“Why would you do that?” she asked aloud.

“And miss ... this?” Eden waved a hand at Scout, kneeling, absently caressing her pinky toe, the gesture so sudden and soothing it had surprised them both. “I’d have walked on spikes for this, Scout.”

Scout rolled her eyes, quietly repeating the gesture as she unlaced, loosened and dragged off Eden’s other hiking boot and silly, sexy striped socks. “Geez, Eden, this one’s even worse.”

“I really tried to make them work,” Eden insisted as Scout slid off her backpack and rifled through two of the zippered side pockets until finding what she was looking for. “What’s that?” Eden asked, wearing a horrified expression as if, perhaps, Scout was preparing to amputate something.

“Antibiotic cream,” Scout explained, twisting off the top and squeezing a dime size portion in her free hand. “It’ll help with the swelling.”

Gently, slowly, just shy of tenderly, Scout slathered the cream on Eden’s toes, rubbing it in as slowly as she could. The moment had grown quiet, oddly intimate and, with the gurgling creek at their side, the birds chirping in the background, leaves rustling and sun shining, Scout glanced up to find Eden blushing, lips gently parted and evocatively moist.

“What?” Scout asked, voice tight and clenched in her throat. “What’s wrong?”

Eden shook her head, chestnut brown ponytail long and rasping across the small of her back. “Nothing, it’s just ... no one’s ever done that for me before?”

Scout chuffed it off, the emotion, the sensation, too much for the moment. All the same, she found herself gently clutching Eden’s foot, as if unwilling to let go of the achingly tender moment after all. “What, bought you shoes in the wrong size and bullied you into wearing them on a hike you didn’t want to take in the first place?”

Eden chastised her with those rich brown eyes. “No, Silly. Touched my feet before.”

“Never?”

Eden seemed suddenly vulnerable, and not just because of her sudden state of undress, innocent though it may have looked. “What, you have?”

“Touched someone’s feet?” Scout repeated the phrase, all while shaking her head. “No, it’s just ... never occurred to me before.”

“Before what?”

“Before just now. You ... were in pain. Vulnerable. Hurting. I wanted to relieve it. That’s all.”

Eden swallowed. Scout watched it, aching to touch her throat, long and tender and bare. “And now?”

“Now ... what?”

Eden gently pressed her bare foot into Scout’s palm, where she’d grasped it like Prince Charming trying on Cinderella’s slipper. The sensation was forceful, almost demanding, the message far from cryptic. “Now you’re still holding onto it.”

Scout resisted the urge to release the foot, bare and seductive and silken in her almost desperate grip. Instead she swallowed as well, nodding with a slow, curious smile. “I can let it go, if that’s what you’d like?”

Eden sensed the challenge in her voice, jutting out her chin playfully. “What? And break the spell?”

Scout smiled, a gush of warmth spreading through her body until it pooled, sticky and damp, in her panties. She sensed the moment happening, even as she struggled to prevent it.

Or, at the very least, try to. “Eden, listen. I ... I ...”

“You what?” Eden purred, wriggling atop the big, flat stone as if presenting herself like a gift.

Scout ignored the way her full breasts pressed against the soft, clingy fabric of her blouse. The way the hem lay just so, revealing the slightest hint of soft, radiant belly above the waistband of her faded denim shorts, clinging tenderly to her gently spread thighs, so pale and creamy and desperately inviting.

Scout squeezed her foot for emphasis, as if giving lie to the words that followed. “Eden, I don’t ... I don’t do this.”

Eden smirked, if anything splaying herself out all the more, a veritable buffet of new and exotic delicacies for Scout’s private consumption. “What? Include free, ill-fitting shoes and subsequent foot massages as part of your house staging services?”

“Obviously, yes. I ... I work for you. I’m a professional. I don’t do things like this ...”

Eden scoffed, voice merry and full of deep, dark, sexy mirth, such a far cry from the frosty boss bitch Scout had met almost literally twenty-four hours earlier. “And what? I do? You think I wear cutoff jeans and ... and ...” She fluffed the flouncy collar of her sexy peasant blouse, sheer and almost see through as the day’s light graced it with a most flattering glow. “Peasant blouses, for Pete’s sake? I’m at a loss here, Scout, same as you. I think ... I think we can both agree we’re slipping down the same rabbit hole at the moment, no?”

“No, I mean ... yes, God yes, I just ...” Scout was still clinging to Eden’s foot, almost desperately, unable to let it go, as if the sudden loss of physical contact might change the trajectory of what was transpiring, deep and alone and sultry in the empty woods.