CHAPTER 17 #2
"I want to be very clear," she said. "I want you to kiss me. I want you to touch me. If that changes, I will say so."
Colt's gaze dropped to her mouth and came back. "And if I need to slow down, I will say so."
"Good."
"Do you have protection?"
The directness steadied her instead of embarrassing her. Practicality had always been one of her safer languages.
"Yes," she said. "In my room."
His eyes flicked once toward the dark hallway, then back to her face. "Then we go only as far as you keep choosing."
She almost smiled. "I am choosing pretty firmly at the moment."
"I noticed."
Her laugh shook at the edges. Colt's hand came up slowly, giving her every chance to step away. She did not. When his palm cupped her cheek, the warmth of him seemed to quiet the whole kitchen. He bent, and she met him halfway.
The kiss held no surprise this time. It had knowledge in it. Old longing, new caution, the taste of beans and butter and the words they had managed not to avoid. Wren opened to him because she wanted to, because saying yes had become a living thing in her body, not a surrender of her sense.
He kissed her until her hands found his shirt. She worked the first button free, then stopped and looked at him.
"May I?" she asked.
His answer was a low, strained, "Yes."
She opened the next button. Then the next. Every inch of skin she uncovered seemed more intimate because he stood still and let her choose the pace. A bruise bloomed near his shoulder, yellow at the edge from storm work. She touched near it, not on it.
"Does that hurt?"
"Not enough to matter."
"That isn't an answer."
His mouth curved. "A little. Your hand there does not."
So she touched him there, beside the bruise, over his heart. His eyelids lowered, brief and hard. When they opened, the want in them was unmistakable and leashed so tightly it made her ache.
"Wren," he said, and this time her name was a request.
"Bedroom," she answered.
The word changed him. Changed her too. The kitchen became bright behind them as they moved toward the narrow hall. At the bedroom doorway, Wren stopped, caught by the force of understanding where she was standing.
Eight years ago, she had left Dusthallow with a suitcase and a story someone else had sharpened for her. Tonight she stood in a borrowed cottage with flour on her hands, debt on the kitchen table, and Colt waiting for her to decide again.
She turned to him.
"I am not promising forever tonight."
"I know."
"I am not promising I will stay."
Pain crossed his face, honest and quick, but he nodded. "I know."
"I am promising this is real."
Colt stepped close enough that his shirt brushed her knuckles. "That is enough for tonight."
She pulled him through the doorway.
The room was simple: iron bed, quilt folded at the foot, one lamp with a shade gone amber from age. Colt looked too large for it and exactly right inside it, a man made of work and restraint standing in the softest light she owned.
She found the unopened box in the drawer and set it on the bedside table without apology.
"Prepared," Colt said, voice rough.
"Anxious women make lists."
"Remind me to respect lists."
"You should already."
"I do."
Then she lifted her shirt over her head, and teasing left both of them.
Colt went still. His gaze moved over her with such reverence that Wren's first instinct was to make a joke, turn, hide the body that had been tired and broke and judged. She made herself stay.
"Say something," she whispered.
He swallowed. "I am trying to say it right."
"It doesn't have to be perfect."
"You are beautiful," he said. "And I am angry at every fool who made you think wanting that said was vanity."
The words went through her clean.
She reached behind herself, unfastened her bra, and let it fall. Colt waited.
"Touch me," she said.
He did.
His palms were warm and careful at her waist, then sliding up her back, thumbs tracing the places where her breath caught.
When his mouth came to her throat, it was gentle enough to ask, hot enough to answer everything in her.
Wren tipped her head and held his shoulders, careful of the bruise even as desire scattered her focus.
She undressed him because she wanted the intimacy of each permission. His shirt hit the floor. His belt followed. He paused before her jeans.
"May I?"
"Yes."
He opened them slowly, fingers steady despite the tension in his jaw. Wren stepped out of denim and underwear while he held her hand for balance, and the ordinary courtesy of it nearly undid her more than nakedness did.
Then there was no use pretending they were calm.
They came together at the side of the bed, skin to skin, her hands in his hair, his mouth on hers, the two of them learning what time had not stolen because it had never been given the chance.
He touched her breasts with a care that turned quickly into heat when she arched into him.
She said his name. He answered by lowering his mouth, and pleasure opened in her with a sharpness that made her grip the sheet.
"Wren?" he asked against her skin.
"Yes. Keep going."
He did, slower than her impatience wanted, thorough enough that the world narrowed to his mouth, his hand, the rough sound of his breathing when she told him what she liked. She had expected tenderness. She had not expected to feel so powerful inside it. Every time she guided him, he followed.
By the time he laid her on the bed, she was shaking.
"Too much?" he asked.
"No."
"Tell me if it is."
"I will. " She reached for him. "Come here."
He came over her, braced on one forearm, his body warm and solid between her knees. She touched his face, his jaw, the place behind his ear that made his eyes close. His control was not indifference. It was a gift with strain underneath.
Wren took one of the packets from the box and put it in his hand.
His gaze held hers while he dealt with it, no coyness, no turning away from the practical fact of what they were choosing. When he settled over her again, she wrapped her legs around him and drew him closer.
"Still yes?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "Colt, yes."
He entered her slowly.
For one suspended moment, Wren could not separate pleasure from grief. It was the ache of arriving at a door that had waited through too many seasons. Her body took him in by degrees, and her hands found his back, his shoulder, the nape of his neck. He stopped when she tensed.
"Stay there," she whispered.
He stilled at once.
She breathed. Felt the stretch, the heat, the unbelievable closeness of him. Felt herself choosing, not being carried. Felt the old girl in her who had left with a suitcase finally stop running long enough to turn around.
She kissed him. "Now."
He moved.