Chapter 7
seven
Peyton
I go back to the river with him. This time, there’s no false pretense of being a client. Just him and me.
Does this count as a date? I’ll have to text my sister after.
We drive out in the early morning with the coffee in the console between us and Koda's head between the seats and the mountains going pink at the edges.
He doesn't make it a conversation. Neither do I.
The silence is easy in the way it got easy somewhere around day three, the way things get easy when you stop treating them like something to be managed.
We fish the private bend. I tie my own fly better than last week, but not good enough to be smug about it.
Silas watches without commenting on the improvement, which I have learned means more than commentary. I work the split current and get the angle right and the morning moves the way mornings move out here, unhurried and full.
Around noon we sit on the flat rock. He brought sandwiches like last time. I eat mine while looking at the river.
"I want to stay through the summer," I say.
He looks over, stopping mid-bite.
"I'll need to talk to my company about going remote. I can do most of my job from anywhere with decent wifi and the hotel has decent wifi." I stop. "I'm getting ahead of myself. Logistics. Can I just say I want to stay and work the logistics out separately?"
"Yes," he says.
"Okay."
I look over at him. He is eating his sandwich and looking at the river and he is the most contained person I have ever spent time with and I have never felt less like containing myself around anyone. That used to frighten me. Right now it just feels like information.
"I'm not scared anymore," I say, reaching out to put my hand on his. "I was scared the other morning. That's why I left. Not because it was a mistake." I hold his gaze. "I want you to know that."
He's quiet for a moment.
"I know," he says.
I believe him.
The afternoon gets warm and we move to the shade at the edge of the spruce. His jacket goes down on the flat rock and I help him spread it. We take our time. I am not naturally a slow person but I am learning that slow has a different quality of attention in it.
He takes my shirt off and runs his hands over me like he's doing something careful and deliberate, and I let him.
"Look at you," he says quietly.
I get his shirt off and put my hands on his chest, his shoulders, the warm solid weight of a man who has spent his whole life working outside. He is very large and very warm in the afternoon sun and I thaw sight of him makes heat flush through my body.
I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing. He holds my face in both hands. Takes a moment to just look at me. Then he lays me back on his jacket and comes down over me and I think: yes. This. Exactly this.
He takes his time undressing me and then his mouth is on my throat, my breasts, his beard dragging against my skin in a way that makes my whole nervous system come online at once. I arch up into it.
"Silas."
"I know, baby."
He works down my stomach and gets his mouth between my thighs and I stop trying to think about anything at all. I lie back and look up at the spruce canopy and the sky in patches through the branches and I let him do exactly what he wants to me.
His tongue works my clit in slow, deliberate strokes and I grip the jacket under me. “Ah, please!”
Silas chuckles. “I’ve got you, don’t worry. Let me savor this.”
He holds my hips still when I try to rush it. Just holds me there and keeps going at exactly his own pace and it should be maddening and it is maddening and it is also the best thing anyone has ever done to me.
"Now," I say, when I'm right at the edge. "Silas, now—"
"Let go," he says, against me.
I come hard, both hands fisted in his jacket, a sound leaving my mouth that goes straight up into the trees. Somewhere above us a bird startles off a branch. I don't care.
He kisses back up my body and I get my hand around his cock and he makes a low rough sound against my neck that I feel everywhere.
He lines up and pushes into my pussy slow. I wrap my legs around him and pull him deeper. He stops when he's fully in, forehead against mine, both of us just breathing.
The way Silas fucks is… intentional. It's deliberate and deep and he finds the angle that makes me gasp almost immediately and he stays there.
I dig my fingers into his back and tell him exactly what I want in specific terms and he delivers all of it without commentary, which is the most Silas Fisher thing imaginable and also extremely effective.
He groans as I clench around him, throwing his head back and coming together with me. He rides it out until we collapse against the rock.
"You're staying," he says, low, close to my ear.
"I'm staying."
The river didn't lie.
Neither did we.