Free Unrestrained by Joey W. Hill

in the early morning, deer came from the woods that backed her property, drank from it. Grazed on the lawn. The pear tree grove also screened the gazebo from the house, making their meeting private. Lynn and her assistant would bring the food or more drinks when Athena rang them, and not before.
    The china gleamed, the silver was polished. The ironed tablecloth moved gently in the breeze coming off the water. The ceiling fan blades made a rhythmic hum.
    She came to a stop a few steps away from the gazebo. He settled his hip on the rail, one long leg braced, the sole of his other boot sliding along the wood floor. They were the same boots he’d worn the other night, the ones with the silver tips.
    “Come here, Athena. Stand in front of me.”
    A breath fluttered from her throat like a startled butterfly. She stood in place for another blink, teetering on indecision. Not a decision about what he wanted her to do, because the moment he said it, she wanted to go to him, but a decision about what it meant if she did. Dreams and fantasy were about to step over the line into nascent reality, and things could go wrong. Some things were better staying fantasy, letting dreams alone be the place where she let go of the reins.
    Her gaze slid back up. Over his legs, the way his thighs outlined his groin area, though the loose shirttails hid most of that from view. Was he wearing the belt he’d worn the other day? He had a drink on the rail next to him. The dark amber liquid suggested Lynn had brought him a whiskey, or maybe a Coke mixed with something else. She didn’t yet know his drinking habits, beyond black coffee.
    She started to walk. It was nine steps to him. She made it five, and then she was at the table, her hand on the back of one of the chairs. She couldn’t move further.
    “Have you thought about what you want, Athena?” he asked. “Do you have an answer for yourself?”
    He didn’t ask if she had an answer for him, because he’d already understood that the question had never really been for him. He knew what she wanted, as much as he understood she had to accept her answer to make those last four steps.
    “One more time, Athena. Come to me.”
    He wasn’t coaxing. He was commanding. Those outside their world didn’t understand that the command wasn’t backed by a threat, but something far more powerful. Over here, by the chair, she was outside of herself, lost. Adrift in a world of beauty muted by a cloudy veneer she couldn’t penetrate until she dropped her shields, let herself accept the vulnerability that came with full awareness of who and what she was.
    One and two. Three and four. Like hopscotch when she was a little girl. She stood directly in front of the silver tip of his boot now, her elegant pumps aligned with it as the center point.
    She stared at his chest, dropped her gaze to his thighs again. His arm rested on the right one, the side where his hip was half-cocked onto the rail. His nails were clean, the potting soil that had collected under them gone, but they were still rough hands, a workman’s hands. One of those hands lifted, cupped the side of her breast, just as before. She pressed her lips together, that fluttering moving down her sternum, spreading out beneath her rib cage as he curled his fingers, stroked her with his knuckles. He didn’t touch the nipple, but it tightened beneath her bra, aching for him to do so. It was one of her thinner ones, so she was sure her response became visible to him, the breeze blowing the light fabric of her blouse against her. But apparently it wasn’t enough to suit his tastes.
    “After five o’clock, when they’re all gone, I want the bra off. You understand?”
    She nodded. Then she closed her eyes, shuddered hard. He shifted off the rail, standing. Roy had been six feet. Dale was about the same, perhaps a couple of inches taller. His shoulders were wide enough to block her view of anything behind him, even if she’d taken a step back. Now he put