Chapter 4
Brennan
Avery tastes divine, and there's no stopping me. No second-guessing. Just her hands in my hair and mine on her waist and the slow, deliberate removal of every barrier between us.
Base layers come off in a tangle of limbs and laughter. I pull back to look at her—all soft curves and smooth skin and vulnerability in her eyes—and something cracks open in my chest.
"You're staring," she says, blushing.
"I can’t help it." I trace the curve of her hip. "You're perfect."
"I'm not—"
"Don't argue with me. You're perfect. Every soft inch."
I prove it with my mouth, kissing my way down her body—throat, collarbone, the swell of her breasts. She arches at my touch, making sounds that undo me.
"Brennan—"
"Let me worship you. Let me show you how incredible you are."
I lavish attention on her breasts, learning what makes her gasp, what makes her moan. Her hands fist in my hair, holding me closer, and I've never felt more needed.
"I want—" She's breathless, flushed. "I don't know what I want."
"Yes, you do. Stop thinking. Just feel."
I kiss down the soft curve of her belly. She tenses, and I pause.
"This too," I murmur against her skin. "This is beautiful too. All of you."
When I settle between her thighs, she gasps my name like a prayer. I take my time, learning her with tongue and lips, what makes her hips buck, what makes her lose words.
She tastes like salt and sweetness and everything I've denied myself for ten years.
When she comes against my mouth, shaking and crying out, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed.
I kiss my way back up her body while she recovers, trembling and flushed.
"That was—I've never—" She can't finish sentences.
"Never?"
"No.” She shakes her head and tries to hide in my neck, but I don’t allow it. “I could never get out of my head enough to have an orgasm. They never cared enough to try."
The confession breaks my heart. "Then, everyone before me was an idiot."
She laughs, pulling me down for a kiss. "Your turn."
"You don't have to—"
"I want to." Her hand wraps around me, and I groan. "Show me what you like."
I guide her hands, show her rhythm and pressure, then she’s sliding down my body and licking my cock and making me go stir crazy before sucking my head and within minutes I'm barely holding on. And I stop her before I lose control.
"I want to be inside you," I rasp. "If you want that."
"Yes, God, yes."
Emergency supplies include condoms—thank whoever stocked this cabin. I roll on one with shaking hands while Avery watches with dark, hungry eyes.
I settle between her thighs, and we both groan at the contact—skin on skin, heat on heat.
"Look at me," I say. "Stay with me."
Her eyes meet mine—trusting, vulnerable, open.
I enter her slowly, and she's tight and wet and perfect. We both gasp at the sensation.
"Okay?" I manage.
"More than okay. Move. Please, Brennan, move."
I move, watching her face, learning what she likes. She wraps her legs around my waist, pulling me deeper, and all my control shatters.
We move together, finding rhythm; the cabin fills with sounds of skin and breath and names gasped like prayers.
"Harder," she whispers. "I won't break."
I oblige, and she matches me thrust for thrust, all that control dissolving into pure sensation.
"You feel incredible," I rasp against her throat. "So perfect. You’re made for me."
"Brennan, I'm—"
"Let go. I've got you. Let go. I want all your orgasms."
She comes with my name on her lips, body clenching around me, and I follow her over the edge, burying my face in her neck, overwhelmed by feeling.
I wake to Avery curled against my chest, firelight painting her skin gold, and for a moment I forget to be scared.
Then I remember: we're stranded. In a cabin. Where last night I kissed her like a drowning man finding air and made love to her. Something that has never felt like this before.
Avery stirs, eyes opening. For a heartbeat, she's soft and unguarded, and then I watch awareness crash in. Her body tenses.
"Morning," I say.
"Morning." She sits up, putting a careful distance between us. "Did the storm pass?"
I check the window. Still white. Still howling. "Not yet. We're here for at least another day."
"Another full day."
"Yeah."
Silence stretches. Then: "About last night—"
"We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." I'm already building my own walls, protecting myself from inevitable rejection.
She bites her lip, making me envious of the action, and I want to take over. She says, "I want to talk about it. I just don't know what to say."
Giving us both a second, I feed more wood to the fire, needing something to do with my hands. "You don't have to say anything. Storm brain is real. We were scared, sought comfort. It doesn't have to mean—"
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Minimize it. Make it less than it was." She's looking at me with those sharp lawyer eyes. "You said we'd be honest. So be honest. Did last night mean something to you?"
Shit. Honesty. The thing I've avoided for the longest time.
"Yeah," I admit. "It meant something."
"What?"
"That I was wrong about you. You're not who I thought.
Underneath the armor, you're brave and funny and so damn beautiful it hurts to look at you.
" The words tumble out uncensored. "And that scares the hell out of me because I don't do this.
I don't feel things. I don't get invested. But Avery, I'm invested."
Her eyes are shining. "I'm invested too. And I'm terrified."
"So, what do we do?"
"I don't know. I've never done this before. Any of this."
I cross over to her, cup her face. "Then we figure it out. Together. One moment at a time."
"No plan?"
"No plan."
She laughs shakily. "That might be the scariest thing you've ever said to me."
"Too much?"
"Probably. But I'm going to try anyway. Just don’t get upset when I do micro-plans."
I chuckle and kiss her softly, and she melts into me with a sigh that goes straight to every part of me. When we break apart, I rest my forehead against hers. And we do another slow dance that heats the shelter and lasts the rest of the day and into the night.
The next morning, we lie tangled together by the fire, hearts slowing, skin cooling. I trace patterns on her back while she dozes against my chest.
"Hey," I murmur.
"Mmm?"
"How do you feel?"
She tilts her head to look at me, and her smile is soft and real. "Strong. Whole. Like I found something I didn't know was missing."
"What was missing?"
"Permission to feel. To want. To be messy and imperfect and human." She traces my collarbone. "You gave me that. Thank you."
"You gave me something too."
"What?"
"A reason to risk caring again."
We're quiet for a while, and I can feel her thinking. "What happens when we leave here?"
The question I've been dreading.
"I don't know," I admit. "What do you want to happen?"
"I don't know either. This wasn't in my plan."
Something tightens in my chest. Her plan. Right. The color-coded itinerary. The controlled life waiting back in the city.
"Right," I say carefully. "Your plan."
She hears the shift in my tone, pulls back to look at me. "I didn't mean it like that."
"How did you mean it?"
"Just that... this is unexpected. Unplanned. And I don't know how to—" She stops, frustrated. "I don't know how to reconcile what I feel with what I thought my life was supposed to look like."
I sit up, needing distance. "You don't have to reconcile anything. We had an incredible night. The storm has passed. We'll go back to the resort, and you'll go back to your controlled life. No harm, no foul."
"Brennan—"
"It's fine, Avery. I knew what this was."
"What was it?"
"Temporary. Cabin fever. Two scared people finding comfort."
She flinches. "Is that really what you think?"
No. But it's safer than admitting the truth—that I'm falling for her, that in thirty-six hours something fundamental changed in me, that the thought of her leaving makes my chest tight.
"I think," I say carefully, "that we both needed this. And now it's done."
Her eyes fill with tears that she's too proud to shed. "Fine. If that's what you want."
"It's not about what I want. It's about being realistic."
"Right. Realistic." She stands, gathering her clothes with jerky movements. "Silly me, thinking this meant something."
"Avery—"
"Don't. Just... don't."
She dresses, putting armor back in place piece by piece, and I watch the Ice Queen rebuild before my eyes.
By the time she's clothed, the woman I made love to is gone. In her place is the controlled lawyer who first walked into orientation.
We spend a couple of hours in brittle silence until rescue snowmobiles arrive and we return to reality.
We don't speak on the ride back.
And when we arrive at the resort to concerned staff and curious retreat women, Avery thanks me with professional politeness and walks away without looking back.
I watch her go, and I know I've made a terrible mistake.
But it's safer this way.
Isn't it?