Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
BIANCA
Two weeks in, and I've stopped pretending I'm staying at the cabin.
My toothbrush lives in his bathroom. There's a drawer that's mine without either of us deciding it.
This morning I made shakshuka in his kitchen while he split wood out back with his shirt off, and Bear sat at my feet hoping I'm clumsy, and the whole scene was so domestic I almost laughed out loud at myself.
Renata caught me mid-spiral last night.
You sound different. Happy different. Report.
Bianca. You're cooking for him aren't you. You're FEEDING the mountain man.
Babe. One month. Say it.
I didn't say it back this time. Texted her a photo of the sunrise off his deck and let her draw her own conclusions, which she did, in seven increasingly alarmed messages.
The thing is, I know what she's afraid of.
I'm the woman who builds a whole life around being needed and then wonders why she's empty.
But this doesn't feel like that. Kieran doesn't need me to fix anything.
He's the most self-contained man I've ever met.
When I cook for him it's because I want to watch him eat something I made and go quiet in that satisfied way, not because I'm earning my place at his table.
That should comfort me. It does the opposite. If I'm not feeding him to be useful, then I'm feeding him because I want to. And wanting is the part that gets me hurt.
Tonight he sets a coil of soft black rope on the bed and looks at me.
"You said you do rope," he says. "Show me your wrists. I want to see how you mark."
We negotiate it in five minutes, easy now, our shorthand built.
He starts at my wrists, then works the rope across my shoulders and down, patient, checking the tension with two fingers under every wrap, eyes on my face the whole time.
The pattern grows over my skin slow and deliberate.
By the time he's done, my arms are bound behind me and a harness of black cord frames my breasts, and I'm already floating, that loose warm place opening up in my chest where I don't have to hold anything.
"There you go," he murmurs, palming my jaw. "Found it fast tonight."
"You're good at this."
"I'm good at you." He says it plain, no flirt, and it lands somewhere I keep trying to wall off.
He lays me back across the bed, arms pinned beneath me, and parts my thighs with his knees.
His mouth starts at my collarbone and travels down, over the rope, around each nipple until I'm arching into the cord, the bite of it sharpening every place his tongue touches.
He takes one nipple between his teeth, gentle pressure, and rolls the other with his thumb, and the helplessness of being tied undoes me faster than any touch.
"Kieran."
"I know. Be patient." He drags his mouth lower, down my belly, and settles between my legs. "You don't have to do anything tonight. Can't, even. Just take it."
That's the part that gets me. Not the rope.
The permission. He licks into me slow, two fingers sliding deep, and I can't grab him, can't steer, can't do a single thing but lie here bound and let this man take me apart on his own schedule.
He builds it layer over layer, until I'm begging into the dark and he finally lets the pressure tip me over.
I come hard, shaking inside the rope, and he works me through it with his mouth until I'm boneless.
He's inside me before I've finished trembling, one hand fisted in the cord at my shoulder for leverage, the other gripping my hip. The angle is deep. Every thrust drags against the spot that makes me see stars, and I'm pinned beneath him with nowhere to go, nothing to do but feel.
"You're gonna give me one more," he says against my throat. "Tied up and full of my cock. Let me feel it."
"I can't, I can't, it's too much."
"You can." He shifts, grinds his pelvis against my clit on every stroke. "Trust me. Let go."
And I do. The orgasm tears through me so hard my vision goes white at the edges, and I'm crying out his name with my arms bound and my whole body wide open to him, and he follows me over with a low groan, buried deep, his forehead dropping to mine.
He unties me slow afterward, careful at every knot, rubbing feeling back into my wrists and shoulders, pressing his mouth to each place the rope left its pink ghost. Tucks a blanket around me.
Brings water. Lies down and pulls my back into his chest, his arm heavy across my waist, his breath slowing against my neck.
I'm wrecked in the best way. Floating still. And in the quiet, with his heartbeat steady against my spine, the truth surfaces before I can stop it.
I'm falling for him. Not falling. Already fallen. Two weeks, and I'd burn the return flight if he asked me to. The thought should terrify me. It just feels like standing in the sun.
So I let myself have it. For one minute I let myself imagine staying. A kitchen of my own down in town. This bed every night. His quiet filling the spaces my noise leaves behind.
"What's got you thinking so loud back there," he says into my hair.
My heart climbs into my throat. "Just figuring out how I'm gonna explain to Renata that I burned my entire life plan down for a man who barely talks."
It's a joke that isn't one. An open door. The closest I've come to saying the real thing, and he had to feel it, the weight under it, the question I didn't ask.
He goes still behind me. Half a beat too long.
"Twelve days left," he says finally. Light. Easy. "Better make 'em count."
He kisses my shoulder and settles like he's done, like that was the right answer to a question about laundry.
Twelve days. He didn't even pause over the number. Had it ready. He's been counting it down the same as me, except where I've been pretending the count could stop, he's been using it to keep the exits clear.
The warm floating place in my chest goes cold at the bottom.
This is what I do. I pour myself out and call it love, and the man on the other end takes the pour and watches the clock.
Kieran's not cruel. He's honest, which is somehow worse, because honest men don't lie to you about whether they'll catch you when you jump.
He just told me the truth the only way he knows how.
Twelve days. Make them count. Then she leaves, and he goes back to his wood and his dog and his lovely self-contained life, and nobody up here gets scraped clean except the woman who forgot her own rule.
I press back into his warmth and let him think I'm asleep.
The leaving was always the deal. I'm the one who moved the line. And the worst part is I can't even be angry at him for keeping it exactly where we drew it.
His arm tightens around me in his sleep, pulling me closer, his hand splaying flat over my heart like he's keeping it somewhere.
I lie awake a long time after that, doing math I don't want to do, listening to a man hold me like he means it while I count down the days until I make myself stop.