"I'm not cold."
"I know."
He kissed me, slow, languid strokes of his tongue that I felt down in my toes. And when he moved over me and pressed inside, the sound I made was quiet — just a breath, just his name — and he stilled and held my face and looked at me in the lantern light.
"Stay here," he said. "Right here with me."
"I'm here."
He moved. Slow. Deep. His forehead against mine. His hips rolling in long strokes that made my toes curl and my breath come in hitches that matched his.
“Made for me,” he grunted, pushing deeper. My hips angled up, taking everything he wanted to give me. Needing it. “Fucking perfect.”
My nails raked down his back, clinging to him. The cot creaked with every roll of his hips, but I didn’t care. It could crumble beneath us, and it wouldn’t matter as long as it was him I was falling to the ground with.
“Yes,” I agreed. This was fucking perfect.
Wewere fucking perfect.
No rush. No performance. Just his body and mine and the canvas above us and the stars beyond that and the sound of the fire outside and his voice in my ear — not words exactly, just sounds, just breath, just my name repeated like something sacred.
I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him closer until there was nothing between us, and when I fell, I took him with me, and we lay there afterward wound around each other like avine, his heartbeat slowing against mine, the lantern flickering, the night enormous and quiet outside the canvas.
I woke before dawn.
Grey light through the tent. His arm heavy across my waist. His breathing slow and deep and even. I lay still for a minute, just feeling the warmth of him, the solid weight of this man in my bed — in our bed, this temporary, perfect, stolen bed on top of a mountain.
Then I slid my hand under the blanket.
He was hard. Already, or still — the male body's morning loyalty to itself. I wrapped my fingers around him, and he stirred. A shift in his breathing. A low sound at the back of his throat.
"Callie —"
"Shh."
I stroked him slowly. Felt him harden further in my hand. His hips shifted — involuntary, instinctive — and his hand found my hair and his fingers curled into it.
"What are you —"
"Saying good morning." I slid down under the covers. Pressed my lips to his stomach. His abs clenched. I kissed lower. Lower. Took him in my mouth and his whole body arched and the sound he made — "Jesus" — echoed off the canvas.
I took my time. Learned the rhythm that made his hand tighten in my hair. The spot that made his hips buck. The way his breathing fractured when I did something with my tongue that I'd been thinking about since approximately the Silver Spur bathroom.
"Callie — I'm going to —"
I pulled back. Crawled up his body. Straddled him.
"Inside me," I said. "I want to feel you."
His eyes flew open. Dark. Wrecked. He grabbed my hips and I sank down onto him. We both gasped and I braced my handson his chest and rode him — slow at first, then faster, finding the angle that hit the spot that made stars burst behind my eyes. His hands on my hips guiding me, his thumb finding me, circling, pressing —
"There— Clay —"
"I know — I've got you —"
I shattered. He followed three strokes later, his back arching off the cot, my name ripped out of him — and I collapsed against him, and we lay there panting and tangled and wrecked in the grey morning light.
Silence. Then: "Best morning of my entire life," he said. "And I've won a national championship, so the bar was high."
