Somewhere above us a bird calls once and goes quiet. Then I don’t hear anything else, can’t feel anything but the thick head of his shaft probing at my entrance.
Before I can pull another breath, before I can even begin to process the assault of sensations, he's pushing inside me, stretching me in that achy, overwhelming way that makes my thighs tremble. “Fuck, baby girl. You squeeze me like this every single time, you choke the life out of my cock with this tight cunt and you think I’ll let you go? You fill my cabin with light, laughter, with your warmth and you think I’ll walk away?”
“You said—” I pant, searching for words amidst sensations. We restrained ourselves for maybe twelve hours but already it feels new, feels like the first time all over again. Familiar but new again. My aching flesh sucks him in gladly, hungrily, and soon he's lodged all the way inside me, his hips flush against my ass, his chest pressed to my back, both of us breathing hard. “You said only if?—”
“I was fucking wrong,” he says, giving me a quick thrust. “Baby or not, you are mine, Princess.” One more thrust and I’m hurling past the clouds, into the stars.
He jerks and throbs inside me, without moving. Tears fill my eyes and plop into the ground. “Are you sure?”
“That my life is nothing without you, yes.” His fingers dig into my hips, knead my ass and pull, opening me wider for his assault. "I'm not returning you, Princess."
He pulls all the way out and thrusts in with a roughness he's never let me taste before. I cry out, the sound swallowed by the pines. My pussy clenches and unclenches, pleasure spreading like fire through my limbs, up my spine, behind my eyes.
"You—" thrust "—are—" thrust "—mine—" thrust "—forever—" thrust "—and ever."
He nips my shoulder with his teeth through the thermal and the first orgasm wrenches me into its grip, shaking me apart against the cold ground while the Black Pine Mountains hold their breath around us.
"Fuck, how you squeeze me when you come, baby girl," Elias says, his voice wrecked and low against my ear, continuing with his relentless thrusts. "How you choke me. How you make me feel alive again.”
The ground is unforgiving against my knees and palms, pine needles and cold earth pressing into my skin. I'm going to have scrapes on both. But I don't care even slightly.
Because this man—the way he's taking me, the way he's owning me out here on this cold mountain in the dark—it's indescribable. It's everything.
"Why," I manage, in the aftermath of shocks still squeezing my pelvis, pleasure rippling outward in waves I can't contain, "why do you want to keep me? What if?—"
His hand comes over my mouth.
"Because you are mine, baby girl." The words come out rough and absolute, each one landing in my chest like something permanent. "From the moment I found you in that confession booth and you looked up at me with those big eyes. I'm goingto keep you. Marry you. Breed you. Fill this belly with my cum over and over." His free hand splays flat over my stomach, warm and possessive, and something inside me cracks wide open. "I'm going to stand by your side while you get a teaching job, while you take the world by storm, while you live your dreams, Iris."
His forehead drops to my shoulder, sticky with sweat, his breath ragged against my skin. Cold air threads through the pine branches above us, and underneath it all the smell of him and me and the mountain, all mixed together into something I'll carry in my body forever.
"I'm in love with you, baby girl." His voice breaks on it, just slightly, just enough. "It feels like I'm falling over and over and nothing in my life has ever been better than this ride."
A sob builds in my throat. I swallow it and feel it land somewhere deep and permanent instead.
"Tell me," he says, pinning me down with his hips, ruthlessly pumping them. Somehow his hands find my breasts through the thermal and he starts pinching my nipples just how I like it, that perfect pressure that lights up every nerve ending. "Tell me you'll be mine. Tell me you'll marry me. Tell me you won't leave me."
The cold ground beneath my palms, his heat above me, his voice in my ear, his hands on my breasts, his body filling mine—it all converges at once into something that has no name, something bigger than pleasure, bigger than want.
Another orgasm rushes through me and I scream into the mountain air, my voice swallowed by the world around us.
"Yours, Elias." The words tear out of me between gasps, between the shocks still rolling through my body. "I'm all yours, Elias. Every inch of me yours."
“Tell me, please.”
“I love you, mountain man.”
He shudders against me, his own release tearing through him with a groan that vibrates into my bones. “Say it again.”
"I love you. And yes," I breathe into the dark, tears and laughter mixing on my face. "I'll marry you. I'll build a family with you. And I will love you for the rest of our lives."
EPILOGUE
IRIS
Three weeks later, we are in the town of Lovesbury, where Aiden and Rosa have made their home, and the latter is expecting their second child. Montana in June is breathtaking.
The sky above Lovesbury is the particular blue that only exists at altitude—deep and endless and so clear it makes your chest ache. The air smells of cut grass and wildflowers and the faint sweetness of the linden trees lining the small church's path.
