Chapter 20 #3
I remove her boots, unfasten her jeans and work them down her legs.
My hands move back up, from her ankles to her calves to her inner thighs, spreading her knees apart.
My mouth follows. I press my lips to the inside of her thigh, and the sound she makes when my teeth graze the crease where her thigh meets her hip puts heat at the base of my spine.
My mouth finds her. She's wet, and the first long stroke of my tongue pulls her hips off the mattress. I grip her thigh with one hand and use the other to hold her open. Her thighs tense against my shoulders.
The pace is deliberate because I set it, and I set it slow. Every movement is measured, given with the same focus I bring to everything I do with my hands. Steady. Steady is what she needs, and steady is what I give. The man who gives it chooses the pace, and the pace is mine.
The orgasm takes her in a rolling wave. Her back bows off the mattress. Her thighs clamp against my head and her hand tightens in my hair. I ease her through it until the tremors slow and her body goes soft against the bed.
I straighten up and strip off my clothes.
Her gaze follows my hands to my belt, the buckle, the button beneath it.
She watches me push my jeans down and step out of them, and her eyes travel the length of me with the same slow, thorough inventory I've been giving her body since the first week.
When her gaze drops lower, her lips part.
"See something you want?" My voice comes out low, rough at the edges.
"I see something I already have." She props herself on her elbows. The flush from her orgasm still reaches her throat, her collarbones. "Come here."
"Ask nicely."
The look she gives me could strip paint.
"Please, Alex. Come here so I can put my hands on you before I lose my mind."
I move over her. My weight settles between her thighs, skin against skin from hip to chest. My hips move on instinct.
I do it again. Slow.
"Alex." The edge in her voice is the one I know. The one that means she's done being patient.
I brace on one arm. My other hand slides down her body.
"Look at me," I say.
Her eyes find mine. The gold light from the window cuts across her face.
"There," I say against her mouth. "All of me."
"I feel it." Her hands slide up my arms to my shoulders, pulling me closer. "Move."
"Not yet."
"You are impossible," she breathes, but the way her body tightens says she doesn't mean it.
I set a pace. Slow enough that neither of us can rush it, controlled enough that every movement matters. It is taking everything I have to keep it there.
Her legs wrap around my hips. The angle changes.
I pull back from the kiss.
"Tell me how it feels."
"Full." The word comes out on a broken exhale. "You feel so full inside me."
"Right there?" I ask, already knowing.
"Right there. Don't stop."
I don't.
Her breathing goes ragged. Her nails drag down my back, long scratches that sting with sweat, and the pain sharpens everything. She's not there yet. I'm not finishing without her.
I slow even further. The room narrows until there's nothing but her beneath me.
"Stay with me," I say against her ear.
"I want to feel you come on my cock."
Her whole body tightens.
"Close," she breathes. "I'm close, Alex."
I watch her eyes because that's what I want. Not tenderness. Proximity. The kind that doesn't let either of us hide.
Her orgasm breaks in a long, rolling wave. Her body locks around mine, every muscle tight, her mouth open against my jaw. The sound she makes is raw, pulled from somewhere deep.
I let go.
The release rolls through me in waves.
The only sound in the room is both of us trying to breathe.
I don't pull away. I stay where I am while the aftershocks fade. Her fingers trace a slow line down my spine.
When I finally roll to my side, I pull her with me. She turns into my chest and I wrap an arm around her waist and hold.
The grip is possessive.
It's always possessive.
The difference is she chose it.
The keys are on the nightstand. She put them there when she led me into the room, pulling them from her pocket and setting them on the wood beside the lamp.
She's had them since yesterday. The truck is in the shed with a full tank.
The road is clear. She could reach the keys without waking me, and she could be at the Canadian border by morning.
"Stay," I say.
"I already did." She presses back against me. "Keep up, Sawyer."
Her breathing slows. Her body grows heavy against mine, the weight of a woman falling asleep without calculating a single exit route. My arm stays around her waist, my hand flat against her stomach.
Outside, the light slips behind the ridge.
The lodge settles around us, timber and stone, the home my father held together until it killed him.
The porch steps still carry Gary's blood.
My knuckles are split and swollen against her skin.
The woman in my arms dismantled an empire with a notepad and a satellite phone, and the man who built that empire drove away one-handed with his face rearranged.
Kendall sleeps… her hands stay open.