CHAPTER SEVEN
FAITH
I knew Walker lied about the mountain not being passable for the next three days as he kept me in his house and fucked me every waking hour. I knew, and I didn’t object to a single minute of it. We had just found each other, and my mini-mountain God wasn’t the sort of man I was inclined to argue with.
Not that I was scared of him. Sure, Walker Roan could be terrifyingly intimidating if he so chose, but he rarely showed that side to me—so far. What I wanted was to fall asleep in his arms, wake up before him and show my mountain man just what having a woman in his life might add to his solitary existence.
This morning’s session involved cockwarming. Which was a personal kink at the top of my list. I had no idea if he’d be into it, but I woke him with his cock in my mouth, simply keeping him warm as he stretched and stroked my hair and shoulders.
“Fuck, that feels good, Precious,” he murmured, winding my hair around his fist and guiding my head gently.
I shook my head, and leaned my cheek against his stomach, keeping still.
He stopped, considered, and let me do my thing, leaning back. Slowly, his cock hardened in my mouth. I licked and suckled gently to prevent from drooling on occasion, and he sighed, resting back, his legs supporting me as I held him in my mouth.
“Good girl.” Walker stroked my cheek gently with his knuckles.
I moaned. Hell, I almost came when he uttered those two golden worlds. His hand dropped to my breast where he played idly with my nipple, and I started to realize the position I’d put myself in as my arousal level peaked. I twisted but he refused to stop and so I sucked him gently, needing to ease the growing ache between my legs as he toyed with my nipples, milking me one at a time. The long moan he drew from my lips when he tapped my head, reminding me of my silent vow to be still, nearly floored me.
I protested, but he laughed and when he pushed deep into my throat, one hand pressed firm to the back of my head, I was trapped.
“Thssaasssaaabbbdddddeaa,” I mumbled around my mouthful of cock, sticking my tongue out to lave his balls.
“Fuck, that’s good, Precious.” Walker contented himself with playing with my hair and stroking my back after that. I resigned myself to the fate I'd set up for until he slid his hands down my body and set me upright on his hips to straddle him, letting me stretch my legs. “I want to see you fuck me. Slowly,” he warned, his eyes hard in warning not to defy him.
Intimidating as all hell.
I knew he worried about hurting me, and I got it—his cock was as thick as my wrist. But Walker Roan had a tendency to make me come a dozen times before we screwed or, like this morning, to tease the absolute fuck out of us both until I was a sopping, whining, writhing mess.
Either way, I was more than ready by the time he pushed into me. Or in this case, I slid over him, taking him all the way inside me before I stopped, breathless, my thighs resting on top of his.
“Oh, wow,” I whispered, finding his gaze with my slightly wild one. “That’s— wow, Walker.”
“Are you okay, Faith?” he checked in, cupping my cheeks and leaned forward to kiss me tenderly. “Tell me you’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” I reassured him. “Fine. Just getting used to youuuuu–”
My whisper became a wail as he clamped both hands onto my hips and railed me from below, ripping control from my hands and slammed into me until I grabbed at his shoulders in a bid to cling to something .
Everything disappeared as my entire body shook with the force of his thrusts. I left half-moon shaped scrapes on his chest and shoulders as I tried to grasp a hand hold to him and failed. Then my orgasm rammed into me—or maybe he did—and I stopped thinking about scratching him at all. My body tightened as I arched against him. Juices dripped down my thighs where we joined.
The first time I squirted on him, I thought he had come already. But when I did it time and again with him in the same session, I realized his body somehow hit something inside me that just brought out the maximum amount of pleasure. Walker made sure I stayed hydrated afterwards, too.
I leaned down and kissed him, finding his mouth and parting my lips for his tongue. His kisses were rough and deep, just like the way he fucked. Everything about Walker was in proportion, as advertised for any good lumber snack. And oh, hell, what a lumber snack. I cried into his shoulder when what he did became too much in an overwhelm of mountain man proportions, but I refused to beg him to stop.
If our time together was limited—and I couldn't think about that right now—then I wanted to preserve every memory we could make in the next hours. Our bodies slammed together over and over. I coated us both with my cum before he growled in my ear words that my lust addled brain struggled to make out.
Then his mouth was back on mine and he flipped us both, slamming hilt deep as he came inside me. His hips jerked once, my name on his lips as he held me close. My breath formed his name on a plea, an echo that refused to die.
I sank into the circle of his arms and let Walker Roan block out reality for me for one more day.
“We’ll head down the mountain today.”
I closed my eyes and pretended my tame lumber snack hadn’t just stripped away my happiness privileges. I mean, I knew we had to go back, but I’d enjoyed the break from the life I forced myself into because it’s what I was supposed to do.
After all, I was supposed to work my butt off. I was supposed to get a law degree. I was supposed to be this kick ass girl with the brain to match and beat all the boys at their own game because of the gifts given to me.
All the pressures I never caved under that I got to release in a week and a bit in the shelter of Walker Roan. And in a scant handful of words he stripped all that comfort away that I craved and threw it off a mountainside like so much junk.
Worst thing? He had no idea because like with every other problem I’d faced in my life, I said absolutely nothing and kept on dancing.
Right at his kitchen bench with a fake as fuck smile plastered on my face that I’d worn for so long that it had become my real one.
“Fantastic. I’ll go pack my stuff.” I stayed right where I was and threw Walker a blindingly bright grin as I tucked my dead phone into my back pocket.
Good thing I wore my own clothes today .
Especially since I’d made a habit of wearing one of his shirts and nothing else for the last few days while we fucked around his house and both pretended that this was life and nothing else mattered.
For the last forty-eight hours, nothing else had.
Walker’s eyes narrowed on me. “Sassy little thing,” he muttered, turning into the pantry.
A tactical looking backpack was gripped in his hand that had a long black cord-like thing hanging out of it. He stopped, reversed, and filled the satchel with water. Then he pivoted on his heel and headed back the way he’d started originally.
My breath stalled. “Wait, you mean on foot?” What remained of my good humor deserted me.
Walker’s snort echoed through the pantry, along his crazy circular mountain home and back to me. “Did you think we were going to hire a plane and fly you out in luxury, Precious? Yeah, we’re walkin’.”
“Ah.” I swallowed, forcing my smile back onto my face, though it felt less real this time. “You don’t have a pair of boots I can borrow, do you?”
“Maybe with a few pairs of socks.” He reappeared holding a stack of power bars and meal supplements that looked like cardboard and probably tasted the same. “I’ve got an old pair of Trav’s. He’s not as big as me?—”
I stared at him, aghast. “The man is six foot and six inches tall!” Mind, I reckoned that Walker capped out at around just shy of seven feet. What in the hell was I complaining about?
“—And you might be able to fit into this with some…help.” He ignored my outburst and kept on packing. A tube of sun cream bounced my way. “Put that on. I’ve got a hat, but it’s not going to stay on that little pinhead of yours.”
I glared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
Walker smirked. “Come on, Precious. Don’t we have a business of yours to get you back to?”
My stomach swooped. “Yeah. Cause That’s the stuff that really matters, right?” I grabbed the sunscreen, lathering it on and cursed the rain for ever stopping.
“Did you fall out of the wrong side of my bed this morning, Faith?”
I didn’t need to look at him to know that Walker was frowning at me, his inked face scrunched up like one of those roly-poly dogs.
“Nope.” I kept on slathering.
“Whoa. Slow down there.” He liberated the cream and placed it gently back on the bench. “You wanna talk to me?”
I laughed at my hands covered in an excess of white goop. “Nope.”
“That’s something new.” He sighed. “Pee. Drink a lot of water. It’ll be dark before we reach Red Hart, but we’ll get most of the hike done before the sun sets. I’ll carry an extra jacket for you.”
I glared at his back as he turned away from me. “I’ll carry my own things.”
“Suit yourself.”
His shoulders lifted in a shrug, his irritation a match for my own. We’re more alike than you think, Walker Roan.
He hadn’t been privy to the conversations I shared with his father over the years when there was no one else to listen to the lonely old man talk. Because while Walker seconded himself away from the world, his father was a social butterfly…until he wasn't.
Until life took away his open intentions and locked a suddenly old man away in his own body and mind, and a small town like White Cap started to forget that he ever existed.
The irony was that Walker wanted what his father achieved by accident. The role reversal wasn’t lost on me, or the old man I visited on a weekly basis. By the end of the first month I had a tea collection to rival a foreign court, because that’s what his father drank. Every month I added to it, and we shared stories—-or at least, he did while I listened. Collected his memories so that one day, I might share some of those stories with the son who left after they fought, and never came back.
And now, I had one day left and I hadn’t done the real job I came to do when I decided to invade the mountain where Walker Roan hid himself away years ago in a bid to make sure that the world forgot he existed.
And I still didn't know why any more than his father did.
Because Walker never told him, either.
A cough brought me out of my thoughts. “We need to leave, Faith.”
Walker stood a few feet away from me, two jackets clipped to the backpack strung across his ridiculously broad, muscular shoulders that his black tee did nothing to hide.
Lumber snack, activated.
I nodded. “I’m ready.”
He held out three pairs of thick, woolen socks and kicked muddied boots my way. “Almost.”
I nodded, planting my butt on the floor without argument. He was ready to go. There was no point fighting. We were done, clearly. Lacing my borrowed footwear up as best I could around my ankles under his watchful eye, I declared myself ready a second time.
Walker said nothing, raking his gaze over me. His eyes lingered on my lips. For a moment I thought he might kiss me, but he seemed to have shut that part of us off the moment he made the choice to push me out of his house.
I swallowed hard. We really were done. The fun part of this unintentional mountain segue was over, and I was being evicted out of his life. I turned on the heel of my borrowed boots to stare out at the view I could finally see that went on and on and on over the pine forests. Cold air lit my lungs with a need to stare for hours and absorb everything.
From here, if I stepped close enough to the edge, it felt like I was flying.
“Faith,” Walker murmured, close enough his breath brushed the back of my nape exposed where I’d piled my hair on my head in a horrendously messy bun because out here, being neat and perfect didn’t matter.
I nodded, soaking in one more breath of the stunning vista like I could imprint some of its untouched, brutal crispness into my skin. Then I turned my back on everything that was perfect in his world, and followed the man I’d already fallen for off his mountain knowing I’d never see any of it ever again.