Critique_This_WIP

Here's the next installment of Friday Fiction. If you'd like to read the previous scenes, or see what Friday Fiction is all about, click here.

Shane spent only a few minutes tending to his gunshot wound, which turned out to be much less severe than they could have hoped for. The bullet had only grazed him. With only a few squirts of antiseptic wash and a bandage, they were on their way.

According to their map, Shane and Erica had disposed of both the RV and Frank’s body just east of Salado, AZ. Over an hour later, the trek through the dark, sandy desert had numbed Erica’s fragile nerves. The past few hours had been a nightmare—something straight out of a movie. She’d picked up a hitcher, discovered a dead body, ran from the scene of a crime, was held at gunshot by a psychopath, shot a man, burnt his body down to ashes, and sent him to his maker with fifty thousand dollars of Winnebago comfort.

Her Winnebago. Her entire life savings and the modest trust fund her grandmother had left her both went into that RV. It wasn’t new—but it was hers. Damn it all to hell! This couldn’t be happening. Erica would have pinched herself, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, but her feet were killing her. With each step, pain erupted through her feet, working its way from heel to toe. Walking across sand dunes was proving to be agony, but at least the pain in her feet kept her distracted from the ugly truth of her situation. Right now, she could recall the events of the day with nothing more than casual detachment, as if watching a TV show in her mind, though that may only be because the pain in her feet had been steadily making its way up to her calves, distracting her further.

How much further would they be walking? She could always ask Shane, but as soon as she’d seen him light the match that had destroyed her cross country dream, her vehicle, and her home, a slow burning fire—unlike the one that engulfed her Winne—began to smolder in her temples. Rage boiled within her, seething down her body and through her limbs, threatening to explode. If she never talked to Shane again, it would be too soon.

Of course, one would think that time would only strengthen one’s resentment toward the man responsible for destroying one’s dreams. And one would be right…if only one’s feet were not threatening to detach themselves from one’s body and beat her to death with a pair of overpriced Nikes.

While Erica was panting her way through the endless heaves of sand, dirt, and rocks, Shane was six yards ahead, calm, collected, and gliding over the cool desert floor as if he’d mastered the art of levitation. Rags was trotting along beside him, his head snapping at the shadows cast by the flashlights. Didn’t he realize who’s dog he was?

Hell, I’m the one that saved you from the pound, you good for nothing mutt.

Come to think of it, this whole mess could be put at Rag’s feet—er, paws. He’d been the one whining at the car window, begging with those puppy-dog-eyes for Erica to let a stranger on board. Her mother had always warned her, ‘dicks hang together’. Mom had never been more right. Yes, this was Ragsie’s fault. And Shane’s. The two made the perfect pair of chaos and mischief.

Still, if chaos and mischief were bad to have around, at least the view was nice. In the darkness, Erica could only make out his silhouette, but a silhouette was all she needed. Shane was tall and slim, but his muscles were well defined, his shoulders broad. While his hips were thin, his butt was the perfect combination of full and firm. It wasn’t the first time she’d noticed it either.

For a while, Erica distracted herself from the pain steadily creeping up her legs with the lulling rise and fall of Shane’s thighs, his hips, his ass. Left, right, left. Up, down, up. Right, left, right. Back and forth, and back and—

“Ooof!” It happened so fast, it took her body a moment to catch up. One second, she was making her way down a dune, and the next she was falling. Then she felt it. Molten heat speared through her left thigh, shooting spasms of agony down to the bone. “Aahhh! Holy mother of—”

—her words were cut off as she twisted, pulling her legs up into her chest, cradling her burning leg like a wounded child. Unstable sand gave way beneath her sudden, jerky weight, sending her sliding, twisting, and turning down the slope.




“Erica!” Shane whipped around, his flashlight making a wide arc in the night sky before he dropped it, reaching out and grabbing her by the arm. He couldn’t stop her. The force of her fall threw him off balance; his feet slid in the sand, and he fell on his left hip. Erica was rolled up tight, her body huddled in a deformed version of the fetal position. He held onto her, hard enough to leave a bruise, but if he let go, she’d never stop rolling. Pushing out with his legs he slowed their decent, keeping Erica pulled close to him as they came to a stop near the base of the dune.

Only then did he notice that Rags was barking. The flashlights were scattered halfway up the dune, each pointing in a different direction, each beam of light half buried in the sand.

“Ooh, my leg,” she cried out, clutching her left leg. “My leg, my leg!”

Had she broken it in the fall? Shane jerked up, anxiety coursing down his muscles in tight waves. Straining to see in the darkness, he peered down at her. No white bone reflected off the moonlit sky. He sent up a silent ‘thank you’, then touched her calf, gently feeling his way up the muscle, testing for any breaks hidden beneath her denim jeans.

“Where does it hurt?” He asked, his hand moving in unison around the width of her thigh.

“There!” She hissed. “It’s a cramp… Christ, I’ve never had one this bad—”

A cramp? That was it? No broken bones? Shane grinned, his shoulders relaxing as the tension fled his body. “A cramp.” He repeated. Well shit, that made sense, they’d been walking for close to 2 hours and covered about five miles of open desert. She’d kept up with him, but he hadn’t checked to make sure she was drinking plenty of water. Or stretching. Shit. He should have been more careful.

“The you go, rub it out,” he soothed, rubbing his hands up and down the length of her thigh, creating a friction that would warm her tired, aching muscle. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he felt the moment her pain started to ebb. It wasn’t just her thigh that relaxed—every muscle in her body went loose. Her arms slid to her sides as her neck and shoulders rolled back and her head rested against the sand. As the strain left her body, she let out a throaty little moan.

It was the most satiated moan he’d heard in a long time.