As the sky above me grayed and water ran over me, my fingers pruned. I cast all sex-based shame from my mind and focused on the seeds of the plan that had first germinated when Mike had hoisted me onto the counter at Levitate. That moment had made my intimate parts clench in a way that was as sudden as it was promising.
Mike could teach me how to sex correctly. I was sure of it. Then my sex charisma would become obvious to all and sundry, and all the trolls who were bullying me online because they didn’t believe Paul would ever have looked twice at me would have to eat crow.
Let Operation Sex Appeal commence.
CHAPTER 6
MIKE
By the time I’d done four hours of milking, three hours at the café, and then driven over to Pahiatua to pick up some more drench for the sheep, I was tired and cranky.
The drive home only worsened my mood, because the driver in front of me thought his indicators were optional party lights. I fell back to a cautious six-second following distance while we were in the 100 kmh zone, giving me even more time to think.
I’d been dodging my sister’s calls, and her messages were all variants of what the fuck were you thinking. I hadn’t intended to tell Lyssa to come to New Zealand, and I definitely didn’t think she’d actually do it. She’d just looked so sad on our Holli-ford family call, all alone in her chaotic hamster cage of an apartment.
Now she was here. In Aotearoa, in my house and in my kitchen, wearing just her knickers and saying things like or ... dot dot dot to me.
Everyone knew what or ... dot dot dot meant, right? Meant she wanted my Mike meat. Meant she wanted to saddle me up and ride me like a pony. Meant that if I asked nicely, she’d have hopped up on the counter and spread her legs.
Part of me—the Mike meat part—really liked that idea. But Lyssa was off limits and I was a changed man. I had big boy business goals now. NEW MIKE.
As the fucko in the Toyota Hilux in front of me made another unsignaled turn, I leaned on the horn. He flipped me off out the window and I waved cheerfully back. Eventually, he veered off down a side road—without indicating, of course—and my thoughts returned to Lyssa.
She was only a year younger than me, but I was going to pretend there were whole decades between us. Or I was Switzerland, and she was … dunno, somewhere far away from Switzy. I’d failed Geography at school, even though I had the best sense of direction of anyone in this town, and they all knew it. In Boy Scouts when I was twelve, they blindfolded us and led us deep into the forest and then left us there without any food or water. Said it was a survival test. I was the only kid who found their way back to camp. They had to use search-and-rescue dogs to find everyone else; Michael Clarke nearly didn’t make it.
That Scout group didn’t exist anymore. For obvious reasons.
Thing was, Michael would have been fine if he’d just fucking followed me, like I told him to. It’s like they say: You can lead a stubborn ass to a river, but you can’t make him follow it downstream.
I was busy thinking about Michael’s terrible sense of direction, about bush survival, about keeping my mouth shut on Zoom calls and turning down dot dot dot offers from lanky brunettes; so when I pulled down my driveway, I didn’t notice that Baz wasn’t in his paddock. I also didn’t notice that the fence that split the grass into two halves was flattened in the middle in a suspiciously Baz-sized shape.
But I did see a familiar lanky figure flattened up against the side of my shed, an ice cream container clutched in her hands and a terrified look on her face as my large pet sheep bolted toward her.
I threw the truck into park and tore a branch off the golden elm tree on the fence line, before vaulting the gate with one hand.
“Oi, Baz!” I waved the branch.
Baz skidded to a stop inches from Lyssa and swung his head around to eye me. It took him a split second to decide that leaves had nothing on Mini M’s special nuts. This should have been enough time for Lyssa to get over the fence to safety, but she wasn’t a country kid, and she didn’t take the opportunity. Instead, she stayed pressed against the boundary fence.
Baz was a wether, with none of the danger of an uncut ram. He was harmless in terms of intent. The problem was, he was a big motherfucker and currently on a vet-mandated diet, which left his bottomless pit of a gut permanently unsatisfied. Baz was huge and more than capable of accidentally trampling someone when he was fixated on food. A few years ago, Brittney Wylie had her femur shattered by a charging ewe. Lyssa didn’t know that, and she also didn’t know Baz was just after food, as demonstrated by her death grip on the ice cream container. If she’d just thrown some of the nuts or dropped the container, he would have left her alone.
Baz thrust his head toward her, teeth reaching, and Lyssa let out a sharp scream.
“Lyssa!” I bellowed. “Drop the nuts!”
She kept hold of the container, her face a mask of pure horror.
Fuck.
I broke into a run as Baz went up on his back legs to pin Lyssa. He used to do that to me when I bottle-fed him as an orphaned lamb, climbing me to reach his bottle. I hadn’t thought to train him out of it because I hadn’t anticipated that knee-high lamb being a bajillion-pound eating machine with an insatiable craving for horse pellets.
I dove and got my arms around Baz’s neck just in time to tug him off balance. Surprised, he tumbled, legs flailing. As his bulk landed on me, all the air was slammed from my body and immediately replaced by searing pain.
I grunted as I took a cloven hoof to the thigh. Baz kept wiggling and protesting until I let him go. He clambered back to his feet, huffing in shock. Fair enough. From his perspective, his two-legged father had just performed an illegal tackle on him for no reason.
“Lyssa,” I wheezed. “Throw the nuts for him.”
Stunned, it took her a second to figure it out. Luckily, Baz was likewise still processing his astonishment. She opened the container and threw the pellets, some of which landed on me. Baz, with the sprightliness of a much younger sheep, jumped to the closest cluster, hoovering them from the grass like an outdoor Roomba.
