I close the drawer.
The chain is still in my left hand. I look at it. I think about putting it back on. Empty. As something I keep. I think about putting it in the drawer with the rings. I think about throwing it in a kitchen junk drawer where I won't remember to look for it.
I lay it on top of the dresser instead. A small loop of gold against the wood. Visible. Available. Not gone. Not on me.
I look at myself in the mirror. The skin of my throat is bare for the first time in twenty-two months. My hand goes up and presses flat against the place where the chain used to be. The skin is warm, naked and mine.
I breathe out a long slow breath I didn't know I was holding.
I leave the bedroom and cross the front room. I let the screen door slap shut behind me on the porch and walk across the gravel to Rogue's cabin.
He opens the door before I get to the steps. He must've seen me coming on the camera.
I come up the steps and he's standing in the doorway with his hat off and his hand on the frame and his eyes are on my face. Then his eyes drop to my throat.
He goes still. Not the way a man goes still when he's surprised. The way a man goes still when something he has been waiting for has shown up.
I stop on the porch boards in front of him. His eyes come back to mine. He doesn't speak.
He lifts his hand from the doorframe and reaches out and his fingers come to my bare collarbone. One fingertip runs along the skin where the chain used to lie. Slow. Like he is reading something. His finger comes to rest at the hollow of my throat. "Baby."
His voice is rougher than it was a minute ago.
"Yeah?"
His eyes don't leave mine. His fingertip is warm where it sits at the hollow of my throat and he isn't moving it. "You doin' what I think you're doin'?"
I cover his hand with mine and hold it there against my skin. "I took the chain off, Rogue."
His thumb moves once against my collarbone. Just once. "I see that."
"I put the ring in the drawer with my own."
The smallest exhale comes out of him. His other hand comes up off the doorframe and finds my hip. "Yeah?"
I step closer. Close enough that the front of my shirt touches the front of his. My free hand goes to his chest, flat over his heart, and I can feel it going faster than it should be.
"I'm yours."
His hand moves. It comes up off my throat and to the side of my face. He cups my jaw the way he cupped it the first night on the porch.
This kiss isn't the one from the other day. This is the kiss he didn't give me on the porch. The one I felt him hold back. The one that's been burning through every look he's ever given me since I stepped onto his land.
His mouth hits mine like a match to dry grass. Sure and hot, and there's nothing tentative about it—he takes the kiss deep, his tongue sliding against mine before I'm ready, and I gasp into him. My hands fist in his cut. I rise on my toes, pressing my body into his, feeling the hard wall of his chest, the heat radiating off him. His beard scrapes my chin, my jaw, and I want that feeling everywhere.
He breaks the kiss just enough to speak, voice thick and low. "Bedroom or out here in the open, Hadley? Trust me, I wouldn't mind if everyone saw me claimin' you."
His words make me blush. "Bedroom, please."
He doesn't hesitate. One arm hooks under my thighs, the other bands across my back, and he lifts me like I'm nothing but air. My legs wrap around his waist. His mouth finds my throat as he carries me, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, and I arch into him, fingers twisted in his shirt. He shoulders the door open as we head through his cabin.
He sets me on the edge of the bed, but doesn't step back. He kneels in front of me. Eye to eye.
He takes his hat off at last and sets it on the nightstand, and now I see the auburn hair, a lock falling over his forehead. I want to push it back but I can't move yet. "I want to make you scream for me, Hadley Cross."
His voice is sure, but there's a ragged edge beneath it. Desire sharp enough to cut.
"Then you'd better get to work."
