Page 63 of Red Boar's Baby

“Saw what you guys were doing down there,” he said. “That’s a good idea.”

“Find the water hole okay?” Costa asked.

“Yeah, thanks. We lucked out that there was water close enough to walk to.”

“We mainly lucked out on time of year,” Diana said. “There’s quite a bit of water in these hills in spring. Later in the summer, most of these springs and basins are going to be dry.”

“Yeah, well, I appreciate what you guys did for me.”

“Don’t make us regret it,” Costa said.

Diana brushed her sandy hands together. “Speaking of regretting things, you will regret many things if you glance in the direction of the water hole in the next ten minutes, because nothing gets you covered in sand like carrying rocks in a sand pit. We’re gonna go clean up.”

She didn’t realize thewewas going to slip out until she had already said it.

“Together?” Farley asked, eyebrows raised.

Costa looked like a guy caught between a rock and a hard place.

Diana wasn’t sure what stubborn urge made her do it. “Yes,” she said. “Together.” And she reached out and took Costa’s hand in her sandy one.

After a startled, frozen instant, he turned his hand around to lace his fingers through hers.

“Like she said,” Costa said. “No peeking. If I see any signs of a wolverine around, that arm will be the least of your problems.”

Farley snorted a slightly nervous laugh. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay up here. I might go down and see if anything’s left in the wreck that we can use.”

“Good idea,” Costa said.

Diana doubted it, after the fire had burned anything flammable and melted everything else into a lump of char. But it got him away from the temptation to be a peeping Tom and that was all she really cared about.

She and Costa picked their way toward the water hole. Her hand stayed in his.

“I don’t know what all that was about back there,” Costa said, his voice low. “But if you want to bathe in privacy, I can wait my turn.”

“We literally spent the night being naked together,” Diana pointed out. “I’ve got nothing you haven’t seen before.”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

There was an intensity to his tone that resonated in her chest. Diana looked away, unwilling or unable to meet the heat in his eyes.

She was aware they were teetering on the edge of something they couldn’t come back from. In her present mood, an odd mix of confidence and recklessness, she didn’t care. Maybe it was spending so much time shifted last night, after not having done so in a while; the roadrunner always thought in terms of “now,” and that tended to bleed over into her human mind a little. The future seemed very far away.

They found their way back down to the spring by following an old animal trail. Diana hadn’t gotten a good look at it before, as she hadn’t yet seen it with her human eyes by daylight. It was actually quite a nice little place. Water bubbled up from the rocks, expanded into a pool and then trickled away in a thin stream that wound out of the hollow through cracks in the rocks, eventually vanishing as it soaked into the thirsty ground. Around the small pool, green leaves and grass framed it with calendar-picture perfection. There was even some degree of privacy, as the rocks sheltering the pool also hid it from casual eyes.

“Well, we’re not going to actually want to splash around in the spring,” Costa pointed out. “We have to drink from that. I don’t think anyone wants my junk swishing around in their morning coffee water.”

Diana burst into laughter. She wasn’t even sure why it was so funny; it just was. She laughed herself weak, leaning on a rock.

“I will take that as a confirmation of my position,” Costa said, eyes dancing. “So I guess that leaves either the spit-bath you suggested, or making ourselves a bathing pool.”

Diana wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. “It’s a good idea, but we don’t have anything to dig with.”

The sparkle in his eyes was joined by a grin. “Youdon’t have anything to dig with.”

Before she could react, he quickly skimmed out of his jeans and boots. Diana barely had a moment to registerfully naked Quinn Costabefore he shifted into his boar shape.

Diana watched with interest, and some amount of amusement, as Costa used his hooves and his tusks, in combination with his powerful neck muscles, to excavate a hollow adjacent to the main pool. There was already a depression there; it looked like, in particularly wet years, the spring spilled over to create a series of small ponds. Costa scooped and scraped at the growing dampness in the widening hole, in the process getting his head and the wiry fur covering most of his body plastered with sand.

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