Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
ALLIE
The fire crackles, golden light dancing over Austin’s rugged features. He holds me like I’m something precious, scruffy beard brushing my cheek, lips feathering over my freckles with quiet reverence.
With Trevor, sex was a transaction. Five seconds of pretending. Then his back turned, the room cold.
No wonder I escaped into books. But now—this quiet, delicious present—feels like the only place I belong.
I stroke Austin’s bearded cheek, etching this moment on my heart.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
I shake my head, no longer interested in naming my past. Or comparing.
“Just enjoying this moment so thoroughly it can never escape me. And you?”
“Same,” he rasps, all bedroom eyes and a kind of attentiveness I’ve never experienced before.
“Been thinking about this… thinking about us for a while now,” he confesses, dimples peeking out from his bearded cheeks. “Better than I ever could have imagined, though.”
“Agreed,” I admit. “Though I can’t wrap my head around it.”
“Which part?”
“A city girl voice actress and a reclusive cowboy mountain man.”
“A girl raised on her grandaddy’s dairy farm, and a guy who doesn’t have a half bad reading voice… at least, according to the professionals,” he teases with a wink, fanning my hair out across the pillow.
“Very good,” I agree. “When you keep reading.”
He chuckles. “Caught me off guard at the bookstore. Probably not kosher in mixed crowds, you know.”
“Speaking of which,” I say, stretching toward the nightstand next to the bed. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, too. Read to me,” I murmur with a naughty smile.
He freezes. “This an audition?”
I nod. “I think our voices go well together… if you can deliver your lines without melting.”
He chuckles, heat rising on his neck.
“Just a line or two. I don’t care.”
He finds the same page, eyes flicking to mine. “Burned this into my brain at the bookstore.” His voice drops, a velvety growl, and my body reacts before my mind can.
“Mmm,” I moan softly, ear-to-ear smile crossing my face.
“Yeah?” he asks. “Do I get the job?”
“Yeah,” I say, stroking his arm.
His finger dances lazily over my collarbone, followed by his lips. “Can’t get over how soft and smooth you are.”
I laugh again. “Were you expecting something else?”
“No. You’re just so different from me. I like it.”
“And I like us,” I say, amazed by the boldness of my words.
“Me, too,” he says, thumb brushing over my cheek. “Could get used to this.”
“Earlier, you said you’d give me anything I ask for.”
His smile fades, replaced by focus. “What if I need to know you won’t forget this—later.”
“I won’t.” And I know it’s true.
He nods once, face relaxing. “Now, tell me how you need me, Allie.”
“I need all of you.”
The hearth crackles, casting a coppery hue on the cabin’s warm log walls. Cozy, calm, safe.
A lazy smile captures his face, boyish in the firelight glow.
He guides my hands to the flannel I clumsily unbuttoned earlier. It falls to the floor, then his Henley. My hand palms his thick bicep, rock hard. The arms of a cowboy rancher, not a gym rat.
It descends lower, memorizing angular planes and dips, teasing and caressing until I slip beneath the waistband of his boxer briefs. A contented growl rumbles through his chest, more like a purr, lips claiming mine recklessly.
Breath frantic, our lips tangle. We struggle out of cotton and denim until nothing exists between us but longing.
My eyes trace the broad angle of his chest, descend along the defined abs and the V of hair that teases lower to where he’s thick and long, veiny and taut.
“I’m on the pill,” I whisper, cheeks burning. “And I haven’t been with anyone since my last checkup.”
“I’m clean, too,” he says. “And I’ve got condoms.”
My arms tighten around his neck. “I don’t want anything between us.”
His breath stutters. “Then neither do I.”
The world collapses into heat, breath, and pulse.
His large calloused hands rove over me, passion igniting as I wrap my legs around his waist, urging him to me. But he doesn’t answer until his mouth has claimed me again. Lips, body, soul.
He sinks into me slowly, giving me time, watching my face like he’ll stop the second I ask.
I breathe through the stretch, nod once. “Don’t stop.”
That’s all he needs.
My nails dig into his back as I draw closer. The world breaks away beneath me as I float free, hips bucking, legs shaking.
Tiny spasms grow and build as he angles my hips, finding the spot his fingers already know so well. He relentlessly drives over it until I scream his name into the silence of the cabin, coming undone.
His body wraps around mine, core shaking as he follows behind, flooding me with wave after wave of heat. Collapsing atop me, though never letting his full weight crush me, he catches his breath, looking at me like he can’t quite believe I’m real.
“Don’t want to rush you,” he says, swallowing hard. “But I need you to know…” He grabs my hand, pressing it over his chest where his heart thuds. “This is yours now, if you want it.”
My throat tightens, his handsome face blurring. “I do.”
I curl against his chest, his hand drifting through my hair like it knows the way.
Pine sap and smoke. Heat and strength.
Nothing missing. Nothing taken.
Just… here. Breathing together.