Chapter 9
nine
. . .
Rosalind
Spool abandons me when a big gust hits the window, leaving me alone as the cabin groans. I press my face into the pillow as the storm batters the memory of men before.
Not many. The boyfriend in college who touched me with a hesitant, almost apologetic hand and spent two years making my body feel like a problem he was generously helping me work around. An ache settles in my chest.
Twenty-eight years old, a virgin. What do I do with the wanting?
He’s real and scarred. Closed off, yes, but he stares at me like he’s holding his breath and sees straight through me.
And the way he looks at me... I feel myself come undone, and he with me.
Enough. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, the mattress protesting, and get up in my tank top and the borrowed boxers.
As I reach for the doorknob, my hand trembles.
In the living room, the ember glow from the fire casts the room in dim orange light. Jace sits in the armchair with McCarthy open on his knee. Spool lies on the floor.
I sit on the couch, pull my knees up, and open the Mary Oliver where I left it. “Can’t sleep.”
We read. As the wind presses into the walls, pages turn. The stove ticks. Every sound he makes cuts through the weather outside. The shift of his weight. His breath.
I finish the book and place it on the cushion beside me. “I’m going to bed.”
He stands, a quick, almost automatic movement. The distance between the couch and the chair is narrow. He’s two feet away. Maybe less.
The heat from his body reaches mine. He smells like woodsmoke and pine. His flannel shirt is unbuttoned at the collar. The scar catches the light, a raised line of shadow down the left side of his face.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Fast. Then back up.
My pulse surges in my throat, vibrates in my wrists, and pounds behind my knees.
Say goodnight. Walk down the hallway. Close my door.
But I’m done waiting.
I rise on my toes, grab a fistful of his flannel, and press my mouth to his.
He freezes, his body rigid. His mouth doesn’t move. His hands remain at his sides.
My stomach drops.
Then his hand cups the back of my neck, his fingers in my hair. His other finds my waist. His mouth opens, and a rough sound tears from him.
His kiss devours me. I grab his shoulders. His body is solid, dense with muscle, warm through the flannel. He backs me up two steps. As my shoulders hit the doorframe, wood presses into my spine. His body pins me, and this is it.
His mouth moves to my jaw. My neck. The spot below my ear. He inhales on my skin, and his whole body shudders. I moan.
“Rosalind…”
“Yes.”
Jace lifts me easily. I wrap my legs around him, and he lays on the couch, his weight settling over me. His hand trembles on my hip. “You sure?”
I pull him back down. “Please.”
As he kisses me, his hand slides up my ribs, under my tank top, warm on my skin.
I catch his wrist. “Wait.”
He pulls his hand from under my shirt, and his forehead drops to mine. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” My throat constricts. “I—I have to tell you something.”
He pulls back enough to see my face. “I’m listening.”
The words I’ve rehearsed for years, never said, press at my tongue. “I’ve never done this before.”
His body stills.
“I’m twenty-eight and…” I bite my lip. “I haven’t.”
His rough thumbs on my cheekbones, so incongruous with his callused hands, are a tenderness I hadn’t expected. My eyes sting.
“Sweetheart.” He speaks more softly and shows no shock or pity. “Look at me.”
I do.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.” I don’t hesitate. “I’m sure. I just… wanted you to know.”
His thumb traces my cheekbone. “I’m glad you told me.”
He kisses me again. “We can stop whenever you want. You say the word. We stop.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
He pulls back to look at me again. “I’m going to take my time with you. Tell me if anything’s wrong.”
“I will.”
He holds my gaze a beat longer. His mouth returns to mine. His hand finds the hem of my tank top, slower this time, his eyes searching mine. His arm remains tense, fingers flexing.
I nod.
As he slowly pulls up my tank top, I lift my arms, and he pulls it over my head.
His eyes sweep my body. My breasts. My soft stomach. The curve of my waist.
I’m big, thick, and curvy. The instinct to cross my arms, make a joke, or ask him to turn out the light flares. My arms twitch.
“Jesus, sweetheart.” He licks his lips. “Look at you.”
I let my arms stay where they are.
His hand follows his eyes. A rough palm with callused fingers runs down the side of my neck, across my collarbone, and over my breast. As he cups the weight, he sucks in a breath. His thumb traces across my nipple.
“God.” His forehead drops to mine, and he stays there. His shoulders shake. “You are perfect.”
I reach for his shirt to unbutton it. He lets me push it off his shoulders, then pulls the undershirt over his head and tosses it onto the floor.
His skin meets mine, and I gasp. The rough hair of his chest rubs my breasts. His lips close around my nipple. My fingers dig into his back. As he groans, the vibration hums through me.
He switches to my other breast. “Let me hear you.”
Then he finds the hollows of my hips. My breath quickens, and he slows. When I pull him closer, he gives me more.
I turn my head away from his intense gaze, but he catches my chin. “Look at me.”
As I do, his hand slides down my stomach, past my hip, to between my thighs. He touches me through my shorts, and I clench.
“There.” He hooks his fingers into my waistband. “Still good?”
“Yes.”
He pulls my boxers down and drops them off the side of the couch. His palm is flat on my stomach, then on the inside of my thigh, tracing the crease where it meets my body. “You’re shaking,” he says.
“So are you.”
His mouth curves, the barest crack. “Yeah.”
He slides off the couch onto his knees, hooks his hands under my thighs, and pulls me down toward the edge of the cushion.
“Jace—”
“I want to taste you.” He waits, his gaze locked on mine. I nod, and he kisses the inside of my knee. Then up to my thigh, unhurried.
His beard rasps against me, all the way to my spine.
When his mouth finds me, I moan again.
He spreads my thighs wider, and his tongue works carefully, testing my reactions. Back and forth, he flicks over my clit as I writhe, lost in the rising heat.
He finds the rhythm that makes my legs shake and stays with it. My fingers twist in his hair.
“Jace,” I say, a warning and a plea. “I’m—”
“I know. That’s what I want.”
I arch off the couch. “Jace.”
He grips my hips and holds me steady through every wave, keeping his mouth on me until the last shudder passes. Then he kisses the inside of my thigh and lifts his head. His lips are wet. My wetness coats his beard. “I want you closer.”
He pulls me onto his lap on the couch. I straddle him, skin to skin, and he pulls me to him.
His fingers trace through the slick heat of me again, slow, almost tender.
“You’re so wet.” He circles my clit, and the edges of the room blur. “This for me?”
“Yes.” I can barely form the word. “For you.”
He slides a finger inside of me, and his thumb keeps working. As he kisses me, I taste myself on his mouth. He adds a second finger. Slow. Careful. Watching my face.
My muscles release. I sigh.
“That’s it.” His mouth is at my jaw. “You’re close again. Can you give me one more?”
I come apart a second time with his forehead pressed to mine. When I open my eyes, he’s watching me with a naked expression.
“Beautiful.” He says it like the truth.
Nobody has ever called me beautiful while touching me. A knot forms in my throat.
“I want you,” he says. “All of you.”
“Same.” That’s the only word I can manage.
“You’re giving me a special gift. I’ll make it good for you.”
“You already have.” The words push past my lips.
He grabs his jeans on the floor. Removes something from his wallet and tears the foil packet. He rolls the condom, handling it with steady hands, his gaze on mine. Jace lays me back on the couch and settles over me, bracing on his forearms. His voice is thick with effort. “We can stop. Anytime.”
“Don’t stop.”
He goes slowly, rubbing around my clit, and it’s all I can do not to hurry him along. Then he moves to my entrance. “This might hurt.”
“Please.”
He enters me. Slow. Inch by inch.
The sharp edge takes my breath. He stays still. Arms shaking. Every muscle in him tenses with restraint.
“How are you?” he whispers.
The sharpness fades. “Move.”
He moves shallow, giving me time. I grip his shoulders. The fullness. The weight. The heat of his body covers mine.
“Jace.” His name is a different word than it was earlier.
“I know.” His hand cradles the side of my face. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
He adjusts when I gasp. Slows when I tense. Goes deeper when I pull him closer. He reads me patiently, taking his time.
I follow his lead. Clumsy at first. Until our bodies move as one. I gasp. His mouth is on my neck. My fingers dig into his shoulders. The creaking couch and the howling wind drown our sounds.
His hand grips my thigh and pulls it higher. The angle changes. An unexpected sound comes from me.
“There.” His forehead drops to mine. “That’s what I want. Tell me you’re here with me.”
This wanting, soul-deep, is everything. “I’m here. Right here.”
“You feel…” He blows out a breath. “Jesus. Rosalind.”
“I know.” Tears burn my eyes. “I know.”
I come apart with his eyes on mine and his hand in my hair. His body tenses, his face pressed into my neck, and he makes a guttural sound.
My arms are around him, my fingers in his hair, his weight settling heavy and complete. I don’t want to let go.
He gets a warm washcloth and cleans me. Then he settles beside me on the couch and pulls me toward him.
A dizzying shock. To be wanted, truly wanted, in a way I’d never believed possible. Tears blur the warm landscape of his chest. I can’t stop them.
His expression fractures. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” I wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand. “It was… everything.”
He holds me tighter. His heartbeat is rapid under my cheek. He presses his mouth to my hair and breathes me in.
The tears stop, and he wipes my cheeks. I press my face into his chest, and he rests his chin on the top of my head.
We stay like that.
The fire dies to ash and faint smoke. The cabin cools, but I’m warm thanks to him. Spool has moved to the armchair and watches us.
My laugh is shaky, small.
“I don’t know how to do this.” Jace’s words vibrate through his chest into my cheek. No side-eye. He stares at the beams of the cabin. His expression is vulnerable. He looks lost, more real. “You just did.”
His chest rises and falls. A corner of his mouth lifts.
Spool sighs from the armchair. Loudly.
“He’s judging us,” I whisper.
“He judges everything.”
I smile against his skin. He traces slow circles on my shoulder. As his breathing evens, his heartbeat soothes me.
In the morning, I wake up alone on the couch.
He’s gone. The cabin is warm, the fire relit, a heavy wool blanket tucked around me.
His absence leaves a chill, though his scent still clings to the blanket. That warmth has to be enough...
For now.