Chapter 1 #4
“I know.” He cupped me, firm but gentle.
“I know you can’t. But you’re just so soft.
” He slid two fingers inside me, then pulled them back out.
“So warm. I just want to touch you.” Sliding his fingers over me, around me, everywhere but the place I was still swollen and tender, he said, “Just for a little while longer.”
Even though I was completely wrung out, my clit gave a deep, interested throb, and I told him, “Okay.”
His touch was soft at first, calming, careful.
But soon, while his lips trailed kisses over my shoulder, my neck, my breast, while his fingers continued to sink into me, then pull out again, tracing my wetness over my inner thighs, my labia, slowly caressing me everywhere but where I suddenly, desperately needed him, it didn’t matter how sensitive I was anymore. And he knew it.
Because this was a game, a trick. Some patient, erotic sex hack meant to make me come a third time. And when his lips closed around my nipple, his tongue swirling over its peaked tip, I fell for it.
Frustrated and writhing and moaning in a way I’d be ashamed of if any of this had been real, I grabbed his hand and guided his fingers back to my clit.
He released my nipple with a soft chuckle, his warm breath ghosting over my wet skin as he caressed me, still slow, still careful, still teasing.
It was torture, in a way. His steadiness, the way he brought me up to the edge and kept me there, suspended in a pleasure so intense it felt close to pain.
“Please,” I whispered. He liked that, the begging, and rewarded me with a bit more pressure.
“You’re like a dream,” he said. “Like I conjured you from thin air.” And then he took mercy on me, sucking on my nipple again while his fingers circled just fast enough, just hard enough, that despite the rain, the clouds, the roof over our heads, I saw stars.
A million motes of light burning brightly behind my eyelids as pleasure rolled through me, drowning me in deep, unrelenting waves.
My arms, heavy and useless, sank to the mattress. My eyelids sank too, pulling me deeper into unconsciousness as the dream, as glorious as it had been, ended the way dreams always did. Fading away like an echo.
A scratch at the door.
A soft whine.
A heavy arm slung over my waist.
A deep voice by my ear: “Just a second, Joey.”
Joey? Who’s Joey?
My eyes slid open to a dark room. There was an unfamiliar ceiling above me. Unfamiliar wood paneled walls all around me. And ahead, a door with an actual deer antler for a handle. Where the hell am—
Memories of hands and lips and orgasms hit me like a thousand volts to the chest, shooting me up and out of the bed I’d apparently passed out in.
“Holy shit!” My clothes? Where the fuck were my clothes? “Holy fucking shit!”
“Don’t freak out,” he mumbled, reaching out blindly to turn on a battery-powered lamp on his bedside table. “I think we both needed that.”
“Don’t freak out?” I snapped while the lamp illuminated his broad chest and sleepy smile in a muted glow.
“You want me to not freak out that I just fucked a complete and total stranger in the middle of the goddamned wilderness!” What was I thinking?
He could be a serial killer. “I must be losing my mind. That’s the only explanation.
” Finding my pants, I shoved my legs into them, backwards at first before I ripped them off and tried again.
“The stress was too much, and I broke, and where the fuck is my bra?”
“You shouldn’t bother with it.” His voice was all gravel, raspy and deep. “You have phenomenal tits.”
“Oh my god,” I wheezed, spinning in a panicked circle. “I have to get out of here. I have to go.”
He rubbed his eyes before looking at his watch—which he promptly removed and set on his nightstand. “We fell asleep. It’s after midnight.” He tilted his head, listening to the pitter patter on the roof. “And it’s still raining. You should stay.”
Meeting his stare head on, I said, “I am not staying with some man I don’t even know.”
“You kind of know me.” There was a wistful tilt to the corner of his mouth, and for some reason, my skin started to melt. “In a biblical sense.”
“That was…” Spotting my shirt next to the bed, I yanked it on. He could keep the bra. “I had a lapse.”
“A lapse?”
“Yes.” I straightened my shirt, hauling my gaze up from his chest and the patch of hair I knew the precise texture of against my breasts. “A lapse of judgment.”
He sucked in a wounded breath. “Ouch.”
“Well, I…” I’d started strong, then lost all my steam when he smirked at me, folding his hands behind his head, waiting.
“Um, thank you…for your…services.” As poetic as anything I’d ever said. “And goodbye.”
“Wait.” He sat up, suddenly serious. “Don’t go. The roads up here wash out when it rains this much. And your car is already stuck. Please stay. There’s another room upstairs. You did pay for this cabin too.” With a small shrug, he said, “We could share it.”
“Share it?”
He raised his hands at my wary expression.
“I’m sure you’ve heard this before from men who weren’t, but I’m a good guy, promise.
I actually felt really bad when you left.
I was waiting for you to come back for your bag so I could suggest that you take the cabin.
I have a tent and figured I could either pop it somewhere on the property or camp behind the Merc.
But then you were so sad and cold, and…”
And you fucked me unconscious. “Can I have the cabin now?”
His big shoulders fell, just a fraction, barely noticeable. “Is that what you want?”
“Maybe,” I said, but it wasn’t convincing. Because while it might have been what part of me wanted, most of me was shouting, Get back into bed with that man!
He pressed his lips tightly, then asked, “Can we sleep on it tonight? And if you still want us to leave in the morning, Joey and I will go. Is that reasonable?”
I pulled in a breath, let it out. His request was, I had to admit, quite reasonable. Because whoever this man was, this was one of his strong suits. Being reasonable. And being spectacular in bed. But that was neither here nor there…
“Okay.” Finally spotting my bra and underwear, I gathered them to my chest like a shield. “We’ll decide in the morning.”
Giving me a triumphant smile that curled my toes, he said, “Before you go, what’s your name?”
I laughed. Forty-five years on this earth and this was the first time I’d slept with someone I didn’t know, and who didn’t know me. “It’s Hannah. Hannah James.”
Reclining back onto his pillow, resting one hand on his chest while the other slipped behind his head again, he said, “Hi, Hannah. I’m Darryn Madigan. It’s been very nice to meet you.”
Another scratch at the door saved me from having to reply. But then my bladder chimed in. “Is there a bathroom somewhere?”
“Ah, no.” He scratched the back of his head, the gesture apologetic, almost boyish. “But there is an outhouse.” Swinging his long legs over the edge of the bed, he said, “I’ll show you.”
With a flashlight in one hand and an umbrella in the other, he held me close, keeping us safe from the rain as he ushered me down a sloshy, pine needle-lined path, past a firepit on one side and a hammock strung between two trees on the other.
When we reached the outhouse, I was about to venture inside, but Darryn said, “Hey, Hannah?”
“Yes?”
Looking down at me, the flashlight making his eyes glitter, he asked, “Do you feel better?”
I swallowed thickly. Because I did. Maybe better than I’d felt in months. “It was…” I hoped he couldn’t see the heat scalding my cheeks. “Good.”
When he dragged his lower lip between his teeth, then said, “If you need more, all you have to do is ask,” my mouth and eyes went wide, until I snapped both shut. Which made him laugh.
“Here.” He closed the umbrella and set it in a little tin bucket just inside the door, switched on the battery-powered twinkly lights strung along the outhouse walls, then he handed me the flashlight. “For your walk back.”
“What about you?” I asked while raindrops pattered in his hair.
Stepping back, holding his arms out wide and angling his chin toward the sky, he said, “I love getting wet.”
As much as his head scratch before had been boyish, the giddy laughter bubbling out of me was equally girlish. Get it together, Hannah James.
“See you in the morning?” There was a note of hope in his voice, but some wariness too. Like he was already imagining waking up and finding me gone.
But when I cut a sideways glance to my car, which the earth seemed to be actively swallowing whole, I realized how unlikely a rapid exit was. Even if it did seem like the safest idea at the time.
Giving him a tight smile, I nodded, then closed the door, surrounding myself with twinkling string lights, rain tapping on the tin roof, and absolute shock at the turn my life just took.
A high-pitched bark pulled me from a near-dead sleep. Rolling over, I heard a low chuckle. And then, good god, I inhaled the salty, smokey, unmistakable scent of bacon.
I’d wondered, before I passed out again last night, if I’d wake up in a panic.
Either not remembering where I was—or remembering it too well.
But when I stretched out long, listening to the rain that had continued through the night, smelling something sweet now too, maybe pancakes, the only thing I felt was hungry.
Throwing on a hoodie and some leggings, I twisted my hair into a bun, pinched my cheeks, and crept through my door.