14. Jensen
JENSEN
I don’t move for several long seconds, because I must be dreaming. And I sure as hell don’t want to wake up.
I wait for Sloane to realize what she’s doing and pull away. Flatten herself against the opposite side of the tent again, or tell me to get the hell out.
But she doesn’t.
What she does is let out a frustrated little whimper against my mouth. “Kiss me back.”
Full disclosure, I was never the best student in school, but I’m not a fool. And I’ve been waiting for this moment for over a year now, wishing and hoping, but not truly believing I’d ever get here.
I reach up and cup her cheeks in my palms, wanting to savor every bit of skin I can touch. Then I kiss her.
She tastes like Swedish Fish and something sweeter that I’ll forever associate with her and only her. God, it’s so fucking good. Her tongue tangles with mine, and I groan and press my hips into hers. I’m rock hard from just a kiss.
There’s too much sleeping bag between us, both hers and mine, and I want nothing more than to rip away all the barriers. But instead, I force myself to take it slow, because this is a gift. A moment I’d begun to believe would never happen again, even after I found her.
The material slips and slides as she tries to get closer, and she laughs into my mouth. I could build my life around that sound.
Slowly she stills, and I take that as my cue to keep the kiss unhurried, memorizing how her lips curve against mine when she’s not fighting what she wants.
Every brush sends electricity through me, and I trace my thumbs along her cheekbones.
I’ve been thinking about touching her for fourteen months, and reality is better than anything I conjured up in the dark of my bed in Nashville or on the road.
My entire body hums with wanting her. The tent is almost completely dark, other than the light spilling across us from my discarded headlamp.
She pulls back enough to look into my eyes, pupils blown wide, her smile relaxed. “Is Henry David Thoreau kink a thing?”
“It is now.” I drop my voice and give her my best affected drawl. “Welcome to Walden Pond, baby.” I add in a little hip thrust for good measure.
Her smile widens. “Well, you killed that moment in record time.”
“Can I get it back?” I try not to sound desperate.
“We should probably quit while we’re ahead.” Although she doesn’t sound any happier about it than I feel.
“Is that really what you want?”
“Don’t get cocky.” She lifts a brow. “It’s because I’ve had a fourteen-month dry spell. I’m sure you can’t say the same.”
I could play it cool. Deflect, or make a joke. Two decades in the music industry have made playing it close to the vest second nature for me. I never lay my cards on the table when there’s a chance the house can win. But Sloane is the whole reason I sat down in the first place.
“I haven’t been with anybody since you, Sloane. You might have ruined me for any other woman.”
“Don’t lie,” she says, sounding legitimately pissed.
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
“You’re a mildly attractive guitar player who spent the summer on tour with the hottest breakout star in country music.”
“Mildly.” I chuckle. “That’s huge coming from you. I’m blushing.”
“Whatever, Nashville. Am I supposed to believe that a one-night stand—” She holds up a hand when I open my mouth to correct her. “A two-night stand knocked you off your game that much?”
I don’t know why this is bothering her so much, but I do understand I need to tread lightly. “It wasn’t like I made some kind of vow. I just didn’t want to be with anyone. My advanced age comes in handy on occasion.”
“You need a little blue pill to get it up?”
“You know I don’t need a little blue pill. But I’ve done enough oat sowing or whatever your generation calls it. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have ever climbed back up on that particular horse, but the idea of it just didn’t appeal to me. Not after you.”
She closes her eyes as I tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “Why does that upset you so much? It’s not as if—”
“It doesn’t upset me, you big idiot,” she says. “It makes me want to tear off all your clothes, and mine too, and let you fuck me until I forget my own name.”
I open my mouth to speak, but a harsh rush of air comes out. “Yes, please,” I manage.
And then we’re a tangle of elbows and knees as we both try to extract ourselves from our sleeping bags. It’s awkward and hilarious. And the absurdity of trying to get naked in a space approximately the size of a two-person coffin doesn’t deter either of us one bit.
But it’s a hell of a logistical challenge. My zipper catches on the fabric for a few frustrating seconds, and at one point, she accidentally knees me in the hip hard enough that I let out a pained grunt.
“Sorry. Should we give up?”
“Absolutely not.”
I finally wrestle free of my bag and help her kick hers away, and then her hands are on the hem of my shirt.
She pulls it up, and I do the same with hers, both of us fumbling in the near-dark like randy teenagers.
The headlamp throws a pale crescent across the tent ceiling, enough light to see the dip of her waist as her shirt clears her head.
I pull her sports bra up and over. She shivers but doesn’t cover herself, and I think my heart actually stops for a second. She’s so goddamn beautiful.
“Jesus, you taste good,” I murmur against the hollow of her throat, my mouth moving to the soft skin below her ear, across her collarbone, and then lower.
I press my lips to the swell of her breast, and she arches into me with a sound that makes me want to worship every square inch of her for as long as she’ll let me.
She shivers and then shivers again. And again. I lift my head when she can’t stop trembling.
She gives a shaky laugh. “Ignore me.”
“Not a chance.”
I reach behind her to drag my sleeping bag over both of us, creating a cocoon of nylon and body heat that traps the warmth between us, and hold her close until the trembling stops.
Then I fuse our mouths together, one hand cradling the back of her head while the other traces down the curve of her ribs.
My palm skims across her hip, and I hook my thumb into the waistband of her leggings.
I want to touch every part of her, and will spend the entire night reacquainting myself with her body if she lets me.
She lifts her hips and helps me slide them down, and then she does the same with my pants, her cold fingers making me hiss when they graze my stomach.
“Sorry,” she whispers against my jaw.
“Don’t be.”
We’re both naked, tangled together under my sleeping bag on top of her unzipped one, and the air trapped between our bodies is the only heat for miles.
I can feel her everywhere, and I want to stay in this exact moment for the rest of my life, the two of us skin to skin in a tent in the middle of nowhere with rain still tapping on the fly and the whole world reduced to the space between us.
Whatever she wants, whatever she needs. I’ll do it. I’ll be it.
“Are you sure?” I ask, because I have to know.
She rolls herself against me as an answer. The sound I make isn’t dignified, but dignity checked out somewhere around the time she said the words fuck me until I forget my own name.
“Positive,” she whispers, then straddles my thighs. I can feel how wet she is as she sinks down slowly, taking me in inch by inch. I could die right now a happy man.
She’s tight and slick, and I grip her hips with both hands to anchor myself in reality, because the sensation of being inside her again after all this time fills me with an ache so sweet I can barely breathe.
She rocks forward, and my fingers dig in, not hard enough to bruise, but enough that she knows that I’m not going anywhere. I’m holding on to her like I should have the first time instead of letting her walk away.
“God, Sloane.” My voice sounds wrecked, which…yeah, that tracks.
She braces her hands on my chest and finds a rhythm that makes both of us groan.
In the dim light, with her eyes closed and lips parted, her expression is stripped of every defense she keeps between herself and the world.
This is the version of her I’m guessing she doesn’t show many people, and the fact that she’s trusting me enough to let her guard down makes me feel like the luckiest man alive.
I slide my hand between us and find her clit, circling it with my thumb while she rides me. She bucks mid-stroke and drops her forehead to mine.
“Don’t stop,” she breathes.
“Not a chance.” I keep the pressure steady, matching the rhythm of her hips. I can feel her getting close when her breathing goes ragged and her thighs tighten around me. She grabs my wrist like she’s afraid I’ll stop. As if anything on this earth could make me pull away from her right now.
She comes with a sound that’s half gasp, half laugh, her inner muscles clenching around me.
The combination of that and hearing her call out my name—not a flirty term of endearment, but my actual name on her lips—sends me right over the edge.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her against me while we both come down, her forehead pressed to my shoulder, my face buried in her hair.
For a long time neither of us speaks. The only sounds are the rain pitter-pattering against the nylon and the gradual steadying of our breathing. She’s still on top of me, and I run my fingers down the length of her spine.
Then I feel goosebumps rise under my palm. She’s covered in them, and, despite our sleeping bag cocoon, the temperature has dropped enough that the sweat on my skin is turning cold.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pulling back. “You’re freezing.”
“I’m fine,” she says through chattering teeth.
“You’re covered in goosebumps.”
I reach for the headlamp and angle it toward the jumble of clothes at the foot of our sleeping pads. “Let me help you for once.”
I find her shirt and sports bra and hand them over. She pulls the shirt on without the bra, which is practical given that we’re operating in approximately four square feet of usable space. Then I locate her leggings and help her work them over her feet because her hands are shaking.
“I need to—” She gestures toward the tent flap.
“Yeah. Go. I’ll get dressed.”
She unzips the tent, and a wall of cold, rain-washed air hits us as she scrambles out.
I hear her footsteps recede into the dark and use the time to pull on my own clothes.
I straighten the wreckage of our sleeping bags so that by the time she unzips the tent flap and ducks back inside, smelling like rain and cold, both bags are more or less where they’re supposed to be.
“It’s not letting up,” she says, rubbing her hands together. Her nose is pink.
“It’s a good thing one of us is prepared,” I say, earning a laugh as she slides into her sleeping bag and zips it up to her chin. I get into mine, and we’re back to where we started—side by side with the nylon barrier between us.
I hate it, even though it’s necessary. Reaching over, I hook my arm around her sleeping bag, pulling her closer until her back is up against me.
“This okay?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Her breathing slows, and the tension drains out of her body as she warms up again.
I hold her tight, my face pressed against the back of her head through the sleeping bag.
The rain provides a continuous soundtrack as I think about spending the better part of a year wondering if I’d imagined what it was like to be close to her.
It’s better than I remembered, which shouldn’t be possible, but here we are.
She falls asleep before I do. Her breathing deepens and her body goes soft. I keep holding on through the stupid sleeping bags and remind myself to be grateful for small wins.
Tomorrow, Sloane’s going to meet the woman whose words set her on this journey, and I have no idea what happens after that.
Will she still want me around once the trail ends and real life starts back up?
Or will what happened between us tonight stay in the same suspended reality as the rest of this hike?