Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
ALANA
At first, I don’t recognize what’s in the corner.
A drafting table sits in the corner—wasn’t there yesterday.
A heavy plank laid across two sawhorses, sanded smooth enough to not splinter.
My lamp is positioned there too, the one I brought in my suitcase—the nice one with the adjustable arm that gives north light—and Zac’s done something to rig it so it doesn’t tip the whole setup.
My supplies are lined up along the edge.
The sketchbooks I was keeping on the floor.
The pencil cups, arranged by hardness grade. The eraser collection. Everything.
He cleared a corner of the cabin for my art.
The realization hits and I’m crying. I can’t stop. I’m standing in the middle of the living room ugly-crying like someone just told me my dog died, and Zac comes around the corner with coffee and stops short.
“What’s wrong?” He sets the coffee down on the table. “Are you hurt?”
Everything’s right, and I can’t explain it without sounding insane. My brothers made space for me by shrinking me down to fit. Nobody ever made space for what I do. Not like this. Not something a grown man builds with his hands because he watched me work and decided it mattered.
“Nobody ever made space for what I do,” I say, my voice cracking. “Like, nobody’s ever just made a place for it.”
Zac crosses the room and pulls me into his chest. He doesn’t say anything—doesn’t try to fix it or tell me to stop. He just holds me while I fall apart against his flannel.
When I finally get it together, we’re still standing there. My face is blotchy. Zac tips my chin up and kisses my forehead like I didn’t just demonstrate the emotional stability of a houseplant.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’ve got space,” he says. “For your art. For anything you need. This is your home.”
Our home. The word lands in my chest and stays.
I leave him standing there and walk over to the drafting table like I’m approaching something sacred.
The plank is sturdy when I press on it. The height is perfect — he’s never seen my setup, never asked, but when I sit down it’s exactly right for my forearms. Like he watched me hunch over my sketchbook on the floor for three days and did the math.
The lamp swings smoothly. The angle is perfect.
He built me a studio in his cabin.
I spend the rest of the afternoon at the drafting table, pulling out my current project—a freelance branding job for a local bakery—and actually working.
The deep kind. The whole afternoon disappears and I don’t notice.
I don’t hear Zac leave for his supply run or come back.
I don’t hear him stacking wood on the porch or running water in the kitchen.
I come up for water once and he’s at the kitchen table sharpening a hunting knife — doesn’t look up, doesn’t interrupt, just lets me exist inside the work.
Around four o’clock, I feel eyes on me before I see him. Zac’s leaning against the doorframe with a small smile.
“What?” I ask, not looking up from the paper.
“You stick your tongue out when you concentrate,” he says. “Right side.” He walks over and leans against the edge of the drafting table. “Draw something for me.”
“I’m in the middle of?—“
“After you finish. Or instead. Doesn’t matter.” He hooks a thumb toward the blank sketchbook sitting under a pile of pencils. “Whatever you want to draw.”
I finish the bakery logo in another twenty minutes, then pull out the blank book. I’ve been thinking about drawing his hands for three days. The way his fingers dwarf mine. The scar tissue across his left forearm. His nails trimmed short and clean. How they look against my skin.
I don’t ask permission. I just start sketching.
He’s reading by the fire and doesn’t move for the first ten minutes. Then he glances over and catches me studying his hands, and something shifts in his expression. He knows what I’m drawing.
The sketch takes forty minutes. I get the line of his thumb right on the second try. The scar becomes detail work. By the time I finish, the light’s changed through the windows—golden, warm.
Zac sets his book down and comes over. He looks at the sketch for a long time without saying anything.
“That’s me?” he asks finally.
“Your hands,” I say. “Yeah.”
He looks at me, then back at the paper, then at his actual hands like he’s seeing them for the first time and finding out they’re interesting. “I like it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He reaches out and traces the line of the sketch, not touching the paper itself, just moving his finger along an inch above it. “You got the scar right. The way it runs along the forearm.” He turns his wrist over, showing me the real thing. “You see that, in your head?”
“I see a lot of things,” I say, and my voice comes out different. Softer. Wanting.
He looks at me then, and his eyes darken.
I don’t think. I move. I step closer to him, and before I can talk myself out of this like I always do, I’m pushing him to the armchair.
He sits, and I’m crawling into his lap like I’ve done this a hundred times when really it’s been twice.
My knees settle on either side of his thighs and his hands come up automatically to my hips.
“Stay still when we’re done,” I tell him. “I want to draw you with your guard all the way down.”
“Alana.” My name is rough in his mouth, like he’s saying it through gravel.
“I want to.” I pull his flannel open, button by button. “Please.”
He doesn’t argue. His hands move to the hem of my dress and he pulls it over my head in one motion, and I’m sitting on his lap in just the underwear I put on this morning.
His flannel is hanging open around his shoulders and I can see the breadth of his chest, the dark hair across his pecs, the way he’s built like the mountain he guides people through.
“Tell me what you want,” he says, voice already rough.
I look him dead in the eye. Heart hammering. Brave in a way that still surprises me every time. “I want to be in control. I want to touch you however I want. I want to ride you until you forget your own name.”
His dark eyes flash with pure hunger. His fingers dig into the soft flesh of my hips hard enough to leave marks I’ll trace tomorrow like love notes. “Fuck yes. Take what’s yours. I want to watch my wife use me.”
He shoves his jeans down just enough. His cock springs free — thick, heavy, already leaking for me — and my mouth goes dry at the sight.
I wrap both hands around the base, feel the scorching heat of him, the way he throbs against my palm.
Then I rise up on my knees, notch the wide head against my soaked entrance, and sink down.
The stretch is obscene. Every thick inch forces me open wider than I thought possible, dragging a broken moan from my throat. My soft belly presses against his hard abs as I take him to the hilt, until I’m flush against his thighs and I can feel every inch of him buried inside me.
Zac’s head falls back against the armchair with a guttural groan. “Jesus Christ, Alana. Look at you. So full of me already.” His jaw clenches. “That’s my good girl — taking every inch like you were made for it.”
I start to move. Slow at first, rolling my hips in deep circles, feeling every ridge drag against my walls.
Then faster. My full tits bounce with every downward stroke, nipples tight and aching.
My wide hips roll, my thick thighs flex, and the soft curve of my belly moves in a way that would have made me hide two weeks ago.
Not anymore. Not with the way he’s staring — like he wants to devour me whole.
His hands slide up my body, thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts before he cups them, squeezing, pinching my nipples until I cry out.
“That’s it. Ride me harder, wife.” His voice drops.
“You’re so wet I can hear it. That’s my cum from this morning and you mixed together.
You’re dripping down my thighs, baby. Making a mess of your man. ”
The praise hits me like lightning. I brace my hands on his broad shoulders and slam down harder, faster, chasing the angle that makes stars burst behind my eyes.
His beard scrapes my jaw as I lean in and kiss him filthy, tongue sliding against his while I grind my clit against the base of his cock on every downstroke.
He reaches between us, two thick fingers finding my swollen clit, rubbing tight, relentless circles.
“Don’t you dare slow down,” he growls against my mouth.
“Keep riding me just like that. You’re doing so good, Alana.
My wife riding her husband’s cock like she owns it.
Because you do. This is yours. Come on it — soak me. ”
My rhythm stutters. The pressure coils so tight I can’t breathe. “Zac — I’m —“
“Come.” His voice is wrecked. “Right now. Let me feel you fall apart on me.”
I shatter. My walls clamp down around him in pulsing waves, thighs shaking, a broken scream of his name tearing out of me as I come so hard my vision whites out.
He doesn’t stop touching me, doesn’t stop thrusting up into me through every flutter and clench, dragging the orgasm out until I’m sobbing against his neck.
When the aftershocks finally slow, he bands one powerful arm around my waist, locks me tight against his chest, and takes over. His hips snap up — brutal, deep, punishing strokes that make my whole body jolt. His mouth is at my ear, beard scraping my skin, voice pure gravel.
“Gonna fill this pussy up, wife. Gonna pump you so full it’ll be leaking out of you for days. Gonna breed you right here in my lap — keep you stuffed and dripping so everyone knows exactly who you belong to. Say it.”
“Yes,” I moan, nails digging into his shoulders. “Fill me up, Zac. Breed me. I want all of it.”
He groans like he’s dying, buries himself to the hilt, and comes with a sound that vibrates through both of us. I feel every hot, thick pulse — flooding me so deep and so much that it starts to leak out around his cock, slick and warm, running down my thighs.
He holds me there, still buried inside me, arms locked like he’ll never let go. His forehead presses to mine, breath ragged against my lips.
His hand slides down between us — past my belly, past the place where we’re still connected — and his thumb finds the freckle on my left hip. The one nobody sees. The one hidden under fabric and denim and every dress I own. He traces it slow, deliberate, like he’s memorizing a secret.
“Nobody else is ever gonna see this,” he says, voice wrecked and low, thumb pressing into the mark like he’s branding it with his fingerprint. “Buried under all those pretty sundresses where no man but me will ever put his mouth.”
His thumb presses harder into the freckle. “Tell me nobody else gets this,” he rasps. “While my cum is still dripping out of you.”
I should push back. I’ve spent my whole life fighting to not belong to anyone — clawing my way out of four brothers who thought owning me was the same as loving me.
But this doesn’t feel like a cage. It feels like being chosen so completely that every hidden part of me has a name in his mouth.
The freckle nobody noticed. The body I tried to shrink.
The girl who wanted to be wanted and never was.
He sees all of it. Keeps all of it. And God help me, I don’t want to be free of this.
“Yours,” I whisper, boneless and glowing, thighs trembling around him. “All yours, Zac. Always. I need to draw this.” I press my mouth to his jaw. “I need to draw you like this. Wrecked.”
He goes still. Completely still — his chest stops moving under my cheek, his hand pauses in my hair, his breathing evens out like he’s holding a pose. “Go ahead, wife,” he says quietly. “Draw whatever you see.”
He called me his wife. Not like he’s referring to paperwork, but like it’s obvious as gravity. We’ve been here maybe six days out of thirty, and it already feels like the trial period was a joke.