Ronan. The cabin. His voice in the dark, flat and certain, like a door closing between me and everything chasing me.
I lie very still.
He's behind me, chest to my back, one arm heavy across my waist, and he is warm, the specific, deep warmth of a large body that generates heat the way a stone wall holds the sun. I can feel his breathing, slow and even, the rhythm of genuine sleep, and for a moment I just stay inside that and breathe.
Then I feel the rest of him.
He's hard against the small of my back. Fully, unmistakably, absolutely hard, the length of him pressing against me through the thin fabric between us, and my entire nervous system comes online at once like a city grid lighting up after a blackout.
I don't move.
Or rather… I try not to move.
My body has other ideas. There's heat pooling low in my belly and my thighs and every point of contact between us suddenly has its own pulse, and I am very… very aware of the exact position of his hips against mine and the exact amount of pressure and the exact—he shifts.
A small movement, involuntary, the body doing what bodies do in sleep, and he presses closer and I make a sound that is very quiet but not quiet enough.
His breathing changes.
The arm around my waist doesn't move. But the quality of it shifts, the unconscious weight of sleep becoming something else, something aware, and I feel the moment he wakes up the way you feel a change in atmospheric pressure.
Silence.
He knows I'm awake. I know he's awake. Neither of us says anything, and the full reality of what is pressed against my lower back is very present in the silence between us.
"Harper." Low. Rough with sleep.
"Good morning," I say.
A pause. "You feel that."
"I'm a physical therapist," I say. "I'm very hard to surprise anatomically."
He makes a sound against the back of my head that is almost… almost, a laugh.
His hand, the one resting against my stomach, moves. Just slightly. A slow press of his palm, deliberate, feeling the way my breath catches when he does it.
"Hard to surprise," he repeats.
"Professionally speaking."
He spreads his fingers against my stomach and pulls me back against him at the same time, one smooth motion that eliminates the last half-inch of space between us and replaces it with the full, unambiguous length of his erection against my lower back, and I stop speaking entirely.
"Still professional?" he asks.
"Less so," I admit.
His mouth finds the back of my neck.
Not a kiss, too slow for a kiss, too deliberate. His lips drag along the nape of my neck and I feel the exhale that follows it, warm and controlled, the breath of a man who is keeping himself on a very short leash.
I reach back and find his thigh. Press my hand against it. Feel the muscle jump under my palm.
The leash snaps.
He rolls me onto my back in one motion, his weight coming over me, and the full impact of Ronan Ryder in the early morning light, the breadth of his shoulders blocking the grey window, the dark eyes completely awake and completely focused, the scar catching the pale light, all of him, lands somewhere below my ribcage and doesn't stop.
He looks at me.
