Six
Hearth
“Now you’re starting to sound like a writer.”
“Am I?” asks Penn.
“It’s a thing,” I explain. “Writers are told all the time, show don’t tell .”
“So you’ll understand. There’s something I want to show you.” A feeling of déjà vu grips me. He said those exact words to me in a dream, and it wasn’t even that long ago. “But please don’t think it’s creepy or weird.”
He hadn’t said that part. But I don’t know how to explain it, I trust Penn. I barely know him, if you really think about it. But I just do, I trust him.
“I won’t,” I reassure him. “Show me.”
“It’s just a short drive.” He corks the wine and takes me out to his truck, and I climb in. Standing outside the passenger side door, he reaches over me to buckle the seatbelt.
“That’s over the top,” I joke. “You already opened the door for me.”
“Gotta make sure you’re in there good.” He throws me a wink. “It’s a bumpy ride.”
Cheesy, but damn. I felt that straight down to my thighs.
And it hits me, I haven’t thought about my “new face” or the still-long recovery ahead or all the ways my life has changed and will change, all night. Not even when we were literally talking about it. I have only felt good, peace in his presence. Tinged with something else—a sweetness, a sexiness I never expected.
And now, glancing over at him as he drives, that’s all I can think about.
When he said it was a short drive, he wasn’t lying. In five minutes we’re pulling up to a gate. A very closed gate, with a very locked lock.
Penn hops out of his truck and goes over to the gate and works the lock, then hoists it open. He drags the gate open enough to get his truck through.
“Are we allowed to be here?” I ask as he hops back into the cab.
“We’re not not allowed.” He throws me a smirk and starts down a long dirt and gravel drive.
“What is this place?” All I can tell through the descending darkness is the shapes of tall trees on either side and an unpaved road that stretches out into…more darkness. Is that a field, up ahead?
It must be a new moon because there doesn’t even seem to be a wedge of moonlight to help me out.
“Close your eyes.” That’s unnecessary this time of night, I don’t have great eyesight as it is, even worse at night, but I do it anyway.
I feel the truck park, then hear the crunch of boots on the ground as he comes over to my side. “Keep ’em closed.” He unbuckles me and then lifts me out of the truck as if I weigh nothing. Penn carries me for a few steps and then positions me in a seated position on the tailgate of his pickup. Jumping on next to me, he says eagerly, “Okay, open.”
I see nothing. It’s so dark. It’s not even that late but this time of year, the sun sets early. I squint. “Um, Penn?”
He chuckles, and the easy, lighthearted yet masculine way it rumbles from him turns my insides to jelly. “It’s better in the daytime,” Penn notes, sheepishly.
“Do you have a flashlight?”
“Yeah.” He shines his flashlight from his phone, and it gives the whole area a spooky quality that to be honest, I don’t hate.
“Kinda creepy.” So maybe he was telling the truth earlier when he said he never had a serious relationship— not exactly a lady-killer, this one . But whatever he’s doing to me tonight, it’s working. It’s for me.
“Here, let me show you.” He pulls up some pictures on his phone. Aerial photos of a beautiful landscape…and I do mean land . It’s been cleared just enough to build a gorgeous house, a shop, maybe a pond and a little garden and…I’m getting way ahead of myself. But there are still so many trees on the land, like his own personal nature preserve.
“You’re buying this?”
“Hope to. All twelve acres.”
“That’s your dream,” I mutter.
“It’s my plan,” he gently corrects.
I can’t help my smile. I peer closer at the images. He hands over his phone, letting me scroll through the pics unabandoned. Does he have nothing to hide? If someone just had my phone for a period of time like this I would probably die .
“Oh, damn.” I stop on one, a perfect shot from down low looking straight through the trees. “Talk about writing views for days.” I look up from his phone, out at the blackness before us as if I can still see it from the photos. In a weird way, I kind of can. Feeling like I’ve indulged enough, I hand it back over.
“Yeah? You think you could find some inspiration here?” He tucks away his phone.
I can’t help look up into his face, and for maybe the first time tonight, maybe the first time ever, I hold his gaze in the most uninhibited way. Like it’s all mine to hold and so dammit, I’m gonna.
“I think I already have.”
He smiles, a broad, earnest one, and my heart thumps harder. Warmth spreads from my chest to the tips of my toes.
Penn reaches for my hand, threading his fingers through mine. Electric energy scuttles up my arm and down into my belly, settling there. It’s hard to think with his hand around mine. Almost hard to breathe. I want more of him wrapped around me. More of those kisses …
“So, what do you think you’ll write about?” he asks, his voice coming out deep and hoarse, like he’s thinking about kissing me too.
“Mm. No more dreams,” I murmur. “Maybe I’ll write something totally off the wall and different. Like…cozy mysteries, or romance novels.”
“I like romance.” He grins, looking mischievous.
“You don’t read romance.” I laugh.
“No, but you could read me romance.”
“Oh I could, could I?” My eyes fall right to his lips as I lean in to kiss him.
Everything stops. My heart, my breath. My thoughts. Even the land stretched out before us seems like it takes one big inhale and is holding it, waiting, and wanting, and knowing.
Penn’s lips brush against mine, his hand letting go of mine only to push into my hair, and the whole world seems to spin around us.
The kiss deepens, becoming heated. My heart kicks to life again, thrumming like a bird in a cage. I lay back and he crawls over me, spreading hot kisses on my neck, down my chest. He smells like juniper and diesel and wine. His strong hands scope up my legs, and I open them for him. His fingertips graze upward between my thighs, then higher, tracing a line up the length of my zipper. He makes quick work of the clasp of my jeans and I’m already soaking wet when he dips his hand inside, his warm touch instantly sending me into fits of delirium.
“Oh my god, Penn. Yes…”
He touch is slow, controlled at first, exploring my folds with a lustful expression. I stare up into darkened eyes. He touches me there and my mouth hinges open, a throaty gasp escaping and he swallows it in a hungry kiss that almost has me blacking out. His fingertip swirls around my clit and then drags lower, plunging inside. A squeak rips out of my throat at the sudden contact.
“That hurt?” he asks, his tone so husky and low that I can’t decide if it should or it shouldn’t. “You’re so tight, sweetheart… Christ.”
“It feels amazing. More.” My body rocks into his hand.
His finger glides all the way out and then presses back in, stealing my breath. Out, in . Moans of pleasure sing from my lips. The stroking, petting rhythm picks up and every time he sinks into me I fall deeper and deeper into a spinning bliss. All the while Penn kisses the hair around my ear, his breath on my neck sending chills of sensation down to my knees, his perfect ministrations opening up all the heat that’s curled low in my belly, ready to burst.
“Don’t stop, Penn. Please don’t stop.”
“Never,” he growls, his voice all gravel and heat. His hips press against me and I feel the bulge of a rock-hard erection. Holy, fuck. I want that.
“Penn…” But I can’t get a word out past that. Oh my god, I’m going to come. I am actually going to come on his fingers in the bed of his truck like a horny teenager out past curfew. Shit.
“Fuck,” I simper, reaching down to lay my hand over his, as if to guide his hand that needs zero guidance whatsoever. No one has ever made me come this way—no one has really ever made me come any sort of way except me—but his capable touch, reverent, powerful, mine, has me coming undone part by part. He’s groaning and mewling and hard as a damn steel rod and not doing a thing about that except pleasuring me. Have I ever had so much focused attention… right where I need it? And from Penn of all people. Not just my hero. Not just this fireman with a heart of solid gold. But the dead-sexiest man on earth.
“God you’re beautiful,” he rasps in my ear. He looks down at me, lips parted slightly, his pupils blown. I hold his gaze. Looking right into his insanely handsome face as my happy pussy clenches around him, drenching his fingers. Now I can’t stop my eyes from shutting down. My knees struggle to stay apart as waves of euphoria build and build and then crash through me.
I come with a hard, shaking orgasm, and he captures my lips in a soul-searing kiss, and his movements slow, and slow.
Whenever I finally settle down and stop losing my goddamn mind he slides out of me with a groan, softly tending to my clit that’s pulsing with zings of aftershock sensation. When my legs start to squeeze together unbidden, he brings his fingers up to his mouth, taking a slow, ragged breath in as a tastes them. “Fuck, you taste good, Hearth.”
Oh my fucking god .
“More,” I whimper, even though I’m still limp with satisfaction as he buttons me back up, kisses my lips as if to seal what just occurred here, and tosses me a sly grin that promises exactly that— More .
“Let’s go home, baby.” He means, his home, of course. But something inside me, some crazy unreasonable voice of reason, tells me I’m already there. With Penn, I am home.
It makes no sense. And yet I know it within the very fabric of my soul. This man who saved me, who keeps saving me, is all mine.
And I’m totally his.