Chapter Eight #2
And now he lay her in the middle of all that frothy, airy featherdown sweetness.
Knox didn’t move his gaze from her as he shrugged out of the flannel shirt he was wearing and the long-sleeved T-shirt beneath it.
Then he shoved off the rest of his clothes like they were in his way, leaving his jeans and his long johns and his winter socks in a pile on the floor.
Then he crawled toward her, his eyes gold with intent. And he was so wired into her that she felt his gaze like a shower of sparks beneath her skin.
And Ramona thought about the vows she’d made—and had broken repeatedly already, out there in her living room. In her kitchen before that.
She’d been holding the line that it was touching him that made the difference, but she supposed she’d known all along that she was splitting hairs.
And now she felt soft and destroyed and molten hot, and he was coming toward her with that burning hot promise all over him.
Ramona knew that if she had any self-respect at all that she would shut this down. Right now before it went any further.
She knew it, but there wasn’t one single part of her that wanted to do that. There wasn’t the faintest hint of any resistance inside of her.
Instead, she thought about the things he’d said, out there in the kitchen, showing her more of himself than she thought he ever had before. And maybe more important, the things that she thought he’d wanted to say, but couldn’t.
Ramona had beat herself up for that a thousand times. Interpreting his silence as admission, when maybe it was really just him not having anything to say.
But she didn’t believe that was true. She didn’t truly believe that she was so delusional that she would make up what she saw in him.
She followed her intuition in her work all the time. She was an excellent diagnostician, so why had she convinced herself that she could read pretty much any human being on this planet except him?
But she knew the answer. He hadn’t responded to her the way she’d wanted him to—the way she needed him to. It was easier to tell herself he felt nothing at all than to sit in the pain of thinking that he felt all the same things, but for some reason wouldn’t step into them the way she did.
The truth of this, she knew with the same certainty she’d felt that first night so long ago, was that she was in love with him.
It had grabbed her that fast, and it had never released its grip.
But she also thought—and had for some time, though tonight cinched it for her—that he loved her.
No matter what he did or didn’t say, did or didn’t do, or how it all made her feel.
It hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d put her on the same level as the father she knew that he adored and the baby he clearly felt responsible for now.
Maybe what she needed to do was redefine her responses to a situation that she was beginning to think she’d been misreading all along.
What did it matter what they called themselves? What did it matter what he thought his future ought to look like when he was making no move toward it? What did it matter if he never spouted her poetry?
Maybe the two of them were the poem.
She’d looked up from a local beer that the Bennett sisters who ran Mountain Mama Pizza had told her they’d imported from Flintworks, a local brewery down in Marietta. She’d thought the local IPA would be the hero of the evening, but then she’d looked up.
Knox had been there and her heart hadn’t belonged to her ever since.
Now, on the other side of so many months of back and forth, he’d admitted that there hadn’t been anyone else for him, either.
Did she really need a bigger declaration than that?
He stretched out beside her and propped his head on his hand. “You look serious,” he said.
“I’m always serious,” she replied. “I’m a doctor.”
Then she smiled and crawled on top of him.
And finally, it was her turn to play.
She had yet to find a single square inch of this man’s body that she didn’t love, but that didn’t keep her from looking. Ramona took her time making sure she hadn’t gotten any part of him wrong in her memories.
But when she kissed and licked her way down that outrageously rich and gorgeous chest of his, following the dark hair that led to the part of him that made her mouth water, he hauled her up again.
“Not now,” he said, with a particular wickedness in his gaze that thrilled her. “I’m too hungry.”
He rolled her over and gathered her to him, so he could reach down and pull one of her knees up high. Then he was there between them, that silken steel of his finally rubbing into all of her white-hot softness.
“If you really haven’t slept with anyone else—” she began.
“I haven’t. I’m not a liar, Ramona.”
She smoothed her fingers over the place where a frown was introducing itself between his eyes. “That wasn’t an accusation. I only wanted to tell you that we don’t need a condom. Not for me. You know I’m on the pill.”
And she didn’t say the rest—that maybe she hadn’t trusted that he wasn’t sleeping with other people the last year and a half, because he’d maintained that either one of them could do that at any time.
He looked almost stricken, for a moment.
“In case it wasn’t clear, I haven’t slept with anyone else either, Knox,” Ramona said, distinctly. Had she not told him that directly? She couldn’t remember. “I thought you knew that.”
His breath seemed to leave him in a rush. She could see emotion in that bright gaze of his, but then his mouth was on hers, his hands on her face again because he liked to keep her jaw where he wanted it. Because what he wanted was to practically eat her alive.
And even as he did that, he was moving his hips and finding his way—but not fast enough.
Ramona reached down between them and wrapped her hand as best she could around the thick width of him, then guided him inside of her at last.
At last.
But he still wasn’t moving fast enough for her, so she threw her legs around his hips and pressed her heels against his butt, then slammed him home.
They both groaned.
Because it had always been this hot. It had always been the same almost too tight fit for one breath. Another. Then he moved, and she met that movement, and it tipped over into pure, impossible heat.
Only this time, there was no barrier between them.
It was only him.
That great, big, hard length of him as he began to move. As he tested this magical fit, sinking inside of her so very slowly, then pulling back out again.
So slowly she began to quiver. So slowly that she thought she might die.
“Please…” she whispered.
And he laughed, because he knew.
He always knew.
But he picked up the pace.
And it was all about the way he thrust deep and the way she met that thrust. They rolled over and over on the soft bed, and maybe she bit him on his shoulder. Maybe the grip he had on her hips left marks.
None of that mattered.
It was like they were fighting—to get close enough that they could slip their skins entirely and become one.
Anything to chase that fire until it burned them both enough that they couldn’t tell where one of them stopped and the other began.
Somewhere in there, she stopped pretending that she could control the pace. She stopped pretending that she could control him either. And then there was only that wild, restless rush to the edge.
Until he finally thrust deep enough that it sent her flying, and he leaped out into the same stretch of starshine behind her.
She felt him scald her, deep inside, and found herself shattering all over again almost before she finished the first go-round.
He was murmuring her name in disbelief, and wonder, again and again, as they scattered into too many pieces to count.
And they fell asleep like that, him inside her, her body wrapped around him.
Sometime in the night, they woke up and did it all over again. This time it seemed almost more urgent, as if they couldn’t believe they’d woken up in the same bed again.
Later still, Ramona woke up to hear the shower running. She crawled out of the warm bed and went into her pretty little bathroom to join him there, and she couldn’t keep herself from smiling when she stepped into the shower stall.
He kissed her again and again by way of a greeting, and then she’d nestled into him as the shower came down all over them.
And it made her heart feel like it was singing.
In the morning, he woke up insatiable, but she was even hungrier. So Ramona crawled on top of him and went up on her knees, then sat herself down on him. She took all of him, thick and long, until she felt so full of him that she was surprised her body didn’t break open.
She braced her hands on Knox’s hard chest and she leaned over him as she began to lift herself up and settle down on him again. Her hair fell all around them like a kind of curtain, but she could still see him.
And all that intensity in his golden gaze.
His hands gripped her hips and his gaze stayed on hers. And he let her ride him at her own lazy, then frantic pace, until they both shouted out their explosive finish within seconds of each other.
It was so good, Ramona thought, that it was no wonder it hurt.
When they finally got out of bed, it felt painful to tear herself away from him but she managed it.
She wrapped herself up in his flannel and pulled on her heavy socks.
Then she went into her kitchen and blinked in the morning light, then made them a big, hearty breakfast of eggs and toast and sausages—all bought from a local farmer she knew by name.
She still got a kick out of that.
They sat in the kitchen the same way they had last night, but Ramona felt that everything was different. They were different. That everything had changed.
And she did not remind herself that she had felt this way before. More than once.
That was the old Ramona. The new Ramona was going to live in the freaking present, even if it killed her.
When they finished eating, Knox did the dishes. They showered and got dressed again—though they were both a little too tempted to delay things a little longer.
Once again, it hurt to deny herself.
It really didn’t get better with time.
Knox held her hand as they walked away from the temptation of her bed and went down the stairs, and she pretended it didn’t make her feel butterflies in her stomach. When they got to his truck, he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it.
Ramona couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
She leaned in and kissed him back, then they climbed into his truck, and headed out toward Billings.
Where there would be answers, Ramona hoped. Of one sort or another.
And she would be there with him no matter what.