Page 33 of CowSex

It’s Hawaiian. It means warrior. There’s also a tree that’s native to Hawaii that has that name. The wood from it is used to make surfboards and canoes.

A gentle, earthy, warrior, at one with nature. I like the sound of all that, and once again, I find my toes curling inside my UGG boots.

I start to make my way downstairs but pause at the top for a moment when I hear Koa’s voice.

“Is what it is, can’t spend the rest of our lives pretending it didn’t happen.”

He’s sitting on the bottom step, head hanging forward as one hand works the back of his neck and the other holds the phone to his ear.

I feel like I’ve interrupted a private moment and take a step back, but Koa either hears or senses my presence and stands, turns, and looks up at me.

I take the first two steps with his eyes on mine but almost stumble and most definitely stop in my tracks when he says into the phone, “Listen, son, you give me a call back with all your flight details, and I’ll make sure I’m out at the airport to pick you up that Wednesday.”

Son?

He has a son?

Does that mean he also has a wife?

I don’t know why this should come as any kind of surprise, I guess his age to be at around thirty-six or thirty-seven, so why wouldn’t he have kids, a wife? There are people from the estate I grew up on who are grandparents by his age.

I start moving again while Koa continues his conversation. He’s blocking my way, so I stop two steps away from the bottom, waiting.

“Love you, too, boy. Now get going and give that right arm a rest and don’t go getting tempted by any of them young fillies or mares in the paddock. Pretty sure that kinda thing’s illegal, even out in bumfuck nowhere.”

He ends the call, eyes still on me.

“Did you just advise your child not to have sex with a horse?”

The gold in his brown eyes shines under the lights from the antler chandelier above us, and I wonder for a moment if they’re actually green and gold, not brown at all.

“Doesn’t every parent?”

“Not being one myself—a parent that is—I wouldn’t actually know, but I would assume it’s in theParenting101 handbook.”

“Then you’d assume right. Chapter ten, paragraph four: ‘Upon reaching teenage years, advise your child to abstain from bestiality.’ Were you not given that advice?”

“I grew up close to the city. Our advice was to abstain from sex with lampposts, police cars, and traffic lights.”

“And did you take that advice?”

“I prefer having sex with something warm, hard, and either has a pulse or contains batteries.”

I give him my sweetest smile and attempt to squeeze past him. His hands go to his hips, and he stares at the timber floor as he shakes his head, and I deliberately brush my arm against his chest while finishing my descent.

I’m flirting. I’m stranded in a foreign country, all alone in the middle of nowhere, with a man I know nothing about, and I’m flirting with him.

As my grandad used to say, “I must want my brains testing.”

I’m playing with fire here, and I’m very likely to get burned—or dead. Raped. Murdered. Chopped into pieces. Never to be seen or heard of again.

“I took some steaks out of the freezer earlier. There’s a grill out back, was gonna cook ’em up with a couple of baked potatoes. You wanna share?” Koa says as he follows me into the kitchen.

I go to the fridge and pull out a bottle of water. I’m not thirsty, I just need to be doing something.

I turn around to see Koa leaning back against the worktop, arms folded over his chest, legs crossed at the ankles.

“Sounds good, but why on earth would you have a grill outside? And why would you go out there to use it in this weather when there’s a perfectly good oven in here?”