Chapter 13 #2
She pulled back, her forehead pressed against his, her breath coming fast and ragged against his lips.
Her eyes were open, inches from his, and what he saw in them wasn't just desire. It wasn’t just need.
It was the bone-deep, soul-level connection that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the one thing they both had been running from their entire adult lives—and she was still avoiding love.
“I think we need to—”
"Don't think," she whispered. "Don't be careful. Don't ask me if I'm sure." Her fingers released his shirt and slid up his neck, into his hair, gripping hard enough to hurt. “We can think later. Talk about why I need this—later. Right now, just be here. With me."
He could have stopped it. Could have been the steady one, the one who said maybe we should wait until you've had more than three hours of sleep and aren't running on adrenaline and grief. He could have held her instead. Could have stroked her hair, told her it was going to be okay, and been the kind of man who said those three little words that had never left his mouth before. And that she’d probably never heard.
However, love meant knowing, and he knew Dove. Saying those words now would only push her right out the door. Hell, just thinking them were making his heart race and making him wonder if he shouldn’t backpedal.
Dove wasn't asking to be held. She wasn't asking to be comforted or soothed or managed.
She was asking for someone she trusted to help her feel something other than pain.
To be reminded that she was alive, that her body could do more than carry grief, that there was still something in this world worth reaching for.
And Trent understood that. God, he understood that.
Because in the weeks after his mother died, the only thing that had made him feel anything at all was the weight of Dove's hand on his arm and the sound of her voice cutting through the silence. She’d been his reminder.
His proof that the world still had texture and warmth, and that someone in it gave a damn whether he lived or died.
He hadn’t recognized that as love. Not until recently.
But now it was his turn to give her what she needed.
He kissed her back.
Not gentle. Not careful. He gave her what she was asking for—all of it, everything, his hands and his mouth and the full weight of whatever he was feeling.
She arched into him, a sound catching in her throat that was half sob and half something else entirely, and he swallowed it.
Took it in. Held it for her so she didn't have to.
Her hands were everywhere. Pulling at his shirt, pushing at his shoulders, dragging him down onto the bed with an urgency that bordered on desperate.
She was relentless. Demanding. Moving against him with the focused intensity of a woman who'd spent her adult life channeling every emotion into action because sitting still with feeling was the one thing she'd never learned to do.
He let her lead. Let her set the pace and the pressure and the rhythm of it, because this wasn't about him. This was about giving her whatever she needed to get through the next hour, the next minute, the next breath. If she needed fire, he'd burn. If she needed tenderness, he'd be soft.
The quilt his mother had made ended up on the floor. His shirt was somewhere near the window. Her hands found the scar on his ribs where a gator had caught him when he was nineteen, and she pressed her mouth against it like she could heal old wounds with new ones.
He watched her tongue trace that old line of raised skin, and the heat of it shot through him. He slid his palm up under the hem of the shirt she still wore and found warm skin.
“Dove,” he said, or maybe he just breathed it.
Her name tasted like honey and whiskey and the morning.
He gathered the shirt in his fists and pulled it up.
She lifted her arms without hesitation, hair catching on the fabric, and then she was bare in the gray light, every inch of her goose pimpled from the blast of air and the kind of need that didn’t care about temperature.
He set his mouth on the slope of her shoulder where the shirt had slipped before, then lower, tasting skin that still held the faint blueberry sugar of yesterday. She arched and gripped his head like she intended to keep him there.
He had other plans.
He kissed his way across her neck as he cupped her perfect breasts. He licked one nipple and then sucked it into his mouth, hard, demanding, and unforgiving.
A half gasp mixed with a deep guttural groan escaped her mouth.
Easing off the bed, he shed his jeans and tugged her to the edge.
Curling his fingers in the elastic of her panties, he yanked them to her ankles, and tossed them across the room.
For a moment, he held his breath and just stared at her, sprawled out in his bed like she belonged there.
Like she was home. He reached out and twisted one nipple while he slipped a finger inside her, rubbing his thumb across her clit.
She arched into his hand, spreading her legs wider, rolling her hips, as if begging for more. He stroked her with one finger, then two. She clutched the sheets in her fist and bit down on her lower lip as she moaned softly.
He could do this all day long and be satisfied.
But right now, she needed more. He leaned over and pressed his tongue where his thumb had been, his fingers still gliding in and out.
“Oh god.” She clutched his head, her fingers threading through his hair, and her hips rolling with the rhythm of his tongue. “Yes, Trent. Yes…”
He draped both legs over his shoulders and drove his tongue deep inside.
If sunshine were a flavor, that’s what she tasted like, and he couldn’t get enough.
He reached up and toyed with both nipples, plucking, twisting, and pulling.
Not too hard, but hard enough that he was meeting her demands.
He lapped at her clit, circling and sucking, before diving inside, and then repeating the motion while her fingers dug relentlessly into his scalp.
Her breath came in quick pants. Warm liquid spilled from her like a fountain as her body bucked and jerked.
“Oh, yes, yes,” she managed. Her legs tightened around the sides of his face. Her back arched. Her muscles continued to twitch, and soft moans rose from her lips and landed on his ears like sweet music.
Carefully, he pushed her legs apart and kissed his way up her belly, across her breasts, to her lips. She shoved him to his back, her hand gliding down his chest.
He grabbed her wrist. “I won’t last if you do that. Not today.”
“That’s fine.” She smiled, climbing him, thighs bracketing his hips, heat searing between them.
She reached for him and guided him in with a surety that knocked the wind out of him.
He had a last flash of the world—curtains breathing with the morning, the smell of damp earth finding its way through the screens—and then it narrowed to the tight, yielding slide of her around him.
His body knew what to do. He tried to take inventory—steady her, let her set the pace, don’t get lost and leave her alone in this—and then she moved, and thinking fell away like useless equipment tossed overboard.
She rocked hard, head tipped back, throat bare.
He set his hands on her hips, gripping tight, holding on for dear life as she controlled everything.
She made sounds that hit him low, not pretty, not composed—broken pieces that told him she was right there with him, and that was all he needed.
He bit the inside of his cheek and kept his eyes open, watching her face change as the rhythm found them.
Sweat slid down his temple. The mattress complained.
“More,” she said, rough as gravel.
He gave it. He sat up and wrapped an arm around her back, pulled her tight against him, chest to chest, her heartbeat knocking against his.
He filled his palm with the curve of her, thumb drawing a line that made her gasp and clench.
He swore under his breath and did it again because that sound lit him up like a match in dry grass.
He kissed her mouth, her jaw, the damp hollow below her ear where her pulse hammered. She caught his earlobe in her teeth, and he almost came from that alone, that small, mean sweetness, the way she claimed him without asking permission.
He shifted his angle and felt the change hit her.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders hard enough to bruise.
She rode him like the motion itself could scratch grief out of bone.
He held on, pushed up into her, gave her that angle until her breath broke on a sound that went straight through him and scattered everything that wasn’t this.
She tightened around him, sudden and hot and insistent, and he felt the surge take her.
She shuddered, body clamping down, forehead thudding into his with a soft curse that might have been his name.
He didn’t close his eyes. He watched the way her mouth parted, the way her eyelids fluttered, the tear that slid down her cheek because even pleasure couldn’t outrun everything.
It undid him. He thrust again, and then he was gone, muscles snapping taut, heat ripping through him in a way that felt like surrender and relief and something he wanted to say, but it wasn’t the right time. Not yet.
He held her while it took him apart. He held her after, both of them shaking a little, breath sawing the quiet to pieces.
They stayed tangled like that. Her weight settled warm and heavy on him, skin damp, the room smelling like sweat and coffee and the humid green of the morning. His heart pounded against her palm where it still rested, as if it had been waiting there for her hand the whole time.
He smoothed his palm up and down her spine in slow passes. Her shuddering eased by degrees. He felt the small, involuntary after-twitches inside her and swallowed hard, wanting to say something stupid and reckless. Instead, he kissed her temple.
Outside, a bird called once, sharp and distant. The house clicked as it adjusted to the day. She made a low sound that he felt more than heard and tucked her face into his neck, breath damp and warm.
“I’ve got you,” he said, quietly. He could at least promise that much without scaring either of them.
He eased them down onto the mattress fully, still joined, unwilling to let the world slide back in just yet.
He reached for the edge of the quilt with his foot and dragged it up awkwardly until it covered her back.
Her shoulders rose and fell. Another minute, maybe two, and the rigid line between them softened.
He let himself memorize the weight of her, the heat, the way her hair stuck to his cheek.
If there were a way to keep this exact version of time, he would have figured it out.
He didn’t know how. He only knew he would stay.
Outside, the sun broke the tree line. Light spilled through the gap in the curtains, cutting a warm stripe across the bed, across them, turning the gray room gold.
The gators bellowed in the moat. A mockingbird started its morning repertoire from the cypress stand—cycling through stolen songs, one after another, like it couldn't decide which one to keep.
His breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t reached for the nightstand.
He hadn’t grabbed a condom. As much as he hated the damn things, they were necessary since Dove wasn’t taking any birth control.
Something about having an IUD removed sometime after she’d left the military and but hadn’t gone about getting on the pill yet.
Something she kept meaning to do and never did.
He was about to say something, but then Dove's hands found his face. Held him there. Made him look at her while the world narrowed down to the space between them, and all thoughts that weren’t Dove drifted away.
There was nothing left but he heat and her skin and the sound of her breathing and the way her eyes, even wrecked, even swollen and red-rimmed and exhausted, were the most alive thing he'd ever seen.
The conversation could wait a moment or two.
“Do you have to leave for your meeting with Keaton and Fallon soon?” she asked.
“About a half hour, but you can come if you want to. Actually, I’d feel better if you did. No reason for you to be alone.”
“I’m not staying in this reptile-infested house by myself.”
He chuckled. “You know, since we’re a thing, you kind of need to get used to that.”
“Not sure that’s possible.” She shivered, tossing her arm and leg over his body."
He kissed her nose. “After the meeting, I want to come back here because they’re exhuming my father’s body, and then I need to get ready for the town meeting.”
She propped herself up on his chest. “So far, I haven’t been able to make a connection between Sovereign Resources and the Hendersons, but I’m going to dig deeper.”
“My land wouldn’t necessarily help Sovereign.
They can access the water reservoir where the limestone is without setting foot on Mallor’s Landing,” he said.
“But Fallon and Keaton gave me some paperwork about how their blasting could upset the natural habitat that Mallor’s Landing has provided for three generations.
Not to mention the eco tours and educational programs run through the commercial side. ”
“Do they believe you could stop them from mining?”
“Neither one of them can be completely sure, but they do think I have the power to make Sovereign’s life a little bit miserable in gaining permits and whatnot.
But they could also be prepared for the likes of me.
They could already have answers to all the questions I’d ask.
Could have a plan in place to protect the wildlife here.
It’s not like companies like that aren’t aware they’re gonna disrupt communities. ”
“What about the Hendersons and their threat to expose you if you don’t sell and how that might play into all this?” She arched a brow. “You can’t just ignore that and think it will go away.”
“I’m not going to and I’ll talk with Keaton, Fallon, and Dawson.” He tucked her into his side. “But I don’t want to think about any of that right now. I want to take ten minutes of silence before the world gets loud again.”
And for a moment, there was nothing else.
Just the two of them, tangled together in a bed that smelled like coffee and cypress and something new.
Something that he was ready to admit to himself but wasn’t sure either one of them was brave enough to embrace what it meant.
He’d deal with the lack of a condom when he wasn’t too scared to discuss the implications.