Chapter 8 #3
“All the cabins have names. We thought it was nicer than numbers.”
“Who thought it was?”
“We,” he said. “The collective of us.”
“Which one of you was responsible for the cute animal names?”
“Okay. It was me, and it’s not cute,” he said, sounding angry that he’d had to admit to having even a shred of whimsy in his soul.
She laughed. “I very much disagree.”
There was a path next to each sign, lined with the same bark as the paths she had walked on in other parts of the property.
Rich and red. It led them from the little parking lot into the trees, where it might’ve been fifteen degrees cooler than it was away from the canopy.
It was like stepping into another world.
It was incredible.
“This is gorgeous,” she whispered.
The sound of the river was amplified, reverberating off the dense foliage. There were trees and bushes flourishing around each cabin, giving them a little nook of privacy even though they were positioned closely together.
Each one was small, rustic, and had a back deck that looked over the river.
“This is where I would stay,” she said.
“Is it?”
“Yes. The hotel is lovely. But I love this. It’s so private and…”
She turned to face him, and she saw heat flare in his eyes again.
She waited for him to say it. I’m your boss.
Waited for him to put up that guard rail between the two of them like he had done yesterday.
But he didn’t.
“Come on, I’ll show you the inside.”
They walked back up the trail and followed to where it wrapped around in front of Osprey, one of the cabins toward the end.
He took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.
She was held captive by the confident, masculine energy he gave off with everything he did.
By how large his hands looked wrapped around the key.
Or maybe that was just a sign that she needed to do something about this. And quickly.
Because if you were lusting after the way a man unlocked the door, you were maybe somewhere several yards past sane.
Understandable, considering the situation she found herself in.
And what she had decided was that decorum was for other people.
Certainly not for her. Decorum was for people who hadn’t just had their entire lives implode around them.
Decorum, perhaps, was for the people who had reaped rewards from it. She certainly hadn’t. Oh, she had for a while. She’d been convinced that she had done it. That she had beaten the system. That she wasn’t just perpetuating the same kind of problems that she had grown up in.
But here she was, divorced. In spite of her best efforts. Here she was, starting again, even though what she had wanted to be doing now was moving into a more settled phase of her life.
So why not blow it up? Why not say to hell with everything? If her good behavior hadn’t been rewarded, maybe her bad behavior wouldn’t be punished.
Maybe that was faulty logic.
She didn’t care.
He pushed open the door, and she followed him into the cabin. It had one large room, with a bed in the corner, and a kitchenette. There were big picture windows that provided views of the river, and off to the left was a bathroom.
With a door that actually swung shut.
“I can’t even tell you how much I appreciate you not doing barn doors on the bathrooms.”
“I hate those,” he said. “They don’t give you any privacy.”
“I know,” she said.
The conversation had lifted some of the tension, but the moment silence fell, it descended again.
His eyes were intent on hers, and she was waiting. Waiting for him to do something. Waiting for him to move closer to her. Just waiting.
In spite of herself, she turned to look at the bed, which felt like a signal, whether she had meant it to be or not.
Then she looked back at him. As if that signal might not have been as direct as she wanted it to be.
“Cody…”
He took a step toward her, dark eyes blazing. “I’m your boss,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes. You are.”
“I’m your boss,” he said again, putting different emphasis on different words this time.
“I know,” she whispered.
A harsh breath escaped his lips, somewhere between a groan and a laugh rumbling in his chest. He looked up, as though he was waiting for some kind of divine intervention.
And then, when none presented itself, he moved closer to her, wrapped his arm around her waist, and brought her up against his body. “I’m not crazy,” he said.
She shook her head.
“You feel it?” he whispered, his voice ragged and harsh.
She nodded.
“This is a bad fucking idea.”
“It is. It’s a very bad idea. I work for you, I need this job so badly, and I just got out of a very long-term relationship.”
“You’re aware that… this has nothing to do with your job.”
“It never even crossed my mind.”
“Good.”
That was the last thing he said before he claimed her mouth.
And it was a claiming.
His kiss was hard and fierce. And it lit her on fire from her toes all the way to the top of her head. Bright sparks shimmering everywhere in between.
She’d had any number of kisses in her life.
All from the same man. And she had thought that true love’s kiss would shine brighter than them all.
But true love’s kiss had nothing on revenge’s first kiss.
Reclaiming your life’s first kiss. Forbidden desire’s first kiss.
This first kiss with Cody was all those things and more, and it had her gasping for breath. Had her praying it would never end.
He didn’t just kiss her. He consumed her.
And she had never felt so wanted, so desired in all of her life. She wanted to cling to him, to never let go of him, and for him to never let go of her. She wanted this to go on forever. She didn’t feel alone. She felt needed.
All because of a kiss. It was the most terrifying, intense thing she had ever felt in her life.
And yet, she had never wanted so badly to embrace something this frightening before.
But oh, she wanted to embrace it now. She wanted to embody it. She wanted to be it.
She kissed him back, with everything in her, parting her lips and letting his tongue slide against hers.
It was a wild sensation.
Before now, Aiden was the only man she’d ever kissed.
The shape of Cody’s mouth was different. His whole body was new, and the sensation of being claimed by him was something utterly unique.
Maybe other people spent their whole lives having this experience every other weekend, a new partner, a new sexual conquest as easy as changing their clothes, but Marlowe had never done it, and so this seemed radically novel, and she hoped that was all it was.
Because she hoped she wasn’t putting herself into some deep, emotional pit, leading herself into a tragic disaster that would compromise the fragile new life she was trying to build.
There was no time to think about that. No time to worry about it.
There was nothing in her that even wanted to worry about it.
All she wanted to do was hold onto him. All she wanted to do was find out what happened next.
That was like a breath, a surge of adrenaline.
Wanting to know what happened next.
It was an amazing feeling, because for the last week, everything had been dreaded. There had been nothing good on the horizon, nothing but dealing with the fallout of the end of her marriage.
Now there was this. Like a bright green leaf bud on a tree that she had been certain would never grow anything new again.
This was astonishing.
It was a revelation.
She clung to his shoulders, and he kissed her down to the bed.
She gasped, arching up off the mattress, breasts pressed against the hard wall of his chest.
They had too many clothes on.
She nearly laughed. She had put on nice clothes, clean clothes, matching underwear, because part of her had hoped that she would end up here. Part of her had wanted this so badly.
Had wanted to throw everything, caution, common sense, and rational thought to the wind. And cling to him instead.
That’s what she was doing.
He stripped his shirt off, and the sound she made, partly a groan, a growl, and a shocked gasp, was completely inelegant and unladylike, and absolutely not sexy. But his body was incredible.
All sculpted lines and hard muscle. There was dark hair on his chest, and he was just so… masculine.
She didn’t want to draw comparisons between him and Aiden, mainly because she didn’t want to think about Aiden right now, but they were so different. She was going to let her thoughts end there.
Because she wanted to be in the moment. She wondered when the last time was she had truly been in the moment. That was just about her, more than her marriage, her present circumstances, or anything else.
She was always planning. Always moving toward the next thing, because she was so desperate to make things last, to make them permanent. If she got a taste of something nice, she didn’t want to then be deprived of it.
This was an exercise in just living for now.
Something she wasn’t good at historically. But she wanted to be.
She wanted to embrace feeling good right now. She wanted to feel beautiful. She wanted this.
She moved her hands over his chest, looked up at him, and then kissed him again, so that she didn’t say anything stupid. So that she didn’t make declarations that she didn’t mean to make, or swear eternal devotion to his abs, because dear God, they were perfect.
The kissing got heated, he pulled her shirt off, and she unhooked her bra.
He pulled away from her, and looked down at her breasts, it was the only thing he could possibly be looking at with that kind of intense focus.
He moved his hands up and cupped them, sliding his thumbs over her nipples.
It felt amazing, but half of it was watching his face while he did it. He looked like a starving man, one who had just been given a glorious feast, and nothing had ever made her feel so…