Chapter 5
GARRETT
Day five and the whole cabin smells like her.
I don't know when that happened. Somewhere between the second night and this morning. She uses my soap because it's all I have and it smells different on her than it does on me. Warmer. Greener. Like it had been waiting for the right skin.
She's at the kitchen table with a mug between her hands and my Henley slipping off one shoulder and a bruise at her temple that's almost gone. Ankle wrapped fresh this morning. She's supposed to be keeping it elevated. She's not. I already lost that argument twice today.
"You're staring."
"I know."
"You could do something about it."
I could.
I don't.
Because I've been doing something about it every night since Parker's headlights swung down the mountain.
I kiss her on the couch until neither of us can breathe.
I walk her to the bedroom. I tuck the blanket.
I kiss her forehead. I close the door halfway.
I sleep on the couch with a hard-on that could split firewood.
Five days of that.
She's stopped pretending she sleeps through any of it.
I cross the kitchen. Refill her coffee. Set the pot back down.
Stay standing behind her chair longer than I need to.
My hand goes to the back of her neck under her hair, the way it's started doing whenever I pass her, and she tips her head forward without being asked and lets me work my thumb along the muscle there.
She makes a soft sound. The kind a woman makes when she's trying not to make one.
My jeans get tighter.
"Hawk."
"Mm."
"You're going to have to make a decision."
"About."
"About whether we're going to keep pretending the couch is working out for you."
I don't answer.
I lean down instead. Put my mouth at the corner of her jaw. Not a kiss. A breath. She shivers.
Ghost lifts his head from the rug, gives me a long-suffering look, and flops back down. Traitor is judging me now.
"Parker's coming up tomorrow afternoon."
"I know."
"Raid's Thursday. You'll be out of here by end of the week."
"I know."
"Delilah."
"I know, Hawk. That's what I'm saying. I've got three nights left on this mountain. You're going to spend them on the couch?"
I straighten up. Walk to the woodstove. Add a log I don't need to add. Put my hands flat on the mantel and stare at the fire until my breathing steadies.
"I'm trying to do this right."
"I know you are."
"You've had a concussion, a broken ankle, bruised ribs, a man with a rifle on your trail, and about six hours of real sleep in a week."
"All of which is true, and none of which makes me want you any less."
I turn.
She's twisted in her chair to watch me. The Henley is slipping further off that shoulder. The curve of her collarbone has become a problem that owns real estate in my head.
"Come here."
She stands. Balances. Hops the first two steps and then limps the rest on a foot that can take some weight now. I close the distance halfway because I'm done pretending I can let her come all the way to me.
I catch her waist with both hands.
"You sure."
"Don't."
"Don't what."
"Don't ask me that like I might not know my own mind."
I huff a laugh into her hair. "Noted."
"Garrett."
She almost never uses that. She uses Hawk. Garrett lands in a part of me that hasn't been used in fifteen years.
I bend. Pick her up under her thighs. She wraps her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck and I carry her to the bedroom that's been hers all week.
The door closes behind me with a kick.
The bed is a double. Quilt my mother pieced before she died. Pillow that smells like her now because she's been sleeping on it for five nights.
I lay her down careful. Ribs. Ankle. I'm catalogued on both.
Then I stop being careful about anything else.
My mouth finds hers. The kisses I've been rationing for five days stop being rationed. She arches up into me and her hands are in my hair and her good leg hooks behind my thigh and pulls.
I break off long enough to get my flannel over my head.
My shirt goes with it. She sits up, winces once, pulls the Henley up and off, and it's dark in the bedroom except for the lamp in the hall but I can see her, freckles across the tops of her breasts, nipples already tight, soft belly I want to put my mouth on, scar along her knee from a field season that went wrong.
I put a hand flat on her sternum and ease her back down.
"Let me."
"Let you what."
"Everything."
Her eyes darken.
"Yes."
I start at her mouth. Work my way down. Throat.
Collarbone. I take one nipple into my mouth and she makes a sound that tells me the Henley has been a problem for her too.
I spend time there. Too much time. Not enough.
Her hand fists in my hair and holds me and I feel the shudder that rolls through her when I drag my teeth.
I switch sides. She arches. Swears.
My beard scratches down her stomach. She laughs once, breathless. "That's going to leave a mark."
"Good."
I hook my fingers in the waistband of the borrowed flannel pants she's been living in and work them off slow, mindful of the wrapped ankle. I drop them over the side of the bed.
Pause.
Look at her.
She's flushed down her chest. Thighs pressed together because she's always going to be her, even here, even now, careful with what she shows and what she holds back. I put one hand on each knee and open her.
"Garrett."
"I've been thinking about this for five days."
"Only five?"
I grin against the inside of her thigh. Bite softly. She jolts.
Then I put my mouth on her.
She tastes like clean salt and the soap I use and something sweeter underneath that belongs only to her.
I eat her like I mean it. Flat tongue across her clit first, then tighter, then two fingers curled up inside her while my mouth stays where she wants it.
Her thighs close on my ears. Good. Let them.
When she comes, she comes quiet. A gasp and a stutter and her whole body going tight and then soft, and my name half strangled in her throat.
I keep going.
She tries to push me off. I pin her hips with a forearm across her pelvis, careful of the ribs, and I don't let up until she's shaking and saying please and please and please and comes again harder than the first.
Then I come up.
Kiss her soft belly. Her hipbone. The underside of her breast. Her throat.
Her mouth.
She tastes herself on me and her tongue chases it and her hand slides between us and palms me through my jeans, and I let out a breath that sounds like I've been holding it a year.
I get my jeans off. Boxers with them. Condom from the nightstand because I put one there on day three and I'm not proud of how hopeful that was.
She watches me roll it on. Licks her lips. "God."
"What."
"You."
I fit myself between her thighs. Careful of the ankle. Rest my forehead against hers.
"Tell me if anything hurts."
"Yes sir."
I push in.
Slow. All the way.
Her mouth falls open and her hand fists at the small of my back and I don't move. I can't move. Not for a second. She's tight and hot and looking up at me like I've done something miraculous by showing up at all.
"Garrett."
"I know."
I start to move.
Deep. Unhurried. I've been a patient man my whole life and this is what the patience was for. I watch her face. I watch the freckles across her nose. I watch the way her eyes slip closed and open again to find mine because she can't help it.
Her good leg wraps around my hip.
"Harder."
"You sure."
"Hawk."
I give her harder.
She takes it. All of it. Her hand slides up into my hair and pulls and I drop my forehead to her collarbone and fuck her in long deep strokes that shake the headboard against the wall, and her breath catches with every one of them, and I know I'm not going to last long because I've been hard for five days and she's saying my name like it means something.
"I'm close."
"Me too. Come with me."
She does.
Clenches around me like a fist and breaks apart under me and I follow her over with my teeth in the meat of her shoulder to keep from making the sound I want to make.
We lie there. Breathing. My weight half on her, half on my elbow so I don't crush her ribs. Her hand strokes slow up and down the back of my neck.
"Hawk."
"Mm."
"That was worth the couch."
I laugh into her hair.
First real laugh in about four years.