Page 27 of The Mountain Man Lumberjack’s Claimed Bride

Her smile breaks wide open. The one that reached me across a driveway fourteen months ago and hasn't stopped reaching me since. She crosses the kitchen, bare feet on clean floorboards, and her arms wrap around my waist. Her head rests against my chest. My arms close around her. My chin settles on top of her hair, and the smell of her, flour and shampoo and the cold November air still clinging to her skin from the porch, fills my lungs.

"You're going to be an incredible father." Her voice vibrates against my sternum.

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do. You build everything to last. Our child won't be any different." Her hands flatten against my back, pulling me closer. "You'll teach them to read timber. Mark trees. Use a chainsaw safely at fourteen, just like my dad taught me. You'll grind themfresh coffee when they're old enough and read them forestry books by candlelight when they're not."

"Nora."

"And when they're difficult, because they will be difficult, because they'll be half Marsh and half Chambers and stubbornness is genetic on both sides, you'll do what you do with everything. You'll be patient. You'll wait. You'll let them come to you."

My arms tighten. Pulling her up onto her toes. Her face tilts, chin on my chest, brown eyes looking up at me with the unshakable certainty of a woman who drove eleven hours to a stranger's mountain and turned it into a home.

"I didn't ask for you," I tell her. "I didn't ask for any of this. The agency. The letter. The woman in my driveway with two suitcases. But I'm standing in a kitchen that smells like bread, holding my wife, counting down to July, and I have never in my life been more grateful for something I didn't ask for."

"You should probably thank Bette."

"I'll die first."

Her laugh. God. That laugh. Full, warm, shaking through her body into mine. My mouth finds hers. Slow this time. Not the urgent crash of reconciliation or the desperate heat of a first night. Something deeper. The kiss of a man who knows how this story goes because he's living it, and the ending is a beginning, and the beginning started with flour on a cheek and a woman who wasn't afraid.

"Take me to bed, Hunter."

"It's two in the afternoon."

"And?"

My hands slide down to her thighs. One smooth lift, her legs wrapping around my waist, her arms looping around my neck. She weighs nothing. She weighs everything. The whole world,balanced on my hips, smiling down at me from a height she only reaches when I'm holding her up.

The bedroom door kicks open. The bed catches us both, her back against the mattress, my weight braced above her, mouth never leaving hers. The flannel opens under my hands. No bra underneath because there never is in the mornings, and her breasts fill my palms, warm and full, nipples tightening as my thumbs circle them.

"Mine." Against her throat. My teeth graze her pulse. "Every part of you. Every part of what's coming. Mine."

"Yours." She arches into my touch. "Ours."

The flannel peels off. My thermal follows. Skin against skin in the afternoon light that pours through the south-facing window, painting her body in gold. Her jeans work down her hips, then mine, then the rest follows until there's nothing between us but heat and intention.

My mouth moves down her body. Throat. Collarbone. The swell of her breasts, each nipple drawn between my lips, tongued until she gasps. Her stomach, where my mouth pauses. Presses flat. A kiss against skin that is keeping the most important secret either of us will ever share.

"Hi," I whisper against her belly. Rough. Barely audible. Ridiculous. The kind of thing a man says when he's broken open so completely that the pieces have rearranged themselves into something better than the original. "I'm your dad. I'm going to build you a crib."

"Hunter." Nora's fingers thread through my hair. Her voice cracks. "You're going to make me cry."

"Later." My mouth continues south. Over her hip. The inside of her thigh. "Crying later. This first."

My tongue finds her pussy, wet and swollen. One long stroke from entrance to clit draws a moan out of her that fills the bedroom. Her thighs open wider, hips lifting, fingers tighteningin my hair. The taste of her floods my mouth. Familiar now. Mine. Something I'll never get enough of, even after fourteen months of learning every sound she makes, every spot that makes her arch, every rhythm that drives her to the edge.

Two fingers slide inside. Curling forward, pressing, finding the place that makes her voice break on my name. My tongue circles her clit in steady, relentless strokes while my fingers work her from the inside, building pressure, reading every tremor and gasp the way I read timber. Patiently. Precisely. With the full attention of a man who takes his time because this matters.

"Fuck, Hunter, right there, don't stop?—"

Her orgasm hits hard. Back arching, thighs clamping, pussy gripping my fingers in rhythmic waves while she comes apart with my name on her lips and my mouth on her clit. Beautiful. Devastating. Mine.

Before the aftershocks finish, my body covers hers. One stroke sinks deep inside her, filling her completely, her gasp mixing with my groan in the space between our mouths. Her legs wrap around me. Ankles locked. Pulling me deeper.

"Harder."

My hips slam forward. The bed frame protests. Her breasts bounce with each thrust, nipples flushed dark pink. My mouth finds one, sucking hard, tongue lashing the peak while my cock drives into her at a pace that shakes the headboard against the wall.