Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
BIANCA
His hand is warm and heavy on my knee, and I let it stay there because I want it there. Simple as that.
My phone buzzed with Renata's text an hour before I left the cabin, and I can still see it.
Girl PLEASE do not adopt a mountain man and his trauma. You go feed people and fix them and then you cry. ONE month. Fun only. Say it back to me.
I texted back a single thumbs up and turned my phone face down, because she's right, which is the annoying thing about Renata.
I spent six years pouring myself into a kitchen that chewed me up and called it loyalty.
Gave a man my whole self once because he told me he needed me, and need turned out to be the cheapest word he owned.
Empty bowl by the end of it. Scraped clean.
So I came up this mountain to remember what I want when nobody's asking me for anything. Four weeks. No projects. No fixing. A confident woman gets to want a man purely because he looks good and knows what to do, and then she gets to leave.
This one looks very good.
"You don't waste words," I tell him. "I like that. Saves time."
"Negotiation," he says. Low, even. "Before anything."
"Mm. A man with manners." I shift on the stool so my thigh presses into his palm. "Hard limits, I don't do pain for its own sake and I don't do degradation. Bratting, I do enjoy. Color system, I use it. Green, yellow, red, and red means stop everything, no questions, no sulking after."
"No sulking," he says. Something flickers at the corner of his mouth. "Heard I'm bad about that."
"I heard your friend say it. Loudly." I lean in. "Your turn."
"You stay where I put you. You tell me the truth, all of it, every time." His thumb moves once across my knee, slow. "Lie to me about a limit, we're done. That's the one."
There's weight under it. Old weight. Whatever happened to this man, somebody handed him a lie dressed up as a boundary and he hasn't put it down since. I file that away and forget it.
"I don't lie about what I want," I say. "Bad habit of mine. Honesty."
He stands. Drops cash on the bar without counting it, then takes my hand off my own drink and folds it into his.
"Come here."
He leads me past the main floor, past a couple wrapped up in rope under blue light, to an alcove at the back half hidden by a velvet curtain. One chair. A small bench. Privacy enough to be private, open enough that the music still finds us.
"Dress stays on," he says, and turns me by the hip so my back's to his chest. His mouth comes to my ear. "For now."
Big hands settle on my waist and slide up slow, learning me through the fabric, thumbs grazing the underside of my breasts until my nipples go tight and obvious through the red. He notices. Of course he notices.
"You walked in here looking for trouble," he says against my throat.
"I walked in here bored."
"Liar."
His hand wraps my jaw, gentle, tipping my head back onto his shoulder, and his other hand drags down the front of my body to press flat and warm between my legs through the dress. Heat floods through me. My hips chase it before I decide to let them.
"There she is," he murmurs.
He gathers the hem of my dress in one fist and pulls it up to my waist, baring me to the cool air and his palm, no underwear to slow him down because I made that choice in the cabin mirror two hours ago.
His fingers find me already slick. A rough sound leaves him, satisfied, and he draws one slow circle around my clit that buckles my knees.
"Easy." His arm bands across my hips and holds me up. "I've got you. You're not going anywhere I don't put you."
Two fingers slide into me and curl, and the heel of his hand grinds against my clit in the same motion, and the noise I make is not dignified. I grab his forearm, the one holding me, and his muscle flexes under my fingers like he could hold me up all night and not strain.
"Look at you," he says, low and dark in my ear. "Soaking my hand in the back of my brother's club. So much for bored."
"Shut up and earn it."
He laughs, a real one, warm against my neck, then pushes a third finger in and stops talking.
His mouth works the side of my throat. The drag of his fingers gets deeper, the pressure on my clit steady and merciless, and he reads every gasp out of me, adjusting, pressing harder where I jerk, never once losing the rhythm.
Whatever this man does up his mountain, he does this with the same patience.
He's not chasing my orgasm. He's building it, brick by brick, and he wants me to feel every layer go down.
The coil pulls tight at the base of my spine. My thighs start to shake.
"Right there," I manage. "Don't you dare stop."
"Wasn't planning on it." His teeth graze my ear. "Come on my hand. Let the room hear you."
I shatter. It rolls up through me hard, and my whole body locks against his arm, and I hear myself cry out without a single thought spared for who's nearby. He works me through it slow, gentling the pressure as I come down, fingers still buried, my pulse fluttering around them.
When I sag back against his chest, he holds my full weight. Doesn't rush to move me. Just brings his slick fingers up and, watching my face, slides them into his own mouth and sucks them clean.
"Show off," I breathe.
"You taste like you're gonna be a problem." He says it like a verdict.
Then he eases my dress back down over my hips, smooths it, and turns me around to face him. He pushes a loose curl off my cheek with a knuckle, careful, the same hand that just wrecked me, and the gentleness of it lands somewhere I didn't have guarded. My chest does something I don't authorize.
That's the part I should be worried about. The hand. The care in it. A man who can flatten you and then tuck your hair back like you're worth handling slow.
"Water," he says. "Sit." He guides me onto the bench, fetches a bottle from a side table, cracks it, and presses it into my hands. Crouches in front of me so we're level while I drink, eyes moving over my face, checking. "Color."
"Green. Extremely green." I drink. "You always this thorough?"
"Yes."
"No notes, then." I let my head tip against the wall. My legs are still humming. "You didn't even take your pants off."
"I don't need a bed to make a woman fall apart." He stands, looks down at me with that quiet, certain face that gives away nothing and somehow promises everything. "That was the introduction."
My stomach flips. Four weeks. Fun only. I can hear Renata in my head, very faint, very far away.
"The introduction," I repeat.
"You'll let me up that mountain eventually." Not a question, the way he says everything. He pulls me to my feet, steadies me, then bends and presses his mouth to mine for the first time all night, slow and deep and unhurried, a man tasting something he intends to come back for.
When he lets go, my heart is going like I sprinted here.
"Eventually," I agree, before I can talk myself out of the word.