34. Our cabin #2
But I didn’t want to see the cabin with someone else there. I wanted to go there and open my fucking front door that I carved myself. I wanted to take Vicky up to the mezzanine and fuck her on the bed I made.
I gripped the steering wheel too tight, my driving jerky as we turned down the long gravel drive.
When I pulled up outside, there was a large van in front of the house. It was the exact make that I’d looked at last week to buy. As I was frowning at the van, Vicky took the opportunity to fling open the passenger door of my Land Rover and jump down onto the gravel.
“Vicky!” I said as she walked straight up to the front door. “What the hell are you doing? You can’t?—”
I broke off as I watched her unlock the door and push it open, then disappear inside.
“Shit,” I muttered, stalking from the Land Rover to the open door.
When I made it inside the house, Vicky was standing in the middle of the large space, watching me with cautious eyes.
“Baby,” I said, striding over to her as I checked for the likely irate new owners, but there was nobody else there. “I don’t know how you got hold of a key, but you can’t just barge in here. It’s not?—”
When I was right in front of her, Vicky reached out and grabbed my hand, lifting it up, turning it over and then dropping a set of keys into it before she closed my fingers over them.
“I was very cross with you when I heard you were selling this house,” she said.
I was blinking down at the keys in my hand, frozen to the spot in shock.
“This is your cabin, Mike. I won’t let anyone else set foot inside the house you built.”
“Our cabin,” I said, looking up from the keys to Vicky’s face.
“What?”
“Our cabin,” I repeated in a firm voice as I tightened my grip around the keys.
“Our cabin,” Vicky whispered, her eyes filling with tears as a tremulous smile formed on her lips.
I dropped the keys and shot forward to sweep her up in my arms. I was not wasting any more time without this woman.
One of her tears fell, but her smile grew as she threw her arms around my neck.
I kissed her once, closed-mouthed, hard and brief, and then I strode over to the staircase. When we made it to the bed, we landed with me on top of her.
Two more tears made their way into the hair at her temples as she smiled up at me.
I kissed one then the other as I brought my hands up to frame her face.
“You bought our house back for us, baby,” I said in a low voice.
She nodded.
“You’re going to live here with me,” I told her, frowning at the thought of her returning to London. “You can commute. I mean, we can stay in your house in London sometimes, but mostly we should?—”
“I’ll live here with you,” Vicky said, and the tension in my body I hadn’t even realised I’d been carrying relaxed.
“You’ll marry me,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said simply.
“You’ll have my babies,” I bossed some more.
“Okay, Mike.” Her voice was soft now as her hand came up to stroke the side of my face.
I let out a relieved sigh. After so long thinking I’d lost her, I was feeling like I needed to lock her down in every way possible.
Oh bollocks, that might not have been the most romantic way to propose.
Most women wanted flowers and diamonds, and maybe Paris, not being pinned to a bed in a wood cabin in the middle of the forest by some big lout and told they were going to get married, not asked.
“I’ll do this properly,” I muttered, kissing the corner of her mouth.
“Properly?” she breathed, moving against me as her legs fell open on either side of my hips.
“Propose,” I said against her neck as I kissed my way to her collarbone. “I’ll propose properly.”
“Mike,” she called, and I lifted my head to look up at her. “That was the best possible way you could have proposed to me. Clear, concise, with no room for interpretation.”
“Vicky, I?—”
“Am I yours?”
“Damn right, you are,” I growled.
“And you’re mine?”
“Always.”
“Well, that’s all I need,” she said through a smile.
Vicky
I woke up with the sun streaming in from between the wooden beams. When I stretched out on the bed, I felt aches everywhere, and I smiled.
The first time last night with Mike had been hard and fast, as if both of us were too desperate to take it slow, both too scarred from our time apart.
Mike pinned me down, taking me with an urgency that met my own. We went over the edge together, stars exploding behind my eyes as Mike roared with his release.
Then Mike made us sandwiches from the ingredients I’d stocked the fridge with yesterday, and we ate them in bed.
It was the first time I’d ever eaten anything in bed.
I still wasn’t quite at peace with the crumb aspect.
This was before he chucked the plates on the floor and made love to me, slowly and excruciatingly gently until we both lost control again.
He gathered me into his arms afterwards and spoke into my hair.
“Christ, I missed you so much it scared me.” His voice cracked at the end of that sentence, and I was shocked to see actual tears in his eyes when I pushed up on his chest to look at his face.
“You’re my favourite human being,” I told him firmly, the best compliment I could think of.
He scanned my face for a long moment, then levered us both up and carried me to the shower. Once under the warm water, he made me put my hands on the tiles and told me not to move them, then called me his good girl when I did as he asked.
Shower sex was amazing. It combined cleanliness, being told I was a good girl and no fewer than two orgasms—three of my favourite things.
When I felt for Mike, his side of the bed was cold, and my eyes flew open. I pushed up to sit and turned to look at the kitchen from over the balcony, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw a gloriously muscled, bare-chested Mike putting some bread in the toaster.
When I saw him set his timer on his phone, I smiled.
Of course, he was going to make me my breakfast just the way I wanted.
His gaze met mine when I made it down the spiral staircase, a possessive look coming over his expression when he saw I was wearing his shirt from yesterday and nothing else. He opened his arms, and I went straight into them, pushing up onto my tiptoes to give him a kiss.
“Hi,” I whispered when I broke the kiss.
“Hi,” he said back, his arms giving me a squeeze. “Vicky, is that a new van in the drive?”
I looked to the side and out of the window to where the van was parked. “Yes.”
Mike scowled at me. “Why did you buy a van?”
I shrugged. “You needed a van.”
“Right. Boundaries, okay?”
I nodded.
“No more buying me stuff.”
“Hmm.” I bit my lip, thinking that the new industrial circular saw in his workshop might be a problem.
“I mean it, Vicky,” Mike told me, his voice intense as his hand came up to my jaw to lift my face and look into my eyes. “I want to look after you. Not the other way around.”
I frowned at him before I lowered my head to his bare chest, loving the feel of his skin under my cheek.
“You do look after me,” I whispered, listening to the strong beat of his heart under my ear. With perfect timing, the alarm on his phone went off. “You make me eggs just the way I like them.”
His low, rumbling laugh vibrated under my face. “Making eggs is not buying a van and a whole bloody house.”
“No, it’s more. It’s everything. It’s love.”