hurt her. Through the flimsy fabric of her bra, his lips found her erect nipple then, sucking it into his mouth and tracing wet circles around it until she was moaning against his ministrations, begging in contradictory pleas for him to release her tension. To stop. For more.

His teeth raked the tightened tip and she gave an incoherent husky cry, knotting her hands in his hair. The sound of it struck him hard, his knees buckling with his body’s reaction, and he only kept from crushing her beneath him on her bed by bracing with one arm as his knees caught the edge. The rapid change in elevation forced her skirt up and thrust one muscular thigh against the damp heat between her legs. Jim shuddered, choking out an agonized groan. “Sweet Moses, Teri, why did you leave me?”

Of their own volition, her hips rocked, rubbing light friction against his thigh and the space between hers, previously denied and desperate for his touch. The stabbing pleasure of the sliding massage rocketed through them both, dragging another unintelligible guttural moan from her and the reiterated suffering question from Jim again.

“Why did you go?” Steady now, or at least not at risk for falling over, Jim clutched her to him, his hungry mouth claiming the opposite nipple, repeating his previous abuse in rhythm with the rolling of her hips against him. “God, please, Teri,” he growled, trapping the aching bud between his teeth, “Tell me!”

Her answer was a low keening wail, rising in pitch with the unbearable pleasure arcing in wild ecstasy across her synapses. “What else could I do? After—ah! no! please! don’t stop!— your reaction—I was so surprised— I.” Unable to string words together anymore, she trailed off into nonsensical cries.

Relaxing his grip, Jim braced himself on his knees and held her tenderly. His reaction after—that had definitely been an epic fail on his part. With circular strokes of his tongue, he soothed her misused nipple while the hand he’d freed made its way down her taut flat stomach, over the bunched fabric of her simple black pencil skirt. He stopped, the heel of his palm resting on her mound, his ready fingers easing between his thigh and the fragile soaking wet cotton of her panties with a pleasure-laced shuddering groan and a corresponding lurch of his hot sex between his legs.

At the time, it had seemed like the only option. He’d quit the swim team, begged excuse from distant excavations, and spent every second outside classes with Teri, day and night, trying to reassure her she was safe, that he’d never hurt her, never force her. His fingertips followed the tender folds through her wet panties, the stimulating caresses he gave so willingly—over and over for as long as she’d take them—were his non-verbal apologies for each minute he’d botched in her care and recovery.

She moaned again at the touch of his hand, her body growing tense as her pleasure drew towards a peak he wanted, maybe more than she did. He focused his efforts through the light material at the top of her slit and the swollen hooded bud beneath, coaxing her body towards climax, his breath heaving with hers in aching anticipation. His forehead pressed against her breast, Jim willed her, come for me, come to me, repetitively in his head.  

Her breath hitching and stuttering in moaning whimpers, Teri strained towards the tantalizing pressure of his fingertips, mindless and helpless against the rising tidal wave of consuming pleasure barreling down upon her, her core wrenching and constricting, aching and tight. So close so close so close so close—just— yes! Bucking and thrashing against him, the coiled tension inside shattered and with a gasped wail, she shuddered against him.

Strong and sure, Jim held her, riding her climax vicariously through her moaning pants and wanton throes. Surprised by his reaction, she’d said. He levered them both forward to stretch out along her bed, and lying beside her, edged trembling aftershocks from her weak and exhausted body with his fingers and trailed kisses along her neck. When he’d hurried back to the apartment they’d secretly shared one afternoon after classes only to find Teri gone, her drawers and closet empty, without a hint of where or why, imagine how surprised he’d been…

Oh, crap! Surprise. That's why he'd come here. Carla would absolutely viciously murder him if he didn’t take the plane out and confirm the site locations they’d received this week.

Jim groaned. Cold water snuffing at the raging fire inside him, but enough effective for him to rein in his ardor. Once again, the minute he was around her, he’d completely forgotten why he was here, and now, aroused to a frenzy by Teri’s responsiveness, now, he was going to have to delay his own gratification and wait to sate an entire decade of undying love and burning lust when he was mere inches and a single pair of plain cotton panties away.

God’s punishment, her mother had said. Well, this sure felt like living hell.

He nuzzled along her neck to her collarbone, shifting in his shorts uncomfortably. “We should go soon. I don’t want you to miss this surprise.”

Her spectacular hazel gold eyes opened, focusing on his face as she leveled him with a heart-stopping smile. “You mean there’s another one?”

At the irony, he had to laugh too. “I’m generous that way. It’s not as awesome as me mauling you in your tiny bedroom, but it’s pretty cool and I think you’ll like it.” Reluctantly, he withdrew his hands from her body, rolled onto his back and sat up. With one hand behind him, he caressed her thigh. “Come on. Get dressed.”

Masada, he reminded himself, watching as Teri slithered off the bed, collected a change of clothes and ducked into the bathroom to dress, only to have his rebellious body reply: she had opened the gate. Stunned by the realization, Jim looked sharply towards the bathroom and froze.

Teri had let him in. She’d not only answered his questions but given him so much more. While the anthropologist in him itched to have her story, not merely the daily grind—her life in her RV, the silly car, her adorable daughter and dog— but the emotionally profound one that had torn them apart and forged the wall still standing between them, albeit wobbly and weak, this afternoon was a huge reversal from the outcome of his efforts last night. If he could just get her to let him walk in her shoes, he could connect to her humanity and work his way forward into her present, her now. Her life. 

Permanently.

The minute he’d seen her jogging, his heart and body roared to thunderous life from near nothingness the with the single goal: to restore her to him. The past couldn’t do that. He could dig it up, see how it came together and came apart, but neither of them was part of it anymore. It didn’t matter how it had happened. Only that it did, and somehow, whether by some rogue deity’s intervention or fortuitous alignment of the stars, it was happening again. They were getting another chance-- he was getting another chance. He didn’t want it to stop, and he didn’t believe Teri did either.

Teri emerged from the bathroom, now dressed in casual clothes, Evie coming quickly to her heel. “What? Jim, are you alright?”

For a second he stared at her, confounded, speechless, then forced a smile that quickly reclaimed his consciousness. “Yes. Just thinking about—work.” He could see the lie didn’t fool her. “Let’s take the dog out.”

When the dog bored of their meanderings, they returned to the RV. “Be back soon,” Teri assured her with a gentle pet, closing her up in the cool interior.

At Jim’s urging, Teri climbed into his Jeep, fastening her seatbelt. His hand was on her thigh before they reached the highway headed north.

**

As they crossed the Colorado river, the southern bank was heavily forested with riparian growth and the northern bank arid, desert-like and winding through the red canyons. The wind whipped Teri’s hair about her face, but she didn’t care. She watched the passing scenery, a rare treat since Zoe couldn’t yet drive, with Jim’s hand warm on her thigh, solid and comfortable. Had it always felt this way with him? she wondered, and some long-silent corner of her mind reassured her, yes.

With her body still remembering the feel of his lips, the taste of his mouth—oh, Lord! the touch of his hands, Teri wondered how she’d been reduced to this—this—senseless immoral hussy, wantonly capitulating to Jim’s every suggestion and shamelessly happy about it. Threading her fingers through his where they rested on the exposed flesh below her shorts, she squeezed lightly. In response, he flashed her a brilliant smile, then reached up to tuck a loose wildly waving lock of hair behind her ear.

Would he still smile so fondly, touch her so tenderly, if he knew what she had done? If he knew her sudden exodus a decade ago was because she was too cowardly to confess she was carrying his child for fear he’d leave her and too in love with him to terminate the pregnancy, even if it meant leaving him herself? And if by some strange twist of fate, Jim had changed his mind, decided he wanted children after all, would he forgive her what her actions had deprived him of? Had cost him? For the years she’d stolen with his firstborn and all he'd missed because of it? Zoe’s first smile, her first words, her first steps, her first tooth. The baseball and soccer games. The countless pictures and art contests.

Jim regretted negotiating the afternoon off with Carla by offering to complete the pending aerial surveys almost the minute he remembered that’s why he’d gone to Teri’s RV. And especially regretted it now, with the sweet lingering fragrance of her desire filling his head.

Knowing what she knew, he was certain Carla would have wished him well for the day the instant he said he wanted to spend it with Teri. In fact, he could hear her incredulous voice asking him what he was doing here, in his Jeep on the way to the airport when the very woman he’d pined for— for years— had invited him to undress her, in her bedroom, and let him bring her to a spectacular climax with his hands.

Debating whether she’d mind him suggesting they turn around and go back to her RV, Jim glanced across the console to Teri. He had no idea what caused it, but he loved the soft smile she wore, wondered what she was thinking. Wished it was about him. “You alright, Gorgeous?”

She faced him, nodding with a polite smile and craning her neck to look around as they made the turn into the airport and around to the hangers for private planes.

Recognizing the airport, both from her flight in April, and from when they’d passed in the RV on the way into town, Teri studied Jim’s profile for the reason they were here, surprised even more when they by-passed the terminal.

After flashing his ID at a security gate, they were waved through and Jim parked the Jeep outside another entrance and helped her out. Taking her hand, he led her through a magnetic security door he opened with a key card he kept in his wallet.

A third secured door opened to an airplane hangar, a few small private planes parked inside with logos on the tails that read: Canyonlands Archaeological Aviation. Teri recognized the registration name from Jim’s phone with a guilty pang.

With long strides, Jim led her to one plane, opening the passenger door. “Up you go.” He swept his hand towards the interior in a grand gesture.

“In there?” Teri’s hazel eyes were wide, the amber tones prevailing in the shadowy interior of the hangar. “Are we flying?”

A beaming smile lit his face and he nodded.

“Who’s piloting?”

“Me.”  His brows flicked up. “Get strapped in. I’ll be right back.” Jogging across the building, Jim entered a code on a keypad near the great double doors, watching a few seconds to confirm they were opening before jogging back to the plane and climbing into the pilot’s seat.

He handed her a bulky headset, checking her belt as she positioned the headphones over her ears, watching him. Assured she was buckled safely, Jim looked up, kissed her in the narrow cockpit and flipped the mic into position in front of her mouth. Flipping several switches started the engine, and he buckled in, putting on his own headset.

Teri understood little of the communication between Jim and the tower as he taxied the plane out of the hangar and onto the tarmac. “I hope you love this.” His voice crackled in her ears, at once powerfully intimate and strangely disembodied. In a matter of minutes, the small plane purred into the air, angling away from the airport.

She watched the world around them in wonder, unable to suppress her smile. Unlike commercial flights, they were flying relatively low, and more was visible around them. The sky was the same fantastic shade as Jim’s eyes, speckled with fluffy white clouds on the horizon. Stratified cliffs cropped up around them, stark against the blue, and capped with straggly determined trees. The river, a green-brown ribbon, twisted and curled beneath them.

Lost in the view, she realized she had no idea how long or where they were flying. “Where are we?” Teri asked, her voice staticky and incredibly feminine over the headset.

“Beef Basin,” Jim’s disembodied voice answered, seemingly inside her head. “It’s home to several well-known Ancestral Puebloan ruins with remarkably well-preserved architecture. If you watch, you should be able to pick them out easily at this elevation.”

“Is this part of Arches? Or something else?” The ground sped away beneath the plane, deep green of the low trees dark against the sand and umber earth and pale grey stones below.

“Canyonlands. The Beef Basin area was originally included in the Bears Ears National Monument borders, but later cut in the monument reduction.” Holding the controls steady with one hand, Jim pointed briefly, directing her attention to a ruin below them.

Teri giggled, thrilled. “Oh wow!”

Jim swung the plane in a wide circle, giving Teri time to look over the ruins. “Many of the structures out here have been recorded by archaeologists, but dozens more are still unrecorded. The museum maps the ones discovered and reported, using the data in predictive models and for advising governing agencies.”

As the ruins slipped away behind the plane, she faced Jim. “Unrecorded. Are there plans to excavate?" 

Leveling the plane, he scanned the horizon. "There's some tree ring and other research underway in the area by different grants and agencies, but large-scale excavation of any site is uncommon. The excavation destroys it, which poses ethical concerns about cultural and political significance for the descendant peoples. So it's unlikely here unless the sites become endangered by development."

Teri’s eyes scanned the horizon. She couldn’t imagine the area being threatened by development. Then again, that seemed like exactly the kind of naïve sentiment that led to the very thing. They drifted through the air, the landscape around changing slowly.

When Teri pointed, Jim’s eyes followed and he smiled, nodding. “Good eye. Those two are undocumented. One reason I brought you this way.” He tipped the plane slightly, angling towards the ruins.

“Do you know all of them by heart?”

Jim laughed. “No. I know the map we keep at the museum, and where it has holes. Get my phone out of my front pocket, will you?”

Teri’s eyes flicked down his body to his lap and she leaned in, patting along his thigh.

Suddenly aware of her attention, his gaze dropped to her hand in his lap, then his widened glacial blue eyes to her face, a half-smile tugging his lips. Her lips were parted seductively, the tip of her tongue just visible against her top teeth. One brow arched teasingly as she slipped her hand into his pocket, feeling around unnecessarily.

Focusing ahead, Jim exhaled through pursed lips as Teri finally withdrew the phone after taking her agonizingly sweet time about it, her fingertips stroking against his thigh along the inside of the pocket.

“We’ll both die if you make me crash this plane,” he warned in her headset, shifting in his seat in an attempt to ease the new tightness between his legs.

She flashed him a wicked smile, biting her lower lip. “Are you that distracted?”

“You better believe I am.”

His assurance made her laugh. “What am I doing with your phone? Wait.” She turned the device over in her hand. It was smaller than the one he’d showed her last night. “Is this your phone?”

He glanced at it briefly, then nodded. “I have two. Go ahead and open it. There’s an icon that looks like a magnifying glass.”

Teri was familiar with the icon, and the associated tracking application, but surprised at how casual he seemed showing it to her. She pressed the Home key and the phone opened without any security. “You really ought to have better security on this device.” She tapped to initialize the app. “What am I doing now?”

“I’m going to fly over those sites you just found. I’ll tell you when, then I want you to press that little red thumbtack in the lower right of the screen.”

“So I’m pinning their locations?”

Nodding, Jim leveled the plane, his eyes focused on the first of the two sites.

“Do you come out here after you pin them?”

“Depends. Some sites out here see frequent visitation, while others don’t. Many actually are pretty far off the beaten path. Get ready.” He sat up straighter, craning to keep his eye on the ruin. “Now.”

Teri pressed the icon, pinning the first ruin as Jim tipped the plane slightly, making a wide circle for a second pass by the other one.

“This area would really benefit from the safeguards proposed by the initial monument boundaries,” Jim sighed. “The Ancestral Puebloans of this region belonged to the Mesa Verde and Northern San Juan branch of the larger Puebloan system. They interacted with the other neighboring branches, like the Virgin, Kayenta, and Chaco, and the Fremont. In particular, Chaco influence continued well into this region. Turning up Kayenta ceramics at these sites isn’t unusual.” He leveled the plane in line with the second ruin.

Setting her hand on his thigh, Teri smiled at him, the phone forgotten in her lap. “It’s amazing, Jim. Thank you.”

“Next time we’ll bring Zoe. When’s she get back?”

“Tomorrow.” The thought made her pause. “How often do you fly out here?”

“Not as much as I’d like. A few times a week maybe for the grants and the private financiers. I attend various meetings all over the southwest. Use the travel as another opportunity to search.” Focusing ahead, he straightened, watching the ruin out the window beside him. “Ready?”

A few seconds passed with Teri reading his body language as he neared the location he wanted her to pin. His cue and her guess aligned perfectly.

Jim angled the plane again, turning away from the sun and back toward the airport. “What do you cook in that little kitchen?”

Teri arched a brow at his inquiry. “Take me home and I’ll show you.”

There was no stopping his broad smile. It was exactly what he wanted to hear.