18. Hunter
Hunter
I woke up to the sky turning pink at the edges.
The truck bed was hard under my back. The blanket was twisted around our legs.
The air was that pre-dawn cool that settles into the creek valley before the sun burns it off.
My arm was numb. Jess was lying on it, so I didn’t dare move.
She was so peaceful. Her breathing was slow and deep. Her body curled against mine.
I brushed her hair out of my face and turned my head.
I watched the sky go from grey to pink to pale gold along the tree line.
It wasn’t long before Jess’ fingers twitched on my stomach.
Her breathing changed with a deep inhale.
She pressed her face harder into my shoulder. Her arm tightened around my ribs.
"What time is it?" The words came out muffled against my skin.
"Dawn."
"Mmm." Her hand slid from my stomach to my chest and pressed flat over my heart. "Five more minutes."
"Take ten."
Her lips curved against my shoulder, and she dozed some more. I could feel the shape of her smile on my skin. The sky kept brightening. The mist thinned on the water. Her fingers curled against my chest.
Eventually, she lifted her head. She looked wrecked: hair a mess, mascara smudged under her eyes, a crease from the blanket on her cheek.
Beautiful.
When she looked at me the morning light caught the gold in her irises, and I wondered what I did right to get this lucky.
Her gaze softened. “Hi,” she whispered.
"Hi."
She looked me up and down. Bit her lip. ”You look like you slept in a truck bed."
I couldn’t fight my smile. ”You look like you slept on a man in a truck bed."
"I did. He was lumpy but the view made up for it."
She pressed her lips against my chest. One kiss.
Quick, warm. She sat up and the blanket fell away and the cool air hit her bare skin and she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
I sat up behind her. Pulled her back against my chest. My arms around her, my chin on her shoulder, both of us looking at the creek in the dawn light.
"Take me home, Hunt. I need coffee and hot water and approximately forty-five minutes to look like a human being."
I drove us back to the ranch. The sun came up on the way — orange and enormous, breaking the tree line and flooding the cab with warm light. She sat close. Her hand on my thigh. Her head tipped back against the seat with her eyes closed and a small, private smile on her face.
The shower was too small for two people. This didn't stop her.
She followed me up the stairs to my apartment.
Once she was through the door, she went straight into the bathroom and turned the water on before I'd finished closing the front door.
The bathroom was filled with steam by the time I made it in there.
She pulled the oversized t-shirt she'd thrown on over her head and dropped it on the tiles.
My eyes traced every curve of her body as she stepped under the water and tipped her face up.
The spray hit her chest, and she sighed long and deep — the sound of a woman being returned to civilization.
I stood in the doorway. Watching.
"Are you coming in, or are you just going to stand there being decorative?"
My clothes hit the floor seconds later. I stepped in behind her. Her body was warm and wet and pressed against mine by necessity. I realized as cramped as we were, I could stay like this for hours. Her back against my chest, my arms around her waist, the water running over both of us.
She turned in my arms. Her hands slid up my chest to around my neck. She grinned up at me — water droplets on her face, her hair slicked back, her eyes bright with something playful and reckless. She rose on her toes and kissed me — quick, grinning against my mouth, her teeth catching my lower lip.
"Hi again."
My grip on her tightened a fraction. ”Hi."
"This shower is criminally small."
"It wasn't built for two."
"Well, it's going to have to adapt, isn't it?" She pressed her hips against mine, and my cock responded instantly — hardening against her stomach, the contact electric through the hot water. Her grin widened when she looked between us. “Oh, hello."
"Jess —"
"Don't Jess me. You started this when you kissed your way up my arm in the creek like some kind of nineteenth-century gentleman with very ungentlemanly intentions."
Her hand slid down my chest. Down my stomach. Her fingers wrapped around me, and my breath punched out of my lungs. My hand shot to the tile wall to brace myself. "Now you have to deal with the consequences."
Her hand moved slow, firm, her grip confident, her thumb dragging across the head on each upstroke. The water poured over us. The steam pressed in. My hips rocked into her hand involuntarily. My forehead dropped to her shoulder, and a groan came out of me that echoed off the bathroom walls.
She laughed. The sound was bright and warm and completely Jessica. "That good?"
"Shut up,” I panted.
Her head turned a fraction, lips grazing my ear as she whispered, ”Make me."
My mouth found hers — hard, deep, desperate. My hands gripped her hips and I lifted her into the air. The shower was too small and the angle was wrong, but neither of us cared. Her legs wrapped around my waist, and I pushed into her in one stroke. Her gasp bounced off every surface in the bathroom.
"Fuck — Hunt —"
"Hold on."
She held on. Her arms around my neck, her legs tight around my waist, the water beating on my back. I braced one hand on the wall and gripped her hip with the other and moved — hard, fast, nothing like last night's slow build.
Her head tipped back against the tile. “Harder,” she demanded, and I delivered. “Yes — fuck, yes, Hunt, right there.”
Her thighs squeezed my hips. Her nails raked down my shoulders.
Her body tightened around me, and she came with a cry that the bathroom amplified into something the neighbors could probably hear.
She me pulled me over the edge. I pressed deep and came with my face in her neck, and her laugh — breathless, delighted, victorious — ringing off the tiles.
We stood there. Panting. The water drumming on my back. Her legs still around my waist. Her forehead against mine.
"We need a bigger shower," she said.
"I'll add it to the list."
She laughed again, unwrapped her legs, and slid down my body. She kissed my jaw before turning into the spray and let the water run over her smile.
I left her drying her hair.
"Go. I'll be ten minutes." She was wrapped in my towel with another on her head. She waved me toward the door. "I need to look like I didn't spend the night in a truck bed and the morning in your shower. Give me ten."
I walked across the yard to the main house. The morning was bright and warm. The kitchen windows were open. Maisie's voice carried from the porch — something about bears, always something about bears.
The kitchen was mid-chaos. Mom at the stove.
Dad in his chair with the paper. Maisie on her step stool, helping Callie with something that involved a bowl, and a whisk and a significant amount of flour on the counter.
Clay leaning against the bench, eating toast. Wyatt and Ivy at the far end of the table.
"Morning." I poured coffee. Sat on the kitchen bench near the window. The coffee was hot and strong, and the kitchen was warm and loud, and I sat there and drank it and waited.
The screen door opened.
Jessica walked in. Her hair was down — damp at the ends, but brushed.
It caught the light from the window like it always did.
Her face was clean. No mascara smudge, no blanket crease, just her skin and her freckles and a flush across her cheekbones that could have been from the walk or could have been from the shower.
She was wearing one of my shirts — the grey henley, too big in the shoulders, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows.
She hadn't asked to borrow it. She'd just taken it.
That was the thing about Jessica Williams. She walked into your space and made it hers, and you were grateful for the invasion.
She didn't slow down. She didn't wave or say good morning to the room. She walked straight to where I was sitting on the bench, stepped between my legs, slid her arms around my waist, and pressed her face into my chest.
I set my coffee down. My arms came around her, and my chin rested on top of her head. She pressed closer. My hands settled against her back — one between her shoulder blades, one at the base of her spine.
The kitchen went quiet.
Not gradually. All at once. Every conversation stopping. Clay's toast frozen mid-air. Wyatt's hand stalled on his coffee mug. Callie's whisk paused in the bowl. Mom's spatula hovering above the eggs.
Maisie broke the silence. "Are you Uncle Hunt's girlfriend now?"
Jessica turned her head against my chest. She looked at Maisie. "What makes you ask that, baby?"
"Because you're wearing his shirt and you're standing in between his legs and Daddy says that's what girlfriends do."
Clay choked on his toast.
"Maisie —" Callie started.
“Also, your hair is wet, and Uncle Hunt's hair is wet. Daddy says when two people have wet hair at the same time it means they went swimming, but Daddy was making a face when he said it, so I think it means something else."
The kitchen was vibrating with held laughter. Clay's face was scarlet. Callie had her hand over her mouth. Wyatt was staring at the ceiling. Ivy had buried her face in Wyatt's shoulder. Mom was gripping the spatula with white knuckles, and her shoulders were shaking.
Dad turned a page of his paper. Didn't look up.
I looked down at Jessica. She looked up at me. Her eyes were bright. Her lips were pressed together, fighting the laugh.
"Yeah, Maisie," I said. "She's my girlfriend."
The word landed in the kitchen like a stone in still water. The first time I'd said it out loud. My voice was steady. My arms were around her.
Maisie nodded. "Good. She's really funny."
"She is."