Chapter Seven
Kelsey
Marc carries me through the door of my cabin, shutting the door with his foot. The lock turns under my fingers because I reach for it without thinking. My house smells like last night’s roasted chicken and the lemon oil I use on the pine table. Under that is lake water, turned earth, and him.
He sets me down but does not step back. Dirt streaks his forearms. My T-shirt is stuck to my spine. We look like we belong in the trench, not in my kitchen.
“Boots,” I say.
We leave them by the door. I wash my hands at the sink. He does the same, standing close enough that his hip brushes mine. When I reach for the half-finished bottle from last night, he takes two glasses from the shelf without asking where they live. He has been in this room once. He already knows.
I pour. The wine is darker than it was at dinner, a little tired, still good. I hand him a glass and keep mine between us like a small, honest barrier I do not actually want.
“To not falling in the lake this time,” I say.
“Give the night a minute.” His mouth tips. “I’m not making promises.”
We drink, silent for a moment. But my mind is busy. It’s full of the dock, his mouth on my neck, the way he stood up with me wrapped around him and asked which cabin. I set my glass down first.
“Why aren’t you already taken?”
The question comes out plainer than I meant. Marc goes still in that particular way he has, the one that means he is deciding whether to give me the polished version or the true one.
“Because I leave,” he says. “Every job has an end date. I got good at being the man who is excellent for a short while, then gone. Most people want someone who unpacks the boxes.” He turns the glass by the stem. “I have an apartment that proves I don’t. Why aren’t you?”
“The cabins got here first.” I trace the rim of my glass.
“I have been proposed to by a man who thought Eight Pines would make a charming hobby once I hired a manager. I have been dated by men who liked the idea of a woman who owns something until they realized I was not going to sell it or shrink it to fit their weekends. After a while I stopped introducing anyone to the property. It was easier than watching them measure the rooms for a life I was never going to live.”
“They were fools.”
“Some of them were kind. They just wanted a different woman than the one who stays up calculating water-heater replacement schedules.”
Marc sets his glass beside mine. He does not crowd me yet. He looks at me the same way he looked at the damaged lug, like the truth is useful and he will not pretend otherwise.
“I don’t want a different woman.”
“You have five weeks and four days left after tonight.”
“I can count.” His voice drops. “I still don’t want a different one.”
The last of the practical list I have been reciting since Monday evaporates. I step into him. He meets me halfway, both hands framing my face, and kisses me like the conversation was only the fuse.
This kiss has no audience and no flickering lights. He tastes like wine and dust. I fist my hands in his shirt and feel the heat of his skin through the cotton. When I make a sound against his mouth, his control frays in a way I can feel.
“Tell me what you want,” he says against my lips.
“You. In my bed. Not carefully.”
“I can do that.” He searches my face once more. “If you change your mind, you say so. I stop. No argument.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
“Say it anyway if you do.”
“I will.”
That is enough for him. He lifts me again, easier than he should be able to after a full day of digging, and carries me down the short hall to my room.
The bed is made. The window is cracked to the lake.
He sets me on my feet at the foot of it and pulls my shirt over my head in one motion.
My bra follows. The air is cool; his gaze is not.
“Christ, Kelsey.”
He says my name like it is part of the work he intends to do well.
Pulling off his shirt, I put my hands on him the way I have wanted to since he stepped out of that truck.
Muscle, heat, a scar at his ribs I have not seen until now.
He lets me look. Then he hooks his fingers in my belt loops and brings me against him so I can feel how hard he already is.
“Jeans,” I manage.
“Yours first.”
He drops to one knee without making a production of it and works the button, the zipper, the denim down my legs.
I brace a hand on his shoulder. He presses his mouth to the soft skin above my navel, then lower, over cotton, and the sound I make would embarrass me if I had any pride left that was not currently occupied.
“Marc …”
“I know.” He stands, strips the rest of his clothes, and takes me down onto the quilt with his weight on his forearms. I expect him to rush.
He does not. He kisses my throat, the slope of my breast, the place his hand spanned under the water two days ago.
When his mouth closes over me I arch hard enough that he has to hold my hip still.
“Sensitive,” he murmurs, not unkindly.
“Don’t you dare be smug.”
“Too late.”
I laugh, breathless, and then I am not laughing because his hand slides between my legs and he finds out exactly how little patience I have left.
He watches my face while he touches me. That is the part that undoes me more than the skill of it.
He wants the evidence. When I gasp for air, he kisses me through it, keeping his hand where it is until I grab his wrist.
“Marc, I want you in me,” I say. “Now.”
He reaches for his jeans, finds his wallet, the foil packet. The pause is brief and responsible and somehow as intimate as the rest. He rolls the condom on, moves between my thighs, and waits with the head of his cock against me until I nod.
He pushes in slowly enough that I feel every inch. My body stretches around him as my hands fist in the quilt. He swears once, low, and goes still when he is seated.
“All right?”
“Yes. It feels so good.”
Marc’s first strokes are measured, almost polite, until I wrap my legs around him and pull.
Then the civility leaves. He drives into me with the same focused force he used on the conduit.
Deep and sure, a rhythm that steals the air from the small room.
One hand braces beside my head. The other grips my thigh and hitches it higher so he can get closer.
“Look at me.”
I do. It is almost too much. He is right there, eyes dark, jaw tight, watching me take him. I have never been looked at like this while being fucked. It makes me greedy. I tell him so, words I do not use in daylight, and his control slips another notch.
He changes the angle. The new depth wrings a sound out of me that I would have swallowed if I could.
He likes that. He does it again. When I start to come he holds me through it, talking low against my temple.
He’s saying my name, how tight I am, how long he has thought about this … until I shake apart under him.
He follows with a groan that sounds dragged out of him, hips flush to mine, forehead dropped to my shoulder. For several breaths neither of us moves. My heart is trying to leave my chest.
Marc shifts his weight so he is not crushing me and stays inside me. His thumb traces an idle line along my cheekbone, gentler than everything that came before it.
“Still with me?”
“Yes.” My voice is wrecked. “Very with you.”
He kisses the corner of my mouth. “Good.”
I lie there long enough to feel the tremor leave my thighs. We are a wreck with sweat, dust from the trench, the faint mineral smell of the lake still clinging to his skin. I start laughing before I can stop it.
Marc lifts his head. “That is not the sound a man hopes for.”
“We are filthy.” I poke his shoulder. “You inspected my service, dug up my lawn, and then did that in my clean bed. There are health codes.”
“I don’t work for the county.”
“Lucky you.” I slide out from under him. My legs argue about it. I win, barely, and catch his wrist. “Come on.”
“Kelsey …”
“You threw me in a lake two days ago. The least you can do is wash the dirt off before you get any more ideas.” I tug. He could stop me with one planted hand, but he doesn’t. He sits up, glorious and disreputable, and I watch his mouth change when he realizes I am serious.
I snag his jeans off the floor and toss the wallet onto the quilt. “Bring what you need. I’m not done with you.”
His eyes darken. “You’re in a mood.”
“I’m in my house, Decker. I can be in any mood I want.”
The bathroom is small enough that he has to turn sideways in the doorway.
I twist the shower on and hold my fingers under the spray until it runs hot.
Steam lifts against the mirror. I look at him over my shoulder, naked and still marked from his mouth, and I let him see that I am not shy about this.
“Well?” I step in first. Water hits my shoulders, my breasts, the ache he left between my legs. I hold out my hand through the steam, playful on purpose, because if I am not careful I will say something I cannot take back. “I hear you’re good with wet conditions. Prove it.”
Marc picks up the wallet, extracts another packet, and sets it on the shelf inside the shower like a man laying out a tool he intends to use. Then he takes my hand.
His gaze drops the length of me as the water sheets over my skin, and the look on his face is no longer careful at all.