He makes a sound that's pure animal. Lifts his head. Strips his own shirt off in one motion and the body underneath makes my mouth go dry. Broad, scarred, roped with muscle, the body ofa man who lives at altitude and works with his hands every day of his life.
His hands go to the waistband of my hiking pants. Button. Zipper. He pushes them down my hips with my underwear in the same motion, and I kick them off along with my boots, and then I'm naked in front of Cory Matthews in a firelit room during a blizzard and his expression is something I want to photograph and frame.
"Jesus Christ," he whispers. "Look at you."
"Your turn," I say, reaching for his belt.
He catches my wrist. Brings it to his mouth. Kisses the inside of it where my pulse is hammering, and the tenderness of it after all that intensity makes something bloom in my chest that I am absolutely not ready to name.
He undoes his own belt. His own pants. Steps out of them, and he's hard and thick and I drag my eyes back up to his face where amusement and desire are warring for dominance.
"On the bed," he says. It's not a request. It's the voice of a man who gives orders for a living, and my body obeys before my brain catches up.
I lie back on the mattress and he follows me down, bracing over me on his forearms, and the weight of him between my thighs is the best thing I've ever felt. He kisses me deep and slow while his hand trails down my stomach, over my hip, and between my legs.
His fingers find me wet and swollen and ready, and his forehead drops to mine.
"Soaked," he breathes. "Fucking soaked for me."
His middle finger slides between my folds and circles my clit with a precision that tells me this man pays the same attention to a woman's body that he pays to his mountain. He reads every response. Adjusts pressure, speed, angle based on the sounds Imake. When I gasp, he does it again. When I moan, he locks in and stays.
He pushes two fingers inside me and curls them forward and my back arches off the bed.
"That's it," he murmurs against my mouth. "Give me that sound again."
His thumb works my clit while his fingers stroke that spot inside me and I'm climbing fast, too fast, gripping his shoulders and digging my nails in and he doesn't flinch. He watches my face with those burning blue eyes and when I shatter, clenching around his fingers and crying out against his neck, he holds me through every pulse of it.
Before the aftershocks fade, he's reaching for his pants on the floor. Condom from his wallet. He rolls it on and settles back between my thighs and the blunt head of his cock presses against my entrance.
"Look at me," he says.
I do. Blue eyes on blue eyes. Storm outside, fire inside.
He pushes in. Slow. Stretching me inch by inch until he's fully seated, and the fullness of him forces a sound out of me that's half gasp, half prayer.
"Fuck." His voice is wrecked. "You feel like everything I've been missing."
He pulls back and thrusts deep, and my entire body lights up. He sets a rhythm that's controlled and deliberate, like everything he does, and each stroke hits so deep I feel it in my spine. I wrap my legs around his waist and he groans, gripping my hip with one hand to angle me higher, and the shift sends him against a spot that makes me scream.
"Right there," I beg.
He locks in. Drives into me with a focus that is relentless and devastating and worshipful all at once. His mouth finds my neck,my jaw, my mouth, kissing me with every thrust until I can't tell where his body ends and mine begins.
"You're not leaving this mountain," he says against my lips, his rhythm building. "You hear me? You're not running from this."
"I'm not running." My voice breaks on the last word because I'm close again, coiling tight around him. "I'm not running, Cory."
He reaches between us. His thumb finds my clit and presses in tight circles and his cock hits deep and I come apart so violently that my vision whites out. I feel him follow, his whole body locking up, his face buried in my neck, a groan torn from somewhere deep in his chest as he pulses inside me.
We lie tangled together. Breathing hard. His weight on me is grounding and warm and I never want him to move.
The storm rages. The lantern flickers. And for the first time in seventeen years of constant motion, I am completely, utterly still.
