Chapter Seven
Dawn came in dirty gray.
The rain had thinned to a drip off the eaves. The ridge looked scoured. I was still inside her when the radio cracked, her cheek on my chest, my hand on her stomach, the bunk a wreck of blankets and the night we had made.
“Lookout Seven, base. Miller. You copy?”
I reached for the handset without leaving her body.
“Seven. Hale.”
“Switchback’s clearing. Crews cut the top pine an hour ago. Truck’ll be at the landing in fifty. Get your volunteer decent and start down when you can see the steps.”
“Copy.”
I hung it.
She had heard every word. She sat up on me, wincing in a way that was all stretch and memory. At some point in the night I had put her back in my flannel. She reached past it for the volunteer shirt on the chair, like the night could be folded and put away with it.
I caught her wrist.
“No.”
“They’ll be here.”
“In fifty minutes. You’re not putting that on like I didn’t spend the night in you.”
Color hit her face. Heat, not shame. She was still sitting on my cock. She knew exactly what I meant.
I pulled out of her only long enough to stand and haul her with me. Upright. Efficient. No romance in it. I turned her to the map table, bent her over the edge, and notched myself against her. Palms on contour lines. My flannel still the only thing covering her.
“Last time before there are other people on this mountain,” I said against her ear. Fist in her hair. Other hand spanning her hip. “Take it.”
She pushed back onto me.
I slid in on one long, wet stroke and had to breathe through the feel of it.
Swollen. Slick. Already used and still clamping down like she wanted to keep me.
The map table scraped an inch across the floor.
I pulled almost out and watched myself leave her, thick and shining, then fed it back in slow so she had to feel every inch of the stretch all over again.
“Look at that,” I muttered. “Still trying to keep me. After everything I already put in you.”
“Grant—”
“I know. Hold the table.”
I gave her a few of those filthy, measuring strokes, then stopped being kind about the clock.
I snapped my hips in, and the breath punched out of her.
Again. Deeper. The wet sound of it filled the cabin, obscene in the morning quiet.
I kept the fist in her hair and used it to arch her, changing the angle until she cried out, went up on her toes, and still pushed back for more.
“That’s it. Use it. You don’t get to file this night away in a uniform.”
I reached around and found her clit.
She was already soaked, swollen, oversensitive from the night, and the first pass of my fingers made her jerk against the table. I did not tease. I rubbed her in time with the thrusts, two fingers circling, pressing, using her own wetness until her arms started to shake.
“That’s it. Don’t hold it.”
“Grant—I’m— I can’t—”
“You can. Come on my cock.”
She broke with a cry she tried to bury in her arm and failed.
Her whole body locked, then shook, pussy clamping down around me so hard I snarled and had to plant my feet.
I felt every pulse of it, that tight rhythmic squeeze trying to pull me over with her.
I fucked her through it. I did not ease off.
I kept driving into that fluttering heat, kept my fingers moving on her clit, and when the first peak started to fall I dragged a second out of her, smaller, meaner, until she was sobbing little yeses into her arm and dripping down the insides of her thighs.
“Good. Again if you’ve got it, I want you wrecked on this table.”
She shuddered and gave me another helpless clench, aftershock after aftershock, her cheek pressed to the map, my fist still in her hair. I watched myself slide in and out of her, thick, shining, her body trying to keep me on every stroke.
“One more from me,” I said against her spine. “Then you walk.”
“Give it to me.” Her voice was raw. Sure. “I want it. Come in me.”
That finished me.
I buried myself to the root and came with a groan I did not swallow.
It tore through me in hard, ugly pulses.
I pumped into her through all of it, short, filthy thrusts, filling her a fourth time while first light crawled across the glass.
I stayed locked in until there was nothing left to give.
I rolled my hips once more to push it deeper and felt her whimper around me.
When I finally pulled out, the mess of us followed, thick and obvious, sliding down her thigh. I gathered it with two fingers and pushed it back into her, slow, and held it there while she trembled on the table.
“That stays while you walk.”
She nodded, breathless, still bent over the map, still pulsing around my fingers like her body had not gotten the message that we were out of time.
I stepped back to find my clothes.
She turned, flushed, wrecked, and took the shirt out of my hands.
“Let me.”
I let her.
She dressed me carefully, as if leaving fingerprints.
Undershirt first, smoothing it down my chest with both hands.
Then the flannel she hadn’t tried to take back.
She threaded my belt through the loops with unsteady fingers, pulled up my pants, and knelt to lace my boots because it was easier than making me sit.
I looked down and put a gentle hand in her hair, just to feel her there.
When she stood, she reached for the chair, picked her underwear off the seat, and pressed the damp scrap into my palm.
“Keep them.”
I closed my fist around the cotton. Still damp. Still hers.
“A souvenir,” she said, chin up, color high. “So you don’t get to pretend this was just weather.”
I tucked them into my inside pocket, against my chest, where the crew would not see and I would feel them all the way down the mountain.
“Get dressed. My flannel stays under yours.”
She did it. Pants with nothing underneath. Service shirt over my flannel. I rolled the cuffs so her hands came free. I watched her try to stand like her legs belonged to someone else.
“Stairs. Slow. I’ve got you.”
Twelve flights.
The grate was slick. The air smelled like wet pine and cut wood.
I kept a hand at her back the whole way down, not because she would fall, but because I was not done watching her move after I had used her.
She hissed under her breath at the fifth landing and shot me a look that was half glare, half heat.
“Every step,” I said.
“I know.”
The truck was already at the landing when we hit dirt. Miller in the cab. A kid from the cut crew on the tailgate. Nobody who needed to know a damn thing.
I put her pack in the bed. I did not kiss her in front of them. Her underwear sat over my heart like a second pulse.
I stepped close enough that only she could hear me.
“You radio me when you’re off shift. Not the district channel. Mine.” I named the frequency. I watched her file it. “You’re not disappearing into the volunteer list. You hear me?”
She looked up at me, twenty-one, wrecked in a way that did not show on a uniform, my flannel hiding under Forest Service cotton and nothing at all under her pants.
“I hear you.”
“Say it.”
“I’ll radio you when I’m off shift.”
“Good.”
Miller tapped the horn. I handed her up into the cab and shut the door. Through the window she glanced once at the tower, then at my mouth, then away before anyone else could see it.
The truck turned down the newly cut switchback.
I stood in the road and watched them go, the lookout rising behind me, glass dull in the morning, one cot upstairs that was going to need new sheets and a better story than weather. Her underwear was a secret in my pocket. The road was open.
She was still wearing my shirt.