Chapter 12
ALEX
She lit my fire. The kindling has caught and the logs are climbing, amber light filling the room.
Kendall is sitting on the edge of my bed with nothing on and her clothes folded on the chair by the window.
She folded them. She didn't drop them on the floor in a rush.
She made a decision, undressed with the calm of a woman who knows exactly what she wants, and sat down to wait for me.
The sight of her stops me in the doorway. My hand finds the frame because the alternative is crossing the room before she's finished watching me decide.
She holds my gaze. She doesn't reach for the sheet.
"Close the door," she says.
I close it. The latch catches. The sound is small and final, and the smile that pulls at my mouth is slow because I want her to see it forming. I want her to watch the exact moment I decide to cross this room.
She watches.
I cross the room. Each step lands heavy on the floorboards.
The fire throws her shadow long across the wall behind her, and the light catches the planes of her body in ways that make my hands ache.
The dip of her waist, the line of her collarbone, the way she sits straight-backed with her shoulders open and her chin level.
She is not hiding. She is done hiding. The woman who arrived at my lodge with a borrowed name and a bag packed for running is sitting naked in my bedroom because she chose to be here. The choice is the thing. The choice is what makes my blood move.
My shirt and jeans are still on, boots still laced. She is bare and I'm fully dressed. The imbalance between us is deliberate on her part. She could have waited under the covers. She could have kept the flannel on, left something between her body and my reaction.
She left nothing. She wants me to see every inch of her before I touch any of it.
I stop in front of her. She has to look up to hold my gaze from the edge of the bed, and the angle puts her mouth level with my belt. She knows this. I can see her knowing it in the way her breath changes.
My hand comes up. I find the line of her jaw and tilt her face higher. Her skin is warm from the fire. Her pulse beats under my thumb, fast and steady, and the rhythm of it fills my palm.
"You lit my fire," I say.
"You took too long coming upstairs."
"I was giving you time to change your mind."
"I changed it the day I stopped running. Everything since then has been waiting."
I lean down and kiss her. Her mouth opens under mine, no hesitation, no testing.
She tastes like the coffee she drank after dinner and something underneath that belongs only to her.
My hand slides from her jaw into her hair, and my fingers close at the roots.
She exhales against my lips, and the sound carries the weight of a woman who has been holding her breath for years.
I kiss her harder. She answers it. Her hands come up to the front of my flannel and she pulls, dragging me closer. I let her pull because letting this woman move me is a specific kind of surrender I'm learning to tolerate.
Her fingers work the buttons. She's efficient. The flannel opens and her hands press flat against my abdomen. The contact sends heat down my spine. I shrug the flannel off. It hits the floor.
Her hands explore. She traces the lines of my torso with a focus that tells me she's mapping what belongs to her now. The thought hits harder than expected. The possessive runs both ways, and the territorial pull of it is as strong as anything I've felt for the land under this lodge.
I press her back. She goes, lowering onto the mattress, and I follow her down. My weight settles over her, one knee between hers, and I hold myself up on one forearm so I can look at her.
The firelight moves across her skin. She is lean and strong, the body of a woman who has survived on stubbornness and whatever version of living Gary Simmons permitted. The thought of his hands anywhere near this body tightens my jaw until the muscle aches.
My free hand starts at her collarbone. My fingers trace the ridge of bone, down between her breasts, following the midline of her sternum. She watches my hand move. Her breathing has gone shallow.
I find it. The bruise has almost disappeared. A shadow of yellow-brown along her lower ribs, the last trace of what Gary Simmons put on her body before she ran. It is barely visible in the firelight. If I weren't looking for it, I would miss it.
I don't miss it.
My thumb traces the edge. She goes still under me. The stillness is not a flinch. It is attention, focused and absolute, the awareness of a woman who remembers what happened the last time a man's hand found this spot.
I keep my thumb there. I hold her gaze.
"This is mine now," I say. My voice comes out low and rough, and I mean every syllable. The bruise, the ribs underneath it, the body that carries them. Territory I intend to defend until the last man standing on this ridge stops breathing.
"Yours," she says. The word is quiet and certain.
I lower my mouth to the bruise. My lips press against the fading mark, and I feel her ribs expand under me as she takes a full breath.
The skin is warm. I trace the outline with my tongue, unhurried, tasting the place where someone hurt her and replacing it with the heat of my mouth.
Her fingers slide into my hair and grip.
I keep going. My mouth moves from the bruise down the curve of her waist, across the jut of her hip bone, and she arches into the contact.
I press her hip flat with one hand, holding her against the mattress.
The sound she makes when I pin her is low and throaty, and the surrender in it tells me she likes the weight of my hand keeping her still.
"You're still wearing your boots," she says. Her voice is rough but the observation is pure Kendall, noticing details while my mouth is on her hip.
"They'll come off when I'm ready."
"Control freak."
"You're just now figuring that out?" I say with a chuckle.
I follow the line of her body lower. She knows where I'm going. Her thighs part before I get there.
I settle between her legs and hook one of them over my shoulder.
The scent of her arousal hits me before my mouth closes over her, warm and salt-sweet, and the want in my body ratchets tighter.
She is wet, slick and swollen, ready for me.
The image of her spread open for me in the firelight is going to live behind my eyelids for the rest of my life.
I lick her in a long, slow stroke that starts low and drags up through the folds of her to the swollen center. The noise that escapes her has no syllables. Her fingers curl against my scalp.
I give her another stroke and then another. My tongue works in flat, broad passes that cover everything, tasting her, learning the specific geography of what makes her hips jerk and what makes her moan. She is trembling under me. Her hips try to lift and my hand holds them down.
"Alex." My name comes out of her on a breath.
I close my mouth over her clit and suck. Her back lifts off the mattress and her thigh clamps against my ear. The noise she makes fills the room, ragged and real, and I want to hear it again. I want to hear every sound she has been keeping locked behind four years of silence.
I release the suction and flatten my tongue against her, broad pressure followed by the pointed tip tracing circles around the hood.
She is soaked. I can feel it on my chin, my jaw, and the slick evidence of what I'm doing to her feeds something primal at the base of my skull.
I slide two fingers inside her while my tongue works, and she clamps around them, tight and pulsing with heat.
I curl my fingers forward. The pad of each one drags along the textured wall inside her, and the cry she gives when I find the right angle is sharper than anything before it.
Her heels dig into my back. Her hand in my hair has gone from gripping to pulling, and the sting of it only drives my mouth harder against her.
I add my tongue back to her clit. I give her tight circles, focused pressure, a relentless pace.
My fingers stroke inside while my mouth works outside.
The dual assault breaks whatever composure she had left.
Her breathing has turned to sharp gasps, and the rhythm of them tells me exactly how close she is.
She comes with her hand fisted in the sheets and my name in her mouth. She locks around my fingers and my tongue, thighs clamped tight, spine bowed. I keep my mouth on her through every pulse of it. She earned this and I am not giving it up early.
When the tremors slow, I press one more kiss against the inside of her thigh. She shudders.
I rise up over her. She looks at me with eyes that have gone dark, unfocused, and her hand closes on the back of my neck. She pulls me down. She kisses me with her own taste still on my lips, and the urgency in it tells me she is not done.
Her hands find my belt. She unbuckles it with the same efficiency she used on my buttons, and the zipper follows. Her palm presses against me through the cotton underneath, and the pressure of her hand makes my vision narrow.
She pushes at my hip. I let her move me.
I roll onto my back and she follows, rising up on her knees beside me.
She reaches for my boots first, unlacing them with quick, practiced fingers.
They hit the floor one after the other. Her hand pulls the waistband down and I lift my hips to help her. The jeans come off. The boxers follow.
She looks at me. The appraisal in her gaze is frank and heated, and my cock twitches under the attention.
She positions herself between my legs. Her hand wraps around the base of me, and the grip is firm and certain. The intent in her expression makes my stomach tighten.
"I've been thinking about this since the kitchen," she says.
She lowers her mouth. Her lips close over the head of me and the wet heat of her tongue presses against the underside, and every organized thought I've ever had exits my skull.