Starry Night

twenty-two

Another scream follows. It's from a different location. An answering scream.

Not a human scream. An animal?

"What is that?" I whisper, hand stilling on the hard muscles of his bare stomach. Someone's lifted up his shirt in a completely indecent manner. Oh, that was  me.

"It's fine. Just a little mountain lion. No danger," Jungkook whispers, guiding my hand lower.

Oh.

Wow.

He's definitely excited about the mountain lion.

This makes me extra excited in return.

Wait. Mountain lion?

"Mountain lion?" I whisper hotly.

"Caterwauling. Probably trying find a mate," Jungkook confirms in a drugged voice. "God, your hand feels good."

"Are we about to get attacked?" My voice sounds drugged too. I know I should move my hand away from his jeans, but I'm having trouble replying the message to my fingers, which really want to linger and continue with exploration. My body is saying: Ahoy! I sailed on a deserted sea for months and have finally spotted land. Fertile land. Land better than I remembered. No way am I turning this ship around now.

"What?" he whispers.

"Did I say that out loud?"

"Is this some dirty pirate routine? Because I've really got a thing for that."

Another scream rips through the night air.

"Aish!" I say, heart racing, and not in a good way. "That sounds like a human being."

"It also sounds really, really close," he says, voice sobering up. "As much as I would like you to never, ever, ever, ever stop . . . I think we should -"

More screaming. Okay, talk about a bucket of ice water. I'm seriously scared  now, imaging something jumping out of the darkness and clawing my face to shreds. Nature is a horror movie. And we're out here in the middle of a field, being stalked by killer animals.

I panic, unable to find my phone or my headlamp, but Jungkook spots them. We can't gather up our stuff fast enough. Then we're jogging back up the hill as the horny wildcats scream behind our backs.

By the time we get up to the camp, several other campers are standing around in long underwear, warily listening to the caterwauling. All eyes turn to us, and - terrific - I'm flushing like a guilty person. Well, technically, I am guilty, but now I'm also the camp hussy, so yay?

Jungkook, on the other hand, acts calm and collected, breezily talking to the other campers as he lugs the rainfly around, reporting that, yes, it's probably two mountain lions down in the tree line at the bottom of the hill, but no, they likely won't come up here. Someone else, a middle-aged man with an accent who introduces himself as Wooyoung, says he's encountered several mountain lions in this park over the years, and agrees with Jungkook. He's telling other campers to make sure their kids aren't wandering around alone, and to be cautious.

Since the camp ranger has left for the night, several people, including Jungkook, volunteer to keep an eye out for a little while. And after we get our stuff put away, he digs out an extra camp light from his pack - another one of those palm-sized ones - and puts that on our picnic table.

For a while, the camp is buzzing with murmured conversations, and a few campsites are lighting fires in their pits. We can eat some of Jungkook's M&M stash in a late-night anxiety beinge, and when I'm on my second handful, his eyes go big.