Chapter 12 #2
I hit it right at the edge, sending a small chunk flying one direction while the rest of the log teeters, then spins, then falls off the splitting block.
“Well done,” Rhys says.
His dry delivery cracks me up.
And me laughing earns another squinty stare.
“What?” I ask.
“Who are you?”
“Seriously?”
He lowers my phone. “The internet says you’re going to own half of Manhattan someday.”
“I’ve heard that rumor. Pretty sure my ex-fiancé started it.”
“You don’t want it?”
“I’d take it, and I’d be good at running it all.”
He lifts a brow.
I grip the maul in both hands and face him. “You have dinner in the oven inside.”
“So?”
“So security isn’t your entire personality.
You like to cook, and you like to cook food that tastes good too.
It’s obviously more to you than a necessary function.
Business isn’t my entire personality either.
I also adore my sister, and I’ve realized sometime in the past few years that there’s more to a successful life than a business ledger.
So I can absolutely rule Manhattan someday, but I will also make time to be a kick-ass aunt when Daph has kids, and I’ll make time to walk along the beach and feel the sand between my toes, and I’ll stand on a mountain and laugh at myself when I’m terrible at chopping wood. I want to be a person, not a robot.”
The wind blows through again, carrying a few yellow aspen leaves and the subtle scent of woodsmoke while Rhys studies me.
I get it.
Powerful women get reputations for being completely heartless.
Thank fuck for Daphne, or I probably would be. She inherently understood her own humanity from the time she was born, and she taught me mine. I might be older, but she’s wiser in so many ways.
I grab the log and straighten it while Rhys watches, then I line myself up.
Daph talks about a weekend every year back in Athena’s Rest, her home in upstate New York, where she and her best friend, Bea, head out to Bea’s brother’s farm to help him split wood for winter.
Maybe I’ll get good enough that I can participate this year.
Or next.
I don’t know when wood-splitting weekend is. Maybe I’m missing it by being here now.
But I know that when I fling that axe—maul—down on the wood, and it splinters and cracks apart under the strength of my blow, I feel a different kind of power course through me.
It’s primitive and raw and thrilling.
I bounce on my toes and grin at Rhys. “I did it!”
He’s still staring at me like I’m a puzzle. “Good job.”
I barely hear him.
I’m digging into the log pile for another log without many knots.
When I find it, I set it on the chopping block, and I picture my father’s face on the top of the log when I swing the maul down.
And fuck, it feels good.
So I do it again, picturing my father’s face and all.
And again.
And again, until I’m huffing with the effort, until my arms ache and my eyes are unexpectedly wet.
I pull off my gloves and swipe at my eyes.
“Who’d you imagine?” Rhys asks.
If he’s said anything else since I got in the groove of pick, picture, split, I haven’t heard him.
I give him a wry smile. “As if you’d get it out of me that easily.”
“I imagine my stepfather.”
I look at the pile of wood left to split.
It’s mostly knotty and gnarled.
And then I look at Rhys, broad and thick, and I hold out the maul. “Need a few whacks? I left you the hard ones.”
He’s been stacking while I’ve been splitting, so there’s not much for me to do besides watch while he takes powerful swings that easily split through the knotted wood.
Watch and get turned on.
Beefy displays of testosterone have never done it for me.
Give me an intellectual man who can debate economic policies with me, and I’ll be planning a strategic wedding in my head before I can stop myself, mostly because the lesson of Merriweather-Browns marry for business was drilled into my head so young that it’s instinctive and I have to actively argue back against it now.
But this?
Contemplating where the wood came from, knowing there’s a big wildfire risk in this part of the country, that these logs won’t be fuel for any wildfires, but useful in heating the cabin instead now that we’ve split them down—there’s something magic about that.
And something even more magic about watching Rhys use his power and strength to do the work efficiently and quickly.
Purposefully.
With enough vigor in his swing that I believe he really is picturing his stepfather the same way I was picturing my own father.
He checks his watch, then steps back from the pile. “Gotta check dinner,” he grunts.
“I’ll stack.”
Once again, he looks at me.
Just looks at me, like he wants to ask me who I am again.
I smile. “Princesses can’t stack firewood?”
He shakes his head and turns away. “Stack it fast or your dinner will be cold.”
But even as he says it, he grabs five split logs and tucks them under his arm.
Not to stack.
He carries them inside, me watching his ass and getting warm in the cheeks.
I hustle through stacking wood, and I’m nearly done when I feel the same sensation I had when I left for work yesterday.
Something’s off.
Like, hair-raising, adrenaline-pumping, off off.
Something snorts nearby in the thick brush with the browning leaves.
I’m facing the wood pile, but I turn slowly, so slowly, certain I’m about to come face-to-face with a mountain lion, when I spot something entirely different.
And holy fuck.
That’s not a deer.
It’s not one of the elk I saw wandering through the yard either.
It’s much larger.
The rustling in the brush is coming from a full-blown daddy moose with daddy moose antlers.
Staring at me like I’m in his territory.
Wow.
He’s beautiful.
Large as a horse—probably larger—with dark brown fur and a big bump between his shoulders and the most massive antlers I’ve ever seen, those fathomless dark orbs staring directly at me while he slowly chews something in his huge jaw.
But also—didn’t one of my brothers make a comment last night about not fucking with moose?
And that is a moose. Like, the moose.
If there are bigger moose, I don’t think I want to know.
It snorts at me again, big brown eyes narrowing.
I creep closer to the back of the house for lack of a better idea.
It lowers its head.
I’m contemplating making a mad dash for the front door when a window clatters open beside me, screen launching away from the house, and a long, thick arm reaches out.
“Inside,” Rhys barks.
And that’s the last warning I get before the moose charges as Rhys hauls me into the house through the window.
He flings me onto the bed and slams the window shut, then throws himself on top of me.
All of the air wooshes out of my lungs, and every muscle in my body tightens while I wait for the moose to sail through the window and maul us.
But there’s no thud.
No glass shattering.
No shouting.
Just me and the mountain of a man pinning me to the quilt-topped mattress.
“Is it gone?” I gasp with the little air that’s left in my lungs.
“It’s staring,” Rhys whispers.
And that’s when I’m reminded that the firewood isn’t the only wood at the cabin.
That solid lump against my right butt cheek is definitely not a leg, and if I thought that was a bulge against my ass earlier, I was mistaken.
Holy shit.
Is that real, or is he pranking me?
“Rhys?” I squeak out.
“Fuck on a rice cake, he’s huge,” he breathes.
“I’m noticing.”
The rest of his body goes as stiff as the thick steel rod against my ass, and then he rolls off me, but he flings an arm out. “Don’t move.”
I twist my head enough to look at the window, and oh my god.
He’s not kidding.
That moose—he is huge.
Huge and staring at us with a special kind of contempt.
Like he knows what Rhys is doing as he adjusts himself, and like the moose also knows that my clit is tingling and aching, and that if we didn’t have a chaperone, I’d be seriously considering pulling the man back onto the bed.
But also— “He’s majestic,” I whisper.
“Rare,” Rhys murmurs.
“Magnificent.”
Rhys shifts closer to me, still angling himself between me and the moose at the window.
And that’s when I notice his arm.
“You’re bleeding.”
He looks down, then back up at the moose, who snorts at us through the window, then saunters away. “Just a scrape.”
It’s fresh. I lean closer and touch his arm, twisting it to get a better look. “Did you cut it on the window?”
“Must’ve.”
“There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. Stay here.”
“I can—”
“You almost broke through a window to pull me to safety. Let me bandage your boo-boo, okay?”
His blue eyes finally lift to mine, and once again, I feel like he’s studying my soul.
Like he wants to know every thought I’ve ever had, every happy moment, every sad moment, and everything in between, so that he can line it up with his own life’s triumphs and tragedies and make sense of why we’re here, together, now.
I lick my lips.
I haven’t hired him yet.
He’s not off-limits yet.
So I could kiss him.
I could kiss him and run my fingers through his hair and explore his broad chest and see if his hard-on is as notable as first impressions would suggest.
Sure, he’s more or less blackmailing me, but I am definitely okay with kissing people who blackmail me.
It’s a benefit to knowing I’ll never fall in love.
His gaze flickers to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and fuck it.
Just fuck it.
I move slowly, giving him all the time in the world to push me away as I slide a hand up his chest and around his neck to the back of his head.
He’s pliable and easy, his gaze flitting back and forth from my mouth to my eyes as I pull his head down to mine.
“I know better than to fuck people I want to work for,” he murmurs.
“Maybe I can simply endorse you for…good behavior.”
“I can’t decide if you’re the nicest evil person or the evilest nice person I’ve ever met.”
“Let’s just say I’m complicated.”
His lips brush mine. My eyes drift closed, and I let myself feel.
The scratch of his short beard against my mouth.
His large hand sliding down my spine to linger just above my ass.
The scent of sweat and pine and something else intriguing but just out of reach.
The swipe of his tongue across my lower lip.
The desperate need tightening and twisting deep in my center.
I should be tending to his wound. It’s the kind thing to do.
But I’m enjoying the way he’s teasing my lips, the taste of his lips on my tongue while I thread my fingers through his thick hair.
There’s no hurry.
No desperation.
Just a game of slow, languid kisses on a cool mountain night.
Exploring.
Learning.
Indulging.
His hand creeps lower on my back.
I angle closer, my legs parting wider to straddle his thigh.
He grabs my hip and pulls me tighter against his thick quad, his solid muscle right under my aching clit, and I barely stifle a whimper of satisfaction at the friction.
I deepen the kiss, my tongue wrangling with his while my hips start an ancient rhythm against his leg.
God, I miss physical touch.
Holding someone’s hand.
An arm casually draped around my shoulders.
Stripping someone out of his shirt and fumbling with his pants.
Chopping wood is good.
Riding wood is better.
And I miss—
“Hello? You guys here?”
Rhys and I break apart, me panting, him drawing a deep breath as he swipes his thumb over his mouth.
His eyes are dark.
Hungry or haunted, I can’t tell.
“Margie?” one of the triplets calls again. “Rhys?”
Definitely one of the triplets, but I can’t tell them apart by voice yet.
Calling for me first suggests Lucky, but it could be Jack.
Definitely not Decker.
“Yes, we’re in the bathroom,” I call back, hearing the frantic desperation that comes from interrupted kissing in my voice.
I shove Rhys in that direction.
“Ahhh…” answers me from the direction of the living room.
“First aid!” I call, my voice higher and tighter. “Giving first aid!”
“Is that a euphemism?”
Rhys doesn’t smirk.
Just watches me, quiet, poker-faced, while he lets me push him into the bathroom.
“What?” I whisper.
“I don’t like how much I like you.”
One more thing we have in common. “Everyone has issues. Happy to be yours.”
He stares at me for another beat, and then he does the best-worst thing he could possibly do.
The man has the absolute audacity to smile back at me.
Eyes crinkling at the edges. The barest dimple appearing in his stubbled cheek. Front tooth just a little crooked.
He’s fucking beautiful when he smiles.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
I just know it’s not good.