Chapter 15 #3
Then his mouth twists, not quite a grimace. “No,” he says, voice raw. “You’re goddamn right you shouldn’t have.”
He shuts his eyes for a beat, like he’s praying for sense, then opens them again, and what’s in them now is plain and awful. “You think you know what I want? What I fuck? You don’t know a goddamn thing.”
“You clearly… You and Okee care for each other a great deal.”
“He’s my other half,” he corrects, hand to his heart as if my words were inadequate. “Ain’t many folks in this world understand what that’s like when it comes to men like us. They think love just looks like husbands and wives but that ain’t the whole of it. Ain’t so simple neither.”
My heart slams against my ribs, and I want to shove him away, climb down the ladder, and pretend this moment never happened. But the loft is too small, and he’s too close, and shame is a living thing clawing its way up my throat.
Then his hand drops from the beam and catches my waist. I suck in a surprised breath, the sudden closeness nearly making my knees buckle. Heat rolls off him, solid and unmistakable. He bends his head, slow enough that I could still turn away.
But I don’t.
I can smell sweat on him. My pulse thrums so loud I’m certain he can hear it.
He moves, his mouth against my ear. “You think I ain’t noticed you?”
My breath snags in my throat. Heat floods me in a merciless rush, leaving me dizzy, aching. I try to hold still, to keep my face composed, but my lips part on a shaky exhale I can’t stifle.
He sees it. Of course he does. His gaze rakes over me—slow, deliberate, undone.
He drags his thumb along my jaw, rough and possessive, tilting my face up so I have no choice but to meet those blazing eyes.
“You got a mouth on you and a spine like iron, and you look at me like you could bring me to my knees and make me behave and I hate that I want it. Hate that I can’t stop picturin’ you…”
I hold my breath, waiting for him to finish. My eyes flutter. But he swears again, softer this time, and pulls away abruptly, releasing me as though I’ve burned him. I stumble a half step back, heart skidding, the space between us suddenly too empty.
“Christ,” he mutters to himself, dragging a hand through his hair. He turns his face aside. The wood creaks. The fire pops below. Okee hums under his breath, unaware or pretending to be. “Just… Don’t mistake what you don’t understand. And mind your mouth. You’ll get a man killed.”
I swallow against the lump in my throat and nod once.
Boone takes another step back, putting distance between us. He doesn’t look at me again. He climbs down the ladder without a word.
The loft is colder, darker, the small window frosted over so thick I can barely see the night beyond. I kneel at the pallet, pull the wool blanket around my shoulders, and lie down facing the rafters.
Below, their voices drop to murmurs. Boone’s low rumble first, something teasing, something apologetic. Okee’s reply is measured, calm, the way he speaks when he is trying not to laugh or scold. The wind howls against the eaves like it wants to join us inside.
I pull my blanket tighter.
It was nothing. Just a quarrel from too close quarters and too little patience. Still, Boone’s restlessness returns to me: the way he swings himself around the cabin, all muscle and momentum. A body built for hours of exertion, not restraint.
The notion comes easily enough of what it might be like to meet that kind of force head-on, to be taken apart by it and left spent. I let the thought run its course, then dismiss it.
Appetite alone is a poor reason for trouble.
I think, not for the first time, that if bedding Dr. Bowering once managed to make an entire expedition unbearable, being snowbound till spring with these two will ruin me outright.
I swallow, steady myself. Lust is a luxury I cannot afford, and yet the shape of his fingers, splayed wide, thumb brushing the curve of my hip still holds heat like a burn, his touch branding me.
My breath hitches. My own hand drifts down, slow, almost hesitant, resting over the flat of my belly.
I pull the blanket closer, and though I try to force my attention elsewhere, the image arrives unbidden: Boone’s broad hand wrapping my throat the way it almost did a minute ago, not gentle, just claiming the pulse there while his other palm slides down my ribs, fingers spreading wide enough to span half my waist.
He’d lift me like I weigh nothing, pin me against the rough logs of the wall, the wood biting into my shoulder blades while his hips shove forward. No preamble. No mercy. Just the thick stretch of him forcing inside, splitting me open until I’m a babbling puddle.
And then—because my mind is cruel—Okee is there too.
He steps in close behind Boone, one thick-fingered hand calmly sliding up Boone’s spine to grip the back of his neck the way he gripped that rifle stock.
Guiding. Directing. Okee’s other hand would find me—sliding between where Boone and I are joined, fingertips circling lazy over the swollen knot of nerves.
He’d lean in, mouth at my ear, voice velvet-soft the way it was as I balanced the weight of his gun in my hands.
“Let him ruin you. I’ll hold you steady while he does. ”
My hand has already slipped beneath the waist of my drawers.
I’m slick—embarrassingly so—just from the memory of Boone’s mouth an inch from mine, from the heat of his hands gripping my waist, the way his pupils had bloomed dark as a predator when he looked at me like he wanted to devour me.
My fingers find the swollen bud at once, slippery and hot, and I press down, rubbing in frantic circles.
A small sound escapes me. I clamp my lips shut.
Below, their voices are only soft murmurs. The fire snaps once, twice. I freeze, heart hammering, listening for footsteps on the ladder. Nothing.
I let my knees fall open wider beneath the blanket.
In my head Boone is already rutting against me again and again until I’m whimpering. Okee holds me from behind now, chest pressed to my back, one arm banded around my ribs to keep me steady.
He would kiss the hinge of my jaw, soft, while Boone pounds faster, brutally chasing his own release. “Fill her,” Okee would murmur to Boone. “Mark her with it.”
The thought shatters me.
My fingers rub faster, blanket rustling in the quiet loft.
I turn my face into the crook of my elbow, muffling the choked cry that rips out of me as the pleasure peaks.
My thighs clamp around my hand, hips jerking in uneven pulses while the release rolls through me, nipples tightening, quick and painful under my chemise.
I lie there afterward, chest heaving, skin damp with sweat despite the cold. The voices are gone entirely. Only the wind remains, keening against the eaves as I pry my thick tongue from the roof of my mouth and swallow hard.
I pull my hand free, wipe my fingers on the inside of the blanket, and turn onto my side again, facing the wall.
A soft, rueful laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Oh, you silly creature, I think. What a fool you are. Lying here like some wanton strumpet, dreaming of those two, spent and shaking from the very thought of being used by them both.
Fie on you, girl. Shame on such thoughts. Boone’s a pest, forever goading me into quarrels. This is no place for such fancies, snowbound with men who already crowd the cabin enough without crowding my nightly thoughts too. It’s a bad road, a dangerous one I must steer clear of at all costs.