Mace
Ridge Road opens tomorrow morning.
I know this because I checked the forecast twice, called the county road crew, and confirmed the plow schedule with Walt, who told me the same thing he told me an hour ago and then asked if I was feeling all right.
I'm fine. I am walking across the fifteen feet of covered walkway between the SAR base and the Summit at eleven at night to deliver information she already has, and I am fine.
The bar is dark except for the light above the counter. She's sitting there with her laptop open and a mug of chamomile beside her elbow. Hair pushed back, sleeves of her sweater bunched at her wrists. Still in a way that makes me not want to move.
She looks up when I walk in.
"Road opens tomorrow," I say.
"I know." She closes the laptop halfway. "Dottie told me an hour ago."
I stand there. I have a key to this place — Dottie gave all five of us keys years ago, and I've never thought twice about using mine. I walk behind the bar, pour two fingers of bourbon I don't particularly want, and sit down one stool away from her.
She watches me do all of this.
"You came to tell me something I already knew," she says.
I don't answer. The bourbon sits in front of me untouched.
She closes the laptop the rest of the way. Folds her hands on top of it. Looks at me the same way she looked at me at the falls — steady, direct, not giving me anywhere to hide.
"Mace."
"Yeah."
"Why are you here?"
The honest answer is that I've been sitting in the SAR base for two hours trying to think of a reason not to be, and I couldn't find one.
"Because you're leaving tomorrow," I say. "And I haven't —" I stop. Start again. "I didn't want tonight to just be the night before you left."
Her guard lowers. Not all the way. Enough.
She picks up her laptop. Holds my gaze. Stands.
I follow her up the narrow stairs without either of us saying a word about what's happening.
Her room is small and warm. The lamp on the nightstand is already on — low, amber, enough to see by. She sets the laptop on the desk and turns around and I'm already there, already close, through the door before I've decided to walk through it.
I kiss her and she makes a sound against my mouth — quiet, certain — and her hands find the hem of my shirt and pull it up and her palms are flat against my stomach and my whole body locks.
"Tell me what you want," I say against her mouth. My hands are at her waist. Holding. Not moving yet.
"You." Simple. No hesitation. "I want you."
I pull her sweater over her head and she lets me and she is — God.
Warm skin. Curves that fill my hands like they were designed for exactly this.
She is soft under my palms and solid in a way that quiets my brain.
The weight of her breasts settles against my chest and the heat coming off her skin registers in my hands before my brain does anything with it.
Warm and real, hips that fill my grip, waist that dips and flares, a woman who asks hard questions and kisses like she expects an honest answer, and I am going to give her one with my hands and my mouth and every part of me that knows how to be thorough.
I reach back and unclasp her bra. The straps fall.
She lets them. Her breasts drop free and my palms come up and take their weight — full and soft and warm, her nipples already hard against the rough skin of my thumbs, and she pulls in a sharp breath through her nose, nnh, and tips her chin up and I close my mouth over her throat instead of saying a single thing I'm thinking.
I press my mouth to her shoulder and she tips her head back and I can feel her pulse under my lips, fast and hard, and the fact that I did that — that her heart is hammering because of me — cracks open a lock I didn't know I was carrying.
I expected her to be loud. She is not loud. She is focused. Present. Every touch I give her she meets with one of her own, her fingers tracing the lines of my chest, my shoulders, the scar on my left side that she finds without flinching and runs her thumb across like it's just another part of me.
Nobody has ever touched that scar like it was just another part of me.
I lay her down on the bed and kneel over her and just — look.
The lamplight turns her skin gold. She is all soft curves and warm shadows, her dark hair fanned across the pillow, her chest rising and falling fast. My hands are massive against her.
Scarred knuckles, rough palms, built for ice axes and rope work, and she is soft and curved and flushed underneath them and my brain whites out for a full second.
I undo the button of her jeans slowly. She lifts her hips to help me and I slide the fabric down her thighs — full, generous thighs that I grip with both hands because I can and because she lets me.
Her underwear comes down with the jeans.
I don't rush it. I pull both off together and drop them and sit back and just look at her.
The dark hair between her thighs. The flush running down from her throat to her chest. The way her breathing has gone shallow and her legs have shifted apart by an inch without her deciding to do it.
I press my mouth to the inside of her knee and work my way up.
Slow. My lips drag across the inner skin of her thigh and she makes a sound that is barely sound at all, more breath than voice, hh—, and her hand drops to my hair without pulling, just resting there, just contact.
Salt and warmth and the faint sweetness I caught at the SAR base, vanilla or her, and it's stronger here, in the soft places, a musk that hits the back of my throat and goes straight somewhere useful, and I drag my mouth higher and she stops breathing for a full second.
She arches into it. Her breath catches. I feel it under my palm when I press my hand flat against her ribs — the stutter and then the slow, deliberate exhale of a woman deciding to let go.
"Look at me," I say.
She does. Dark eyes. Flushed. The lamplight catches in her hair.
I hold her gaze and slide my hand between her thighs.
She is warm and wet and swollen against my fingers — slick — she's been wet longer than the last two minutes, and that lands in my chest like a fist. I press my thumb in a slow circle against her clit and watch her face change — the sharp inhale, the way her lips part, the moment her eyes go unfocused and her hand grabs the sheet beside her head and twists.
Fff— she starts, and stops, and her hips roll into my hand.
I push one finger inside her. She is tight and hot and her whole body clamps down and her head goes back and she makes a sound she was clearly not planning to make, low and raw, "oh?—"
I expected to feel in control. I do not feel in control. I feel like I'm standing at the edge of something I can't see the bottom of, and I went over it the moment she said you.
I add a second finger and she lets out a slow "fuuu—" that she doesn't finish, and I take my time with her.
Thorough. Deliberate. I work my fingers slow and deep and use my mouth between her thighs — not teasing, not cautious, just eating her out the way I'd do anything that needed doing right, the flat of my tongue dragging over her clit while my fingers curl inside her and find the place that makes her stomach snap flat.
I learn the shape of her with my hands — the dip of her waist, the swell of her hips, the soft weight of her breasts against my chest when I lower myself over her.
I learn her with my mouth — the hollow of her throat where her pulse hammers, the curve of her stomach that she tries to pull away from and I press back into with my palm flat, keeping her there, because every part of her is the part I want.
She stops pulling away. She stops doing anything except breathing my name.
Every sound she makes is something I'm memorizing without meaning to — the sharp inhale when I press deeper with my fingers, the way she says Mace like it's a word she just learned, the low, broken sound when I curl my hand and find the exact place that makes her back arch off the bed and a long, helpless "—nnhh, god—" come out of her mouth.
Her thighs tighten around my wrist. Her hand finds the back of my neck and pulls me down to her mouth and she kisses me while I take her apart, tasting herself on my lips without hesitating, and I feel her start to shake.
"Not yet," I tell her. My voice is rough. I barely recognize it.
She makes a sound that is half laugh and half plea. "Then stop being so good at that."
I don't stop.
She is generous. She gives back everything I give her and then more — her mouth on my throat, her hands running the length of my back, nails dragging down my spine hard enough to sting, her hips rolling up against mine with a rhythm that tells me she is done waiting.
Her hand drops between us and wraps around my cock and I go completely still, every muscle in my body locking at once, because her grip is firm and certain and she strokes once, slow, and looks up at me while she does it like she is absolutely aware of what she has just done to me.
"Fuck," I say. The word comes out low and without decoration.
"Yeah," she says, and does it again.
When I push inside her the sound she makes is quiet and raw and it goes through me like a current.
I go slow. She is tight and gripping and I can feel every ridge of her against me and I keep going until I bottom out and we are both very still for a second, just breathing, the fullness of it settling, and she makes a small sound with her mouth closed, mmh, like something just became true.
The room is hot. The air between us is heavy with sweat and the smell of sex and the lamp throws our shadows against the wall and I can feel every inch of her — slick and warm and pulsing around me — and my arms are shaking with the effort of not moving too fast because I want this to last. I want to remember every second of the night before she leaves.
I move and she moves with me. Her legs wrap around my hips.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders hard enough to bruise.
She is not passive. She is not waiting. She is here, fully, matching my rhythm and then changing it, grinding up against me in a way that makes my vision blur, her hips circling and canting, changing the angle until she finds the one she wants and then staying there and working herself against me with deliberate, selfish focus, and I follow her the way I followed her down the trail — without deciding to, because she is going somewhere and I want to be where she is.
The headboard hits the wall once. She doesn't stop.
Neither do I. The slick sound of us fills the small room and her breathing goes ragged and her nails are in my skin and I drive into her harder because she's been asking for it with her whole body for the last thirty seconds and I am capable of understanding a direct request.
"Mace—" she says, and it breaks in the middle.
"I've got you," I say into her hair. And I mean it.
She comes with my name in her mouth and her body tight around me and I feel it everywhere — my chest, my spine, the place behind my ribs where I keep the things I don't say — the clench and pulse of her squeezing around my cock while she shakes and makes a sound that is just sound, no word in it, just what a person sounds like when they stop managing themselves.
And when I follow her down I press my forehead to hers and breathe and she breathes and we are very still in the quiet room above the bar, her laptop closed on the desk, the road opening tomorrow, my hand locked around hers like I can hold the morning off by force.
The town is silent outside the window. Snow on every surface, absorbing sound, turning Harrow Peak into a quiet that only exists at nine thousand feet.
She's on her back, looking at the ceiling. She has an expression I've started to recognize — the one that means she's composing something. Not on paper. In her head. Sentences forming behind her eyes that she'll write down later or won't, and either way they exist.
"What are you writing?" I ask.
She turns her head. "Something I'm not sure I can print."
The corner of my mouth pulls. Rusty. Out of practice.
"You're different than I thought," I say.
She turns her head all the way. "Yeah, you said that. At the falls."
"I meant it more this time."
She laughs. Low, warm. I've been collecting that sound since the SAR base. The quick one when Dottie says something dry. The surprised one when Sergeant put his head in her lap. The one just now that is only for me.
Her hand finds mine on the mattress between us. Her fingers thread through mine. She doesn't make it a moment. She just does it, easy, like it's already a habit.
I think something I would not say out loud.
I don't want her to leave tomorrow.
I haven't wanted to stop someone from leaving in a long time.
Not since the day I left base for the last time and didn't look back because looking back was not a thing I did.
I moved forward. Always. Through every door, toward every next thing, fast enough that nothing ever settled long enough to stick.
She is settling. Right now. In this bed, in this town, with her hand in mine and her breath evening out and the mountain outside the window doing whatever mountains do in the dark.
And I am not moving.