Chapter Seventeen
Hazel’s skin was cold, but inside, she burned.
While Ash opened up the barn, she had to hug herself to keep from wrapping her arms around him. If that made her desperate, so be it. She was. Every sensor in her touch-starved body had fired back online. It had been so long since anyone had put their hands on her, and the brief loss of contact while he went around flipping on lights, closing the door, and plugging in a space heater, tested her self-control.
The inside of the barn didn’t match its rough exterior—fully finished with warm gray walls, and insulated, she guessed, from the complete hush of the wind outside. The wood-plank floor was a bit nicked and scuffed but swept clean around neat rows of boxes. And though the rafters were high, a loft ate into half of it with a circle staircase leading up. Big, rustic wagon-wheel chandeliers lit up the space.
“Are we trespassing?” she asked suddenly.
He shook his head, then moved in close behind her and rubbed warmth into her arms. That wasn’t much of an answer, and this was clearly private property—they’d passed a house on the way in—but she lost her conviction as soon as she felt him at her back. She tried to spin around, but he stilled her. One hand slid across her stomach, the other to her hip then her butt. He nipped at her ear as his hand dragged up to her breast. Just like outside, she thought she might collapse from the relief of that wide, warm palm.
“God, your body,” he murmured. “Don’t know where to touch you first.”
The heater hummed, low and steady, an echo of the thrum of blood in her ears. It was either incredibly efficient, or she was so turned on she could no longer register the chill.
All Hazel could do in this position was receive his hot, open-mouthed kisses on the back of her neck, the electric promise of his fingers tracing her waistband, dipping just inside to skim the top of her underwear. She endured the agonizing bliss of it until, finally, desperate, she turned in his arms.
She was struck by how beautiful he looked right now, watchful and intense, his eyes dark, locked on her. Even his eyebrows did something to her, thick and a little unruly, that sexy scar. Hazel kissed one, pulling a soft laugh from him. She kissed the other, then his cheek, his chin, his throat, the dip where his neck met his shoulder. Her kisses turned to sucking, and she pressed her palms to his chest, his stomach, working them under his layers of shirts to feel his sun-hot skin over ridges of lean muscles. Oh, yes. This. She wanted this body on hers.
“Take this off,” she said, trying to pull apart the halves of his flannel.
He laughed. “They’re buttons, not snaps.”
“They’re annoying.”
He shrugged his jacket off then worked the shirt buttons quickly, and she yanked it down his shoulders. Next came the Henley underneath and then—
“Jesus Christ, this is the clown car of shirts.” She shoved the last undershirt, a threadbare tee, up and off, and there he was, bare and lean, his chest rising and falling. She tore off her own sweater and shirt in one quick movement, not caring where they fell, and melded her body to his.
Then her hands were between them, working at his fly.
Ash groaned and walked her backward until her backside hit a ledge. A workbench, she realized, just as he bent to catch the backs of her thighs and lifted her onto it.
She’d managed to get his zipper down, and now that her face was just above his, she had the perfect vantage point to see his pleasure pass across it when she slipped her hand in and palmed him over his underwear. He swayed involuntarily into her touch and pulled her face down for a kiss that immediately turned rough, his tongue probing into her mouth, teeth catching her lip.
Her mind snagged on the unexpected image of Christmas trees.
Ash pulled away, panting, eyes dark with want. “Are you laughing with your hand down my pants?”
“You told me you weren’t working with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree in here.” She couldn’t get it out without a giggle. “You weren’t lying.”
He opened and closed his mouth, at a loss. “If you utter the word ‘stately,’ I’m out of here.”
“It’s a compliment.”
He shook his head, trying for stern, but he was breathless, eyelids heavy, and very hard against her hand.
Then, an unexpected touch at the seam of her jeans pressed right at the part of her that had begun to ache, and she squeezed her thighs around his hips, heels at the backs of his knees begging him closer. His mouth dropped to her collarbone. Before she could get used to the delicious wet warmth there, he moved lower, lips dragging over her, tongue darting out to lick just above her bra. He tried the clasp at her back for two seconds before giving up, hooking his fingers into one cup, and tugging it down. His mouth covered and then sucked her nipple, a moan vibrating straight to her heart.
She didn’t recognize her own voice, but yes, that was a whimper, and it had come from her. She was a live wire from months of deprivation and loneliness. But this—he—was something else. She was losing control a lot faster than usual, writhing into him, nearly hyperventilating. She wanted him so badly she could cry.
Hazel shoved her hand inside his waistband, wrapped her fingers around him.
He groaned at the contact, rocked forward into her grip as she began to work him. “Fuck. Wait.” Ash tilted his face up to the open rafters of the barn and then back down, kissing her more gently this time. “If you keep that up,” he murmured against her lips, “this isn’t going to last as long as either of us wants.”
She smiled and knew he felt it because he grumbled, “Don’t be cute. I want this to be good for you.”
Every inch of him screamed restraint. His shoulder muscles, his abs, his jaw—they were all rubber bands about to snap. Couldn’t he see she felt the same, practically bursting through her own skin? She wanted to see him lose control, but not at the expense of his pride, even if her own had left the building.
She released her hold on him, ran her palms up his back to the smooth plane of each shoulder blade as he snaked a hand into her pants—when had he gotten them open?—and stroked the damp heat of her underwear, making her jump and then grind shamelessly into his touch.
After a few rolls of her hips, he stopped to work her jeans down over her butt. The wooden workbench was cold under the backs of her thighs. The shock of it wasn’t entirely unwelcome, though, one extreme swinging to its opposite, just like her warring desires to race ahead and to savor this.
He pulled her closer to the edge so she was perched there, one hand clinging to the back of his neck, the other planted behind her for leverage. His fingers were finally on her without a barrier, gently stroking her slick heat then circling right where she wanted him.
“Ash,” she panted.
“What do you want?”
She wanted everything—his fingers, his mouth, him pushing deep inside her. She wanted the sweet release that was building, but also for this to never end.
“Don’t go quiet on me now,” he teased. He stroked her entrance, thumb still circling, and she shuddered in anticipation.
“Ash,” she said again, his name a harsh intake of breath, broken and needy.
“God, you’re too much.” In any other context, she might have taken this as a complaint, but his voice was so raw and wanting.
He yanked her underwear down her thighs, tilting her back so her shoulders and head met the pegboard for tools on the wall. On the other side of the table, something clattered down and fell to the floor with a metallic clunk. She covered her head, laughing, but then his face was between her thighs, and he was licking into her, and she forgot everything else except the hot velvet press of his tongue.
When she clutched his hair, he pushed a finger into her, withdrew it, and immediately added another, the stretch and fullness almost pushing her over the edge. She felt unmoored, swept up in a huge swell about to break.
“Condom?” she managed to say.
He shook his head then pulled back. “I don’t—”
“What?”
“Hazel, I didn’t bring condoms to a family festival.” He brought his mouth back to her like this wasn’t the worst possible news he could give her right now.
“Whose barn is this? There was alcohol. Maybe there are condoms.”
The rumble of his laugh against her core made her eyes flutter closed. “Do you want me to stop and look?”
Yes. No. God, she didn’t know anything right now, except that she wanted more of him, all of him. His mouth was already back to work.
“I’m close.” It came out like a complaint.
“Good.”
If she was going to fall apart, she wanted him right there with her. “Reciprocity,” she said, unable to articulate anything more.
At first, he kept his steady pace against and inside of her, but when she tugged helplessly at his hair, he relented, rising back up. “Okay, okay.” He tongued at her free breast again and caressed and massaged the other. Every part of her body clenched with the insane pleasure of it, and she wasted no time getting back into his boxer briefs.
Soon, his teasing at her nipple turned aimless as he rocked his hips, pushing himself into her grip. Even his mouth fell away when his breathing turned ragged. He curled over her, their chests touching, their wrists and hands brushing with each pull and thrust. He was right there, almost where she wanted him, so tantalizingly close. His weight now resting more heavily on her, fingers still filling her, pushing deep while she ground hard against the heel of his palm, their bodies simulating what they were barely not doing, she could imagine the real thing, and she broke.
With a sharp cry, she buried her face into his neck, and somehow, in the midst of his own quickening, unsteady thrusts, he cradled the back of her head so sweetly, holding her to him. He saw her through it, her body shuddering, and then he followed, falling against her and groaning her name.