Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Wren
"You came back," I say, and my hands are flat on his chest, and his heart is going like a hammer on stone, and I mean it as the only thing that matters, because it is.
He's looking at me like he expects me to recoil.
Like he's braced for it. This enormous man who just walked out into a blizzard and came back the only one of two, standing in his own doorway expecting the woman he saved to be afraid of him, and underneath the dread on his face is something so much worse.
Resignation. Like he's been waiting nine years for someone to finally see the worst of him and confirm what he already believes, that the thing he's good at has made him a thing that can't be loved.
I am not going to confirm it. I have never been more certain of anything.
"I know what you did," I say. My voice doesn't shake. "I heard enough. A man came up here to help kill me, and you stopped him, and it was him or me, and you chose me. Eli. Look at me. You chose me."
"Wren—" His voice is wrecked. "You don't know what I?—"
"I know exactly what you are." I press harder against his chest, like I can push the truth into him through his ribs.
"You're the man who pulled me out of a wrecked truck upside down in a whiteout when every sane person was in bed.
You're the man who built a line on the floor so a hurt girl wouldn't feel hunted in the one place she was safe.
You're the man who turned me down yesterday because you wanted my yes to be real more than you wanted me.
" My eyes are burning now. "And you're the man who just killed for me and came back through your own door braced for me to be scared of you.
You are not a monster. You're the opposite.
You're the most carefully good man I have ever met and it cost you everything to be, and I am not. I am not. Going to flinch."
Something breaks in his face. Nine years of it, breaking.
"You're hurt," he says, hoarse, the last wall, "and snowed in, and I'm the only?—"
"It's a clear day." I take his face in my hands, this man who has to bend so far to let me.
"Look out the window, Eli. The storm broke this morning.
The sun's out. It's the clearest day on this mountain in a week.
You said when I could decide from solid ground.
" I'm crying now and smiling through it, and I have never in my life felt so much like myself.
"This is the most solid ground I have ever stood on.
I'm not deciding because I'm cold. I'm deciding because it's you.
I've been deciding since you said you believed me.
Now kiss me before I lose my nerve, because I've never done this and I'm choosing you to be the one I do it with, and that is a clear-day, solid-ground, eyes-open choice and you do not get to talk me out of it to be noble. "
He kisses me like the dam finally bursts.
It’s not gentle. His hand fists in my hair, his other arm bands tight around my back, careful of my taped ribs even now, and he lifts me clear off the floor, crushing me against his chest. His mouth is hot, demanding, tasting of cold mountain air and nine years of pent-up hunger.
I make a broken, needy sound I’ve never heard from myself before, and he devours it like it’s the only thing he’s wanted in his whole goddamn life.
When he finally pulls back, we’re both panting like we sprinted through the storm.
“Tell me to stop,” he growls against my lips, voice wrecked. “Any moment. One word and I stop.”
“I’m not going to say it.”
“Then I need to hear the other thing. Say yes, Wren. I need the words. Because of what you’ve never done. Because you’re trusting me with this. I won’t move without it.”
“Yes.” I breathe it into his mouth, against his jaw, into the pounding pulse under his ear. “Yes, Eli. All of it. Fuck me. Take me. Yes.”
He carries me to the bed like I weigh nothing, like I’m something precious he’s terrified to drop and even more terrified to lose.
He lays me down on the wool blankets with heartbreaking care, then kneels over me in the firelight and just looks.
Being seen by Eli Brandt feels like being stripped to the bone.
His eyes trace every inch of me, slow, thorough, reverent, like he’s reading the deepest layers of stone.
My pulse hammers in my throat, my wrists, and especially between my legs, where slick heat has already gathered.
“Tell me if anything’s too much,” he says, voice low. “Out loud. I stop the second you say it, no matter how deep I am. Understand?”
“I understand.” My voice is steady. “Now stop being so fucking careful with me, Eli. I’ve had three days of careful. I want the rest of you.”
Something raw and desperate cracks open in his face. The last of his restraint shatters. He bends to me.
He undresses me with steady hands that still tremble for me, and I love it.
He peels the base layer up over my taped ribs, watching my face, then bares my breasts to the firelight.
A deep, rumbling sound tears from his chest. His huge hand cups one breast, the same hand that cut me from the wreck, that could crush stone, and he squeezes gently, greedily, thumb dragging over my stiff nipple until I gasp.
He does it again, harder, then leans down and sucks the peak into his hot mouth, tongue lashing, beard scraping my sensitive skin.
“Eli—” It comes out a wrecked moan.
“I’ve got you.” He moves lower, kissing, licking, biting softly down my body. When he drags the rest of my clothes away and spreads my thighs, I’m completely bare and dripping for him. He stares at my soaked pussy like it’s a miracle.
“You’re sure?” he asks one last time, forehead pressed to mine.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in deep time.”
He laughs, low and broken, then that laugh turns hungry as his mouth moves down my body. He settles those broad shoulders between my thighs, gray eyes locked on mine, his breath hot against my aching cunt. “Tell me yes.”
“Yes. Eli, yes—please?—”
His mouth descends and I cry out. He licks into me like he’s starving, broad flat strokes of his tongue over my swollen clit, then sharp, precise flicks that make my hips jerk.
One massive hand splays across my belly, pinning me down as I writhe.
He eats my pussy like he’s memorizing it, sucking my clit, fucking me with his tongue, growling against my wet folds.
The wet, filthy sounds of his mouth fill the cabin along with my desperate pleas.
“That’s it,” he rasps, voice vibrating through my core. “Let go, Wren. You don’t have to be brave here. Just come on my tongue.”
He slides one thick finger into my tight cunt, slow and careful, then adds a second, stretching me open while his mouth stays locked on my clit.
The pressure coils tighter, hotter, until it snaps.
I come hard, thighs shaking around his head, pussy clenching and gushing around his fingers as I scream his name.
He watches every second of it, eyes dark and possessive, drinking in the sight of me falling apart for the first time.
He rises while I’m still trembling, kissing up my body, inner thigh, hip, taped ribs, mouth, letting me taste my own slickness on his tongue.
I reach for him desperately. He yanks off his shirt and I finally get my hands on all that hard, scarred muscle, his thick cock heavy and leaking against my thigh. Nerves flicker through me at his size.
He feels it instantly. “We go at your speed,” he murmurs, forehead to mine, holding himself back on braced arms. “Not mine. You say stop, we stop. I’ll hold you all night and call it the best night I’ve had in nine years.
” He drags the fat head of his cock through my dripping folds, teasing my clit until I shudder. “Tell me when.”
“Now,” I beg. “Eli, now. Please.”
He pushes in slowly, watching my face the whole time.
There’s a sharp stretch as my virgin pussy opens around his thick cock, then his stillness, his low soothing voice in my hair: “Easy, I’ve got you.
Breathe. Let me in.” I do, and the burn fades into a deep, golden fullness.
He’s seated to the hilt, stretching me wide, and we’re fused together at the top of the world.
“Okay?” His voice is shredded with restraint.
“More than okay.” I roll my hips. “Move. I want to feel you fuck me.”
He starts slow, pulling out and sliding back in, reading every gasp, every twitch.
Then the careful breaks and he gives me more, deeper, harder, the wet slap of his heavy balls against my ass filling the room.
The bed knocks against the wall as he drives into me.
“Fuck, Wren,” he groans into my neck, voice reverent and filthy.
“Your tight little pussy feels like heaven. I could lose myself in you.”
“Then lose yourself,” I gasp, legs wrapped around him as much as the splint allows. “Come home, Eli. Harder. I’m load-bearing. I can take it.”
He laughs, broken and wild, and fucks me harder. His hand slips between us, thumb circling my clit in time with every thrust. The second orgasm builds fast and vicious. I’m begging, clawing at his back, chasing it.
“I’ve got you,” he pants, watching me. “Come on my cock. Let me feel this pussy milk me. Give me everything.”
It crashes over me harder than before, white-hot, blinding.
My cunt clamps down around his thick shaft, spasming wildly as I come with his name on my lips.
He follows right behind me with a deep, guttural roar, burying himself to the hilt and pumping rope after thick rope of hot cum deep inside me.
His arms lock around me like I’m the one anchoring him now, his face buried in my hair as the last of the pleasure rips through both of us.
For one long moment there’s nothing else—just him, just us, just this raw, perfect claiming in the firelight.
* * *
After, in the long gold quiet, tangled in his arms with his heart slowing under my ear and the firelight low and the killers somewhere down the mountain forgotten for one stolen hour, I understand for the first time why people risk everything for this.
Why they leave and arrive and ruin their lives for it.
Because it's not the body. It's the being seen. It's a man who deals only in true numbers looking at the truest thing you've got and choosing, with his whole self, not to look away.
And when the shaking has gone all the way to stillness, I press my mouth to the old scar on his shoulder and whisper the thing I decided two nights ago and have known since.
"I love you," I tell him. "Clear day. Solid ground. No taking it back."
His arms tighten. I feel him not-trembling, the way he does when something costs him.
"Wren," he says, and his voice is the bottom of the quarry and the top of the mountain both. "God help me. I love you too."