“Not drowning”—I waggle my eyebrows suggestively—“but you can still join me if you want.”
He raises a dark brow and glances down at me in the water, his eyes heating as they roam over my body, and his tongue darts out across his lips. “I’m pretty filthy right now. I don’t think you want me in that water with you.”
I chuckle, well aware that he’s been bathing at the end of every day before he comes into the cabin to save me from having to experience how dirty and sweaty he really becomes from working all day.
Though, I’m not sure I would mind it all that much, given how sexy it is to watch him do that work that gets him that way.
I bite my bottom lip, picturing how goddamn good he looks naked, then I glance over at the river. “So, wash off in there first, then get in here.”
He considers my proposition for a second, maybe two, before he starts stripping off his clothes, letting them haphazardly fall to the ground.
Strong, sure steps bring him to the edge of the river, and he dives in where it’s the deepest, disappearing for a few seconds beneath the rippling surface. He bursts out from under the ice-cold water and shivers as he quickly rubs himself down with his hand.
Watching him touch himself, even so casually, when it isn’t meant even remotely as a sexual movement still requires me to press my thighs together against the throb between them.
There is just something about Connor, about how unabashedly confident he is in his physical shape yet can be so vulnerable about everything else that makes him fascinating and irresistible.
Connor dips his head under again, comes back up, heads onto the riverbank, and stalks across the few steps from the water to the tub. Rivulets of crystal-clear water trail down his muscular frame, making me suddenly parched. “Scooch forward.”
I move as far forward as I can, and he climbs in and sinks down behind me, his massive body displacing so much water that it sloshes over the sides and sizzles on the fire beneath us.
He barks out a laugh. “Shit. I may have just put out the fire.”
I glance over the side. “No, we’re good.”
My laughter mixes with his, and for some reason, the sound of it echoing out over the mountain and floating across the water lifts my heart to a place I haven’t felt it in a very long time.
Maybe ever.
Since everything went down with Willow and Killian, it has felt like there has been this gaping hole in my life, and when she came back, I thought that had been fixed. But now, I’m not so sure it was all about her or her absence from my life.
This time up on the mountain has made me question a lot of things I thought I understood.
Far too many.
I settle back against Connor, and he wraps his arm around me, tugging me tightly to him, his mouth trailing along my neck. His cock instantly hardens against my ass. I grind against it, but he uses his other hand on my hip to still me.
“No. Not right now. Because you have more work to do this afternoon.”
He nips at my skin playfully, and I laugh for a second but suddenly tense, remembering what work needs to come.
The thing we’ve both been dreading.
Connor seems to sense the shift in mood instantly and lifts his head from my shoulder, tilting my chin back until I look at him. His brows draw low over concerned eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I…we can’t put it off any longer, Connor.” I see in his gaze that he knows exactly what I mean. “We have to talk about that night. We have to talk about everything that came after it. It’s the last part of the puzzle, the last piece that I have to put into the story. I’ve worked in every other allegation, every fact, all the things I found out from all my sources; all that’s left is the attack on the homestead. I know you don’t want to talk about it, I know how painful it is for you, but…”
I trail off because I don’t know what justifies me pushing. I thought I did before we came up here. I thought I had plenty of good reasons to poke and prod and try to force his demons to the surface.
The fact that I’m trying to protect all of us? The fact that I’m trying to save all of us, including him, from having to live like this?
His gaze softens. “It’s all right. We both knew it was coming, right?”
I chew on my bottom lip and nod, and he releases a heavy sigh, pressing his forehead to my temple.
There’s something so intimate about this moment. Far more than any time he’s literally been inside of me. Words don’t even need to be spoken for us both to feel it.
We don’t move for a few minutes, embracing the silence and listening to the sounds of the mountain. I’m too afraid to, and he’s too shaken by what I’m asking. It makes me regret even bringing it up, ruining this moment when it could have waited for tonight.
