Chapter 5
CORY
Iwake up with Shelby Cruise in my arms and the blizzard still howling outside and a feeling in my chest I haven't experienced since before the Teams.
Peace.
Not the manufactured kind I build through routine and discipline and keeping my world controlled to the inch. Real peace. The kind that comes from holding something warm against your body all night and knowing it's still there when you open your eyes.
She's curled into me with her back against my chest, her hair fanning across the pillow in copper and gold.
My arm is wrapped around her waist, my hand flat against her stomach, and she's breathing in that slow, deep rhythm that tells me she's out cold.
Truly sleeping. Not the restless, half-alert kind of sleep I've gotten used to.
The kind where your body trusts the person next to you enough to go completely offline.
I don't move. I lie there and listen to her breathe and feel her heartbeat under my palm and something enormous shifts inside me. A wall I built so carefully that I forgot it was there. I just feel it going, brick by brick, and in its place there's something raw and exposed and terrifying and good.
I press my lips to the back of her neck. She makes a soft sound and pushes back against me, still asleep, and my body responds instantly. I'm hard against the curve of her ass, and the heat of her skin through the thin sheet is making it very difficult to be a gentleman about this.
She stirs. Her hand finds mine on her stomach and her fingers thread through mine.
"What time is it?" Her voice is sleep-rough and warm and I want to hear it every morning for the rest of my life.
That thought should terrify me. It doesn't. It lands in my chest like a compass needle finding north.
"Oh five fifteen."
"You don't own an alarm clock, do you."
"Don't need one."
She rolls in my arms until she's facing me. Her eyes are still drowsy, her cheeks creased from the pillow, and she's smiling. That open, unguarded smile that rearranged something in my chest the first time I saw it in the parking lot.
"Hi," she whispers.
"Hi."
"The storm's still going."
"Sounds like it has another twelve hours at least."
"So we're trapped."
"Appears that way."
Her fingers trace the scar on my collarbone, a souvenir from a training exercise in Norway that involved a rock face and an equipment failure. Her touch is light and curious, like she's reading braille.
"This one?" she asks.
"Norway. Rappelling line frayed."
Her fingers move to my ribs. A puckered mark from shrapnel during a classified operation I'll never be able to tell her about.
"This one?"
"Can't say."
She nods, no frustration, no pushing. Just acceptance. Her fingers drift lower, tracing the ridgeline of muscle along my obliques, and my stomach tightens under her touch.
"And these?" Her hand flattens against my abs.
"Those are just from carrying heavy things up mountains."
She laughs, and the sound in this small room with the storm outside is the warmest thing I've ever heard. I roll her onto her back and pin her beneath me and she gasps, her hands flying to my shoulders.
"I have a question," she says, her eyes bright with challenge. "As a journalist."
"I already gave you your three questions."
"This is a new day. New allocation."
I lower my mouth to her collarbone. "Ask."
"Is this something you do? With women who visit the school?"
I lift my head. Look her dead in the eyes. "No one has been in this bed. No one has been in this room. No woman has been on this mountain in the three years since I built it. You're the first person I've touched since a one-night stand in Anchorage that I barely remember and didn't enjoy."
Her lips part. Something vulnerable and astonished moves through her expression.
"I don't do this, Shelby." My voice is low and rough with a truth I need her to hear.
"I don't let people in. I don't tell them about Tyler.
I don't cook them dinner and hold their hand by the fire.
You walked onto my mountain two days ago and dismantled every defense I have, and I don't know whether to be furious about that or grateful, but I know one thing with absolute certainty. "
"What?"
"You're mine. Whatever this is, wherever it goes, you're mine. And I don't share."
Her breath catches. Her pupils dilate until the blue is just a ring.
She hooks her leg around my hip and pulls me down and her mouth finds mine and this kiss is different from last night.
Last night was ignition, all heat and urgency and the desperate need to cross the distance between want and have.
This is something deeper. Slower. She kisses me like she's memorizing the shape of my mouth, and I kiss her back like I'm writing promises into her skin.
I take my time. I start at her mouth and work down, kissing her jaw, her throat, the hollow between her collarbones where her pulse flutters fast. Her breasts are full and soft and responsive, and when I take her left nipple into my mouth and suck gently, her back lifts off the mattress.
"Cory." My name in her mouth is a drug I didn't know I was addicted to.
I move to the other breast. Give it the same attention. My hand slides down her body, learning the geography of her. The dip of her waist. The swell of her hip. The softness of her inner thigh.
She opens for me without hesitation, her knees falling apart, and the trust in that gesture levels me. This woman who runs from everything is lying open and bare beneath me, giving me access to the most vulnerable parts of her body and her heart, and she's not flinching.
I kiss down her stomach. Past her navel. Along the crease of her hip where the skin is impossibly soft. She realizes where I'm heading and her hand finds my hair.
"You don't have to..."
"I know I don't have to." I look up at her from between her thighs. "I want to. I've been thinking about this since you sat across from me at dinner last night and licked gravy off your thumb."
Her cheeks flush and I can't tell if it's arousal or embarrassment and I love both options equally.
I lower my mouth to her pussy and she makes a sound that I will replay in my head for the rest of my natural life. A broken, startled moan that dissolves into a whimper as my tongue finds her clit.
She's wet. Swollen. Already sensitive from last night and exquisitely responsive to every stroke. I flatten my tongue and drag it from her entrance to her clit in one slow pass and her hips buck off the bed.
I pin her down with one arm across her lower stomach and settle in.
This is the one area of my life where patience isn't a discipline.
It's a pleasure. I eat her like she's the best meal I've ever tasted, because she is, and I vary the pressure and rhythm and technique until I've cataloged every response.
Circles make her moan. Direct suction makes her scream.
A slow, steady pulse with the tip of my tongue while two fingers curl inside her makes her grip the headboard and call me names that would shock her editor.
"Fuck, Cory, right there, don't stop, please don't stop."
I don't stop. I lock in on exactly that rhythm and that pressure and I give her what she needs with the same focus I give to every critical task.
Her thighs clamp around my head. Her body arches.
And she comes with a cry that echoes off the timber walls, her pussy clenching around my fingers in pulses I can feel all the way through my chest.
I don't wait for her to recover. I kiss my way back up her body, reaching for the nightstand where I left the condoms last night, and she grabs my wrist.
"Wait." She pushes me onto my back with a strength that surprises me. Straddles my hips. Looks down at me with her hair falling around her face and her eyes still hazy from the orgasm and her swollen lips curved in a smile that's pure intention.
"My turn," she says.
She wraps her hand around my cock and strokes, and the pressure is firm and sure and perfect. She knows what she's doing. She reads my body the way she reads a landscape, with attention and respect and the intuition of someone who pays attention to what matters.
She strokes me until my hips are driving up into her fist and my jaw is clenched and I'm gripping the sheets to keep from flipping her over.
"Condom," I grit out.
She reaches for the foil packet. Tears it open. Rolls it down my length with a deliberate slowness that's either careful or evil. Possibly both.
Then she rises on her knees, positions me at her entrance, and sinks down.
Inch by devastating inch until I'm buried inside her and her palms are flat on my chest and her mouth is open and her eyes are locked on mine.
"God," she breathes. "You feel..."
She doesn't finish. She rolls her hips instead, and the sensation of her riding me, tight and wet and achingly slow, obliterates whatever was left of my ability to think.
I grip her hips. Not to control her, though every instinct in me wants to.
To anchor myself. Because watching Shelby Cruise take her pleasure from my body, watching her head fall back and her breasts move and her stomach flex as she finds her rhythm, is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and I need something to hold onto.
She speeds up. Braces her hands on my chest and rides me with an abandon that's raw and real and stripped of every performance she's ever put on for the world.
This is Shelby without the adventure persona.
Without the fearless facade. This is the woman underneath, desperate and vulnerable and claiming something she's been afraid to want.
"That's it," I growl, gripping her hips harder, meeting her rhythm with upward thrusts that make her gasp. "Take what you need. Take everything."