Chapter 45 Maya
MAYA
The glacier was a different planet.
Black ash streaked through white ice in long, jagged lines, like someone had taken charcoal to a canvas and dragged it sideways. Crevasses split the surface into deep blue fissures that dropped into nothing, and the wind up here had a bite to it that made my eyes water and my cheeks sting.
I loved it. Every brutal, beautiful inch of it.
“Watch your left.” Nate caught my elbow as I stepped too close to a ridge where the ice sheared away. “The edge is softer than it looks.”
“I see it.” I adjusted my footing, crampons grinding into the ice. He let go of my elbow but stayed close. Close enough that our arms brushed with every step.
I reached over and took his hand.
His fingers tightened around mine immediately, a reflex, and we kept walking. Linked together on a glacier in the middle of nowhere while our guide pointed out formations ahead and the wind carried half his words away.
“You’re quiet,” Nate said.
“Mmm?”
“I said, you’re quiet. You okay?”
I flicked him a glance. He was so alive up here, so present, that something behind my ribs turned over, sharp and aching.
I squeezed his hand and leaned into him. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
He studied me for a few beats, doubt pooling in his eyes.
“Honestly, I’m all good.” I nodded toward the guide, who had stopped farther up the ridge and was looking back at us, waiting. “Come on, we’re falling behind.”
We picked up the pace. I held onto his hand the whole way.
The guide had stopped at a formation where the ice had folded in on itself, creating a wall of blue so deep and vivid it glowed from within.
The group gathered around to listen. I stood in front Nate and leaned back into him, the bulk of my jacket pressing against his chest. After a moment his chin came to rest on top of my head.
The sweetness of it made me want to cry.
The group moved on. We followed. I tucked myself under Nate’s arm as we walked because the thought of there being space between us was unbearable.
The wind dropped. Just for a moment, the air went still and the silence up here was so vast and so complete that my own breathing sounded foreign.
And in that quiet, the weight of everything Nate had told me last night finally caught up with me.
His father’s voice.
The wall.
The hours of standing with numb legs and shaking shoulders while a man sat behind him and read the paper.
His mother turning the volume up to drown out what came next.
No wonder he couldn’t stay in North Carolina.
The understanding hit me right in the solar plexus. My skin prickled, my pulse hammered, and my eyes burned.
I was going to throw up.
Fuck.
Of course he needed to leave. Of course proximity to that man was a cage with the door permanently open and the lock still rattling. Every mile Nate had put between himself and Esperance made perfect, devastating sense.
And I was standing on the other side of that equation, rooted to a town he needed to escape. That fact landed somewhere deep and so fucking painful I could barely breathe through it.
I turned my face into his jacket and pressed my forehead against his shoulder. His arms tightened around me and I stayed there, breathing him in, letting the cold air scrape through my lungs until my pulse slowed. I blinked against the burn behind my eyes and the tears finally retreated.
“Maya.” Low, just for me, under the wind.
I pulled back and met his gaze. A crease sat between his brows, his jaw tight, his eyes searching mine, bracing for whatever I was about to say.
“I’m just really glad I’m here with you,” I said.
The crease between his brows eased as the haunted light in his eyes faded. “Me too.”
My throat still tight, I rose up on my toes and pressed my lips to the side of his neck, just above his collar, where the cold had turned his skin pink.
He exhaled. A long, slow breath that took something with it, some tension I hadn’t registered until it left him.
We walked on. The ice cracked and groaned beneath us, ancient and alive, and the mountains rose up on every side like cathedral walls.
His arm stayed around my shoulders. My hand stayed curled into the front of his jacket.
And the ache in my chest held steady, beating alongside something I was too afraid to name.
* * *
The car was warm and quiet after the glacier. I leaned my head against the window as the landscape scrolled past.
Without a word, I reached over and slide my hand into Nate’s. He shot me a look, but didn’t say anything, just linked our fingers and kept on driving.
My heart hurt. A low, steady throb behind my sternum that clenched every time I looked at him. So I covered his hand with mine and laced our fingers together. He squeezed once, keeping his eyes on the road.
We’d been driving for about twenty minutes when he turned off the main road onto a gravel track.
“This isn’t the way back,” I said.
“Nope.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
The track ended at a small parking area at the base of a valley. Mountains rose steeply on both sides, dark and streaked with green, and a stream cut through the middle, catching the late afternoon light.
We got out. The air was cold and sharp after the warmth of the car. “What now?”
He held out his hand. “We’re walking.”
“How far?” I asked, slipping my hand in his.
“Fifteen minutes.”
The path followed the stream through the rocky valley floor. I leaned into Nate as we walked, my shoulder bumping his arm. The vast silence around us slowly untangled the tight knot inside me, leaving room for something else.
We rounded a bend in the path and I stopped.
A pool sat tucked against the mountainside. Steam curled off the pale water in slow white ribbons, dissolving into the bitter air. A hot spring trickled down the rock face feeding it, framed by a sweeping view of mountains and sky.
“Oh,” I said softly.
“Found it last night. Thought you’d like it.”
Last night. He’d been searching for this while I slept.
He said so little and did so much. No grand speeches. Just quietly finding a hidden hot spring and bringing me here. My throat ached with words I couldn’t say and he probably wouldn’t know how to hear.
“I really like it,” I said.
He smiled. A real one, rare and full, that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Good.”
We undressed by the pool’s edge, fast and graceless, because every second of exposed skin was a personal attack. Nate got in first, lowering himself into the water with a long exhale. I followed before I could overthink the naked-in-broad-daylight thing.
The heat hit my skin and I groaned, loud and completely shameless. The warmth was so good it bordered on religious.
“Oh my god.” I sank lower until the water reached my collarbone. “Oh my god, Nate.”
That quiet amusement he got when I was being dramatic, which was always, danced in his eyes as he reached for me under the water. He pulled me toward him until my back was against his chest and his arms were wrapped around me from behind.
I let my head fall back against his shoulder and closed my eyes.
His thumb traced a line along my collarbone under the water, before drifting lower, skimming the curve of my breast. My breath caught.
His lips brushed my ear. “Okay?”
I nodded, and his hand closed gently over my breast. His palm was hot from the water, his fingers slick, and the slow drag of his thumb across my nipple sent a shiver rolling down my spine despite the heat.
He pressed soft, open kisses into my neck, and I tilted my head to give him more room, my hand drifting up behind me to slide into his hair. His other arm tightened around my waist, pulling me closer, until his hard cock was pressed against my lower back.
“Nate.” Barely a whisper. Just his name. Carrying everything I needed to say in the way my voice broke.
His hand moved down my stomach. Slow. So slow that every inch of skin he crossed lit up, aching for more. His fingers traced the line of my hip, then my inner thigh. When he touched between my legs, I inhaled sharply. My whole body went taut against him.
He stroked me with the same patience he did everything.
The only thing that mattered was the sound I made when his fingers found the right spot.
When they did, I gasped. My hips rocked into his hand.
His arm locked tighter around me, holding me steady while his fingers worked in slow, deep circles that made the water ripple around us.
“Right there,” I breathed. “God, right there.”
His free hand came up to cup my chin and turn my face toward him so he could kiss me. His tongue slid against mine and his fingers pressed harder. I moaned into his mouth, my hand fisting in his hair, my hips grinding into his touch with a rhythm that was falling apart.
He pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes were dark, his lips wet, and the expression on his face was so open and so focused on me that I could have drowned in it.
“I want to taste you.” His voice was low, rough, a question and a statement wrapped into one.
I couldn’t speak. I nodded.
He turned me in his arms, lifting me out of the water. His hands gripped my hips as he set me on the flat stone edge of the pool. His mouth was already on my inner thigh, hot and open. The contrast between the freezing air and the heat of his lips made my head spin.
He kissed his way up my thigh, spreading my legs wider. Steam curled around us, drifting across my skin. The mountains stood enormous and silent against the sky. The sheer scale of it turned every touch electric.
His mouth found my clit and my back arched.
His tongue moved in long, flat strokes. My thighs trembled.
My fingers scrabbled against the stone beneath me.
He was thorough. Patient. Licking me like he was memorizing the taste, like he had nowhere else to be.
Every time I got close, he eased off. Just enough to pull me back from the edge before building me up again.
“Please,” I gasped, my hand finding the back of his head. “Nate, please.”
He looked up at me from between my legs. Water dripping from his hair, his eyes blazing. The sight of him nearly ended me on the spot.
He held my gaze as his tongue flicked against my clit, and I shattered. The orgasm tore through me in deep, pulsing waves that bowed my spine. He held my thighs open, his mouth staying on me through every tremor until I was shaking and gasping and pushing at his shoulders because it was too much.
He pressed one last kiss to my inner thigh. Soft. Almost tender. Then he straightened up in the water, his hands sliding up my legs to my hips, and looked at me with an expression that made my pulse stumble.
I reached for him. My hands cupped his face, and I pulled him up to me and kissed him, tasting myself on his tongue.
“I need you,” I said against his mouth. “Now.”
He positioned himself between my legs, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer. The tip of his cock pressed against my entrance. We both went still, our foreheads touching, our breath tangling in the cold air.
He pushed inside me slowly. So slowly that every inch of him registered. A stretch, a fullness, a rightness that made my eyes sting. My legs tightened around him. I pulled him deeper, taking all of him. Our bodies pressed together so completely that his heartbeat pulsed against mine.
The thick mist drifted between us and the water lapped softly against him and the mountains held their silence around us.
Then he started to move.
Long, slow strokes that pulled almost all the way out before pushing back in. His forehead stayed pressed against mine, his eyes open. The intensity of him watching me while he moved inside me was almost more than I could take. My eyes fluttered closed.
“Maya.”
One word, but there was no mistaking the command underneath it. I forced my eyes open and his gaze locked onto mine. He was going to watch me the entire time, and I was going to let him.
My hands slid to his shoulders, his neck, into his hair. I held onto him and matched his rhythm, tilting my hips to meet every thrust. The angle sent him deeper, hitting a place inside me that made me whimper against his mouth.
“There?” His voice was strained, a rough rumble in the quiet air.
“There. Don’t stop.”
He kept the pace slow even as his breathing grew ragged, even as the muscles in his arms and shoulders trembled with the effort of holding back. His hand slid between us, his thumb finding my clit, and the added pressure made me cry out, my nails digging into his shoulders.
“That’s it,” he breathed. “Let go. I’ve got you.”
The orgasm built from somewhere deep. His mouth hovered just a breath above mine, his chest heaving with short, desperate bursts of air. He was trembling, holding on, just waiting for me.
I came with his name in my mouth and his eyes locked on mine. It was quieter this time, deeper, a slow implosion that started in my core and radiated outward in waves. It left me gasping and clinging to him like he was the only solid thing left in the world.
He followed me over the edge two strokes later, his hips stuttering, a rough groan torn from somewhere deep in his chest. His arms locked around me, and he buried his face in my neck. I held him tight as he broke apart against me, his breath hot and ragged on my skin.
We stayed like that. His face in my neck, my fingers in his hair. The steam, the silence, and the slow return of our breathing were the only evidence that time was still passing.
Eventually, he lifted his head. His eyes were soft and wrecked.
I brushed the wet hair off his forehead. He turned his head and pressed his lips to my palm.
The ache in my chest was still there. Quieter now, wrapped in warmth, pressing up against something so big it scared me.