Chapter 12
IRIS
Ahalf hour later, I'm huffing and puffing, sweat prickling at my hairline despite the cold.
The Black Pine Mountains at dusk are nothing like I imagined when Elias first carried me up here unconscious and upside down.
The trail—if you can call it that—winds through lodgepole pines so tall they block out the last of the failing light, their roots knuckling up through the earth like old hands.
The ground is soft in places, muddy where the snowmelt has pooled, and hard and root-crossed in others. My breath mists in front of me in little white clouds. The air smells of pine resin and cold water and something green and alive underneath it all, the mountain exhaling the last of winter.
I'm wearing his sweatpants—belted with a length of rope he tied himself, looped twice around my waist with a knot that took him approximately four seconds—and his thermal over the t-shirt.
Every exhale stings my lungs pleasantly, the kind of cold that makes you feel alive rather than miserable.
He gave me a compass, a map, and a set of instructions. All delivered with that dark, hungry look in his eyes that made my stomach drop to my knees.
That stillness I found in him when he first brought me here—that careful, controlled quiet—was completely gone. He was tense, vibrating, as if he were running on something I couldn't name. High on it even. His jaw tight, his green eyes tracking my every movement as he explained the route.
I had to force myself to look at the map instead of him.
I check the time now. Thirty-five minutes. The trail marker should have appeared ten minutes ago according to his map. The head start is over. He could be coming for me any minute now.
My gaze returns to the watch, my stomach dipping suddenly. It's sturdy and plain and completely wrong for a wedding dress, which is exactly why I fought the stylist to keep it on that morning.
Marco gave it to me two years ago. You're stronger than you think, Iris. He'd said it like he meant it. Like he saw something in me I never did.
I can’t believe the lengths he went to give me my life back. He did it without telling me because he knew I'd argue.
I swipe at my cheek with the back of my hand.
But Elias—grumpy, scarred, impossible mountain man—gave me myself back. Showed me what it felt like to be seen. To be wanted. To take up space in a room and have someone look at you like you're exactly where you're supposed to be.
For a moment, when he said he'd keep me if there was a baby, it nearly broke my heart clean in two. But I saw the instant regret cross his face. That flash of horror at himself, the way his jaw went tight.
It's strange how well I can read him after three days. I know the particular set of his shoulders when he's fighting himself, the way his eyes go distant when something costs him more than he wants to admit.
He didn't mean it the way it came out. I know that in my heart and so I agreed to let him do this his way. My faith in him, in my love for him, in the connection between us is so strong, so absolute that every inch of me buzzes.
My pulse kicks up, no longer just from the exertion. Somewhere behind me on this mountain, my mountain man is already moving. Already hunting.
And then I hear it.
The rhythmic thud of footsteps on the earth. Steady. Unhurried. Getting closer.
I stuff the compass in my pocket and run.
The cold air rushes against my face, my lungs burning, the sweatpants threatening to slide despite the rope belt as I crash through the undergrowth, pine branches catching at my sleeves.
The ground pounds up through my feet, root and mud and stone, my breath coming in ragged gasps that smoke white in the dark air.
The smell of pine is sharp and wild around me and underneath my own sweat and his thermal against my skin I can smell him—that dark clean scent that has learned every part of me in three days.
The footsteps behind me sound close. Then his warmth hits my back, close enough to feel before he even touches me. And then an arm reaches out and I'm tripping, the earth rushing up to meet me.
Clever hands break my fall even as a heavy body covers me, his weight warm and solid and everywhere at once, the cold ground beneath me and the heat of him above, pine needles and damp earth sharp in my nostrils.
"Got you," Elias says at my ear, his breath hot against my neck. "And now I'm going to claim you in the most primal way possible.”
"God, yes. Please."
Heat races through me from my scalp to my bare ankles. His hands find the rope knot at my waist—one pull and it's undone—and the sweatpants slide down my ass. The cold mountain air hits my bare skin immediately, a shock that makes me gasp, gone in an instant as his large palm covers me.
"Thirty-three minutes, Princess." His voice is rough and fractured at the edges, nothing like his usual controlled gravel. "It felt like hell, like a lifetime. I thought I'd go mad."
His palm strokes over the curve of my ass, then his fingers find my entrance and stroke expertly. I moan into the earth beneath me. An arm pulls me to my hands and knees, pine needles pressing into my palms, the cold ground solid under me.
Somewhere above us a bird calls once and goes quiet. Then I don’t hear anything else, can’t feel anything but the thick head of his shaft probing at my entrance.
Before I can pull another breath, before I can even begin to process the assault of sensations, he's pushing inside me, stretching me in that achy, overwhelming way that makes my thighs tremble. “Fuck, baby girl. You squeeze me like this every single time, you choke the life out of my cock with this tight cunt and you think I’ll let you go? You fill my cabin with light, laughter, with your warmth and you think I’ll walk away? ”
“You said—” I pant, searching for words amidst sensations.
We restrained ourselves for maybe twelve hours but already it feels new, feels like the first time all over again.
Familiar but new again. My aching flesh sucks him in gladly, hungrily, and soon he's lodged all the way inside me, his hips flush against my ass, his chest pressed to my back, both of us breathing hard. “You said only if—”
“I was fucking wrong,” he says, giving me a quick thrust. “Baby or not, you are mine, Princess.” One more thrust and I’m hurling past the clouds, into the stars.
He jerks and throbs inside me, without moving. Tears fill my eyes and plop into the ground. “Are you sure?”
“That my life is nothing without you, yes.” His fingers dig into my hips, knead my ass and pull, opening me wider for his assault. "I'm not returning you, Princess."
He pulls all the way out and thrusts in with a roughness he's never let me taste before. I cry out, the sound swallowed by the pines. My pussy clenches and unclenches, pleasure spreading like fire through my limbs, up my spine, behind my eyes.
"You—" thrust "—are—" thrust "—mine—" thrust "—forever—" thrust "—and ever."
He nips my shoulder with his teeth through the thermal and the first orgasm wrenches me into its grip, shaking me apart against the cold ground while the Black Pine Mountains hold their breath around us.
"Fuck, how you squeeze me when you come, baby girl," Elias says, his voice wrecked and low against my ear, continuing with his relentless thrusts. "How you choke me. How you make me feel alive again.”
The ground is unforgiving against my knees and palms, pine needles and cold earth pressing into my skin. I'm going to have scrapes on both. But I don't care even slightly.
Because this man—the way he's taking me, the way he's owning me out here on this cold mountain in the dark—it's indescribable. It's everything.
"Why," I manage, in the aftermath of shocks still squeezing my pelvis, pleasure rippling outward in waves I can't contain, "why do you want to keep me? What if—"
His hand comes over my mouth.
"Because you are mine, baby girl." The words come out rough and absolute, each one landing in my chest like something permanent.
"From the moment I found you in that confession booth and you looked up at me with those big eyes.
I'm going to keep you. Marry you. Breed you.
Fill this belly with my cum over and over.
" His free hand splays flat over my stomach, warm and possessive, and something inside me cracks wide open.
"I'm going to stand by your side while you get a teaching job, while you take the world by storm, while you live your dreams, Iris. "
His forehead drops to my shoulder, sticky with sweat, his breath ragged against my skin. Cold air threads through the pine branches above us, and underneath it all the smell of him and me and the mountain, all mixed together into something I'll carry in my body forever.
"I'm in love with you, baby girl." His voice breaks on it, just slightly, just enough. "It feels like I'm falling over and over and nothing in my life has ever been better than this ride."
A sob builds in my throat. I swallow it and feel it land somewhere deep and permanent instead.
"Tell me," he says, pinning me down with his hips, ruthlessly pumping them.
Somehow his hands find my breasts through the thermal and he starts pinching my nipples just how I like it, that perfect pressure that lights up every nerve ending.
"Tell me you'll be mine. Tell me you'll marry me. Tell me you won't leave me."
The cold ground beneath my palms, his heat above me, his voice in my ear, his hands on my breasts, his body filling mine—it all converges at once into something that has no name, something bigger than pleasure, bigger than want.
Another orgasm rushes through me and I scream into the mountain air, my voice swallowed by the world around us.
"Yours, Elias." The words tear out of me between gasps, between the shocks still rolling through my body. "I'm all yours, Elias. Every inch of me yours."
“Tell me, please.”
“I love you, mountain man.”
He shudders against me, his own release tearing through him with a groan that vibrates into my bones. “Say it again.”
"I love you. And yes," I breathe into the dark, tears and laughter mixing on my face. "I'll marry you. I'll build a family with you. And I will love you for the rest of our lives."