Chapter 16 REID
REID
She is still facing the valley when the last echo dies.
Her chest heaves. Both arms at her sides, hands open. Tears track down her face in clean lines and she has not moved to wipe them. The wind comes across the ridge and the light from breaking clouds moves over her in long, slow golden sweeps.
She is beautiful.
The most alive thing I have seen in years.
She turns and her eyes find mine immediately. Wild. Clear. Whatever was locked behind them has come through the door she just kicked open.
She closes the space in two steps, takes my face in both hands, and pulls my mouth down to hers.
The contact is total. Her lips are cold from the wind and sure of themselves, no hesitation in them. For one suspended second my entire system stalls. There is only the pressure of her mouth and her hands on my jaw and the valley open and enormous behind her.
Then it moves through me and I kiss her back.
My hands go to her waist and I pull her in and she makes a sound against my mouth that dismantles everything.
She presses closer. Her fingers move into my hair and she kisses me with the specific hunger of someone who has been keeping herself from wanting things for a long time and has just decided to stop.
I feel it in the pressure, the deliberateness. I meet it in full.
Then I make myself pull back.
We are both breathing hard, the cold air working against the heat between us. I can feel her pulse under my hands where they rest at her jaw. Fast. Certain.
I need to know she is here. That this is her choosing, not the ridge or the rawness of the moment or the wide-open sky. Her. Just her.
"Say the word and I stop." The words between us, low and plain.
She pulls at my collar. Deliberate. Drawing me in with the same certainty she kissed me with.
"Maya." I stay where I am.
She looks up at me. Grey-green eyes, direct, completely without ambiguity.
"I want this." A breath. "I want you."
The last of it goes.
I bring my mouth back to hers and this time I don't measure it. I press my tongue to her lips and she opens for me with a gasp. I taste the warmth of her mouth, her tongue moving against mine, and I go still for one beat with the full weight of what is happening.
She is choosing me.
On this ridge, after everything that broke her open, she turned and she chose. That knowledge moves through me slower than the hunger but it goes deeper, settles into a place I have not let anything reach in a long time.
I pull her harder against me. She is flush against my body and I am fully hard against her belly. I have not wanted anything with this kind of pull in longer than I can think.
I press us together as close as the layers between us allow. The cold has stopped registering. Only her. Only the heat building between our bodies where they meet.
Her hands move across my shoulders, down my back, finding the shape of me through the jacket.
Even through the fabric the touch draws me tighter against her.
I want her hands on my skin. I want mine on hers.
I have enough left in me to know we are on a ridge in the open air. I don't have enough left to care.
I slide my hands down the back of her thighs. She understands immediately, her legs coming up and wrapping around my waist as I lift her, and then she is straddling me, arms locked around my neck, her face level with mine, her eyes dark and decided.
Three steps to the cedar at the edge of the ridge. Massive, old, the bark rough under my palm as I press her back against it. I pin her there with the weight of my hips, both hands free. She is held. She is safe. She is going nowhere.
I kiss her mouth. Her jaw. The line of her throat down to the hollow of her collarbone. She tips her head back against the bark and I feel her swallow under my lips, feel the specific vulnerability of a throat offered freely. Something tightens low in my gut that is not gentle.
I unzip her jacket. Work my hand under both layers at the hem, finding the skin of her stomach. She pulls in a sharp breath at the contact, my hand cold against her, her impossibly soft skin.
I find the underwire of her bra. Pull both cups down at once and her breasts fall free, pale and flushed in the mountain air, nipples drawn tight. I look at her against the cedar. The rough dark bark behind her, the light catching the curve of her, the color climbing her throat.
I lower my head and take one nipple into my mouth. She makes a sound I feel the full length of my spine. I roll my tongue over it, graze with my teeth, pull with deliberate pressure. She arches against the cedar, her hips rolling forward into mine, her hands going into my hair.
I move to the other. Same attention. Same patience. She is moving in my arms, a restless involuntary roll of her hips she cannot stop, and the sound she makes nearly finishes my composure entirely.
"Please." The word comes out unsteady. "Reid."
"I've got you." My mouth at the curve of her breast, my hand working the other nipple between my fingers. "Sweetheart. I've got you."
I keep my mouth where it is and slide my free hand down between us. Flat of her stomach. Waistband. The zipper, slow, deliberate. My hand slides inside.
She is wet. The heat of her immediate against my fingers, slick and certain. I press my face to the side of her neck and hold.
"Christ." The word comes out against her skin. "You wet like that for me?"
"Yes." No hesitation. "Yes. All of it."
I close my eyes. The heat of her on my hand, the salt of her throat under my mouth, the way her hips have already started moving against my fingers.
Every nerve I own is pulling toward the center of her and the only thing keeping me from losing myself against this tree like a man with no blood left in his brain is years of practiced discipline, which is eroding by the second.
I breathe. I hold.
Then I start to move.
Two fingers finding the swollen center of her, circling.
She pulls in a sharp breath. Her hips roll forward.
I slide through the slick heat of her while my thumb works her clit and she grips my hair and presses her forehead to my temple.
The sounds she makes are quiet and desperate and completely unguarded.
She starts moving against my hand. Tentative at first. Then less so, the rhythm taking over.
"That's it." I whisper directly into her ear. "Ride my hand. Get what you need."
Her hips find the pace. I watch her face. Eyes closed, lips parted, cheeks flushed in the cold air, the cedar rough and solid at her back. She is here entirely. Nothing withheld. She is chasing what her body wants and I am giving it to her.
I feel her getting close in the tightening of her thighs against my hand, in the shift of her breathing, in the tension pulling through her from shoulders to hips.
I pinch her clit between two fingers. At the same moment I roll her nipple hard between thumb and forefinger.
She breaks.
Her whole body seizes and releases, the sound muffled against my jaw as she presses into me.
I feel every pulse of it against my fingers, the orgasm moving through her in long slow waves, her grip on my hair loosening and tightening and loosening again.
I turn my face into her hair and breathe through my nose because the feel of her coming apart in my arms is almost too much. But not enough. I want more of it.
She goes soft against me. Still held against the cedar. Her forehead drops to my shoulder and her hand rests open in my hair.
The wind moves across the ridge. Cold and steady and indifferent to everything that just happened on it.
The valley sits below us, enormous and unchanged.
I pull her jacket back up around her shoulders. She lets me, eyes still closed, breathing settling.
Then she opens her eyes and looks at me.
Her face is quiet in a way it was not before.
I keep her where she is. My hands at her waist. The cedar at her back and the valley behind her and the cold light moving across everything below us.
She looks at me and I look at her and I know, with the kind of clarity that does not need to explain itself, that I am not done with her. Not close.
And by the way she is still looking at me, her legs still wrapped around my waist, her body still warm against mine, neither is she.