I met him stroke for stroke, my body tightening around him, my hands gripping his shoulders, my mouth against his ear. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He couldn’t. His control was slipping, his breath coming faster, his movements losing that careful precision. I could feel him getting closer, feel the way his body tensed, the way his hands gripped me tighter.
“Soleil—”
I kissed him, swallowing the sound of his name on my lips as he came, his body shuddering against mine, his breath ragged in my ear. I followed him over the edge, my own release crashing through me, my nails digging into his skin, my mouth pressed to his shoulder to muffle the cry.
He collapsed next to me, pulling me against him, his arms wrapping around me like he was afraid I’d disappear. The fire crackled, the rain still pattered against the roof, and for a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of our breathing, the way his heart pounded against my cheek.
Then his mouth was in my hair, his voice quiet. “Six weeks.”
I tilted my head back to look at him. “What?”
His thumb brushed my bottom lip. “Six weeks until Labor Day.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. The way his arms tightened around me said it all.
CHAPTER 7
TREYTON
I'd beenawake for two hours by the time she moved.
The fire had burned down to nothing, and I'd rebuilt it twice, once around five and once around six-thirty, working slow because I didn't want to wake her. The rain had stopped sometime in the night. The sun was up but the cabin still sat in shadow at this hour, and the only light came through the one good window. Biscuit had moved at some point from his spot in front of the fireplace to sitting at my feet, where he had spent the morning watching me think.
The damn dog knew. I'd been watched all morning by an animal who had witnessed the whole thing and who had opinions, and the opinions were not in my favor.
Soleil was tucked against my chest under the blanket with her hair a mess across my collarbone and her hand curled loose on my ribs, and at some point, I’d stopped trying to plan how I was going to walk this back and started counting the hours she had left on the ridge.
Not even six full weeks. We had forty-one days. I'd done the math twice because I hadn't believed it the first time.
She stirred. Her hand on my ribs moved, found my skin under the blanket, and settled. She made a small sound againstmy chest, and her other hand came up and slid along my jaw. She pulled my face down toward her without even opening her eyes.
Her lips found mine before I could stop it. I should have stopped it. I'd been deciding for two hours that I was going to stop it. I kissed her back.
She was warm and sleepy and her mouth was soft, and I had her hip in my hand and her breath in my mouth before I'd registered that my body had decided my head had spent two hours arguing against. I took her against the tarp again. Her fingers tangled my hair, my lips pressed kisses against her throat. Her leg hooked over mine, and the cabin seemed brighter in a way it hadn't been when she was asleep. Her eyes opened and she looked at me like she hadn’t realized that at some point we were going to have to rejoin the real world.
I pulled back, my breath coming harder than I wanted, and braced on one elbow above her. As I looked at her underneath me, so beautiful and warm and ready to be mine, I tried to find the sentence I'd been working on for the past two hours.
She saw it on my face before I said it. “What?”
“Soleil.”
“What, Treyton?”
I sat up. Pulled the blanket up to cover her even though it was too late for that to mean anything. I scrubbed a hand across my jaw and made myself look at her.
“Your residency is only for three months,” I said. “You've got six weeks left.”
It landed on her face the way I'd known it would. She didn't argue. She didn't flinch. She did the thing she had done at the workshop when I'd shut down on her, which was rearrange her expression into something easier and turn it back toward me like nothing was wrong.
“Right,” she said. “Of course. Six weeks.” She sat up too. Pulled the blanket around her shoulders. Looked at the fire instead of at me. “I appreciate you being practical about it. That's smart.”
She was using her professional voice. The voice she used on the phone with her editor. I'd heard her a couple of times through the open window and I'd hated it because it wasn't a voice that should have been on the ridge. But it was on the ridge now and I was the one who’d brought it.
“Soleil.”
“I'm fine.”
