Chapter 4
Chapter Four
ELIZA
Morning. Day three. Neither of us has mentioned the kiss.
Weston is at the stove making eggs. Scrambled, with salt and pepper, in a cast iron pan that's been seasoned so long it's practically a family heirloom. He hasn't looked at me since I came out of the bedroom. Just poured my coffee, set it on the table, and turned back to the stove.
The flannel I'm wearing is his. The socks are his.
The sheets I slept in smell like him. My own clothes are drying on a makeshift line he strung near the woodstove sometime before dawn while I pretended to sleep.
Every piece of fabric in this cabin has his scent woven through it, and my body has spent the entire night cataloging it.
"Eggs?" he asks without turning.
"Please."
He plates them. Sets mine down. Sits across from me. We eat.
The silence should be uncomfortable. Yesterday it was. Today it's loaded with something else. Something that hums just below the surface of every accidental touch, every time one of us shifts in the small kitchen and our bodies almost connect.
"The storm's peaked," he says, eyes on his plate. "Should start tapering tomorrow. Another day after that before the pass is clear."
"So one more full day."
"One more full day."
My files are on the table. I've reorganized them twice since yesterday. Reading the same pages over without absorbing a word because every time Weston moves through this cabin, my attention follows him like a compass needle.
"Your ex wife," I say, because I've been thinking about the books on his shelf. A woman's handwriting in the margin of one. Pencil, faded. Loopy cursive. "She lived here?"
His jaw tightens. "She lived in town. I stayed here. That was part of the problem."
"She wanted you to come down."
"She wanted me to be someone who wanted to come down." He clears his plate, stands, runs water in the sink. "I couldn't do it. Too cold, she said. Too remote. Too much like the mountain I lived on."
"She was wrong."
He looks at me over his shoulder. Something raw flickers across his face before he shuts it down. "You've known me two days."
"You've taken a call from a dead man's mother every November for fifteen years.
I've seen you kneel on a floor to warm a stranger's feet.
You fed me without being asked, gave me your bed without negotiating, answered every question I threw at you without making me feel stupid for asking.
" My voice is steady. Calm. The investigator voice, the one I use in interviews when I need someone to hear me. "Two days is enough."
The water's still running. He turns it off. Dries his hands on a towel, slow, deliberate. Then he's crossing the kitchen in two strides, and his hands are on my face.
Both hands. Cupping my jaw. Tilting my head up. Those blue eyes are inches from mine, and the blue is darker now, nearly navy.
"I don't do this," he says, low and rough.
"You said that."
"I mean it. I don't know how to be what someone needs. The last woman who tried told me I was impossible to love."
"Maybe she just wasn't paying attention."
He kisses me. Not soft like the one I gave him last night.
This one has weight behind it. His mouth opens mine, tongue sweeping deep, and the sound I make doesn't belong in a kitchen at seven in the morning.
His hands slide from my jaw to my neck, thumbs pressing the spots where my pulse hammers against my skin.
My fingers grab his thermal at the chest, pulling him down.
He comes without resistance, one arm sweeping the files off the table without looking.
Pages scatter across the floor. Two years of research, and I don't care.
Not with his mouth on mine, his body crowding me against the table edge, the heat of him pouring through the flannel into my skin.
"Bed," I say against his mouth. "Now."
He lifts me off the chair. Just lifts me, hands under my thighs, my legs wrapping around his waist. The flannel rides up. His fingers dig into the soft flesh of my thighs, and the grip is possessive. Deliberate. The grip of a man staking a claim he's been fighting for two days.
The hallway is short. The bedroom door is already open. He carries me through it, sets me on the edge of the bed, and drops to his knees.
Those blue eyes look up at me from the floor. Hands on my knees. Pushing them apart, slow, watching my face the whole time. The wool socks are still on. The flannel is bunched at my hips. Underneath, just my underwear. Simple black cotton.
His fingers hook the waistband. Pull them down my legs in one smooth motion. Then he leans forward, presses his mouth to my inner thigh, and breathes in.
"God, Eliza." His voice vibrates against my skin. "You smell incredible."
My back arches. His hands spread my thighs wider, and then his mouth is on me. No hesitation. No teasing. Tongue flat against my clit, then circling, then sucking, and my hand flies to his hair.
He knows exactly what he's doing. Every stroke is deliberate, reading my responses the way he reads the mountain.
When my hips buck, he holds them down with one hand across my belly.
When I gasp, he does whatever he just did again, harder.
The pressure builds fast because I've been wound tight for two days, sleeping in his sheets, wearing his clothes, breathing him in.
"Weston. Oh god. Right there."
His answer is two fingers sliding inside me, curling forward while his tongue works my clit.
The combination shatters something. My orgasm rips through me so hard my vision whites out, thighs clamping around his head, fingers pulling his hair.
He doesn't stop. Keeps his mouth on me through every pulse, every aftershock, until my body goes boneless against the mattress.
He stands. Pulls the thermal over his head.
His body is lean, hard, built by years of real work.
Not gym muscle. Mountain muscle. Scarred hands unbuckling his belt.
Jeans dropping. He's thick and hard, cock straining against dark boxer briefs, and the sight of him makes my pussy clench around nothing.
"Condom?" My voice sounds wrecked.
"Nightstand."
He reaches past me, opens the drawer, pulls out a foil packet. Rolls it on while I watch, and watching is its own kind of foreplay. His hands on himself. Sure, efficient, no shyness. Then he's over me, one knee on the mattress between my legs, his weight braced on one arm.
"Tell me if it's too much." He nudges my entrance with the head of his cock. Thick. Stretching.
"Weston. Just fuck me."
He pushes inside in one long stroke, and my mouth falls open.
Full. So full. His jaw is clenched, eyes on mine, reading me.
When my legs wrap around his waist, he starts to move.
Deep, grinding thrusts that light up every nerve ending.
His hips rolling into mine with the patience of a man who's spent his life learning to be deliberate.
My nails dig into his shoulders. He groans, drops his forehead to my neck, and the sound he makes there is raw. Exposed. A man coming apart at the seams because a woman's body feels too good.
"Look at me," I whisper.
He does. Those blue eyes are blown. Desperate. His hand finds my breast under the flannel I'm still wearing, thumb circling my nipple through the fabric, and the combination of his cock inside me and his hand on my breast sends a second orgasm building at the base of my spine.
"Come for me." His voice against my throat. "Wanna feel you."
The words break me open. My second orgasm crashes through, harder than the first, and my pussy clenches around him so tight he swears. His hips stutter, control snapping, and he comes with his face buried in my neck, groaning my name into my skin.
We lie still. His weight on me, heavy, real. His breath coming in ragged bursts against my collarbone. My fingers tracing the scar on his left knuckle where his hand rests beside my head.
"Your ex wife," I murmur.
"Don't."
"Was wrong."
He lifts his head. Looks at me with something so unguarded it makes my chest ache. "You don't know that yet."
"I know what impossible to love feels like. This isn't it."
He stares at me for a long time. Then he rolls to the side, pulls me against his chest, arm locked around my waist, and presses his mouth to my shoulder. Holds there. Breathing me in.
We stay like that while the storm rages. My files are scattered across the kitchen floor. My research timeline is probably under the table. Marcus Farrell's twenty year old mystery is waiting for me in the next room.
For the first time in two years, I don't feel like getting up to chase it.
The realization should scare me. Darius's words should be echoing, the accusation that I love dead people more than living ones. But Weston's arm tightens around me, his mouth warm on my bare shoulder, his heartbeat steady against my spine.
And all I can think is: this is what it feels like to be held by someone who won't let go until you ask.
I don't ask.