I go hard so fast it's practically a medical event.
Then she lets go of my wrist, picks up her cup, and settles back against my chest like she didn't just do that. We have all night and she knows it.
"Want another s'more?"
I'm still trying to recover from the instant hard-on I'm sporting, but she's already gone back to the bag of marshmallows for seconds. She hands me one, her dark eyes dancing in the firelight.
The woman is a menace. She's a menace and a surprise, and I can't get my fill of either side of her.
We roast our second s'mores, then settle back afterward into a comfortable silence. The fire burns down to embers while she sits back between my knees, my chin near her hair, both of uswatching the coals breathe. It's the quiet that happens when two people have stopped performing. It's contentment. I didn't know either existed until tonight.
"I've camped my whole life," I say into her hair. "And every trip, no matter where I am, some part of me is already gone by now. Planning the next adventure. Wondering what I might be missing one ridge over." The coals shift. Her hand comes to rest on my forearm.
"Is that what you're doing now?"
"No. Tonight there's no next thing. I'm not anywhere else. I'm just here."
She doesn't say anything for a second, and her hand tightens on my arm like she heard everything inside it.
She inhales a soft breath as if she's trying to find her voice. "Thank you for this, Finn."
I don't ask her to explain what she's thanking me for. I don't want to break whatever spell has fallen over us, and questions will only beg answers. Answers I don't have, and promises I'm not sure I can ever make her, no matter how heavily they sit on my tongue.
Neither of us asks where we're going, or whether it can last.
All I know right now is this. Darcy is the person I trust most in the world. More than Wyatt. More than my brothers. Her. I've handed this woman the most vulnerable parts of my history and she's never once used an ounce of it against me, never made me smaller with it.
I have money I couldn't spend in ten lifetimes, a company with my name on the side of it, a life most men would take sight unseen. I've never had this. Somebody to share myself with, my days and nights, even my morning afters.
I turn her chin up and kiss her. She tastes like sugar and chocolate, hints of woodsmoke in her hair. The kiss starts warm. Then it goes serious, her hand coming up to my jaw,her body turning in my arms, and when we finally break apart, the firelight is in her eyes and tonight has exactly one place it's going.
She stands and holds out her hand.
"That tent I built is still standing," she says. "It would be a shame to waste it. There's a perfectly terrible sleeping pad in there with our names on it."
Smiling, I bank the fire and take her hand.
Inside, I zip the flap and the world gets small. The lantern stays off. The last of the firelight comes through the fabric in a low orange wash that moves when the flames do, and every sound outside sharpens. The stream working below the ledge. Wind moving through the pines. An owl calling somewhere down the valley. No town. No walls. I have never been this alone with another person in my life.
She kneels on the double sleeping bag, and I kneel in front of her and take the hem of her henley in both hands.
I peel it off her one inch at a time. Then the base layer under it, her arms rising for me, her thick dark hair falling loose. I inhale when I see the lacy bra underneath.
"I like the way you pack for camp," I say, drawing it over her head. "I like you even better with nothing on at all."
She laughs low in her throat, and then she's bare to the waist in the moving light and the laugh fades, because I've stopped to look at her, and a man should look at this properly. Full breasts, her nipples already tight in the mountain air, the dim glow of firelight sliding over her skin. My mouth waters and my hands are not entirely steady. I've quit pretending either fact is under my control.
I bend forward so I can put my mouth on her naked skin. Her throat first, the salt of the trail still faint on her skin, then down, taking one nipple slow against my tongue until her fingers find my hair and pull, then the other. The sound she makes israw and hungered, and I want every sound she's got. Out here, nobody gets them but me.
Her hands go to my shirt and I let her strip it off me. She flattens her palms on my chest, runs them down my stomach, opens my belt, and when her hand slides in and closes around my cock, I suck in a sharp hiss that dissolves into a moan.
"Fuck." It comes out low and wrecked, and she smiles against my jaw, delighted with herself, stroking me slow through the fire-colored dark.
"Careful," I manage, catching her wrist. "I have plans, and you're shortening the itinerary."
We get the rest of our clothing off each other without hurrying, because hurrying is for people with somewhere to be. Her pants and lace-trimmed underwear drawn down her legs, my jeans gone, every layer its own event, until there's nothing between us but the cold air neither of us feels anymore.
I lay her back on the sleeping bag and start at her lips before taking the long way down her body. Her throat, then her collarbone. The soft undersides of her breasts. Her ribs, her belly, the crease of her hip. Her thighs fall open for me, and I settle between them and take my first slow taste of her pussy. She's already wet. Drenched and eager for me. Her whole body arches, and I hum against her and set an easy pace with my tongue, working her clit patiently, learning tonight's version of her needs.
