Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
The heat seeped into her bones one degree at a time, but Willow couldn't stop shaking.
But not because of the cold. The hot spring had chased that away minutes ago, the mineral-rich water wrapping around her like a second skin.
Her lips weren't numb anymore. Her fingers had stopped tingling.
The hypothermia was fading, and with it every excuse she had for why her heart refused to slow down.
Ryker stood at the edge of the pool, dripping onto the wooden floor, frozen in a way she'd never seen him.
The man was perpetual motion—tapping fingers, restless energy, and easy grins that never reached his eyes.
But now he stood absolutely still, water running from his soaked jeans, watching her with an expression that made her chest ache.
She should tell him to go.
His words in the cave still burned. A liability.
A distraction I can't afford. He'd looked at her like she was something to be scraped off his boot, and she'd felt every syllable land like a blow.
Three months of his cold shoulders and cutting remarks, and she'd thought she was used to it.
Thought she'd armored herself against whatever Ryker could throw at her.
She'd been wrong.
The towels sat on the bench where he'd left them. The robe hung from a hook by the door. He could walk out right now, leave her to warm herself, and they'd never speak of this night again. That's what she should want. The smart thing. The safe thing.
Her body didn't care about smart or safe. Her body was a traitor, responding to his presence the way it had from the first moment she'd seen him in the distillery. Her pulse quickening, skin flushing, and something low in her belly pulling tight. She was so tired of fighting it.
Steam rose around her, curling between them. Ryker's gaze dropped to her bare shoulders, to the water lapping at her collarbones, and she watched his jaw clench.
"You should go," she heard herself say. Her voice came out rough, stripped raw by the cold and the wanting she couldn't seem to kill.
He didn't move. His hands hung at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling like he was fighting some internal war. The scar on his forearm caught the light—that pale line she'd wondered about since her first week on the island.
"I know." The words scraped out of him.
Neither of them moved.
Her pulse kicked hard in her throat. The silence stretched, thick with steam and everything unsaid, and she could feel the moment balanced on a knife's edge. One wrong breath and it would shatter.
Ryker took a step forward.
Not toward the door. Toward her.
Her lungs seized. He moved to the pool's edge and crouched down, bringing himself to her level, and close enough that she could see the water droplets caught in his eyelashes.
His hand reached out, and she flinched before she could stop herself, but his touch was gentle when it came.
His fingers brushed her cheek, checking her temperature, and the contact sparked through her like electricity.
"You're warming up." His voice had gone rough. Barely human.
"Yes."
He traced along her jaw. Not checking anymore. Just touching. His eyes had gone dark, the smoky blue swallowed by something hungry and raw, and Willow couldn't breathe.
"I should go," he said again.
"Then go." If that was what he really wanted, she wasn’t going to stop him.
He didn't.
His hand slid into her wet hair, fingers tangling in the strands, and she saw the exact moment his control snapped. The walls behind his eyes crumbled—and then he was leaning down, and she was reaching up, and their mouths crashed together.
The kiss wasn't gentle. Wasn't tentative. Every moment of wanting him, every night she'd lain awake aching, came flooding through, and Willow grabbed the front of his soaked shirt and pulled him into the water with her.
He hit the pool with a splash that sent waves sloshing against the stone edges.
His clothes dragged him down, heavy and ridiculous, and she didn't care.
His mouth was on hers, hot and demanding, and his hands were everywhere.
Her waist, her back, and sliding up her ribs.
A sharp sound escaped her when his palm found her breast through the thin wet fabric of her bra, and he swallowed it like he was starving for it.
"Three fucking months." The words came out ragged, torn from somewhere deep in his chest. "Do you have any idea—"
She kissed him again to shut him up. She didn't want words. Or explanations or apologies or the rational part of her brain screaming that this was a terrible idea. She wanted his hands on her skin and his mouth on her throat and the relief of stopping the fight at last.
His shirt was plastered to his chest, and she yanked at it impatiently.
He broke the kiss long enough to pull it over his head, and Willow's mouth went dry.
Lean muscle, tanned skin, a trail of darker hair leading down from his navel.
The scar on his forearm had a twin across his ribs, pale and jagged. She wanted to trace it with her tongue.
Then he was back, bare skin against hers, the heat of him almost scalding after the chill she couldn't quite shake. Her bra was in the way. She reached back to unhook it, clumsy and urgent, and he helped her strip it off and toss it onto the stone ledge.
The first brush of his mouth on her nipple made her arch into him. He sucked gently, then harder when she made a sound she didn't recognize, his tongue working her into a shaking mess while his hand found her other breast. She was trembling again, and again it had nothing to do with the cold.
"So beautiful," he muttered against her skin, the words almost lost. "Fucking beautiful."
"Ryker." His name came out broken.
He lifted his head and met her eyes. For one unguarded moment, she saw everything he kept hidden.
The want, the fear, and the years of denying himself anything good.
Then his mouth found hers again, and his hand slid down her stomach, past her navel, slipping beneath the waistband of her underwear, making her forget everything else.
The first touch of his fingers made her hips buck. He stroked through the slick heat of her, finding the spot that made her breath catch, and the sound he made against her mouth was somewhere between a groan and a growl.
"So wet." His voice was wrecked. "Tell me you want this."
"I do. Oh Goddess, I want this." The words tumbled out without thought. "I want you. Please—"
He pressed two fingers inside her, and she stopped being capable of speech. He curled them, finding a spot that made her vision blur, and a low growl rumbled through his chest.
"You have no idea how good you feel," he said against her ear. "How long I've thought about this."
The water made everything slippery, heightened every sensation.
He worked her with his hand while his mouth moved down her throat, biting gently at her pulse point, and Willow clung to his shoulders like he was the only solid thing in the universe.
Her back arched against the stone edge of the pool, seeking leverage, seeking more.
"Look at me." A command, but his voice cracked on it.
She opened her eyes. His face was inches from hers, and she could see every line of tension, every fraction of the fight it was taking him not to lose himself completely. His thumb circled her clit in a slow, devastating rhythm, and she watched his jaw clench when she whimpered.
"That's it." Barely a whisper. "Let go."
The orgasm crashed through her without warning. She cried out, her whole body shuddering, and he held her through it, his fingers stroking her down while she fought for breath. When the aftershocks faded, she was limp against him, her forehead pressed to his shoulder.
He was still hard against her hip. Still wanting.
"Bed," she managed while needing so much more.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, something uncertain flickering in his eyes. Like he expected her to change her mind. Or push him away now that the first frantic edge had been taken off.
Instead, she wrapped her legs around his waist and felt him groan.
He lifted her out of the water like she weighed nothing, and the cold air hit her bare skin hard enough to steal her breath.
But his mouth was on her throat, his arms tight around her, and the chill barely registered.
He grabbed a towel from the bench without setting her down, wrapped it around her shoulders one-handed while she clung to him, and then they were moving through the back door and into the cabin, both of them dripping onto the worn wooden floors.
The main room was dark and empty. Willow had her arms around his neck, her bare chest pressed to his, and she could feel his heart pounding against her ribs.
The other witches were at the festival, where they would be busy for hours more.
He made it three steps into the main room before he pressed her against the wall.
The impact knocked the breath from her lungs, not painful, just sudden, and then his mouth was on hers again and she couldn't think. His hands gripped her thighs, holding her up, and she fumbled with the button of his soaked jeans while his teeth scraped down her neck.
"Can't wait." He breathed the words against her throat.
"Then don't."
She shoved his jeans and boxers down as best she could, and he finished the job, finally kicking them off impatiently.
Her underwear was still wet, still in the way, and he solved that problem by hooking his fingers in the fabric and tearing.
The sound of ripping cotton shouldn't have been hot. But it was.