Chapter 5 Becca
And he was gone.
It wasn’t easy to fall asleep, which I should have predicted. I had plenty to process from the events of the day.
Images flashed through my mind: the dusty lot with no yoga retreat in sight… My phone screen mocking me with its lack of signal… Evan framed in that doorway, watching me struggle to pick my cards off the asphalt… Evan, one palm on the wheel as he drove me up here to share his home with a stranger… Evan, feeding the wood stove with logs as he looked at me, hungrily but stoically, not saying a word or making a movement to betray what those dark eyes and short, clipped phrases had told me…
My hand slipped down to the waistband of my pajamas, but I froze.
Something seemed… wrong about touching myself, here, in his space.
But I burned at the thought of him.
Ached.
I balled my hands into fists, nails digging into my palms, and tried to think of anything else. Something to cool me down.
Instead, I fell into a fitful slumber. And as much as I could do to stop myself from fingering myself in Evan’s guest room, I had no control over my dreams.
???
Evan chopped wood, his t-shirt soaked through with sweat, hugging every contour and curve of his back and sculpted arms. He paused, wiping the sweat and disheveled locks from his forehead before pulling off his shirt and tossing it to the side. His tan skin glistened in the heat.
He didn’t stop there.
I watched, enraptured, as he gave the stump one final blow, splitting it. With a satisfied smirk, he set down his ax and locked eyes with me, a knowing smirk on his lips.
I hadn’t even realized I was really there with him in the dream. I’d been so enthralled by taking in the details of him.
Now, he went for the button of his jeans, already slung low enough on his hips that I could see where the dusting of hair on his lower stomach began to darken.
“I can split more than just wood,” dream-Evan drawled, his voice a sinful promise.
“Oh, fuck.”
And in the beauty of dream logic, all barriers between us disappeared. No clothes. No forest. A huge mattress with silk sheets, smooth under me while he straddled me, the feeling of his hard cock warm against my stomach.
We weren’t outside anymore, but he still smelled like pine and sweat. All I could do was smell him, feel his weight, our lips meeting, hot and searching.
A crash.
I jolted awake, painfully returning to the real world. I pushed myself up in beat, heart pounding and skin flushed, trying to orient myself in the unfamiliar room.
Another crash sounded from outside, followed by the distinct sound of metal cans rattling against each other. A jolt of fear ran through me, my mind conjuring up all sorts of terrifying possibilities.
A break in?
Evan preparing his torture chamber straight out of a horror movie?
I slipped out of bed and moved to the window, peering out into the darkness. The rain had stopped, but clouds still covered the moon and it was nearly impossible to see anything. I could just make out a shadow moving in the bushes near this side of the house, its strange bulk barely visible in the diffused light of the moon behind the clouds.
What the hell?
I let out a shaky breath, my heart still racing as I tried to make out the shadow. I knew I should just go back to bed, that it was probably nothing, but I couldn”t shake the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I had to at least find out exactly what it was. There was no way I was falling asleep again without finding out.
Before I could second-guess myself, I crept down the stairs, cringing when a floorboard creaked. I didn’t want to wake Evan because of my own anxiety-fueled curiosity.
A soft glow of light coming from the living room surprised me. Evan was there, standing at the kitchen island that overlooked the living room, sipping a hot mug of something and reading a book to the light of a single lamp.
He glanced up as I entered, an eyebrow raising slightly at the sight of me. “Everything okay?” he asked. “Did the light wake you?”
I shook my head, feeling suddenly self-conscious in my thin pajamas. “I heard a noise outside,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. “There’s something out there. In the bushes outside my room.”
Evan frowned, setting his mug down on the island and crossing to the living room window that looked out in the same direction. I approached, lingering a foot or two behind him.
As soon as we quieted, I could hear the sound of jostling cans and crunching underbrush. A snort. The shadow shuffled alongside the cabin, so close I started to wonder just how sturdy the glass was in the windows.
“It’s a bear,” Evan said after a moment, striding to return to his book as if this was the most commonplace event in the world. “Probably got attracted by the trash cans knocked over in the storm.”
I bit my lip, feeling foolish for overreacting and coming all the way down here. “I”m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn”t mean to bother you. I just got scared and…”
I trailed off, realizing part of the reason I”d come downstairs was that I was hoping to find him. Some inexplicable, subconscious need to seek him out, to be near him when I was scared.
Evan shook his head. “No bother. I was up, anyway.”
“So… There”s really no danger with a bear out there? I”ve seen videos of bears doing some real damage. Like breaking into cars and stuff.”
“Hm. Those were probably grizzlies. Out here we have black bears.”
“Okay,” I said, trying not to make it as obvious that I had about as much knowledge about the difference between bear types as I did between types of power tools -none.
“Black bears top out at about four, maybe five hundred pounds. Not aggressive. Just hungry.”
He strode over to a panel of switches by the front door and flicked one on. An outdoor light turned on, illuminating the brown, fuzzy bulk of a bear with its head in a bin. It wiggled itself out and fled into the safe darkness of the woods, lumbering off with a subdued urgency.
“It was actually kind of cute,” I admitted. I turned back to Evan and swallowed, suddenly remembering the dream I”d had about him in excruciating detail now that the adrenaline from seeing the bear was fading.
Evan cleared his throat, somehow seeming to sense the shift in the way I looked at him. “I still have hot water in the kettle,” he said, his voice a touch rougher than before. “Want some tea?”
My heart skipped a beat at the offer. It meant more than just a thoughtful offer to make tea when we were both up on this cold night. It meant he wanted me down here. Wasn’t pushing me away.
“Tea sounds perfect. I’m not going to sleep again anytime soon.”
I followed him back toward the kitchen, watching the play of muscles beneath his shirt as he reached up to grab me a mug. “Chamomile?”
“Sure.”
Something about this felt so… intimate.
Here we were, hanging out in a dimly lit kitchen with the embers of a fire in the living room fireplace, both of us in pajamas and talking softly. Well, me in my matching silk set and him in a white tee and sweats.
And now he was making me tea.
How the hell was this gruff stranger living out in the middle of nowhere more of a gentleman than any city guy I’d dated?