9. Chapter 9 #2
"Got most of the outside ones up while it was still light," he says, not looking up. "Three left, but those'll have to wait for morning—lost the light on them. These are the inside panels. They seat in the well and the clips hold them. You want the kitchen window or the office?"
"Kitchen." I say, then, "You know nobody else on this ridge is doing this."
"Nobody else on this ridge has what I have to lose." He doesn't look up. "Hold it flush."
"Okay."
The kitchen window is over the sink. I can reach the bottom edge fine, but the top corner is past me. I'm on my toes when he comes up behind me with the board.
I reach for the top corner. My shirt rides up an inch. I pull it back down without thinking. Then I stop thinking about it because he's just there.
He steps in close to set the panel against the frame, and his chest comes against my shoulder blades.
Light. Not pressing. Just present, the heat of him through two layers of fabric, the breadth of him taking up all the space I'd been standing in.
His arms come up on either side of mine, hands on the panel at the height of my head, bracketing me against the window.
I forget how to breathe.
His thigh is at the back of my thigh. Not pressed.
Touching. The denim of his jeans against the denim of mine, the long line of his body fitted to the long line of mine, every place I'd inhabited a second ago now shared.
His chest rises and falls against my back, slow, and I can feel him controlling it.
I can smell him. Sawdust and that clean soap under it, and underneath all of that, warmer, skin-warm, the place at the base of his throat where heat lives.
"Hold here." His voice is at my temple. Low. The warmth of his breath moves the hair by my ear.
I lift my hand to the board.
"Higher."
I lift it higher. His forearm slides against mine, the hair on his wrist brushing my skin, and I make a sound I do not mean to make. A nothing sound. Barely an exhale.
He goes still behind me.
For a second neither of us moves. I'm aware of every inch of him.
Every place his body is touching mine and every place it could move next, his hand at my hip, his mouth at my neck, the half-step that would close the last bit of space and put us flush.
I can feel the shape of all of it in the air between us.
Then he moves.
His left hand comes off the board. It comes down. It closes around my wrist.
Not a grip. A hold. His palm is rough and warm, more than skin should be, and his thumb settles directly over the inside of my wrist where my pulse is hammering, has been hammering, and he must feel it because his thumb goes still there. Pressed. Reading me.
He doesn't say anything for a long moment.
Then: "All this counting, Mara."
It comes out rough. Lower than I've heard him. He doesn't have to say what he means. We both know what he means. Days of counting. And one night that wasn't counting at all, that neither of us has named since, sitting between us in this small dark room.
His thumb moves. Once. A slow stroke across my pulse.
My knees go out from under the word. The panel slips out of my grip and hits the ground. Neither of us looks at it.
His other hand comes off the wall.
It lands at my waist. Open palm, low on my hip, where the hem of my shirt has ridden up an inch from reaching. His thumb finds skin first. Bare skin, just above the waistband of my jeans, and it slides under the cotton without asking and stops there. Splayed against my side. Hot.
Every nerve I have lines up behind that hand.
"Cole."
"I know."
He doesn't move it.
His thumb sweeps once across my ribs, slow, the pad of it dragging warm over the place where my pulse has migrated, and he exhales against the side of my neck. The exhale is uneven. He's not controlling it anymore. He's letting me hear it.
His hand goes higher. Under the shirt. Up the bare line of my side. His palm wide and rough against my skin, and the heat of it travels through me to places nowhere near where he's touching. He stops just under the band of my bra. Doesn't go further. Holds.
"Turn around," he says.
I turn around.
He doesn't step back to give me room. There isn't any room. I turn against him, against the length of him, and his hand stays where it is. His other hand comes up under my jaw, fingers along the line of it, thumb at my chin. He tilts my face up.
His eyes are nearly black.
He looks at my mouth like a man who has been thinking about it since last night.
Then he leans down and kisses me.
It is not gentle.
His mouth opens against mine and it's the taste I haven't stopped thinking about since the kitchen.
Coffee. Faintly sweet underneath, the gummy bears, I think, absurdly, in the half-second my brain still works, and under that, just him, salt and heat and a low warm note I will think about later when I am alone.
His hand under my shirt slides up and around to the small of my back and pulls me in flush against him.
I make a sound into his mouth and he makes one back, lower, and his tongue is on mine and his hand at my jaw has slid into my hair.
I forget what window we were paneling. I forget that a storm is coming. I forget the counting and the rules and the agreement and the line.
His hand on my back tightens. His hips press forward once, deliberate, against mine, and I feel him hard against my stomach through two layers of denim and I make a sound that is not a word.
He breaks the kiss to breathe.
He doesn't go far. His forehead is against mine. His hand is still under my shirt, still on the bare skin of my back, splayed wide like he's holding me upright. His other hand slides out of my hair and down my throat. Stops at my collarbone. His thumb traces it once.
"Tell me to stop," he says. His voice is wrecked.
"Don't stop."
His mouth comes back to mine and he doesn't ask this time.
His hand at my back slides lower, below the waistband of my jeans, and his palm closes over my hip and pulls me against him. I feel him hard against my stomach and the sound I make goes straight into his mouth.
He swallows it and presses closer.
His hands find the hem of my shirt and pull it up over my head in one movement. No hesitation. The cold air hits my skin and then his hands are there, both of them, moving up my sides, my ribcage, the clasp of my bra, and it comes undone under his fingers before I've finished taking a breath.
He steps back just enough to look.
I let him.
His jaw is tight. His eyes move over me the way they moved over that window frame earlier, like he's measuring something he intends to do something about.
Then he steps back in.
His mouth goes to my throat, my collarbone, the curve of my shoulder, and his hands are on my breasts, palms wide and rough, and when his thumbs drag slow over my nipples I dig my fingers into his shirt and pull.
"Cole."
He makes a low sound against my skin and does it again.
My back hits the cabinet. He's pressed against me now, one thigh between mine, and the friction is deliberate. He moves his leg once and the sound I make is not quiet. His mouth finds my ear.
"Again."
I don't argue. I move against him and the sound comes out again, lower, and he says something against my jaw that I can't parse because all the blood in my head has gone somewhere else.
His hand slides off my breast, down my stomach, and stops at my waistband.
He looks at me.
I reach between us and pop the button myself.
He exhales like I've done something to him.
His hand goes inside. Under the denim, under the cotton, and when his fingers find me his head drops to my shoulder and he says my name like it's the only word left.
"God. You're..."
"Yes."
His fingers move. Slow at first. Two fingers finding the place that makes my legs uncertain, and my head goes back against the cabinet and my hips move to meet him and I don't care about any of it.
The window. The panels. The storm loading in the treeline outside.
All the counting. None of it. Just him. Just this.
His breath against my neck and the rough drag of his hand and the way he's watching my face like he wants to memorize each second of it.
"Look at me," he says.
I look at him.
His fingers curl and I make a sound that's half his name and grip his forearm with both hands.
"There." His voice has gone rough. "That's it."
He works me toward it, steady, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world and knows exactly what he's doing. His mouth is at my temple, my jaw, and his free hand is at my hip, steadying, and I'm close, I'm right there.
"Mara?"
A small voice. Carrying from the next room.
We freeze.
Owen. Half-asleep. The blanket shifting on the couch.
Cole's hand stops. His forehead drops to mine. He's breathing hard, both of us are, and his hand is still inside my jeans, still against me, and neither of us moves.
"Mara?" Closer to awake.
I find my voice from somewhere. It does not sound like mine. "Not yet, buddy. Soon."
A beat. The comic crinkling. Owen sighing and settling back.
Cole lifts his head.
He looks at me. His hand moves once, the slowest stroke, deliberate, and my whole body seizes around the almost of it.
"Cole..."
He pulls his hand free.
The storm hasn't even started yet.