“Last chance,” I said, carrying her through the cabin. “You want to tell me to slow down, tell me now.”
“Garrick.” She took my face in both hands and made me look at her, and her eyes were bright and clear and certain, no fog in them, nothing but heat and that spark that had been taking me apart since the river. “If you slow down, I will write a one-star review.”
I gave that rusty little laugh and made her smile.
I set her down on her feet beside the bed because I wanted to unwrap her standing. I started on the buttons of that soaked flannel shirt— my shirt — and my hands, which had field-stripped rifles in the dark, fumbled the first button.
She noticed. Of course, she noticed. “Why, Bigfoot,” she said, delighted, “are you nervous?”
I tore it open and buttons went flying.
“Okay,” she breathed. “That works too.”
Then the shirt was off her shoulders and on the floor and my brain went quiet in a way it hadn’t in years.
“Fuck, Amy.”
She was — there wasn’t a word that could describe her, standing there before me. Lush. Real. Soft heavy breasts still cold-tipped from the hose water, the sweet curve of her belly, hips that flared wide enough to fill even my hands, and all of it right there in the afternoon light coming gold through the curtains. And I watched it happen — the second her chin came up, the breath she took to make a joke, the armor going on. She was bracing for me to be careful with my face. Somebody had taught her to expect that, too. I vowed to make her forget every damn bastard that had looked at her that way.
I let her see it. All of it. Exactly what looking at her did to me.
“You have no idea,” I said, low, “what you look like.”
“I have some idea. There are mirrors in my life—”
“No.” I put my hand flat on her sternum, over her heart, and slid it down — slow, between her breasts, over the soft of her stomach, watching the muscles of her stomach jump and settle behind my palm. “You don’t.”
My hand kept going, hooked in the waistband of those wet shorts, going down the front until my fingertips touched a soft nest of curls. She gasped. It was the sweetest sound she’d made. But I knew I could make her make more.
“You’ve made me useless. I split a half cord of wood this morning before you woke up, trying not to walk back inside and wake you up with my mouth.” I pulled her shorts down, my hands sliding down her legs, helping her step out of them. My nose followed the same path my hands had made coming down, inhaling her fragrance. At the juncture of her thighs, I buried my face in that soft nest of curls I’d touched.
I wanted to taste her. Spread her legs apart and bury my tongue inside her pussy.
But I didn’t. Not yet.
I stood back up, lifting her chin until she met my eyes. “I don’t want to do this in the dark, and if you make one joke about how much of you there is, I’m going to spend the next hour proving you wrong. Slowly. Until you are begging for mercy.”
Her mouth opened. Closed.
“There it is,” I said. “I finally found the trick to making you speechless.”
“That’s not — I’m not —” She took a deep breath. “I want this too, please.”
“How prettily said.” I grabbed the hem of my shirt and yanked it up. She looked at me with hunger in those dark eyes, and I’d never seen anything quite so beautiful. She licked her lips. “Take the rest off. It’s not fair. I’m the only one being brave.”
I took the rest off.
Her eyes went down me and stayed. I intended to remember the look on her face on my deathbed. Her mouth made that small round shape guaranteed to make a man stand at attention, and every part of me obliged.
“Okay,” she said faintly. “It’s a whole Bigfoot situation. Head to toe.” The way she said it, wild and greedy… she got to see just what kind of situation she was getting into as my cock swelled even more.
I picked her up and put her on my bed, spread out on my quilt with her hair wild, her thighs pressed together and her eyes on me like I was something she planned to keep.
Mine.
The word came up again, hard and sure, and for the first time I didn’t fight it. I let it settle inside me. Right. Perfect.
Just like her.
