Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
PIPER
We don't talk about the kiss for the rest of the afternoon.
Beck works in the forge. I sit on his porch with Slag, my ankle propped on the railing, flipping through a book on Japanese bladesmithing techniques while the mountain does its thing around me. Pine trees. Bird sounds I can't identify. A silence so complete it has texture.
My phone is dead. Has been since the car. No Instagram. No client emails. No texts from my mother asking if I've eaten. No notifications from the vintage decor account I've spent two years building one follower at a time. Just me, a one-eared cat, and the distant ring of a hammer on steel.
It should feel like withdrawal. Instead it feels like the first full breath I've taken in months.
By evening, the temperature drops. Beck comes inside smelling like smoke, washes his hands at the kitchen sink, and starts pulling food from the pantry. Pasta again. Garlic. A can of tomatoes. He cooks without asking if I'm hungry because apparently he's figured out that the answer is always yes.
"You're a good cook," I tell him from my spot at the table.
"I can make four things."
"Four things well beats thirty things badly. My ex could make reservations. That was his whole contribution."
The corner of his mouth lifts. He drains the pasta, plates two servings, sits across from me. We eat. He tells me about the Bozeman client who ordered the chef's knife. A surgeon who retired to open a restaurant. Wants a blade that feels like an extension of his hand.
"That's what good design is," I say. Leaning forward because this is my language even if the medium is different. "When something fits so well in a space that you forget it was designed at all. That's the goal. Whether it's a room or a knife."
He watches me talk. Not waiting for me to finish so he can respond. Actually watching, absorbing. His eyes track my hands when I gesture, which I can't help doing when I get excited about something.
"Your side business," he says. "The vintage curation. What's the plan?"
"Quit the firm. Go full-time. Build a client list of designers and homeowners who want authenticated pieces with history.
" The words come out faster than I expect.
"My boss takes credit for my projects. My clients want beige.
I've been playing it safe for six years because safe pays the rent. But safe is also slowly killing me."
"Then stop being safe."
He says it like it's simple. Like there's no mortgage, no health insurance, no voice in my head that sounds like every man I've ever dated telling me my little hobby is cute.
"Easy for you to say. You already made the leap."
"Wasn't easy. Wasn't a leap either. I crawled here after my divorce. This cabin was a place to hide, not a plan." He pushes pasta around his plate. "Took me a year to admit I was building something instead of just surviving."
"What changed?"
"First knife I sold from this forge. Customer drove four hours to pick it up. Held it in his hands and said, 'This is the most beautiful thing I've ever owned.' That's when I knew."
My throat tightens. Because I know that feeling. The first time a client walked into a room I'd designed and went quiet, then said, "It's perfect." That moment when your work stops being effort and becomes something real in someone else's life.
"You should do it," he says. "The business. You talk about it different than you talk about the firm."
"Different how?"
"Like it matters."
Dinner plates go in the sink. He washes, I dry. Same positions as this morning, shoulder to shoulder at the small counter. His arm brushes mine. Heat radiates off him from hours at the forge. The kiss from earlier sits between us, unaddressed, like a door we opened and didn't walk through.
"Beck."
"Yeah."
"I don't want to not talk about it."
He sets the last plate in the rack. Dries his hands on the towel. Turns to face me. We're close. Two feet between us in the narrow kitchen, the counter at my back, the firelight from the other room throwing shadows across his jaw.
"What do you want to talk about?"
"About the fact that you kissed me in your forge and it's been six hours and I haven't stopped thinking about it."
His jaw tightens. Those brown eyes darken.
"I haven't stopped either."
"Good." Closing the distance. One step. My hands land on his chest, fingers curling into the henley. Solid muscle underneath. His heartbeat is fast. Faster than a man this calm should be running. "So stop standing over there acting like you're not going to do it again."
He moves.
Both hands on my waist, lifting me onto the counter. The motion is effortless, those forge-built arms putting me exactly where he wants me. My legs open and he steps between them. One hand cups the back of my neck. The other slides up my thigh, stopping at the hem of the flannel shirt.
"Tell me if your ankle?—"
"My ankle is fine. Kiss me."
He does. Deep. His tongue slides against mine.
The hand on my thigh grips tighter, pulling me to the edge of the counter so my hips press against his.
He's hard. Through his jeans, against my inner thigh, thick and obvious.
A sound rolls out of me that would be embarrassing if I could think straight.
His mouth drags down my jaw. My neck. Teeth scrape my pulse point and my fingers dig into his shoulders. The flannel has three buttons done. He pops them open with one hand, pushing the fabric off my shoulders until I'm bare from the waist up. No bra. Haven't had one since the sundress.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. My breasts are full, heavy, nipples hard from the cold air. His eyes go black.
"Jesus, Piper."
"You going to stare or?—"
His mouth closes over my nipple. Hot. Wet. His tongue circles, flicks, then he sucks hard enough that my spine arches off the cabinet behind me. The other hand finds my other breast, rough palm cupping the weight, thumb dragging across the peak. My hips roll against him involuntarily.
"Bedroom," I manage.
He lifts me off the counter. My legs wrap around his waist. He carries me there with his mouth still on my neck, kicks the bedroom door open, lays me on the flannel sheets. Stands at the edge of the bed pulling his henley over his head.
His chest is broad. Scarred in places. A trail of dark hair runs from his navel into his waistband. His arms are ridiculous. I already knew that but seeing them in low lamplight while he's looking at me like I'm the most important thing he's ever put his hands on is something else entirely.
He unbuttons my borrowed sweats, slides them down my legs carefully over the wrapped ankle. Hooks his fingers in my underwear and pulls those off too. I'm naked on his bed in nothing but the compression bandage.
Then he kneels.
At the edge of the bed. Hands on my thighs, spreading me open. His mouth presses to the inside of my knee, my inner thigh. Slow. Deliberate. The same precision he uses at the anvil.
"Beck, please."
His mouth finds my pussy and I stop forming words.
His tongue drags flat from entrance to clit. Slow. Then again. Then he closes his lips around my clit and sucks while two fingers push inside me. Thick, rough, calloused fingers that curl up and press against the spot that makes my thighs clamp around his head.
He doesn't stop. Doesn't tease. Works me with his mouth and his hand with the same steady, relentless rhythm he uses on the hammer, reading my body, adjusting pressure, speeding up when my breath catches. My fingers twist in the sheets. My hips lift off the mattress.
"Oh God. Oh fuck. Beck, I'm going to?—"
He groans against me. The vibration sends me over. The orgasm tears through me, back bowing, his name breaking apart in my mouth. He keeps going through the aftershocks until I'm shaking, pulling at his hair.
He stands. Unbuckles his belt. Shoves his jeans down and rolls on a condom from the nightstand drawer. His cock is thick, flushed, straining. When he braces over me, forearms on either side of my head, I pull him down and kiss him. Taste myself on his tongue.
He pushes in slow. Stretching me. My nails rake down his back and he groans low in his throat. When he's fully seated he holds there, forehead against mine, breathing hard.
"You feel incredible." His voice is wrecked.
"Move. Please move."
He does. Long, deep strokes that hit bottom. My legs wrap around his hips, pulling him closer. His pace builds. Not frantic. Controlled. Each thrust deliberate, angled to drag against my clit. He watches my face. Reads every sound, every gasp, adjusts.
"Right there," I whisper. "Right there, don't stop."
He doesn't stop. Drops his head to my neck, one hand sliding under my ass to tilt my hips higher. The angle changes everything. I come again, hard, clenching around him, and he follows two strokes later with a groan that vibrates through his entire body into mine.
Quiet. Breathing. His weight half on me, half on the mattress. His hand finds mine on the pillow, fingers threading through mine. Scarred palm against smooth palm.
"I'm falling for you," I whisper. Into the dark, into the flannel sheets, into this cabin on a mountain where I was never supposed to be. "I know that's insane. I've known you for two days."
His fingers tighten on mine.
"Three," he says. "And it's not insane."
Slag jumps onto the bed, walks across Beck's back, and settles between our feet. Beck exhales something that sounds suspiciously close to a laugh.
"I'm falling for you too, Piper. Have been since the stick."
"It was a sharp stick."
"It was a twig."
Curling into his side, his arm heavy around my shoulders, his heartbeat under my ear. Outside, the mountain is dark and quiet. The forge is cold. Tomorrow the road might clear and I'll have to decide what that means.
But right now, in this bed, in this cabin, with this man's scarred hand holding mine, tomorrow can wait.