“I gotta get out of here before it gets cold,” she said, almost to herself.

He shot a look at her profile without breaking stride. He hated when she spoke like that, but he kept his mouth shut.

They were surrounded by abandoned factories where the old service road was scarred by frost heaves and cracks with spindly weeds pushing through them. Lilah was three years older, but they were both too young to remember when the industrial park had been active and booming.

Runner had a flash of the attention she’d get if the area were crowded with workers the way everyone described it from the old days. In a pair of tight cutoffs, her thighs were strong and lithe. Her skin was tanned a shade like melted butter. White, cowgirl boots gave her long strides an air of power while her breasts juddered with every footfall, straining the top that barely held them.

She was corn silk blonde and wore it loose around her shoulders.

“You gotta promise you’ll get outta here, too. First chance you get.” She frowned but kept her gaze straight ahead. “Promise you’ll take one of those scholarships for September.”

“Yeah, sure.” Listless tone, listless spirit. It was the last thing he wanted to think about. It wasn’t leaving town that bothered him. She was right about getting away, but the thought of being distant from her threw him into a tailspin.

He felt responsible toward her. He didn’t trust anyone else to look after her. Or know her the way she was supposed to be known. Who would notice the arcane intricacies in the relationship between her cheekbones and the curvature of her jaw? It didn’t matter whether or not she noticed. It was just something that needed doing the way chopping onions for dinner needed doing.

She kept staring ahead, still talking as much to herself as him, but then she stopped short and grabbed him by the shoulders. Even though he was much broader and taller, he nearly dropped the folded beach chairs in each of his hands.

She looked up at him over the top of her sunglasses. Her amber flecked-eyes dead serious.

“Promise me, Run. Really promise. Don’t give me that bullshit you always think I want to hear.”

She was so close Runner could feel her breath on his face. His throat tightened and his body shivered from inside.

“Okay, I promise.” It was what he always said when anyone told him the same thing. What he said to get everyone off his back. His mother. Friends. Teachers who’d run out of things to teach him years ago.

“Bullshitter,” she muttered. She let him go and shrugged the strap of the overstuffed bag she was carrying onto her shoulder, then turned to keep going.

“No, really,” he said, falling back in step beside her. “Definitely. I mean, if you leave, I’ll go nuts around here on my own.”

“Yeah, sure. Besides, with your grades and IQ you’ll be able to write your ticket. You can go anywhere.”

“Well you’re smart, too. You could…”

“Oh, don’t even try,” she cut him off. “I know I’m bright enough, Runner, but I’m nothing like you.”

“Actually, Lilah, you are. You’re just different…”

“Just forget it, okay?”

He didn’t say anymore, but he didn’t forget it.

They turned down a chipped sidewalk leading to the tallest of the buildings. When they reached the door, he set the chairs against the bricks and waded through the weeds to a window. He gave the bottom edge a shove with the heel of his hand and it swiveled open. Then he lifted himself over the sill and tumbled inside.

A few seconds later, he yanked open the heavy, rusted door. Lilah picked up the folding chairs and stepped inside. Runner shouldered the door closed, sliding the bolt back in place. He took the chairs and followed her across the open space to the stairs.

He watched the movement of her ass as she led the way up three flights. By the time they reached the top, he was breaking a sweat, but not from the exertion. At six-one, with a solid, defined body, he could’ve spent half the day running up and down those stairs barely getting winded, but following Lilah in those tight shorts made him breathless.

Most people found Runner’s physique a contradiction to his IQ. He had the kind of body that took hours to develop, but studying was something he never had to work at. Everything just made sense. Complex theories that gave his teachers migraines fell into place easily as fairy tales. But when he was younger, he’d been a popular target for bullies. Only Lilah ever stepped in to defend him until he grew capable of defending himself.

Lilah’s mother and Runner’s father had once had a relationship that never lasted six months, but the two of them meshed so naturally neither of them ever noticed it was happening.

Runner had loved her in silence through a minor circus sideshow of boyfriends. He’d sat by in silence when she talked about them, continually griping how yet another one wasn’t working out.

“It’s because you waste your time on men who aren’t as smart as you,” he’d told her a few months ago. She’d laughed him off, as usual, but still, whenever she needed someone big and intimidating standing nearby, Runner was always there. But there’d be a time she wouldn’t need him like that anymore. Someone would fill the shapeless, undefined spaces in her life he always had.

Unshakable sadness fell over him.

When they walked onto the roof, Lilah unrolled a pair of mats while Runner unfolded the chairs. He held his breath as he watched her bend over and pull a couple of insulated water bottles and a plastic tube of tanning lotion from the bag. Every muscle and sinew of her legs flexed while her cutoffs lifted above the crease of her ass cheeks.

He turned away before she straightened up and caught him, but he knew she was aware of the way he looked at her. She never said anything about it, and she never did anything to make him feel good or bad about it. Runner assumed it was something a girl like her was used to, like it didn’t mean anything. People just look at a body like hers.

Kicking off his sandals, he peeled his T-shirt over his head and then opened his shorts, letting them drop. In his tight blue boxer-briefs, he sensed Lilah inspecting him from behind her sunglasses. He felt good, even proud of the ripe, substantial bulge in his crotch, but he also felt self-conscious and lowered himself onto one of the chairs.

He reached for one of the water bottles while Lilah kicked off her boots and lifted the tank top over her head, revealing the black bra underneath. Then she unzipped her cutoffs and pushed them down, revealing panties that matched the bra. Runner closed his eyes, bathing his face in the sun before the sight of her caused his cock to balloon and break free of his briefs.

He followed her by sound. A bottle of water for her. The other chair scraping the roof, then creaking as she sat down.

After a couple minutes of silence, Lilah blew a loud sigh of frustration and Runner opened his eyes. She was looking at him with her head cocked slightly to the side.

“Runner? How come you never say much when I talk about getting away?”

“’Cuz I don’t like it. I know it’s coming, but I don’t like it.”

“You don’t wanna see me stuck here forever, do you? You’ll be going away to college and then where will I be?”

“I know, I know,” he nodded, resigned.

She picked up the lotion and squirted some into her palm. She spread it over her skin while Runner watched out of the corner of his eye.

“Besides,” she added as she continued smearing her body with cream, “it’ll be good for us to get away from each other a while. Get some perspective.”

Runner’s jaw tightened and he gripped the flimsy plastic arms of his chair. He tried to keep his reaction from looking too obvious, but he was he wasn’t doing as good a job as he wanted. Just watching her spread that sheen across her body was fucking with his senses. He had plenty to say, but he knew she was right and kept silent.

“The amount of time we spend together is…unusual,” she said after a while. “Do you know how many people ask if you’re my boyfriend?”

The tightness in his jaw spread to his throat.

“I mean, people talk, Run. Some of my friends say things you wouldn’t believe. Ever since you bulked up like you are.”

“Who said what?” Runner sat up straight.

“You don’t wanna know, believe me. And then there’s my mother’s boyfriend. He looks at us funny most of the time.”

“He looks at you funny. Way too much, if you ask me. Me, he barely notices.”

“Oh he notices you,” Lilah said. “He’s scared shitless of you.”

“He should be,” he responded carefully.

“Hmm. As chance would have it, he’s been noticeably less creepy around me the last few weeks. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Run?”

“I saw him drunk once, you know,” he evaded.

“That’s nothing new,” she muttered.

“Yeah, well…”

She tilted her head at him and nearly glared, expecting more.

“He called me a freak. Said I should quit coming around. That you’re out of my league and…well he said a bunch of other stuff, too.”

Her face went crimson and her jaw fell open. “I can’t believe he…”

“Don’t worry. It’s not like he’s ever gonna do it again.”

“Run…what did you do?”

“Nothing.”

He outwaited her, not wanting to admit how he’d lost it and ended up scaring himself more than he scared her mother’s boyfriend. At least he’d gotten ahold of himself before leaving any marks.

Lylah kept watching his face, waiting, but she finally let it go with a sigh.

“Anyway,” she said, “neither of us is ever gonna have a normal relationship the way we’re going.”

He wanted to say she could go with him when he left for college, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

After a while she started getting restless. She couldn’t seem to sit still, and finally sat up straight.

“Fuck it.” She unhooked her bra and tossed it on top of her other clothes. Then she took a deep breath and hastily slid her panties off, tossing them the same way as her bra.

“Jesus, Li,” Runner barely breathed.

There were pale triangles over her breasts and her nipples looked puffy, with large, pink areolas.

“Oh, c’mon, Run, haven’t you ever wanted to tan all over? Sure you have. It’s just us, anyway. Afraid you’re gonna get excited?”

“Well…yes,” he confessed. “And more than a little.”

Lilah stood up from her chair and stretched. It looked as if her body was moving twelve ways at once, and Runner could hardly catch a breath. She squirted more lotion on her palm and coated the tender looking white triangles in her skin. Except for a thin landing strip, her pussy was bare as a peach.

“That’s natural,” she said. Her voice trembled slightly. “It’d be okay. Anyway, it’s not like those briefs are gonna hide what you’ve got.”

She kept rubbing her lotion-slick fingers over a naked breast until it started looking like a nervous gesture. Runner felt her eyes on him as he stood up. His cock already felt too thick when he pushed off his briefs. She looked him over with a subtle smile.

“You’re gonna need some of this.” She handed him the lotion bottle and nodded toward his swaggering cock.

Though he felt a tremor in his hand as he took the bottle, he’d never felt so powerful. It was as if he could feel the blood pulse through every muscle. He stopped worrying about getting hard in front of her. It would be a huge relief. Even if they felt they could never do anything about it, he liked knowing she’d see the physical proof of his feelings.

Lilah sat on one of the mats and watched him squirt lotion on his hand and spread it over the white of his hips and groin. He squeezed out another dollop and spread it over his cock and nutsac. He felt anxious, but not a shred of shyness. His cock quickly grew thick and started to jut forward.

“Jeezus, Runner. You could injure somebody with that,” Lilah snickered. Then she lay back and stretched her body, patting the mat beside her.

“Now come keep me company before you scare the vultures.”

He lay beside her, and he soon forgot why he should feel nervous about being naked with her.

They lay in silence several minutes when he felt her reach for his hand. They held hands without talking, while Runner felt his cock get harder and hotter. Trusting her eyes were closed, he kept reaching for his cock and stroked it every couple of minutes, easing that other, purely physical tension.

Eventually, his cock was rippling with hardness. His entire shaft and knob were thick with lotion and precum from his stroking. He tried not to let Lilah feel his tension, but it seemed like all he could do to keep from crushing her hand.

The gaps between urges to stroke his cock grew shorter and shorter. He kept thinking of how she’d watched him undress. Her breasts were lush and firm, while her slit had peered up at him from between her shining thighs, so sweet and inviting.

He felt her hand squeeze his as she let out a long, slow sigh. She was watching. He could feel it. He groaned and flexed his hips as his hand angled his cock upward and continued pumping.

His precum dribbled so thick and fast his flesh was completely soaked. He listened to Lilah breathe deeply along with the soft slicking sound of his hand.

She let go of his hand and he sensed her weight shift, then felt her hand on his thigh a scant couple of inches from his balls. Her fingers slowly advanced until she lightly grazed the skin of his sac. He froze, afraid the slightest move would make her take her hand away.

“I can do that for you, Run,” she said quietly after a long moment of silence. “I don’t mind. I mean, I’d like to. It wouldn’t be like we were doing anything serious.”

Runner opened his eyes, shading them with his hand. Lilah, so sleek and raw, so beautiful, sitting cross legged beside him, was looking inquisitively at his face while her palm slowly cupped his heavy sac.

“Yes, it would,” he said, warning and pleading at the same time. “To me.”

“To me, too,” she replied. “I just meant…it wouldn’t be the same as…”

“I know what you meant.”

He watched her intently. She always seemed so in control of herself, but now she seemed almost shy, as if she were a little afraid of touching his cock.

He finally slipped his hand down his cock and over hers, encouraging her. Aching for it as there had never been anything else to ache for.

Her hand moved gently under his, lightly caressing his balls. She brought the other to curl around his thick shaft, squeezing, testing his hard resilience. He moved his arm to prop himself up on his elbows and watched her explore his flesh with both hands. She raked her fingers along his pulsing length over and over, making him drip more heavily than before.

“You’ve got a beautiful cock, Run,” she said quietly. “I knew you would. I mean…”

She spent a long time studying his cock, raking her fingers over his shaft and tracing the heavy ridge around his dome. She soaked her fingers with his oozing precum, lovingly smearing his tautly stretched skin.

“You’re so hard, but so…silky,” she said, almost to herself.

He could barely speak. It was all he could do just to breathe.

“I love you. You know that, right?”

He nodded. “You know I love you, too, don’t you, Li?”

“Yeah,” she smiled. “I know. I always knew.”

She reached for the lotion and dribbled a couple of big dollops onto his pulsing cock while she held him upright with the other hand. Then she started to work his shaft with both hands. It felt like she was stroking him in a hundred directions. He moaned and flexed his butt while she kept pumping him.

“I wish I could do more, Run. A lot more. If you only knew how much. But that’s impossible for people like us.”

“No…”

“Shhhhhh. Just relax and forget all that. I can never have you inside me.”

“Why?” It was part plea, part groan, and a question he already knew the answer to, even if he didn’t see it the same way.

“You know…nothing would ever be the same after that.”

Runner’s arousal grew until he could barely catch his breath and his muscles stood out in stark relief. He wanted to lay his hands on Lilah’s body so much he wanted to scream, but he didn’t want to give her the slightest reason to stop.

She was making love to his cock with her hands. It felt hot and nasty, yet solemn at the same time.

“I really wish you were anyone else right now,” she sighed deeply. “That cock would feel so good sliding up inside me. God, Run, you’re the one I really want to fuck.”

He groaned with a tinge of desperation. “I love you. Lilah,” he said hopelessly.

“Oh Runner, I love you, too. You’ve always known that, haven’t you?”

He nodded silently, eyes burning and chest heaving with soft gasping.

Lilah was shaken by the intensity of his gaze. “You’re the only one ever treated me like I figured I deserve. I mean, if it weren’t for you, I probably never would’ve figured out I really do deserve somebody good.”

She never skipped a stroke. There was a palpable air of relief between them now. She paused long enough to drip more lotion over his swollen cock and then continued caressing him.

“You know I dream about … being in you?” he confessed. A crack formed in his emotional dam, and it felt like it was growing wider and wider as the seconds ticked by. “Don’t laugh, but…I kind of dream if I could only be…inside you…deep…and let you look me in the eye when I tell you I love you…you’d know…and you’d always be mine.”

“Run…” she sighed. Her eyes glittered with a rush of moisture.

For a moment, it seemed she didn’t know what to do next. She released her grip on his cock and clenched visibly. Then she pressed one hand between her thighs and started massaging her pussy while she resumed stroking his hard on with the other. Her breath deepened. Her breasts heaved. The pressure inside him gathered like a storm.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. The look on her face made it seem as if she was bringing herself as much pleasure as him, but he couldn’t imagine that was possible. His cock felt like it was burning up while her hand drove him to the edge.

He needed to cum.

Soft grunts sputtered from his throat while he rocked his hips, fucking into her grip. She opened her eyes and turned her attention back to him, returning the hand from her wet pussy to his cock. She gripped his shaft tightly at the base with one hand and pumped him hard and fast with the other.

“Cum for me, Run,” she mewled. “Oh god, I love you so much. Cum for me now.”

All the tension and pressure in Runner’s body suddenly released in a torrent of cum. He gasped and spurted with dizzying spasms of pleasure. Even Lilah was gasping as if she were cumming with him. For a moment, he didn’t think he was ever going to stop spuming that thick froth, but the spasms finally subsided, leaving his body and Lilah’s hand spattered with cum.

“God, Run, there’s so much,” she mused, still sliding her hand up and down his froth covered cock.

Before he could catch his breath, she leaned over and planted a lingering kiss on his sap covered knob, smearing him over her lips. Then she leaned back on her own mat, spreading her thighs and lifting up her knees. Her pussy was soaking wet as she ground her cum drenched fingers against her bare slit.

“I…I’m sorry, Run…I can’t…help…”

He watched her massage her clit for a several minutes, spellbound by her ardent squirms and rocking hips. He finally rose to his knees. Her eyes were on him as he scooped up a large dollop of cum off his chest and brought those same fingers to her pussy.

He pushed her hand out of the way and began massaging her clit with the slippery pads of his fingers. Lilah gasped and clutched at her quivering breasts, tweezing her engorged nipples as she arched her mound into his hand.

“That’s my cum all over your pussy now,” he said as he slid a finger from his other hand into her broiling channel. “That’s so you’ll always be mine. No matter who you ever go with. You’ll always be mine.”

“Oh, Runner, yes,” she mewled weakly.

She looked at him with wide open eyes, her jaw slack as she huffed for breath. Then she whispered his name and let her head drop back to the mat. She threw her arms off to each side and planted her feet further apart, opening herself even more. She lifted her ass slightly and ground her hips while he fingered her sheath and nub at the same time.

Her pussy seemed more like a work of natural art than just another naked body part. Her mound had a classic, pouty shape, with full, crimson lips that flushed scarlet the more aroused she became. She was oozing with the sweetest honey he could imagine. His fingers and her upper thighs were nearly drowning in it.

Soon after he felt the ripples in her pussy around his thrusting finger, Lilah’s entire spine arched and her hips jerked in time with her deep gasps for air.

“Run…Run…oh god, Runner!” she cried.

She seemed to take forever to cum, and he wondered if she might not be cumming more than once. He hoped so. There was nothing he knew to compare to her at her peak.

When her body finally started to relax, he leaned down and kissed her swollen pussy. He kissed her slit as hard and deep as he’d always yearned to kiss her mouth, smearing her nectar over his lips and letting his tongue slide deeply inside. He felt her hand touch the back of his head while her pussy arched weakly against his mouth.

“I just needed to taste you,” he told her when he straightened up.

A moment later, they were lying just as they had been before, on their backs in the sun with their hands firmly clasped between them. They had everything and nothing to say, and nothing won the battle. A strong sun kept their bodies damp and steamy while a light breeze drifted across them, barely taking the edge off the heat.

After a long while, Lilah meekly called his name.

“Mm?”

“Couldn’t you just lie here forever?”

“At least,” he replied.

As they lay side by side on the roof of that decaying shell of the old factory, they remained silent long enough for it to feel like forever. Runner reached over to lay his hand on her shoulder, and his palm brushed over the soft mound of her breast. There was something electric and forbidden in the fleeting scrape of his skin across her nipple. He wanted to cup her breast and squeeze her firmly.

But he didn’t.

He knew she wouldn’t stop him, but something in his heart told him this wasn’t the day. There would be another, maybe an even better day than this, and it would come whenever it would come. His body didn’t have that kind of patience or faith, but she was there, her shoulder under the palm of his large hand, and the one thing that terrified him more than anything was squandering this crystalline moment.

“There’s something I need to ask,” he finally said.

He didn’t look at her. She didn’t look back. All the energy in the cosmos was passing through the place where his hand was touching her skin.

“Ok,” she said.

“If we both leave town, one of us goes east and the other west.”

“How come?”

“Cuz if we keep going long enough, eventually we’ll come around the corner and meet up again. So just promise me…time comes, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Means you gotta promise, too, Run.”

“You know I do,” he said.

“Yeah.” Her voice drifted somewhere he couldn’t get to.

He suddenly rolled over and covered her naked body with his. He straddled her hips and looped his arms under her shoulder blades to pull her close. Her lush breasts mashed against his solid chest while his cock pressed into the seam along her snugly pressed thighs.

“Say it, Li. Say it out loud,” he whispered urgently.

“Ok, Run…I promise.”

She sounded unconvincing, but there was something deeper inside her that held faith in whatever would come. He knew. Her eyes were saturated with it. Then her smooth thighs parted and his body filled the space between, his cock pressing against the heated lips he’d smeared with his own cum just moments before. She felt sticky and more alive than any creature he’d ever seen or touched.

“Can you feel that, Run? That’s you all over me. Like you said, so I’ll always know who I really belong to.”

He took her face in his hands, the heat of urgency burning up his own. “Don’t you dare forget that,” he said, his voice intense and quavering. “Don’t you dare forget that as long as you live.”

“Baby, ‘course I won’t,” she said. “You know damn well I won’t.”

She touched the back of his head. He buried his face in her neck and believed her.