Chapter 16
SEVEN
T he only thing better than the best view in the world?
Having someone you love beside you to share it with.
I love this woman. I love her so much, I’m probably going to have to have a lobotomy to forget about how incredible it feels to be with her. But I’m a firm believer in the maxim that if you love something, you have to set it free.
Binx deserves to be free to find a man who’s closer to her own age, who can give her everything she wants, including children and a life partner who can keep up with her for the next twenty to thirty years. The memories we’re making right now are all we’ll ever have, so I’m determined to enjoy the hell out of these two days with the sexiest, funniest, best woman in the world.
“So, what do you think?” I ask. “Does the surprise live up to the hype?”
Binx turns to look at me over her shoulder, her eyes shining and the afternoon sun catching the red in her dark brown hair, making it glow around her face.
She’s so fucking stunning, I lose the ability to process language as she replies, and have to ask her, “Sorry, I…” I shake my head, hoping to clear it. “Can you say that again?”
She swallows, her throat working before she says, “It’s stunning, Seven. I had no idea there was a view like this anywhere around here.” She glances back over the edge of the bluff overlooking the gorge below and the rock formations on the other side. “It’s just…gorgeous. No pun intended.”
With the river winding through the center of the valley below and the clear day making the view stretch on for at least a hundred miles, my lookout spot is really showing off. Still, when I showed Sprout this same view a few weeks ago, she wasn’t impressed. She agreed it was pretty, then promptly asked if we could hike down to the bottom of the waterfall and look for salamanders in the pool below.
But she’s just a kid. Kids take beautiful things for granted sometimes. They can’t help it. They haven’t had enough experience with the ugliness in life to realize how truly special beauty is.
“This is church to me,” Binx whispers, a reverence in her tone that makes my chest ache. She gets it. She really does. “This is what you’re supposed to feel in church, just…humbled by the beauty of creation and how lucky we are to get to live in it, even for a little while.”
“Yeah.” I loop my arm around her waist, my soul exhaling a sigh of relief when she leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. “If church was like this, I wouldn’t have snuck out the back every Sunday to smoke in the woods with my friends.”
“Gross,” she says with a soft laugh. “I can’t believe you smoked as a kid.”
“Says the woman who smokes as an adult,” I say, pinching the side of her hip.
“I don’t smoke, not really. I have a sweetly-scented clove cigarette once in a great while, as a source of comfort in times of trial. It’s different.”
“Why do they give you comfort?”
She hums, seeming to consider the question. “I don’t know. Maybe because it reminds me of being a teenager out on the roof, daydreaming of a time when I’d be free to live my life however I wanted to live it.” She chuckles. “Or maybe because smoking drives my parents absolutely batshit crazy, and a part of me really loves doing things to annoy them? Even if they don’t know about it? Probably something mature like that.”
I grunt. “I get that. I think I smoked for some of the same reasons. And because I was a twelve-year-old idiot.”
“Ugh, you’re right. I should outgrow it. Maybe I will someday, when the last of my stash is gone. You can’t buy cloves in the U.S. anymore. I have to order them from overseas in bulk and store them in my freezer to keep them from going bad. It’s a whole thing.”
“Why can’t you buy them in the U.S.?” I ask, sincerely worried now. “Because they’re even worse than normal cigarettes?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says without missing a beat, “they’re awful for you. Really super bad, tons of tar and all that garbage.”
“Then stop, please. Right now. I need you to take good care of this gorgeous body,” I say, adding when she laughs, “And what about Jerry? How is he going to get around if you’re too busy wheezing to take him to see cool things?”
She looks up at me, a wry smile twisting her lips. “Okay, fine. I’ll quit. I’ll toss them when I get home. Are you happy now?”
I grin and drop my hand lower, squeezing the side of her fine ass. “Yes, I am. Thank you. What about you? Having a good day so far?”
“I’m having the best day,” she says, with a sincerity that warms me all over. It’s such a simple day, but it’s one of the best I can remember, too. “But it would be even better if we could sneak down for a better look at that waterfall I can hear splashing away down there.”
My head falls back as I laugh.
“What?” she says, smacking my chest. “I can do it! I have my good climbing shoes on and my thighs barely hurt at all under the bandages.” She arches a sassy brow. “Also, I would like to point out that you weren’t worried about my injuries when you were getting busy between my legs, Mr. Sex Beast.”
“Yes, I was. I was being mindful of your wowies, I promise.” I pull her fully against me, molding my hands to her ass as I pin her hips to mine. “I wasn’t laughing about that. I was laughing because that’s the same thing Sprout said when I brought her here. She spent about five seconds taking in the view, then wanted to hike down and look for salamanders.”
Binx smiles. “Did you find any?”
“No. It was too late in the year, and it gets a lot colder down there in the gorge. I told her that, but she wouldn’t listen.” I sigh, the thought of my headstrong daughter taking a hint of the shine off the afternoon. “She’s really good at that. Always has been, even before the accident.”
Binx brushes a few loose hairs back into my ponytail. “Well, she comes by it honestly, Stubborn Human.”
I fight the urge to lean into the hand she presses to my face and lose the battle. “She’s going to be pissed.”
I don’t have to say what she’ll be pissed about.
We both know.
“Let’s go,” Binx whispers after a beat. “It’s been too long since I’ve felt waterfall spray on my face.”
We hike down the right side of the gorge, sticking to the sunlit side of the path, and in just a few minutes, Binx’s wish is granted.
“Smell that,” she says, lifting her nose into the air as she closes her eyes. “It smells like the world is brand new again. God, I love fall. I know it’s supposed to signal the end of things, but it always feels like a beginning to me.”
I watch her basking in the sun, with rainbows forming around her from the waterfall mist, and for the first time in a long time, wish I had my phone. I’m old enough to remember what freedom felt like pre-internet age, and resent the shit out of my cell most of the time, but I would pay a pretty penny for an easily portable camera right now. I want to capture her just like this, beautiful and unguarded in her enjoyment of this simple moment.
Instead, I settle for imprinting it into my brain. I do my best to memorize every dip and curve of her face, from the elegant swoop of her full lips to the half-moons of her closed eyes.
When she opens them, I keep staring, getting lost in the flawless blue.
She smiles, a shy smile that isn’t like her, but that I instantly love nearly as much as I love her big, bold grin. “You look really pretty right now.”
My lips curve. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
She laughs. “We should start a mutual admiration society. Or, better yet, a sketch club. I’m supposed to be teaching you to draw, remember? We haven’t had a lesson in weeks.”
The words remind me of the dozens of sketches of her lips in my sketch book. I’ll have to hide that away when I get home. Looking at Binx’s mouth is going to be painful for a while.
Probably a damn long while.
“We can do some sketching tonight,” I say, starting back down the trail, putting the sad thought aside. “I don’t have pencils or pastels, but I have plenty of ballpoint pens and blank paper. You could teach me how to draw bowls and plates or something after dinner.”
“And I’ll make you pose nude for me while you practice,” she says, making me snort as I toss a glance over my shoulder.
“Only if you do the same,” I say, loving—and hating—the idea of drawing her naked. That’s a sketch that would come back to haunt me later, no doubt in my mind.
“I absolutely will,” she says as we reach the bottom of the waterfall and step onto the cool stones in the shade beneath it. “I’m not afraid of a little nudity.”
She proves it by stripping off her shirt and reaching for the top of her leggings.
I arch a brow. “You aren’t getting in the water.”
She grins. “Yes, I am. Life’s too short not to skinny dip in every waterfall possible.”
“You’ll freeze your ass off,” I warn her.
She shrugs as she steps out of her leggings and underwear, kicking them off and leaving them on the rocks. Her bra is the last to go. She tosses it onto the pile as she turns to sway toward the pool beneath the falls, calling out, “Oh well, guess we’ll just have to hope for the best. Maybe you can fish my ass out of the water and reattach it at the cabin later, chicken.”
I laugh. “You’re not going to shame me into getting into that water. No way in hell.”
Her lips push into a pout as she cups her breasts in her hands. “No? What if I offer your cock a cozy place to hang out while you get used to the chill?” She presses them together, making my mouth go dry. “You could fist your hand in my hair while you fuck my breasts. That seems like a decent way to stay warm to me.”
I curse and she smiles.
“You’re a bad woman,” I say, but I’m already shucking my t-shirt.
She giggles and spins in a circle before resuming her sashay toward the falls. “I am. And I don’t feel guilty about it at all.”
In the end, I don’t end up taking her up on her very generous breast-fucking offer—I love her breasts, but her pussy is too sweet to pass up. Instead, she straddles me on a smooth stone at the edge of the water, riding me hard until we’re both panting and crying out loud enough to be heard over the crash of the water on the rocks below.
Once we’ve worked up a sweat, I let her drag me into the water up to our chests. We kiss as the falls beat down all around us and even though I’m freezing cold and pretty sure I’ll never feel my balls again, the joy from this morning is still there.
Whoever gets to live the rest of his life with this woman is going to be one lucky man, and fuck…I wish it could be me.
Maybe it can, a hopeful voice whispers in my head as Binx tightens her grip on my neck, flattening her breasts against my chest. Isn’t joy a sign that you’re headed in the right direction?
Before I can think too long on that, Binx shivers against me and pulls away from our kiss with a laugh. “Oh my God, I love kissing you, but I can’t handle it anymore. It’s freezing in here!”
“No shit,” I say, laughing as I swat her ass on the way out of the pool. “I tried to tell you, but you’re a maniac.”
“I am a maniac,” she says, dashing back toward our clothes, shivering and giggling. “I can’t feel my toes or my thighs or my butt!”
Twenty minutes later, we’re dressed and back on the sunny side of the trail, warming up as we hike back to the four-wheeler, but we stop at the top for one last long look at the view.
Binx leans back against me, her back to my front, and I wrap her up in my arms, resting my chin on the top of her head, and it is…perfect. As perfect as every second with her since I stopped fighting the way she makes me feel.
I’ve spent my whole life fighting—fighting to overcome my past, to build a better future, to succeed when so many people said I would fail. But maybe it’s time to lay my armor down.
Maybe it’s time to soften and trust that when something feels this right, it can’t be wrong.