CHAPTER SIX
LAWSON
The screen door banged shut behind us, and the sound of it might as well have been a starting gun.
It had been almost two days. Two days of watching her mouth move and thinking about it doing other things. Making other should. Two days of her in my clothes, on my couch. In my bed.
Under my damn skin.
All those hours of holding a line I’d drawn for good reasons that I could no longer name a single one of, because Amy was in my arms, soaked through and laughing against my jaw, and she’d just told me to get her wet the traditional way.
Damn the flirty minx.
I was done being careful.
“Last chance,” I said, carrying her through the cabin. “You want to tell me to slow down, tell me now.”
“Lawson.” She took my face in both hands and made me look at her, and her eyes were bright and clear and certain, no fog in them, nothing but heat and that spark that had been taking me apart since the river. “If you slow down, I will write a one-star review.”
I gave that rusty little laugh and made her smile.
I set her down on her feet beside the bed because I wanted to unwrap her standing. I started on the buttons of that soaked flannel shirt— my shirt — and my hands, which had field-stripped rifles in the dark, fumbled the first button.
She noticed. Of course, she noticed. “Why, Bigfoot,” she said, delighted, “are you nervous?”
I tore it open and buttons went flying
“Okay,” she breathed. “That works too.”
Then the shirt was off her shoulders and on the floor and my brain went quiet in a way it hadn’t in years.
“Fuck, Amy.”
She was — there isn’t a word that could describe her, standing there before me.
Lush. Real. Soft heavy breasts still cold-tipped from the hose water, the sweet curve of her belly, hips that flared wide enough to fill even my hands, and all of it right there in the afternoon light coming gold through the curtains.
And I watched it happen — the second her chin came up, the breath she took to make a joke, the armor going on.
She was bracing for me to be careful with my face.
Somebody had taught her to expect that, too.
I vowed to make her forget every damn bastard that had looked at her that way.
I let her see it. All of it. Exactly what looking at her did to me.
“You have no idea,” I said, low, “what you look like.”
“I have some idea. There are mirrors in my life—”
“No.” I put my hand flat on her sternum, over her heart, and slid it down — slow, between her breasts, over the soft of her stomach, watching the muscles of her stomach jump and settle behind my palm. “You don’t.”
My hand kept going, hooked in the waistband of those wet shorts, going down the front until my fingertips touched a soft next of curls. She gasped. It was the sweetest sound she’d made. But I know I could make her make more.
“You’ve made me useless. I split a half a cord of wood this morning before you woke up, trying not to walk back inside and wake you up with my mouth.
” I pulled her shorts down, my hands sliding down her legs, helping her step out of them.
My nose followed the same path my hands had made coming down, inhaling her fragrance.
At the juncture of her thighs, I buried my face in that soft nest of curls I’d touched.
I wanted to taste her. Spread her legs apart and bury my tongue inside her pussy.
But I didn’t. Not yet.
I stood back up, lifting her chin until she met my eyes. “I don’t want to do this in the dark, and if you make one joke about how much of you there is, I’m going to spend the next hour proving you wrong. Slowly. Until you are begging for mercy.”
Her mouth opened. Closed.
“There it is,” I said. “I finally found the truck to making you speechless.”
“That’s not — I’m not — “ She took a deep breath. “I want this too, please.”
“How prettily said.” I grabbed the hem of my shirt and yanked it up. She looked at me with hunger in those dark eyes and I’d never anything quiet to beautiful. She licked her lips. “Take the rest off. It’s not fair. I’m the only one being brave.”
I took the rest off.
Her eyes went down me and stayed. I intended to remember the look on her face on my deathbed. Her mouth made that small round shape guaranteed to make a man stand at attention, and every part of me obliged.
“Okay,” she said faintly. “So it’s a whole Bigfoot situation. Head to toe.” The way she said it, wild and greedy… she got to see just what kind of situation she as getting into as my cock swelled even more.
I picked her up and put her on my bed, spread out on my quilt with her hair wild, her thighs pressed together and her eyes on me like I was something she planned to keep.
Mine.
The word came up again, hard and sure, and for the first time I didn’t fight it. I let it settle inside me. Right. Perfect.
Just like her.
I came down over her and kissed her, deep and slow, and she opened under me and pulled me in with her heels at the backs of my thighs, and I took my time even though every muscle I owned was voting against it.
I kissed her jaw, her throat, the wet hollow of her collarbone.
I got a hand under her back and arched her up and took one cold-tight nipple in my mouth, and the sound she made — high and shocked — went straight through me.
“Lawson — “
“Right here.” I moved to the other breast, dragged my beard soft across her skin between them, felt her body answer, all the way down. “You talk all day, sweetheart. Talk now. Tell me what’s good.”
“That. That’s — the beard, the beard is good, I had theories about the beard — “
“Yeah?” I kissed my way down the soft of her stomach, unhurried, both hands full of her hips. “What were the theories?”
“That it would — “ her words broke as I settled between her thighs and pressed them wide with both palms. Her voice went thin as my breath fluttered over her wetness. “That it would feel —”
“Like this?” I murmured before licking the inside of her thigh, then scraping my beard along the same path.
“Lawson,”‘ she moaned.
“Right here, sweetheart.” I did the same thing to her other thigh, mindful of her injury.
Then I kissed my way up to where she was already soaked for me. Drenched for her mountain man.
“Lawson, you don’t have to,” she said, her fingers sliding through my hair.
I looked up the length of her body. “Amy.”
“Present?”
“I’ve been thinking about the taste of you since, well, honestly, since I dragged you out of the river.
” I turned my head and moved my mouth along the inside of her thigh, past the fresh bandage.
I saw the bruise on her hip and covered it with kisses.
“There is nowhere on this mountain I’d rather be. Now lie back and let me eat.”
She lay back.
The first long taste of her pussy pulled a groan out of me. She tasted of sweetness and salt and her.
“Oh, my god,” she said to the ceiling.
I took my time the way I did everything. I learned her. Long slow strokes of my tongue until her hips found the rhythm and rode it, Then her clit, soft circles, softer than she expected — I could tell by the frustrated sound she made as her fingers fisted my hair. I smiled against her.
“Say it, Amy. Tell me what you want.”
“Harder, Lawson, please.”
“There’s the talker.” I slid one finger into her, slow, and her whole body bowed. Tight. Scalding. Her thighs came up against my ears and I hooked my arms under them and pinned her open and stopped being patient.
She was loud. Thank God, she was loud — I’d have been disappointed by anything less from her — and the words burned down into fragments.
My name. Yes, right. there, and a detailed threat about what would happen to me if I stopped.
I worked a second finger in and curled them before sealing my mouth over her clit and sucking.
She went off like I’d lit a fuse, thighs shaking, her cry cracking in the middle, her heels digging into the mattress by my head because I refused to let her close her legs or hurry away from my mouth.
I worked her through it, gentling by degrees, until she pushed weakly at my head.
“Okay. Okay. I need — a medic. A moment. A cigarette maybe? Oh, wait, I don’t smoke.” Her arms were stretched out across the mattress and my hands were the only thing holding her legs up.
I kissed the inside of her knee and came up over her. She looked destroyed in the best way a woman can look destroyed — flushed down to her breasts, eyes glassy, mouth soft. She reached up and dragged her thumb through my wet beard.
“Theories confirmed,” she said hoarsely.
I smiled and she smiled make.
I leaned down and kissed her, letting her taste herself on my lips. She liked that apparently because her legs wrapped around me once again and her arms pulled me closer.
“I want you inside me,” she said, plain and sure, no joke stapled to it, and it knocked the wind out of me. Hard. “Now, please. I’ve been thinking about it since you carried me up that trail like I was made of air.”
“Condom’s in the nightstand.” I reached for it, and her hand caught my wrist.
“I’m on the pill and I haven’t — it’s been a long time.” Her chin came up. “But it’s your call, mountain man.”
“It’s been a while for me too.” I swept the hair back from her face, searching it. “I want to feel everything.”
She nodded. “Me too.”
I shifted my weight to one arm, and took my cock in the other, dragged the head through her slick heart, and watched her eyes lose focus as I pushed into her.
Slowly. I had to. She was tight enough that the feel of her whited out the edges of my vision.
I fed my cock into her an inch at a time while she gripped my forearms, nails biting in, her body making room for me by degrees.
I didn’t stop, just moved slow and easy, giving her time until I was seated all the way inside her.
“You feel — “ she started.
“Yeah.”
“I mean it, that’s — you’re — I have no material for this,” she said. “None. I’m out.”
“Good.” I pulled back and drove home hard, backing her head drop back into the quilt. “Now I have two ways to make you speechless.”
I set a pace. Long and deep, grinding at the bottom of every stroke because it made her gasp, and her body took me like it had been put into existence for exactly this reason — exactly for me.
She was soft everywhere I was hard, her breasts moving with every thrust, her thighs cradling my hips, her heels hooked behind me pulling me deeper.
I got a hand under her ass and tilted her and found the angle that made her go silent — actually silent, mouth open, no sound coming out — and then I stayed on it, relentless, watching her lose every word she owned underneath me.
“Right there, huh?” I murmured against her ear. “Squeezing my cock like you don’t ever want me to leave.”
“Never — leave — “
“Not going anywhere.” I gripped the heavy flesh of her hips, my fingers digging in deep, knowing I was putting a bruise there to match the one on the other side.
I rode her harder, my restraint breaking with every thrust. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, little girl?
Parading around in my shirt, knowing you were wearing nothing beneath it.
Asking to sleep, just fucking sleep in my bed?
I slammed into and stayed there. ‘This pussy is mine now — you hear me?”
“Yours — “ No hesitation. It came out of her on a moan. “Lawson, I’m — I’m going to —”
I started the hammering pace again. “I’ve got you.”
One rough, deep thrust. Another. Then she was clamped down on me in waves, crying out, her free hand raking down my back, and the feel of her coming on my cock would have taken my legs out from under me if I’d been standing.
I followed her over hard, spilling into her with her name torn out of me as the world fell away.
The mountain, the trees, the sound of the creek that I was always aware of.
Gone, only silence. Then everything came floating back in.
But this time it was her. The feel of her, soft and limp beneath me.
Her wetness surrounding me. Her heartbeat against my chest, quick and unguarded, knocking like it wanted in.
She stirred. Turned her face into my neck. And into my skin, muffled and hoarse and entirely herself, she said, “So. The wood-splitting was false advertising.”
I lifted my head. “What?”
“You do not do everything at the same speed.”
The laugh came up out of me before I could stop it — a real one, a full one this timed, still rusty from disuse — and she lit up underneath me like she’d won something, both hands coming up to feel it in my chest, greedy about it.
“That’s mine,” she said. “That laugh. I earned that one.”
I reluctantly pulled out of her. The only thing that kept me sane was knowing I would be back inside her very, very soon.
I pulled her into my side, and she came eagerly, her cheek on my chest, her leg thrown over mine, her fingers tracing the scar along my ribs.
I knew I’d have to tell her things. Things about myself. My past. My future.
I looked down at her. Her eyes were already closed and her breathing was deepening.
Our future, I realized and didn’t feel a moment of panic.
It was what I wanted. I’d kept this room empty, hell, my whole damn life empty. And all it had taken was pulling a water nymph from the water to fill it up.
“Lawson?”
“Mm.”
“I’m not going back to the lodge, am I.”
Mine. The word whispered through me one more time, settling in for good.
“No,” I said, into her hair. “You’re not.”
I intended to remember the look on her face on my deathbed.