Chapter 9 #2
Not toward the cabin. Past it. Past the circle of light, into the open ground where the snow falls thick and the firs stand dark against the sky. He follows without a word.
I stop at the edge of the tree line. I turn. The light from the cabin catches the snow in his fur, white flakes melting against the dark. His horns frame the tops of the firs behind him. He stares at me.
"Take me out there. Not in the cabin."
His chest rises and falls on a single breath.
"Every room you've ever been in was a cage.
" My voice holds steady but my pulse is hammering so hard I feel it in my throat.
"The pit. The handlers' quarters. Every ring, every holding pen, every room where someone told you what you were allowed to be.
" I step closer. "Out here, nothing is holding you.
No walls. No audience. It's your choice.
Everything that happens next is your choice. "
He stands rooted, the snow landing on his shoulders and melting against his skin, the warmth of him so intense that the flakes dissolve on contact. The purr starts low, lower than I've heard it, a vibration that travels through the ground under my boots.
I reach up. I hook my fingers in the collar of his shirt and pull him toward the trees.
His back finds the trunk of an old-growth cedar and I push him against it. The tree holds. Barely. He's massive even against the timber, his shoulders wider than the trunk, his horns scraping bark when he tilts his head down to look at me.
I unbutton his shirt. My fingers shake from the cold and from want and the buttons are too small for the speed I need.
He reaches behind his neck and pulls the shirt over his head in one motion.
I press my palms flat against his chest. The warmth of him radiates through my hands and up my wrists.
His scars catch the dim light from the porch. I know them now. I've kissed every one.
His purr deepens and a shelf of snow slides off the branch above us and scatters across the ground.
I pull my sweater over my head. The cold bites my bare skin and I gasp.
His hands close around my waist and draw me against him, and the burn of his chest against my bare stomach is so intense the cold stops mattering.
My bra unclasps and falls between us, and his palm covers my breast, and the sound I make into the cold air fogs between us.
"I want you," I tell him. My fingers work his belt. "Right here."
The belt comes free. I undo his jeans. I find him hard, thick, radiating heat that pulses against my palm when I wrap my fingers around his cock.
His breath punches out of him and the purr breaks into a growl that vibrates through the trunk of the cedar and sends another cascade of snow from the branches.
"Nina." My name drags out of him like broken gravel. His hands find my jeans, my zipper, and he strips them down my hips with a desperation that makes me grip his shoulders. The cold air hits my thighs and I shiver. His palms slide up the backs of my legs and lift.
I climb him.
My legs wrap around his waist and he holds me one-armed, his forearm locked under me like a shelf, my weight nothing to a frame built for the ring.
He turns us. My back presses against the rough bark of the cedar and his body pins me there, seven feet of heat and muscle between me and the winter, his cock pressing against my inner thigh through the thin cotton of my underwear.
His free hand cradles the back of my skull, his fingers spread through my hair, gentle despite the growl rolling through his chest.
I reach between us. I shove the cotton aside and guide him to my entrance. The head of his cock pushes against me, thick and hot. I'm wet enough that the first inch slides in and the stretch burns through me, full and relentless. I gasp and grip his shoulders and he stops.
His whole body locks. Every muscle in his arms, his back, his legs braced wide on the frozen ground.
I cup his face.
"Garrett."
His eyes find mine through the snow falling between us. Fierce with a need he still doesn't believe he's allowed to have.
"I choose you."
Not a plea. Not don't leave. Not the voice of a woman asking for reassurance.
A declaration.
His hips roll forward. He pushes deeper, slow, the stretch building until he's fully inside me and the sound I make carries through the firs and startles a bird from the canopy above us.
His forehead drops against mine. The growl drops low enough that I feel it in my spine, in my jaw, in the wood pressed against my back.
He moves.
The cold stops existing. He radiates enough warmth that steam rises off his shoulders where the snow keeps falling and melting, and my skin is flushed and burning everywhere he touches.
His arm holds me steady. His free hand moves down my stomach, his thumb finding my clit.
He reads my face. He adjusts. He figures out what I need in the space between one breath and the next and gives it to me.
My fingers dig into the fur at his shoulders.
I rock my hips against him, meeting each thrust, taking him deeper, and the drag of his cock inside me paired with the pressure of his thumb builds a heat low in my belly that winds tighter with every stroke.
The purr hums where his chest presses against mine, so deep I feel it behind my ribs.
"Garrett." I can't keep my voice level.
"I know, sha'li." Three words. The most he can give me and they're enough. His thumb circles faster. His hips drive harder, the tree creaking behind me, the rough trunk scraping my bare back, the growl in his chest splits raw and possessive and animalistic.
My orgasm hits in a wave that starts at my centre and rolls outward through my thighs, my stomach, my chest, my hands locked on his shoulders.
I clench around his cock in tight, pulsing spasms, my head drops back against the trunk and his name tears out of me into the cold air.
He thrusts twice more, deep, his arm tightening around me, and he comes inside me with a shudder that rolls through his whole body.
His face buries in my neck. The growl dissolves into the purr, the vibration spreading through the trunk at my back, low enough to shake snow from the branches above.
We stay pinned together against the tree.
His forehead against my neck. My legs locked around his waist. The snow falling on us both, melting against his skin, sticking in my hair. My heart slamming so hard I feel it where my ribs press against his.
He lifts his head. His eyes are wet. His mouth finds mine. He kisses me like he's afraid I'll disappear if he stops.
I shiver. Not from fear. Cold catching up now that the flush is fading from my exposed skin. He feels it. He pulls out of me, careful, gathers me against his chest with one arm under my knees, and carries me back through the snow, up the steps, through the cabin door.
He wraps me in every blanket he owns.
The quilt from the couch, the wool throw from the back of the rocker, the heavy comforter from his bed hauled through the hallway and draped around my shoulders until I'm buried in a nest on the floor by the hearth and the fire he's rebuilding blazes high enough to turn the whole room gold.
He feeds it log after log, the kindling catching, the flames climbing, and then he lowers himself to the floor beside me and sits with his back against the base of the couch.
I stop shaking. The fire does its work. He does the rest, radiating warmth through the layers between us. I lean into him and press my face against his arm and close my eyes.
His hand finds mine under the blankets. His thumb strokes once, across my knuckles.
I wake on Christmas morning in his bed. His arm locked around me, heavy and warm, his chest pressed to my back and the purr steady against my spine.
The carved hummingbird sits on the nightstand.
Through the window, the clearing has gone white overnight.
Fresh snow covers the tracks we left, the path from the tree line to the porch, the tire tracks from the sedan. All of it buried.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I slide out from under his arm and sit up against the headboard.
FaceTime. Mami, and behind her the chaos of a Castell Christmas: six siblings crowding the frame, Papi in the background holding the youngest nephew upside down by one ankle, Tía Valeria yelling from the kitchen about the pozole.
I angle the camera toward the window so they can see the snow, the fire still glowing in the hearth.
"Mija, where are you?" Mami's face fills the screen, dark eyes sharp, the crease between her brows that means this conversation isn't over.
"In Oregon, Mamá. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be."
"You look really happy." She says it like an accusation. "Who is making that noise?"
Behind me, the purr rolls through the mattress, low and steady. Garrett hasn't moved. My mouth curves before I can stop it.
"Someone who makes me happy, Mamá."
She stares at me through the screen for a long beat. Behind her, my brother Marco shoves my sister Lucia off the couch and Papi drops the nephew onto a pile of wrapping paper and Tía Valeria screams about the pozole.
"Bring him home sometime," Mami says.
The call ends. I set the phone down. Garrett's arm tightens around my waist. His face presses into the back of my neck and the purr deepens, and I hold the carved hummingbird in my free hand and watch the snow fall over the clearing.
My phone is still warm in my other hand. I open it. Scroll to drafts. The email to the Seattle clinic sits where I left it two weeks ago, half-finished, the cursor blinking after I'm available to start March 1st.
I delete it.
I set the phone face-down on the nightstand, close my eyes and let the purr carry me back under.