20. Hunter #2
I picked her up. Her arms went around my neck.
Her face pressed into the side of my throat.
She weighed nothing — or she weighed everything, and I didn't feel it.
I carried her across the paddock in the dark.
Through the workshop door. Up the stairs.
Her breath was warm against my neck. Her body limp and heavy with heat and food and wine and trust.
I set her down next to my bed. "On your stomach."
She lay face down on the bed. The towel opened around her — her bare back exposed, her hair damp on the pillow, her arms loose at her sides.
Her face was turned toward the window. Her eyes were half-closed.
The apartment was warm and the light from the bedside lamp was low and her skin was still flushed from the bath.
I opened the nightstand drawer. The massage oil had been in there for a week — another trip to town, another ten minutes in an aisle reading labels. Almond. I poured it into my palms. Rubbed them together. Then put my hands on her shoulders.
She inhaled sharply. Her muscles tensed for a second under my palms before she meltdown into the bed and her breath came out in a long moan that she pressed into the pillow.
My hands slid over her body, working out more than just the last three weeks from her loosened muscles. I started with her neck, then her shoulders, and down her back. The further down I moved, the more she softened.
“That feels really good,” she rasped when I slid my thumbs down the column of her spine.
“Good,” I replied. My voice came out deeper than I wanted. But I couldn’t help it. Seeing my hands on her body, noticing each little reaction she had to my touch, was doing things to me that I couldn’t control. But this wasn’t about me, it was about her and helping her relax.
I reached her glutes and hips, and that’s when things changed. She started responding with small sounds that were changing register. Lower. Warmer. My control was hanging by a thread.
I could hardly breathe when I got to her thighs. I drew in a long breath when she shifted, and her thighs parted just a fraction. Barely an inch. Her breathing had changed. Shorter. Her fingers were gripping the pillow.
My hands moved up the insides of her thighs, and she arched into me. She made a sound — low, urgent, muffled in the pillow.
"Hunt." Her voice was thick. Rough. "Touch me."
And that was the end of my control.
My fingers slid through the slick heat between her legs.
She was soaked — the arousal thick and hot and the evidence of it coating my fingers on the first stroke.
Her hips bucked against my hand, seeking more.
The sound she made was sharp and desperate and absolutely wrecked me.
I peeked up at her, her face was turned into the pillow, her fists clenched in the sheets.
I worked her with two of my fingers — slow, deliberate, the same patience I'd given the massage. Her ass lifted off the bed, giving me better access, and I pumped my hand faster.
"Don't stop,” she whimpered. “Oh God, Hunt, right there.”
I lowered my mouth to the base of her spine. Kissed the spot my thumbs had worked. Kissed lower — the curve of her ass, the soft skin of her inner thigh. I yanked her up onto her knees, shoved them wide, and put my mouth on her.
“Oh fuck,” she gasped, and pushed against my mouth. Greedy for it.
My tongue found her clit — swollen, sensitive — and circled. My fingers slid back inside. Her body was shaking, her moans getting louder and higher. Her thighs shook beside my head.
She came hard. My name in her throat — broken, loud, the syllables tearing loose. I worked her through it — my tongue gentle now, easing her down, each aftershock drawing a smaller sound until her body gave and collapsed into the mattress and her hands released the sheets.
I kissed her inner thigh. Her hip. Her back.
I pulled the towel over her and lay down beside her and her body rolled toward mine — automatic, unconscious, seeking the warmth.
Her face pressed into my shirt. Her arm draped over my ribs.
Her breathing was already changing — deepening, evening out, the rhythm of a body that had been given food and heat and wine and touch and an orgasm and was finally, completely, done fighting.
Within five minutes, she was snoring. Her hand had gone limp on my ribs. Her whole body was heavy against mine — the full, boneless weight of deep sleep.
I smiled to myself. Mission accomplished.
I eased off the bed. Stripped off my jeans and shirt. Climbed back in beside her in my boxers. She didn't stir. She made a small sound when my arm settled around her waist before nuzzling back into me.
I pulled the blanket over us. Her breathing filled the room — steady, deep, the snoring soft and rhythmic, and the best sound I'd heard in weeks.
She slept like a dead person until morning. Didn't move. Didn't wake. Didn't reach for her phone or her laptop or her binders.
I stayed awake for a while. My arm around her. The dark pressing in. Her breath warm against me. The evening sat in my hands — the tub, the oil, the food, every detail I'd assembled through the afternoon. The work of a man who didn't have the words, so he used his hands instead.
Her snoring hitched once. Her body shifted closer. Her fingers twitched against my ribs — a sleep reflex, gripping, holding on to something her conscious mind had been too proud to ask for.
I closed my eyes. Her head was on my arm, making it go numb, but I didn't move.
I never moved.