Chapter 13 Steam and Stone
Liza POV
That night, Dominic drove me out to the north stretch of river fencing, in case the East wolves had come through anywhere else.
It held. Every post upright, every section of chain-link bolted tight to its frame, the snow around it marked only by the tracks of a West patrol that had run the line that morning.
I stood in the truck’s headlights and checked the last connection point where the fence met a stand of old pines, and when I turned back, Dominic was leaning against the hood with his arms crossed, watching me work.
“It’s clean,” I said. “No cuts, no pressure marks, no scent.”
He nodded. His jaw was set the way it got when something sat heavy in his chest and he was deciding how much of it to let out.
“Kurt crossed my land.” His voice was low and flat. “That doesn’t go unanswered. The fence gets mended tomorrow, and the next wolf who crosses it answers to me.”
I waited, but that was all. Dominic said what he meant, and he said it once. The anger was real, rooted deep. Asking him to explain would only make him repeat himself, and he didn’t need that from me.
“I’m still running the river,” I said.
“I know.” He didn’t argue it. “Shane rides with you, and nobody runs it alone.”
“Deal.”
I stopped at the passenger door with my hand on the handle. “Are we done out here?”
He pushed off the hood and looked at me. The headlights caught the question in his expression.
“There’s a place I want to show you,” he said. “If you’re not too tired.”
I was tired. My shoulders ached from the rescue, my fingers were stiff from the cold, and I’d spent the snowmobile ride back replaying Kurt’s scent in the snow by the hut until it sat like a stone behind my ribs.
But Dominic was offering something that had nothing to do with fencing or enforcers or the man on the other side of the river who still tugged faintly at a bond I refused to feed.
“I’m not too tired,” I said.
? ? ?
He drove us along a service road I hadn’t seen before, winding through thick pines until the trees opened onto a clearing where steam rose from dark water into the cold night air.
The hot springs sat in a shallow bowl of smooth stone, three pools stepping down from a source that seeped from a crack in the mountainside.
Tall pines ringed the clearing on every side.
Beyond them, the distant lights of the town were soft, blurred shapes through the steam, like something seen through frosted glass.
Dominic killed the engine and the headlights went out. Without them, the only light came from the stars and the faint glow of the town through the trees. My eyes adjusted, and I saw the stone ledges beneath the water, worn smooth by years of current and heat.
“West Valley land?” I asked.
“Since before my father’s time. Nobody comes out here in winter except me.”
He pulled two towels from behind the seat and set them on a flat stone near the largest pool. Steam curled off the water’s surface and vanished into the frozen air. The smell was mineral and clean, nothing like the sulfur springs I’d heard about in other parts of the state.
I stood at the edge and looked at the water. Then I looked at Dominic. He was watching me with that focused attention that made my pulse pick up every time. He saw exactly what was in front of him and liked it.
I pulled off my jacket and dropped it on the stone beside the towels.
My fleece followed, then my base layer, and the cold on my bare skin shocked a breath out of me.
I didn’t stop. Boots, socks, patrol pants, everything, until I was standing naked in the starlight with steam rising around my ankles and goose bumps climbing my arms.
He watched every piece of it land.
“You coming?” I said.
He stripped without hurrying. Jacket, flannel, thermal, belt, jeans. His body was exactly what I remembered from the warming cabin. The cold didn’t seem to touch him. He stepped to the edge and offered me his hand.
I took it and we went in together.
The heat took me all at once. It soaked through my skin and into the deep ache beneath my shoulder blades and wrapped around my sore fingers until they uncurled.
I sank to my chin and let the water hold me, my feet finding a submerged stone ledge where the pool narrowed.
The cold air burned my face while the rest of me dissolved into liquid warmth.
“Fuck,” I said quietly. “How long have you been hiding this from me?”
“I was waiting for the right night.”
“This is the right night?”
“You tell me.”
I moved through the water toward him. He sat on the ledge with the surface at his chest, arms spread along the stone rim, his dark hair damp from the steam. His eyes followed me. He let me come to him.
I wanted one night that belonged only to us, beyond Everett, Kurt, and the pack politics creeping closer every day. I wanted the hot water, the cold stars, and Dominic.
I moved behind him on the ledge and pressed my chest against his back. The contact sent a low hum through the bond, deeper and more lasting than the sharp jolt of recognition. I kissed the side of his neck where the water met his skin and felt his pulse jump under my lips.
My hand slid over his hip beneath the surface.
He exhaled hard through his nose when my fingers found him, already thick, already wanting.
I closed my hand around his cock and stroked him slowly beneath the water, and his head came back to rest on my shoulder.
The sound he made came from deep in his chest, stripped of every layer of control he carried during the day.
“Liza.” My name in his mouth, tight with need.
I stroked him harder and his hips pushed forward to meet it. His breathing changed. His hand came up and tangled in my wet hair. I worked him until his thighs tensed and his stomach clenched, his cock throbbing in my grip.
Then he turned.
The water surged between us as he pivoted, caught me by the waist, and lifted me onto the stone rim at the pool’s edge.
Cold air hit my back while my legs stayed in the hot water, and the contrast made every nerve in my body fire at once.
He pushed my knees apart and dropped his mouth between my thighs.
I gasped and grabbed the edge of the stone behind me. His tongue was hot from the water as he licked through my pussy and found my clit. He held the pressure there until I was shaking, my hips rocking against his face, my fingers white on the rim.
“Dom.” I said it the way I’d said it in the cabin, half plea, half demand.
He pressed two fingers deep into me and pumped them slowly while his tongue flicked at my clit without letting up, and it built so fast I couldn’t breathe.
Steam rose around us. The stone was slippery under my ass.
Cold air bit at my wet breasts and stomach while his mouth burned between my legs.
Every sensation wound me tighter until I thought I’d break.
I came with a cry that echoed off the pines. His fingers stayed inside me, moving more gently as I pulsed around them, his cheek against my thigh while I shuddered and grabbed at his wet hair.
Before the aftershocks faded, I pulled him toward me. “Get up here.”
He rose between my legs. I slid off the rim and wrapped myself around him, and he caught me as we sank back into the pool. The heat swallowed us both. I kissed him and tasted myself on his mouth and felt his cock press hard against my stomach.
“Inside me,” I said against his lips. “Now.”
He braced my back against the smooth stone wall of the pool and lifted me with both hands under my thighs.
Buoyed by the water, I guided his cock to my entrance, and when he pushed into me I felt all of him, the slow stretch, the fullness, the way my body opened and pulled him deeper.
My legs locked around his hips and I used them to control how much of him I took, drawing him closer when I wanted more, holding him still when the angle hit a place that had me gasping.
His mouth found my breast. He sucked my nipple between his lips and bit down just hard enough to make me arch against the stone, and his hands tightened on my thighs, supporting my weight while the water moved around us in small, rhythmic waves.
I reached between us and pressed my fingers against my clit while he thrust, and the double sensation of his cock inside me and my own touch sent me spiraling fast. His pace roughened. His breath came in harsh bursts against my wet skin, and I felt the strain in his arms as he fought to hold back.
“Don’t wait,” I told him. “Come with me.”
He drove deeper, and I pressed harder, and the climax slammed into me with enough force to lock my legs and pull him flush against me.
I came with his mouth on my breast and his name on my lips while my body clenched around his cock.
He followed a heartbeat later, as deep as he could go, his groan vibrating against my throat as his hips jerked once, twice, then went still.
For a long moment neither of us moved. The hot water lapped at our chests. Steam curled past our faces toward the stars. His forehead rested against my collarbone, and his breath came slow and ragged, and I held his head against me and let my fingers trace the back of his neck.
? ? ?
When my head started to swim from the heat, he scooped me up with my legs still around him and carried me onto the cold stone. I yelped and he set me down on the flat rock where he’d left the towels, wrapping one around my shoulders before taking the other for himself.
We sat side by side on the stone. Steam rose off our bodies in thin ribbons. Above the pines, the sky was clear and black and full of stars, the kind of sky you only got at altitude, in winter, away from every light that tried to crowd it out.
I leaned against his side. He put his arm around me and pulled the towel tighter across my back, and I let him.
“I want to stay,” I said.
He didn’t answer right away.
“Here?” he asked.
“West Valley. After all of this is done. Whatever this turns into.” I looked at the dark water and the steam and the pines that blocked the town. “I want to stay. I mean it.”
“I’d like that.”
He didn’t add anything, and for a while neither did I.
“Come on,” Dominic said. He stood and held out his hand. “Before we freeze.”
I took it and let him pull me up. We dressed in the cold, fast and clumsy, our fingers numb and our skin flushed pink from the heat.
He drove us back along the service road with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on my thigh.
I watched the headlights carve a path through the dark pines.
I wasn’t ready to call West Valley home, but I was close.
He parked at his cabin instead of the lodge. I looked at the front door and the dark windows and the snow piled along the porch rail, and I didn’t ask whether he was sure. I already knew.
Inside, the cabin smelled like cedar and cold ash from a fire that had burned down to nothing. I traded my clothes for Dominic’s flannel shirt while he built a new fire. From the bedroom door, my hair still damp, I watched his hands arrange the kindling with quiet care.
When the fire caught, he came to me. His hands framed my face, and he kissed me in the half-dark with the taste of mineral water still on his lips.
“Stay,” he said.
I did. From that night on, I lived at his cabin.