6. Holt
Holt
The day passes as usual, but time goes slowly when you’re waiting for something good to happen. I go to the mill. I run the floor. I drive home at five, thinking about her the whole forty minutes.
Sloane’s lights are on when I pull up. I make dinner and she knocks at six-thirty, earlier than she means to. I open the door. She's in a soft blue shirt and her hair's loose, and she smells like cedar and whatever soap she's been using.
"Smells good," she says.
I step back to let her in and don't say so do you because I have some self-control left. Not much.
She moves through my kitchen the way she moves through every space — hands trailing the counter edge, reading it, figuring out what it wants to be. Her palm flattens against the wood and slides slowly to the edge, and I watch her hand and think about where else I want it.
"You hand-planed this?"
"Yeah."
"You can feel where you changed pressure." She looks up. The kitchen light catches her eyes, and she's looking at me the way she's been looking at me all week — like she's already decided and is just waiting for me to catch up. "I like it. Means somebody made it."
I hold her gaze. “Thank you." I don’t know what else to say.
We eat. She talks with her hands about cedar sources and contractor calls and measurements that keep coming out wrong, and I watch her mouth and her hands and the way she tucks one foot up under herself in my chair like she's been sitting at this table for years.
I let her talk. I could listen to her all night.
I'm also thinking about getting her out of that shirt, which I've been thinking about since she knocked, so the conversation is doing what it needs to do.
Thirteen years on this mountain. Every day of it earned this one.
After dinner, she's at the sink before I am, water running, sleeves pushed to her elbows. I come up beside her; she's close enough that I can feel the warmth off her arm without touching it. She hands me the dish towel.
We work through the stack in the quiet, just the two of us, her shoulder almost against mine, the last light going amber through the window.
It's perfectly domestic.
She looks at me for a long moment. Then she says, quiet and direct: "I'm not selling it, Holt. I was never going to sell it." A beat. "I think I came here to stay, and I didn't know how to say that yet."
That's it. That's all I needed.
I put down the dish towel and turn to her and take her face in both hands and kiss her — not the way I kissed her at the woodpile, which was urgency and days of wanting finally tipping over.
Slower. I have her, and I know it now. I take my time with her mouth, her jaw, the soft place I kiss her, and she grabs my shirt in both fists, and that's all I needed to know.
I walk her back to the bedroom. She doesn't hesitate. She's been as ready as I have, which is the thing about Sloane — she doesn't waste time.
I pull her shirt over her head. Unhook her bra and drop it.
She's got full, soft breasts and I get my hands on them and my mouth on her right nipple, and she sucks in a breath and grips my hair hard enough to pull.
Good. I take my time with her — switching sides, using my teeth just enough — until she's pushing her hips against me, looking for something I'm not giving her yet.
I pop the button on her jeans. Get them off her. She reaches for my belt, and I let her work it while I look at her — dark hair loose, mouth open, wearing nothing but small cotton underwear, looking up at me like I'm the only thing in this room.
I am not going to rush this.
I push her back on the bed and get her underwear off and settle between her thighs, and she grabs the headboard before I've even done anything.
"Holt—"
"I know," I said. "Give me a minute."
I get my mouth on her and she tightens her thighs against my head. I stay there. I devour her. I keep going until she comes with both hands white-knuckled on the headboard and her thighs locked around my head, and I don't stop until she's done.
She's still catching her breath when she reaches for me. "Come here. Now."
I move up her body. She gets her hand around my cock and guides me, and I push inside her slowly, all the way, and she arches up hard and makes a sound that makes me leak precum.
I go still. Just hold it there. Feel how she fits around me, how she's breathing, how her hands are already pulling at my back.
I start to move.
Long and deep, and she meets every stroke. Her legs wrap around me. I brace over her and give her the full weight of it, and she tips her head back, letting me kiss her neck. Her nails are in my back. I don't mind.
I reach between us and get my thumb on her clit, and her hips come off the bed entirely.
"Holt!"
"I've got you." I don't slow down. "Let go."
She mews as she gets closer, her body trembling.
"You're staying," I say. "This is yours. I'm yours. You're not going anywhere." She makes a sound against my throat that I feel everywhere and pulls me in deeper, and I drive into her and let go, filling her.
We lie there afterward. Her head on my chest. My hand in her hair. The mountain does its slow dark thing outside — pines going black against the sky, first stars coming through.
She's quiet for a long time.
Then: "I'm staying. I mean it."
I press my mouth to the top of her head. Pull her closer.
"I know," I say.
Outside, the last light leaves the sky. She settles in against me and doesn't move, and I lie there in the dark on this mountain that has been mine for thirteen years and think: now it's ours.
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