Chapter 15 #2
Rent shifts on my lap. He looks at Levi with the flat assessment of a cat who has formed an opinion and isn't sharing it.
Levi looks at the cat. Then at me. He comes up one step and stops.
"I wasn't on that trail today," he says. "I don't know what happened out there. But I watched you ride out after lunch." He pauses. "And I watched you come back this afternoon. Somewhere in the middle of that, I stopped pretending I didn't know exactly what this is."
He doesn't put a joke around it. He doesn't look for a way out of it. He says it and lets it sit.
I look at him for a long moment. Rent steps off my lap.
"Took you a while," I say.
"I know."
I stand up.
He closes the distance. His hands cup my face, and he kisses me like he's been making up his mind about it for weeks.
Slow at first, like he's not interested in rushing something he's been waiting on this long.
I get my hands into the front of his shirt.
I feel him exhale against my mouth. The porch is behind us. The door is six feet away.
"Cass," he says against my mouth.
"Yeah."
"I'm going inside with you."
"You better."
I turn and walk towards the door, going inside. He follows me. The door closes behind us.
***
The cabin is warm and dim. The last of the evening light falls through the curtains in long, low strips across the floor. He pulls me toward him and kisses me again, slower this time. I walk him backward down the short hall to the bedroom without breaking it.
He pulls back to look at me in the low light. I look back. There's nothing between us that needs talking through right now. Whatever comes later, I'll handle it later.
He reaches for the hem of my shirt. I lift my arms and let him take it. He drops it. His eyes move over me slowly, like he's been thinking about having time to look and now he finally has it.
"Your turn," I tell him.
He pulls his shirt over his head. My hands go flat on his chest. His exhale moves through my palms, and his muscles pull tight when I drag down to his belt.
"Umm."
I look up.
He’s looking at me. "I should ask. Are we good?"
"I've got an IUD, and I haven’t been with anyone in a long time."
He nods. "For the record, I haven't been with anyone in eight months."
"Why are you telling me that?"
"I don't know," he says. "Felt like information you should have."
I pull him down to me. "Noted."
He's saying it for my benefit, I think. Maybe for both of ours.
He leans down and kisses my jaw, then my throat, then the curve of my shoulder.
Slow and deliberate. I tip my head back.
His hands move to my jeans, popping the button loose, then lowering the zipper, and sliding them down my hips.
He crouches down to take them off my feet, and I step out of them.
He runs his hands up the backs of my legs on the way up.
I reach for his belt. He lets me work it, watching my face while I do. When I push his jeans down, he steps out of them. I take a second to look at him. His mouth curves into a small, private grin.
"Don't," I say.
"Don't what?"
"Don't look smug about it."
"I'm not looking smug." He is a little smug. "I'm just standing here."
I pull him by the back of the neck and kiss him to end that conversation.
He walks me back to the bed, and I go down onto it. My shoulders hit the mattress. He comes down over me, his body covering mine. I feel the full weight of him.
This is the moment I understand how much I've been holding back. Not from him. From myself. It's the most grounded I've felt.
He gets a hand between us. I'm soaking wet. I make a sound against his shoulder when his thumb finds my clit. He works me back up until I'm pulling at his hips. He lines himself up and pushes in.
He's looking at my face. I'm looking at his. We're both breathing like we've been holding it for a long time.
"Okay?" he says.
"Yeah." My voice comes out low and breathy. "Move."
He moves. Slow at first, learning the angle. I get my leg around his hip and pull him deeper. His jaw tightens. "Jesus, Cass," he breathes.
I've been watching him for weeks, and I still wasn't ready for this. For him, this present. This much here.
I feel it everywhere. He finds a rhythm, and I match him, wrapping my legs around his hips. Nothing but the sounds we stop trying to hold back. The way his breath breaks when I move a certain way. The way I say his name into his neck because I can't help it.
"Ohh. Don't stop," I say.
"Not a chance."
Four weeks. I kept every single bit of this at arm's length for four weeks. I have no idea what I was so afraid of.
He doesn't stop. He works me all the way up until I'm shaking under him.
When I come this time, my whole body shakes.
I hear the sound I make and don't care. He follows me over.
His hips drive deep, then deeper, two more strokes that pull a rough sound out of him that I feel in my chest. Then he goes still, his face in my hair.
He breathes hard against the side of my neck.
We lie there.
He pushes up onto one arm. His hair is going every direction. Neither of us has caught our breath yet.
"Hi," he says, grinning.
"Hi," I laugh. Quiet and real in the dark.
He rolls to his side, gathering me against him. "I've been trying to make you laugh since the day you got here. Figured I'd try a different approach. Four weeks. I was starting to wonder if I had it in me."
I laugh again.
Outside, Rent yells on the porch. Then silence.
"Which one is that?" Levi says.
"Rent."
"He sounds personally offended."
"He always does."
We lie there. The room goes quieter.
I didn't hesitate. Not once. Not at the door, not when he looked at me, not when he asked. I said yes. I meant it.
I said it out loud once, weeks ago, at the wood stack. That I was attracted to him and wasn't doing anything about it. Both things are true at the same time. I thought that was the hard part, saying it.
Turns out the hard part was this. Actually doing something about it.
I don't know yet what to do with that. But I lay my head on his shoulder.