Chapter Seven
Reece
I have done a lot of stupid things in my life—just one I regret.
Of all the things I’ve gotten wrong, watching Rain storm out of my cabin might is one of the worst. It sits at the top of a long, ugly list: leaving my world behind for an oil rig, becoming a roughneck to risk my life for a paycheck, and cutting ties with everyone just to stop the cycle of letting them down.
Most of it I can live with, but there are two mistakes in that list that haunt me—two things I’d give anything to undo.
They called it a one in a million accident—almost unheard of.
We were twelve days into a grueling hitch.
Sleep was a luxury none of us had seen in days, and my eyes burned under the harsh fluorescent lights of the monitoring station.
My focus was gone just long enough to miss the transducer gauge for Wellhead B had started to drift.
It wasn't a sudden spike—just a slow, agonizing crawl into the amber zone.
It’s an error in the telemetry, I told myself. We’d had software glitches all week. If I called for a full emergency shutdown over a ghost, it would cost the company millions, and my shot at supervisor. They were talking me up for a promotion which meant they trusted my judgment.
I convinced myself I was being practical. I decided to wait until the 03:30 manual shift change to have someone check the physical bleed valves. I silenced the digital chirp, took a sip of cold coffee, and looked away from the screen. All hell broke loose before we got to 03:30.
The first sound wasn't an explosion. It was a deep, guttural groan from the belly of the earth, a vibration so violent it shook the fillings in my teeth. Then came the screech of tearing structural steel.
Through the reinforced glass of the control deck, I watched the drill floor literally tear open. A roaring geyser of drilling mud and highly pressurized gas erupted into the night sky. It took less than three seconds for a stray spark to find it. The world turned into a furnace.
“Reece! Why didn't the automated line trip?!”
I remember Miller screaming over the comms. He was out on the primary catwalk, right above the flashpoint.
I froze. My hand hovered over the manual ocean-floor kill switch, but it was too late, I know it.
Flames had severed the hydraulic lines. I watched through the glass as the firewall collapsed toward Miller's position. I couldn't move. I couldn't save him.
Once again, I just stood and watched as the world as I knew it had imploded.
Rain was right to leave. To run off on me, leave me up on this mountain to rot.
It’s what I deserved. I made a mistake that took the life of a good man—a man I considered a friend.
My own body had been battered, but I survived something I should not have.
“Helluva lot more than you deserved,” I grumble as I empty a second glass of bourbon.
It’s a beautiful night up on the mountain, a blanket of stars hanging over Hollow Peak.
I am sober enough to appreciate it and drunk enough to hate that I am alone.
I was fine being up here by myself. Staying away from the rest of the world was the best thing for me.
It should have meant no one got hurt by me again.
“Still managed to hurt that pretty princess,” I whisper, emotion choking my words.
I told her I was going to hurt her, didn’t I? I warned her from the first knock at my door. Who gave her the right to even come here? To try to fit herself inside my space. I knew she could never. No one could ever fit in the dark, vapid space I created for myself.
Pouring myself another glass of bourbon, I sit back in the rocking chair I finished just last week.
Rain was right about that. I gave finished pieces to the lodge, to a retirement home, hell to anyone who would take one of my pieces of furniture.
Making something with my two hands, taking raw materials and creating a beautiful piece is the one thing that provides me some peace.
“Until that woman knocked on your door,” I hiss.
Having full blown conversations with myself while wallowing in my trauma and drinking too much will do me no damn good.
I still empty the glass of bourbon. I cork the bottle of whisky and push up from the chair with a grunt.
My body hurts all the time, my skin still pulls painfully tight from the burns I got on that rig.
I got used to living with pain a long time ago.
This pain, the ache in my muscles, in my hands, is not from that damned accident.
It’s from the night I spent with Rain. Parts of my body I had forgotten about got a lot of use.
I smirk to myself. The things I did with that woman, the things she did to me…
I never thought that kind of pleasure could exist.
I torture myself with the truth that I will never know that sort of pleasure again. No one else would look past my damages. Past the wounds that go deeper than the tattered scars on my skin. I never thought I would know the gentle touch that Rain had shown me.
“Now someone else will know her touch,” I am trying to hurt myself, to remind myself I never deserved what she offered.
Only thinking about someone else touching her, her soft, tiny hands touching them, does more damage than I expect it to.
I am not hurt by the idea of her with someone else.
I am enraged. The beast I told her she could never tame roars to life inside of me.
Because I will be damned if I let someone else hear her sounds or taste her pleasure.
“No fucking way!” I shout to the void, my voice echoing back from the mountains.
No, no I can’t. No fucking way will I let someone else have her. I cannot let someone else know her. I might not deserve her—hell, I know I don’t—but for a moment in time, she wanted me. I wanted her, wanted her sweet scent and that damned lasagna and the sweetest pecan pie I ever had.
It takes me twenty minutes to convince myself to do it.
To take my pathetic ass to town, to go right to that lodge and find her.
I am halfway down the mountain when I have to pull aside.
Panic attacks happen for no reason at all, but facing the woman I am finding myself obsessed with is a damn good one if you ask me.
“Stop being such a pussy, caveman,” I whisper to myself. Hell, I almost hear it in her voice, that cute eastern lilt calming me and exciting me at the same time.
Punching the gas, I steer the truck through the winding roads taking me down the mountain.
It’s dark out but the moon creates enough light to guide me to town.
I hesitate once I reach Main Street, taking a moment to get my bearings.
I’ve lived her almost five years, but I’ve not spent enough time in Hollow Peak to know it very well.
Ducking my head, I look for the beacon of light that the lodge should offer.
Spotting it, I let out a shaky breath and head that way.
I have no idea what I am going to say. If she will even listen to me.
I was damned awful to her. I told her I do not deserve a second chance, but I hope she calls my bluff and gives me one anyway.
“I ought to have taken her bet that you wouldn’t show up here,” Theo’s voice startles me as I sit outside the lodge, still gathering myself.
Blinking at him in the darkness, I narrow a glare at him. “You thought I wouldn’t come for her?”
“Oh, no, I said you would. It was Rain who made the wager you wouldn’t come after her.
Glad to see I was right, Reece,” he offers a knowing grin before he sails past. I find myself wondering if he had been keeping watch, hoping I would show up.
Might be the wrong man to hang hopes on, but I am here to fix that.
“Is she…she still here?” I call after him once I climb out of the truck
Theo pauses, turning to smile at me in the gray light of the full moon overhead. “Of course she is. Rain might not have believed you would leave your mountain, but she hoped you would.”
Taking a shuddering breath, I jerk my head at him.
Good thing one of us was holding out hope.
Watching her storm out of my cabin, clad in just a towel because she was too damn stubborn to get clothes on, had dimmed my own hope.
I had fucked up because that is what I do, I fuck up, but for the first time in a long time, I am going to fix my mistake.
Taking the porch steps two at a time, my footsteps thud on the old wood.
Once I am inside, I realize I have no idea how to find her.
I assume she would be in one of the guest rooms while she stays here.
I’ve been to the lodge to deliver various pieces of furniture I had made, including the rockers that sit on the front porch.
I have never been here looking for a woman who might change my life.
“Upstairs, room 501, end of the hall. Keep the…noise levels down, please,” Theo sails in to offer before he wanders off again.
I laugh because who are these people? What could I have done to make not one but two of the Mallory’ family be kind to me?
I rush up the stairs, making it to the end of the hall in record time.
Only the moment I am standing in front of room 501, I wonder if this is just a huge mistake.
Why would she forgive me? What will I do if she does forgive me?
“All the lodges in town and you walk into mine?”
Blinking, I whirl from my frantic pace. Standing in the doorway of 501 is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Rain leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, stance relaxed as she watches me with those pretty blue eyes.
In just a silky night shirt, her long, thick thighs draw my attention.
I am moving before I know why. Bending, I scoop her up with my arm, storming inside her room.
I kick the door shut behind me with a thud, my mouth slamming to hers.
Rain whimpers against my kiss but she clings to me, her limbs tangling around me.
I keep walking blindly, unsure of where I want to even wind up.
Somehow I pass the bed. We wind up on the balcony off her room, the night breeze cool on my fevered flesh. I am not sure who moves first, but clothes start coming off. I am not thinking about what comes next or how I need to grovel after how I behaved.
“I-I need you,” I growl the words as I hoist her up on the edge of the stone balcony.
In the darkness, I can see it is just one of four balconies on this side of the lodge.
Which means no one will see us. I don’t think I would care if we were watched.
I meant what I said. I need her. I need to feel her wrapped around me, need to bury myself inside her and forget the misery I was drowning in before her.
“Then have me,” she purrs against my mouth, her hips circling that way that drives me crazy.
Growling, I slide my hands beneath her ass to drag her to the edge of the balcony.
Later I will be gentle, I will spend hours eating her, savoring all of her.
Right now, I need to bind myself to her the way I’ve been wanting to from the moment I opened my door to her.
Reaching between us, I fists my cock, dragging the tip through her bare pussy.
Gaze locked there, I watch my cock breach her folds.
The most erotic thing I have ever seen. I can’t look away as I push deeper, deeper.
She is so tight, so wet she drips down my length and I can’t hold back.
Letting out a roar, my hips punch forward to sink myself as deep as she can take me.
It is in the same second I settle balls deep that I realize…she said she no man had ever tasted her, now I know there was more to it.
“There’s been no one else,” I whisper, not asking but telling her a truth I never dared share. “No one for me either. I never…it will be just you, princess. No one else,” I rasp before I take her mouth in a brutal kiss as I start to claim her.
Tilting her hips, I thrust hard, fast, my need to make her come, to come with her, overwhelming me.
I told her before I didn’t want to breed her but fuck, the idea of my baby in her belly turns me into a whole new beast. I rock slower, once again watching how her folds spread to take me, how tight her pussy grips me when I pull out.
I am glad there was never anyone before for either of us.
I never gave a damn about intimacy before.
Now I am thankful for that. I never want to share this moment, these sensations, with anyone else.
I tell her that as I fuck her hard, fast, telling her next time I will be gentle, that I will do it all night long if she lets me.
“Yes, yes,” she pants against my mouth. “Next time. The time after that. You said you didn’t want to keep me…tell me you do, caveman. I need to hear it,” she hums, fisting my hair to pull my head back, forcing me to meet her gaze.
“Yes. Hell yes, I am keeping you. It was the first and last lie I ever said to you,” I whisper against her lips, my climax racing up my spine as she starts to come, fluttering up my cock.
“I want to keep you. Whatever it means, on a mountain, down in Hollow Peak or anywhere in the world. I am keeping you, princess.”
We come together as I seal that promise with a kiss.