Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
HUNTER
Moonlight cuts through the bedroom window in a pale stripe across the floor. The storm has shifted east, rain tapering to a steady drum against the roof, thunder rolling distant now over the far ridges. Enough light to see her. Enough dark to feel like the rest of the world has been erased.
Nora stands at the foot of my bed, looking at me with those brown eyes that haven't flinched once since she stepped out of a rental car six days ago.
Her hair is half down from the braid, loose strands falling across her shoulder.
My flannel hangs open at her collar, and underneath it her chest rises and falls with breathing that's gone fast and shallow.
My hands are shaking.
Not from nerves. From restraint. From six days of maintaining distance that got smaller every morning, every dinner, every moment she walked through my house making it smell like bread and feel like something it hasn't felt in eight years.
Home. She made it feel like home, and now she's standing in my bedroom with swollen lips and flushed cheeks, waiting for me to do what I've been imagining since I wiped flour off her face on a mountain ridge.
The flannel goes first. My hands find the collar, pulling it off her shoulders slow enough to feel the fabric drag across her skin.
It drops to the floor behind her, pooling in a heap of worn cotton that smells like sawdust and her shampoo mixed together.
Underneath, a thin tank top. No bra. The cold or the arousal or both have her nipples pressing hard against the fabric, and the sight of them sends a bolt of heat straight down my spine.
"You've been wearing my shirt for two days.
" My voice doesn't sound like mine. Rougher.
Lower. "Every time the collar slipped down your shoulder, I wanted to put my mouth right here.
" Two fingers trace the curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
She shivers. "And here." Down to her collarbone.
"And here." The hollow of her throat, where her pulse is hammering so hard I can feel it against my fingertip.
"So do it."
My mouth replaces my fingers. Slow. Tasting the salt on her skin, the warmth underneath.
Her head tips back, giving me access, and a sound comes out of her that turns my blood molten.
Not a moan. Quieter than that. A caught breath.
An exhale that carries my name in the shape of it without actually saying the word.
The tank top peels over her head. Her breasts are full, heavy, perfect. Soft skin and dark pink nipples that tighten under my gaze before I've even touched them. My hands span her ribcage, thumbs brushing the underside of each breast, and her back arches into the contact.
"Hunter."
"Right here." One thumb drags across her left nipple. Her whole body jolts. "Not going anywhere."
My mouth closes over the peak, tongue circling slow while my hand cups the other breast, rolling the nipple between thumb and forefinger.
She grabs my shoulders, fingers digging into the muscle through my thermal, pulling me closer.
Her hips press forward, seeking contact, finding my thigh between hers.
The thermal comes off. Her hands are on my chest immediately.
Palms flat, fingers spread, mapping the terrain of muscle and scar tissue and chest hair with the same focused attention she gives everything.
When her thumb traces the line of an old scar below my collarbone, a logging cable that snapped when I was twenty-four, she leans forward and presses her lips to it.
Something cracks open in my chest. Something older than six days. Older than eight years. Something I bricked over so long ago I forgot what was behind the wall.
Her jeans button under my fingers. The zipper follows. The denim peels down her thighs, taking her underwear with it because patience stopped being a resource I have access to about thirty seconds ago. She steps out of them, naked in the moonlight in my bedroom, and the breath leaves my lungs.
Curves. Real, soft, generous curves. Hips that flare wide from a waist my hands can almost span. A stomach that isn't flat and isn't trying to be. Thighs that are strong from walking mountain terrain for a week, pressing together at the top where the light doesn't reach.
Beautiful isn't the right word. Beautiful is for things you look at. Nora is something you feel. Something that rearranges the furniture in your chest to make room for itself.
"Lie down."
She sits on the edge of the bed, then slides back, watching me strip off my jeans. Her eyes drop. Widen slightly. Not with fear. With the particular expression of a woman who is doing math and liking the result.
The bed dips under my weight as I kneel over her. Both hands planted beside her head, my body covering hers without pressing down yet, close enough that the heat between us has nowhere to go. Her hips shift underneath me, restless, seeking.
"Six days." My mouth finds the space below her ear.
"Six days I've been watching you in my kitchen.
At my table. Walking my land." Teeth against her earlobe.
"In my bed tomorrow, that's what I kept thinking.
Every morning. She'll be gone by tomorrow.
And every morning you were still here, making coffee, asking questions, looking at me with those eyes, and I wanted?—"
"What." Her fingers thread through my hair, pulling just hard enough. "What did you want?"
"This."
My mouth travels south. Down her throat. Between her breasts. Across her stomach, where her muscles tense under my lips. Lower. The crease of her hip. The inside of her thigh, where her skin is impossibly soft and she's already trembling.
Her knees fall open. The scent of her arousal fills my head, dark and sweet, and my cock throbs painfully against my own thigh.
Later. This first. This has been building since the ridge, since flour on her cheek and her hand on a chainsaw and the way she said my dad was a forest ranger with no idea what those words did to me.
My mouth finds her pussy. One slow, flat stroke of my tongue from entrance to clit, tasting her fully, feeling her whole body arch off the mattress. Her hand tightens in my hair. A moan, louder now, fills the dark room.
"Fuck." Her hips roll up against my mouth. "Hunter, oh my god?—"
The clit gets attention next. Circling. Slow at first, then firmer, reading her body the way I read timber. Pressure here. Ease off there. When she moans, more of that. When her thighs tense around my ears, she's close, so pull back just enough to keep her right at the edge.
Two fingers slide inside her. Tight. Wet.
Hot enough to make my vision blur. The noise she makes is raw, animal, the sound of a woman who has stopped thinking about anything except the man between her legs.
My fingers curl forward, finding the spot that makes her hips buck, and my tongue flattens against her clit at the same time.
"Don't stop, don't stop, don't—" Her back arches clean off the bed. Thighs clamping against my head. Fingers pulling my hair hard enough to sting. Pussy clenching around my fingers in rhythmic pulses as the orgasm tears through her, shaking her from the inside out.
I work her through it. Slower. Gentler. Tongue easing off as the aftershocks ripple through her body and her grip on my hair loosens. When the trembling stops, she's breathing like she's just summited the ridge, chest heaving, eyes glassy in the moonlight.
My mouth presses against the inside of her thigh. Then her hip. Then her stomach, climbing back up her body while she comes down, tasting her skin, memorizing the sounds she just made and cataloging every single one for future reference.
"You taste like you were made for me." The words come out against her breast, where my mouth finds her nipple again. "Every part of you."
Her hands find my face. Pull me up. Kiss me deep and slow, tasting herself on my tongue.
Her legs wrap around my waist, heels pressing into the small of my back, pulling my hips down against hers.
My cock slides through the wet heat between her thighs, nudging against her entrance, and every muscle in my body goes taut with the effort of not pushing forward.
"Condom," I manage.
"Nightstand?"
A breathless laugh scrapes out of me. "How'd you know?"
"Librarian intuition." She reaches past me, opens the drawer, finds the foil packet. Her fingers tear it open while I press my forehead against her collarbone, trying to breathe, trying to maintain some semblance of control while this woman unravels me one layer at a time.
Her hand wraps around my cock, rolling the condom down. Firm grip. Confident. Not tentative, not teasing. The touch of her fingers on my shaft sends a groan out of me that vibrates through both our bodies.
One thrust. Slow. Controlled. Inch by inch, filling her completely, watching her eyes flutter closed as she adjusts to the size of me. Her nails dig into my shoulders. Her mouth falls open. A sound comes out of her that is pure, devastated pleasure.
"God." Her forehead tips against mine. "You feel?—"
"Look at me."
Her eyes open. Brown, almost black in the dark. Vulnerable. Open. Giving me everything she has while I'm buried to the hilt inside her, and the trust in that gaze nearly destroys me.
The first stroke pulls almost all the way out, then drives back in deep. She gasps. Her hips rise to meet mine. We find a rhythm immediately. Instinctive. Her body responding to mine, adjusting, matching, the way she matches everything about me without effort.
"You're mine." The words come from somewhere deeper than thought.
Somewhere primal, somewhere that has been building pressure since she stood in my driveway with a letter and a smile that didn't flinch.
"Do you understand that? You came to this mountain and you made it yours, and now you're mine. Every goddamn part of you."
"Yes." Her nails rake down my back. The sting mixes with the heat and the wet grip of her around my cock and the sound of her voice breaking on a single word. "Yours."
The pace changes. Faster. Harder. Her legs tighten around me, ankles locked behind my back. The headboard meets the wall with a rhythmic thud that keeps time with my thrusts. Her breasts bounce with each impact, and I drop my mouth to one nipple, sucking hard while my hips drive deep.
"Say it again." Against her breast. A demand, not a request.
"Yours." She moans. "I'm yours, Hunter."
My hand slides between our bodies. Thumb finding her clit. Circling in tight, firm strokes timed to my thrusts. Her pussy clenches around me, tightening, and the pressure at the base of my spine builds to a point that becomes unsustainable.
"Come with me." Against her throat. Teeth against her pulse. "Now, Nora."
She shatters. The orgasm takes her hard, her whole body locking up, inner walls gripping my cock so tight the world goes white at the edges.
My name tears out of her, raw and broken, and the sound of it pulls me over the edge.
My hips bury against hers. The release is violent, consuming, pulsing through me in waves while I groan her name into the curve of her neck.
We don't move for a long time. The rain has quieted to a whisper on the roof. The candles in the other room have burned down to nothing, and the woodstove has settled into low embers, casting the faintest glow down the hallway through the open door.
My weight shifts to one side, pulling her with me, keeping her close. My arm wraps around her waist. Her back against my chest. Her hair damp against my collarbone. The smell of sex and sweat and her shampoo, something floral, something clean, mixing with wood smoke.
"Stay." The word comes out before the thought fully forms. Not a request. Not a negotiation. "Forget the seven days. Forget the deal. Stay."
She turns in my arms. Brown eyes finding mine in the dark. Flour on her future, a letter in her past, and right now, in this bed, in this cabin, on this mountain, there is nowhere else she belongs.
"Ask me properly."
My hand cups her face. Thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. The same place where I touched her on the ridge. Where it started. Where the wall came down.
"Stay with me, Nora. Not one more day. Not one more week. Stay."
Her mouth curves. That smile. The one she gave me in the driveway on day one, steady and certain. Only now it's softer. Now it's for a man she's chosen, not a stranger she's assessing.
"Yes."
My forehead presses against hers. Eyes closed. Breathing settling. The storm is moving east, and the morning will come, and there will be trees to mark and bread to bake and a woman in my kitchen who handles a chainsaw like she grew up in timber country.
This isn't what Bette planned. It's better. And I am done fighting it.