Chapter 16 #2
She comes up into me, her palms on my chest, her fingers spreading across the bare skin like she's measuring what she's got. The flannel rides up on her thighs. I walk her backward until her shoulders hit the wall beside the fireplace. The impact is solid, the breath leaving her body on contact.
"Here?" she says against my mouth. The main room. The common space. My brothers are on the road, the overlook, the east side. Nobody is walking through that door.
"Here."
I've had her on the couch and in my bed.
Against the wall is different. The lodge holds her up while I take her apart.
The stone of the fireplace is rough under my palm beside her head.
The heat from the rebuilt fire presses at our backs.
There is nowhere to sink into. Everything is surface, pressure, her weight in my arms.
I strip the flannel off her shoulders. The fabric slides down her arms and her skin presses against mine, warm from the fire.
I run my mouth along the line of her collarbone, over the faint shadow where I gripped too hard on the couch, and she arches into it instead of flinching.
She pushes the mark toward my mouth like she wants a matching one.
She pulls at my jeans. I reach between us and push the rest of what she's wearing down her hips.
She kicks free, and her legs come up and lock around my waist. The urgency between us isn't the slow burn of the couch or the deliberate possession of the bedroom.
This is adrenaline that hasn't had anywhere to go since the engine sound cut through the quiet.
My hand slides between her thighs. She's wet. The slick heat of her against my fingers makes my jaw lock and my forehead drop to hers. The breath I take is the first uncontrolled thing I've done since the knock on the door.
I push into her with two fingers and her whole body responds. Her thighs tighten around my waist. Her back arches off the wall. Her hips tilt to change the angle, to take me deeper, and the groan that comes out of her vibrates against my throat where her mouth is pressed.
"Alex." Her voice has gone raw. Her hips roll against my hand, chasing the pressure, and I let her set the pace for exactly long enough to learn the rhythm she wants.
Then I take it from her. I pin her hips against the wall with mine and hold her there, my hand working at the pace I choose, curling my fingers against the spot that makes her breathing fracture into pieces.
She fights the pin. Her hips push into the hold and I don't give.
She twists, trying to get the angle back.
I hold her still and slow down until every stroke is deliberate and devastating.
The sound that comes out of her when I slow down is desperate and furious, the most honest thing I've heard from anyone in years.
"Harder." Her fingers are digging into my shoulders hard enough that I'll carry the marks tomorrow. "Alex, right there."
"I know where." I curl my fingers deeper and her whole body tightens around my hand.
Her head drops back against the wall. Her eyes close.
Her mouth opens, her chest heaving, the flush running down her throat and across her breasts the color of the fire behind us.
Her inner muscles clench around my fingers, tight and rhythmic, and the feel of her body trying to pull me deeper while I hold her at the edge finishes whatever restraint I had left.
I free myself from the jeans she already half-opened.
The first press of my cock against her is slick and hot and the sensation of it makes both of us go still.
I push into her against the wall in one long stroke.
Her breath stops. Mine stops. The stretch of her around me is tight, wet, consuming.
The lodge is silent for the space of one heartbeat before she grips my shoulders and says "move. "
The first thrust lifts her off the wall. She cries out and grabs the back of my neck, pulling my forehead against hers.
The second stroke buries me to the hilt and her legs tighten, her heels pressing into the small of my back.
I brace my palm against the wall beside her head and find the pace I want, hard and relentless.
The pace of a man who watched two strangers come to his door and describe the woman he's inside, who didn't break their jaws, who spent every ounce of restraint on that door and has none left now.
Every thrust pushes her up the wall, her body sliding against the timber. She takes it. She takes all of it. Her hips roll to meet me stroke for stroke, matching the pace rather than surrendering to it.
"Look at me," I say, my mouth close to hers.
Her eyes open. The look in them is wild and wrecked and completely mine. She grips, bites, pushes back even as she gives in. The friction of her body against mine, the heat, the pressure, the way she tightens around me every time I bottom out, is taking me apart as fast as I'm taking her apart.
She says my name against my neck, and it is not a question or permission. It is a claim. And the sound of it breaks the last wall between protector and the darker thing that lives underneath.
I press her harder against the wall and give her everything the night held back, my hands on her hips hard enough to bruise, my mouth on her throat with teeth.
The pace builds until her whole body locks around me, her thighs clamping, her back bowing, her inner muscles seizing in waves that pull me so deep I stop thinking.
There is nothing except the feel of her coming apart around me.