Chapter 25
CHLOE
Iwoke up to lips on my neck.
Warm. Slow. Deliberate. Tracing a path from the spot behind my ear down to the curve of my shoulder, each kiss placed with a patience that made my skin prickle and my breath catch before I was fully awake.
His stubble scraped against my skin and the friction of it sent a current of heat down my spine that pooled low in my belly.
“Behave,” I murmured into the pillow.
He did not behave. His mouth moved to the sensitive dip where my neck met my shoulder and he pressed an open-mouthed kiss there, his tongue tracing a line that made my toes curl.
His hand was on my hip, his thumb drawing circles against the bare skin where my shirt had ridden up in the night, and the combination of his mouth and his hand and the warmth of his body pressed against my back was making it very difficult to maintain my position as a responsible adult.
“Let’s take a shower together,” he said against my skin. His voice was low and rough with sleep and something else. Something that made my stomach flip. “Conserve water.”
I laughed. The sound came out breathless, more gasp than laugh, because he was still kissing my neck and his hand had moved from my hip to the flat of my stomach, fingers spread wide, pulling me back against him, and I could feel exactly how awake he was.
“Conserve water?” I said. “That is your line?”
“It is practical.”
“It is ridiculous.”
“Is that a no?”
I turned in his arms. Faced him. His hair was a mess, dark and disheveled, and his eyes were still half-lidded with sleep but the green in them was bright and focused and looking at me with an intensity that made coherent thought difficult.
The morning light was coming through the curtains, soft and gray, painting shadows across the planes of his face.
I should have said no. Emma was down the hall. We were in someone else’s house. There was a man out there who had destroyed our home and carved a warning into the wall and the rational, responsible part of my brain was telling me that this was not the time for showers.
But Sawyer was looking at me. And his hand was warm on my skin.
And after everything, after the cabin and the message and the fear and the long night of lying awake listening for sounds that did not come, I needed him.
Not the way you need comfort or reassurance or the steady presence of someone strong.
The way you need air. The way you need water.
The way your body needs something so fundamentally that refusing it feels like refusing to breathe.
I nodded.
He was on his feet before I could change my mind.
He pulled me up, his hand wrapped around mine, and led me to the bathroom.
The house was quiet. Emma’s door was closed, the early hour working in our favor, and I sent a silent prayer to every deity I could think of that my daughter would stay asleep for the next however long this was going to take.
Sawyer closed the bathroom door. Locked it. The click of the lock was quiet but deliberate, and the sound of it did something to the air between us, charged it, made it heavier.
He turned to me.
The bathroom was small. A tub with a shower curtain, a sink, a mirror that was slightly foggy from the morning chill.
He filled the space the way he filled every space, completely, his shoulders nearly brushing the walls on either side, and the way he was looking at me, steady and hungry and patient like a man who had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it, made my pulse hammer in my throat.
He reached behind me and turned on the water. Steam began to rise, curling between us, warm and wet and smelling faintly of the cedar soap that Josh had left in the shower.
Then he pulled my shirt over my head.
Slowly. His hands gathering the fabric at my hips and lifting, his knuckles grazing my ribs, my breasts, my shoulders, leaving a trail of heat that made me shiver even as the steam warmed the room.
The shirt hit the floor and he looked at me, and the expression on his face, raw and reverent and burning, made my knees weak.
I reached for his shirt. Pulled it up and over his head.
Ran my hands across his chest, the scars, the muscle, the ridge of his collarbone where a tattoo I had memorized seven years ago still lived in black ink against his skin.
He was warm under my palms. Solid. Real.
The kind of real that anchored you to the earth when everything else was spinning.
He pulled down my shorts and underwear in one motion. Knelt in front of me to ease them past my ankles, and the sight of him on his knees, this massive, powerful man on his knees in front of me, looking up at me through the steam with those green eyes, made something inside my chest crack open.
He stood. Stripped his pants off. And then we were both bare, both standing in the steam, both breathing harder than the moment warranted, and the hunger between us was a living thing, pressing against the walls, filling the room the way the steam filled the room.
He stepped into the shower and held out his hand. I took it. The water hit my back, hot and perfect, and then his mouth was on mine and everything else disappeared.
He kissed me like he was trying to consume me.
Deep and rough, his tongue sweeping against mine, his hands gripping my hips and pulling me against him so hard that the full length of his body was pressed against the full length of mine and there was no space between us, not a fraction, not an inch.
The water poured over us and I could taste it on his lips, could feel it running between our bodies, warm and slick and making every point of contact feel amplified.
I moaned against his mouth. He swallowed the sound and gave me one back, a groan that vibrated through his chest and into mine, and his hands moved from my hips to my thighs and he lifted me.
My back hit the tile wall and the cold of it against my wet skin made me gasp, and then his hips were between my thighs and I wrapped my legs around him and the press of him against my center, hard and hot, sent a shock through my body that made me cry out.
“Quiet,” he murmured against my mouth. “Emma.”
“Then stop making me loud,” I breathed back.
He almost smiled. I saw the ghost of it, there and gone, and then he shifted his hips and pressed into me.
Slowly. Inch by inch. The stretch of him filling me was exquisite, almost too much, and I bit down on his shoulder to keep from making a sound that would wake up our daughter and the entire neighborhood.
He held still. Buried deep. His forehead against mine, his breath mixing with the steam, his arms braced against the wall on either side of my head.
The water cascaded over his shoulders and down between us, and the sensation of being pinned between the cold tile and his hot skin with him inside me was overwhelming in the best possible way.
“Move,” I whispered.
He moved.
The first thrust was slow. Deliberate. He pulled back and drove forward in one controlled motion that hit a spot so deep I saw stars. My head fell back against the tile and my eyes rolled shut and the sound I made was not quiet, not even close, and he covered my mouth with his to catch it.
He set a rhythm. Hard and deep and steady, his hips snapping forward with a precision that matched everything about him, controlled and focused and relentless.
The water made everything slick. His chest sliding against mine.
His hands on my thighs, gripping tight enough to bruise.
The wet sound of our bodies meeting with each thrust, obscene and perfect and making me lose my mind.
“Faster,” I gasped against his mouth.
He gave me faster. The rhythm shifted, harder, rougher, and every thrust pushed me up the tile wall and his hands hauled me back down and the friction of it, the water and the skin and the angle, was driving me toward the edge at a speed I was not prepared for.
“God, Sawyer.” My voice was barely a breath. “Right there. Don’t stop.”
He didn’t stop. His mouth found my neck, sucking hard enough to mark, and I clutched his shoulders and held on while he drove into me with an intensity that bordered on savage.
The water pounded against his back. Steam filled my lungs.
My thighs were shaking around his waist and my nails were digging into his skin and every nerve in my body was wound so tight I thought I might break.
He shifted his angle. Hitched me higher. And the next thrust hit something that made every muscle in my body seize.
I came apart. The orgasm crashed through me like a wave hitting a cliff, violent and consuming, and I bit down on his shoulder to muffle the scream that tore from my throat.
My body clenched around him in spasms that I could not control, my back arching off the tile, my legs tightening around his waist, and he groaned against my neck and kept moving, kept driving through the contractions, prolonging the wave until I was shaking and gasping and clinging to him like he was the only solid thing in a world that had liquefied.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Sawyer, I can’t. It’s too much.”
“You can,” he said, and increased the pace.
He was relentless. His hips pistoned forward with a force that I felt in my bones, and the overstimulation that bordered on pain tipped back into pleasure so fast it made my head spin.
The second orgasm built on top of the first, layered, deeper, a pressure that gathered low in my belly and spread outward like fire.
“Come with me,” I gasped. “Please.”
He pulled me off the wall. Turned us so the water hit my back, warm and cascading, and pressed me against his chest. I held onto his neck and he held onto my hips and we moved together, foreheads touching, breath ragged, the rhythm broken and desperate and perfect.
He came with a groan that he buried in my hair, his arms crushing me against him, his body going rigid and then shuddering as he spilled inside me in waves that I could feel pulsing against my walls.
The sensation of it pushed me over the edge again, a third time, a smaller one that rolled through me like an aftershock and left me trembling and boneless in his arms.
The water poured over us. We stood in the shower, holding each other up because I was not sure either of us could stand alone, and the steam wrapped around us like a blanket and the world outside the bathroom door ceased to exist.
He lowered me to my feet. Slowly. Carefully. Keeping his arms around me because my legs were not interested in supporting my weight. I leaned against his chest and listened to his heartbeat, rapid and heavy, gradually slowing.
“Conserve water,” I said weakly. “We just used all of it.”
His chest rumbled. Not quite a laugh. But close.
We actually showered after that. He washed my hair with a gentleness that contradicted everything about the last twenty minutes, his rough hands working through the strands with a care that made my eyes sting.
I washed his back. Traced the lines my nails had left across his shoulders.
He did not flinch. Just stood under the water and let me touch him.
We dried off. Got dressed. Moved through the morning routine with the quiet efficiency of two people who had just shared something that made words unnecessary.
I checked on Emma. Still asleep. Sir Chomps-a-Lot had migrated to the pillow, and Emma had one arm thrown over the dinosaur in a protective embrace.
Sawyer was in the kitchen making coffee when I came out. He handed me a cup without being asked, fixed the way I liked it, and the small gesture, the fact that he knew and remembered and did it without thinking, made my chest warm.
“I need to go to the mill,” he said.
The warmth went cold.
“Sawyer.” I set the cup down. “That is dangerous. If Jonathan found the cabin, he could find the mill. He could have people watching. He could be out there right now waiting for you to show up alone.”
“I am not going to hide in this house.”
“I am not asking you to hide. I am asking you to be careful. He hurt you before. The men at the cabin could have…”
“They were not at the cabin. They came when we were gone. That was the point. It was a message. Not an attack.”
“And next time?”
He set his coffee down. Walked to where I was standing and stopped in front of me. Close enough that I had to tilt my head back to see his face. He took my chin in his hand, gently, tilting my face up so our eyes met.
“I am not going to let them hurt me either,” he said. “Because it will worry both of you too much.”
My eyes burned. The way he said it. Not as a promise of invincibility. Not as the bravado of a man who thought he could not be touched. But as a practical consideration. A priority. He would be careful because his pain would cause us pain, and that was a thing he was no longer willing to do.
“Come back safe,” I said.
“I always come back.”
He kissed me. Slow and deep, tasting like coffee and cedar soap, and his hand moved from my chin to the back of my neck and he held me there, held the kiss, until I was dizzy and breathless and the fear in my chest had been replaced, temporarily, by the taste of him.
“Lock the door behind me,” he said. “Do not open it for anyone you do not know. Josh is coming by at nine. Dollie at ten.”
“Sawyer.”
“I mean it, Chloe.”
“I know. I know.” I pressed my palm against his chest, over his heart. Felt it beating, strong and steady, beneath the flannel. “Be careful.”
He covered my hand with his. Held it against his chest for a long moment. Then he let go, grabbed his keys, and walked out the front door.
I locked it behind him. Leaned my forehead against the wood and listened to his truck start, the engine rumbling to life in the quiet morning, and then the crunch of gravel as he pulled away.
The sound faded until there was nothing left but silence and the distant sound of birds waking up in the trees.
I stood at the door for a long time. Then I made breakfast for Emma and sat at the kitchen table in a house that was not mine, in a town that was becoming mine, and waited for the man I loved to come home safe the way I would wait every day for the rest of my life if that was what it took.
Because that was the deal. Loving Sawyer Cole meant loving a man who walked toward danger instead of away from it. It meant standing at the door and watching him leave and trusting that he would come back. It meant being brave enough to stay even when staying was the hardest thing.
I could do that.
I had been doing hard things for seven years. I could do one more.