He takes his time undressing me and then his mouth is on my throat, my breasts, his beard dragging against my skin in a way that makes my whole nervous system come online at once. I arch up into it.
"Silas."
"I know, baby."
He works down my stomach and gets his mouth between my thighs and I stop trying to think about anything at all. I lie back and look up at the spruce canopy and the sky in patches through the branches and I let him do exactly what he wants to me.
His tongue works my clit in slow, deliberate strokes and I grip the jacket under me. “Ah, please!”
Silas chuckles. “I’ve got you, don’t worry. Let me savor this.”
He holds my hips still when I try to rush it. Just holds me there and keeps going at exactly his own pace and it should be maddening and it is maddening and it is also the best thing anyone has ever done to me.
"Now," I say, when I'm right at the edge. "Silas,now—"
"Let go," he says, against me.
I come hard, both hands fisted in his jacket, a sound leaving my mouth that goes straight up into the trees. Somewhere above us a bird startles off a branch. I don't care.
He kisses back up my body and I get my hand around his cock and he makes a low rough sound against my neck that I feel everywhere.
He lines up and pushes into my pussy slow. I wrap my legs around him and pull him deeper. He stops when he's fully in, forehead against mine, both of us just breathing.
The way Silas fucks is…intentional. It's deliberate and deep and he finds the angle that makes me gasp almost immediately and he stays there. I dig my fingers into his back and tell him exactly what I want in specific terms and he delivers all of it without commentary, which is the most Silas Fisher thing imaginable and also extremely effective.
He groans as I clench around him, throwing his head back and coming together with me. He rides it out until we collapse against the rock.
"You're staying," he says, low, close to my ear.
"I'm staying."
The river didn't lie.
Neither did we.
Silas
One Year Later
Peytonleavesmeanote on the counter every morning before she goes out to the river.
They say things likecoffee's madeandKoda needs her pill in her foodand once, memorably,caught a cutthroat before you were even awake, just so you know.That one she taped to the rod rack. I left it there for a week.
She fishes every morning now. Better than she'll admit, not as good as she thinks, and I am keeping both of those facts to myself for as long as possible because I like the way she looks when she comes in off the river — waders still dripping, colour in her face, already talking before she's through the door.
She talks the whole time she's taking the waders off. She talks while she pours her coffee. She fills the cabin with noise and motion. I have lived alone in this cabin for years and I did not know how quiet it actually was until it wasn't anymore.
She rebuilt the guide business website in a weekend. Put in an online booking system, updated the rates, rewrote every wordof the copy. Within two weeks the summer was fully booked six weeks out. She runs the bookings. I run the river.
This morning she comes in from the water earlier than usual and she's not talking. That's how I know something is happening.
Peyton comes through the door with her waders still on and she's got something in her hand. Her face has the look it gets when she's working up to something she doesn't know how to start.
She stops in the middle of the kitchen. "I went out early to clear my head," she says.
"Okay?"
"Before I told you something."
