Chapter 8
Tess
I wake up in a cabin that’s not mine, on a rug that’s not mine, against the side of a man who is.
That last settles in before I’m awake enough to censor it.
The fire has burned down to coals, and the air is cold against my face.
Sullivan’s body is hot against my side, and his arm is around me in a way that makes me suspect he didn’t put it there willingly while awake.
He’s breathing slow and deep, the breath of a man who has slept hard.
Outside, the wind has dropped. The storm is over.
I don’t move.
I want to memorize this. I want to remember the weight of his arm across my ribs, the smell of him this close—pine and woodsmoke and that specific castile soap, with something underneath it that’s just him and warm, sleeping man.
I want to relish the impossible novelty of being held in a cabin, on a rug, by a man who does not, when sleeping, look like he is being haunted.
He stirs, and his arm tightens instinctively, then loosens.
“Hey,” I whisper.
“Hey,” he says roughly into my hair.
“You snored.”
“I don’t snore.”
“You snored a little.”
“That’s slander.”
“I was here for it.”
He laughs. The laugh is in his chest where my cheek is, and it melts into my bones as it goes through me.
He pulls to look down at me. His eyes are sleepy and unguarded, the pale gray of them soft at the edges. His beard is mussed, and the corner of his mouth is doing the geological thing again, only this time, it’s winning.
“Tess.”
“Mm?”
“Are you—”
“I’m okay.”
“Cabin’ll be a project.”
“It was already a project.”
“More of a project.”
I tip my chin up at him. “You were going to dig out my stand mixer personally.”
“I will.”
“Okay.”
We’re both whispering, and I have no idea why.
Sullivan’s gaze drops to my mouth, his jaw tight.
His fingers curl at my waist. I feel the second he makes the decision because he wasn’t going to and now he is, and something in me has been waiting since the porch step, since the Tupperware, since the first time he said “ma’am” to me like he was erecting a wall.
I lift my hand to his cheek. His beard is softer than I thought it would be.
“Sullivan,” I whisper.
He kisses me.
It’s not careful or tentative. He kisses me like a man who’s been doing it in his head for nine days and has decided to make it real.
His hand cradles the back of my head, big enough that his palm is at my nape and his fingers are in my hair.
His mouth is rough and certain and warm.
He tastes faintly of the mint chewing gum I saw on his counter and of last night’s tea and of him, the Sullivan I’ve been catching glimpses of every time he didn’t quite smile.
I make a sound in my throat as his tongue glides over mine. His arm, the one across my ribs, slides under me. He lifts me enough to roll us so I’m tucked against him on my side, him on his back, my leg over his thigh, my hand still on his cheek.
He breaks the kiss to breathe and looks at me.
“Tess.” His voice is sandpaper. “Tess, listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m not in good shape.”
“I know.”
He swallows. “If you want to take a step back, this is the moment.”
“Sullivan Mercer.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve spent nine days throwing baked goods at you.”
“Yeah.”
“I am not taking a step back.”
“Tess.”
“Kiss me, Sullivan. Please kiss me.”
He kisses me.
This time it’s slower. This time he’s choosing every second of it, the way he chooses every nail in a board he wants to save.
He kisses along my jaw, the soft place under my ear, the corner of my mouth where I’m smiling against his mouth.
He kisses me deeper, and the room narrows to the rug and the dim coals and his hand at my waist.
“Up,” he says against my lips. “I want you up. Floor’s hard.”
“You first.”
“Tess, I will pick you up.”
“Show me.”
He picks me up, standing with me in his arms like I weigh nothing—and I do not weigh nothing—and carries me across his cabin to a couch I hadn’t paid attention to until now.
It’s brown leather, large and old, soft as a worn boot.
He places me gently on it and comes down over me, his weight braced on his forearms, his hips heavy against mine.
“This,” he rumbles, “is also not the moment.”
“What?”
“This is still a negotiation.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “You’re negotiating with me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sullivan—”
“I want you to be sure.”
“I am sure.”
“Say it again.”
“I’m very sure, Sullivan.”
He bends and kisses me slowly. His hand slides under the hem of the daffodil sweater, up my side, his palm a hot, careful weight on my skin. My entire body arches before I’ve made a conscious decision to do so.
“Sullivan.” It comes out as a whisper.
“I’m here.”
“I want—” My breath catches. “I want you to know something. My mother said the sensible thing to do was to sell the cabin. So, I want you to know that this is the second time in my life I’m doing the unsensible thing, and the first one was getting in the truck.”
He goes very still above me, looking at me like I’m something he plans to keep. “Tess, you’re—”
“Yeah.” I bite my lip, waiting to see what he does.
He kisses me.
The time for negotiation is over.
He takes the daffodil sweater off me as if he’s unwrapping something he’s afraid he’ll break.
Then he pulls his flannel over his head, taking his t-shirt with it.
I inhale sharply at the sight of him bare to the waist—the chest of a man who’s done physical labor all his life, scarred in places I’ll count later, stomach ridged with muscles, a tattoo over his ribs with a small line of names.
When he notices my gaze catch on it, he covers it gently with his hand. “Later.”
I cup his face, smoothing my thumb over his cheek. “Okay.”
We’re slow on the couch as our clothes come off, one item at a time.
He learns me the way he learns everything; attention top to bottom, curve to curve, watching my face for what I do and don’t like.
His big hand spans my ribs, then slides up to cup my breast. I gasp as his thumb drags across my nipple, and he watches that gasp as if he is filing it away for later.
His mouth follows his hand, hot and unhurried, his beard rough against the swell of my breast as he swirls his tongue over my nipple.
His other hand slides between my thighs and parts me slowly. His fingers find me wet, and he breathes a low, broken sound into my chest.
“Sullivan,” I moan, my hips jerking.
Two fingers press into me, slow and deep, his thumb finding the swollen nub that makes my hips lift off the couch. He works me there patiently, his teeth grazing my nipples, his eyes flicking up to my face every few seconds to check my response.
He’s unraveling me with every touch, every swirl of his thumb and tongue.
“Sullivan.”
“Yeah?”
“I want you.”
“I know.”
“Now.”
“Look at me, Tess.”
I look at him. He’s above me, propped on one forearm, his other hand still between my thighs. Hair in his eyes, pupils blown, breathing rough. And his face is more open than I’ve seen it in any waking moment over the last nine days.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I want you, Sullivan.”
“Tell me.”
“I want your weight on me. I want your hands on me. I want you to stop being careful. I want”—my breath hitches—“I want you inside me. Please.”
He fists his cock and runs the crown slowly through my folds, coating himself in my wetness. He does it again. And again. I mewl with pleasure each time he bumps my clit.
Guiding himself to my entrance, he pushes in slowly, watching my face.
The stretch of him is perfect and almost too much.
His jaw locks tight as he stops halfway, his forehead pressed to mine, his eyes focused on me.
Only me. Letting me see him. In some ways, it’s more intimate than the physical act itself.
“Christ, Tess.”
I tilt my hips. “All the way, Sullivan.”
“You’re so tight—”
“All the way.”
He sinks into me to the hilt. It burns, and I make a sound I’ve never made in my life.
He buries his face in the curve of my neck and exhales into my hair like a man who’s been holding his breath for a very long time.
“I have you,” he murmurs.
Tears spring to my eyes. “And I have you.”
“Yeah.” His voice catches. “Yeah, you do.”
He moves with me like a man who’s paying attention. Bracing his weight on his forearms, he keeps his eyes on my face as his hips move and his cock drags through me with the rhythm of a man who’s decided he’s not in a hurry.
“You with me, Tess?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
Somewhere in the middle of it, I realize I’m not just being made love to; I’m being seen in the way I’ve wanted for twenty-four years.
His hand slides between us, and his thumb finds my clit. He works it in slow circles in time with his thrusts, his eyes on my face, and the world breaks apart at the edges.
“Sullivan, I’m…”
“I have you. Come for me.”
I come hard around him. I come with my back arched off the couch, my hands fisted in his hair, and the heat of him deep inside me.
His thumb lingers on my clit, working me through every shudder.
He watches the whole of it, his breath ragged, his eyes on mine, and his hand cupping my cheek like I’m made of magic.
He follows. Quietly. With my name in my hair, breath shaky, his forehead pressed to mine.
We don’t move for a long time.
Outside, the wind has finally quieted. Inside, the cabin is silent, the fire is out, the coals orange under gray ash.
“Tess.”
“Mm?”
“You’re cold.”
I snuggle closer. “I’m fine.”
“Your hands are cold.”
“My hands are always cold.”
Sullivan grabs the wool throw from the back of the couch, pulls it over us, and gathers me closer. He turns us so I’m tucked against the back of the couch with him in front of me, my breasts against his chest, one arm under my head and the other a heavy, deliberate weight across my hip.
“Stay,” he says into my hair.
“I was going to.”
“Stay.”
“I’m staying, Sullivan.”
He breathes out slowly and kisses the top of my head. I hear the vibration of his words in his chest before he speaks. “I haven’t slept like that in five years.”
I kiss his chest.
“I’m not going to be good at this.”
“You’re already good at this.”
“Tess—”
“It’s true. You just don’t know it yet.”
His laugh is rusty at the edges. He doesn’t say anything else.
He doesn’t need to.
We doze. The cabin warms back up when he gets up to feed the stove.
He brings me one of his t-shirts that comes down to my mid-thigh and a pair of his wool socks that fall off my feet.
We sit at his kitchen table and eat scrambled eggs out of the same pan with two forks because, in his words, “I haven’t done dishes in three days, and I’m not about to start now. ”
I watch him at the stove with a fork in his hand and the smallest curl at the corner of his mouth, and I think, he’s going to spook.
Tomorrow, or the next day, or by the end of the week.
He is going to look around inside himself and realize that he held me through a night.
He’ll remember that he came here to be alone, and he’s going to spook.
And I refuse to budge.
I’ve spent twenty-four years moving for the convenience of other people. I’m not going to move so this man can stay alone.
I sit with that for a long time. Long enough to ask myself whether Sullivan Mercer is a man I love or a project I’ve adopted along with the house.
And yet, here’s a man who made me a grilled cheese sandwich in the middle of the night because my stomach growled. He does things for me without making it about himself.
I can’t tell him I’ve fallen in love with him. He’s not ready. Not yet.
But he held me through a night, and I’m going to hold him through what comes next.