Page 19 of Working for Keeps

I get her onto the bed I built.

I’ve slept in it alone every night since I put it together and never once let myself picture her in it. On purpose. The way you don’t load a beam you haven’t sized.

She’s in the middle of it now with her hair spread out on my pillow, and the beam holds.

I take the rest of her clothes off the way I said I would, and this time there’s nothing in my way and nothing to rush for.

The blouse first, one button at a time, with her watching me do it. There’s a shadow of carbon at the hip of it where I put my hands on her over a laminate desk this afternoon, and she’s walked around my plant all evening wearing it. I get it off her and fold it once over the footboard before coming back to her.

The rest goes slower than it needs to. I get the trousers down and off and set them on the chair, and she lifts her hips for me without being asked, and that alone nearly takes the top of my head off. The last of it I do sitting on the edge of my own bed with her half in my lap, neither of us saying a word.

Then she gets her hands under my shirt and pulls it off me. Staying up on her knees in front of me, her thumb goes straight to the stripe across my knuckles where a wrench slipped on Line Three.

I catch my breath as she puts her mouth on it, my chest tightening.

“You first,” I murmur as I lay her back down and put my mouth on the freckle over her left collarbone, on the soft underside of her jaw, on the flat of her stomach that jumps under my beard, loving the sounds she makes.

“Mick, we should probably talk about how this looks on Monday.”

“No.”

“I’m only saying there’s a phone call waiting for me in the morning, and if we’re going to be smart about it⁠—”

“Vera.” I stop where I am and wait until she looks at me. “You’ve been managing something every minute since you crossed the county line. Not in this room.”

Her mouth opens. Then it closes. I watch her set down whatever she was holding, and it takes her a second. It’s the bravest thing I’ve seen her do all week.

She’s still wearing the faint scent of the shop floor—engine oil and cold metal—mixed with that warm, sweet skin scent that’s belonged only to her since we were kids. It hits me straight in the chest, so thick it nearly makes my knees weak.

There’s a faint, dark smudge on the inside of her thigh from this afternoon where my hand rested while the presses ran beneath us. I drop my mouth to it, feeling the electric shudder that ripples straight through her. Her hands come down into my hair, her fingers tangling tight, anchoring herself.

When I settle between her thighs and open her with my mouth, any last trace of my composure just burns away.

She tastes like home—warm, salt-sweet, and intoxicatingly familiar. It’s a taste I’ve craved on every cold, quiet night in this cabin, a memory I tried for three years to starve out of my blood. The second my tongue finds her, she goes rigid, her hips hitching off the mattress as she catches a fistful of my hair.

“Mick—”

It comes out like a warning, broken and raspy, but I don’t move back. I can’t. The smell of her slick and hot in the quiet room is driving me out of my mind. I get my forearm heavy across her hips, pinning her down where I want her, feeling the frantic, wild pulse of her body against my cheek.

Her thigh starts to shake violently against my ear. She’s slick, burning hot, and every small sound she makes—the ragged hitches in her breath, the way her heels dig into the sheets—goes straight to my gut like a physical blow. I stay right there, drinking her in, coaxing those sharp, helpless sounds out of her throat until the warning turns into something with no words left in it at all.

When she goes over, her body arches so hard her chest heaves, one hand fisted in my hair and the other flat against the headboard, her thighs clamping tight around my face. I hold her through every last tremor, feeling the wild, rhythmic spasm of her release against my lips, completely undone by the fact that I’m the one giving it to her.

Afterward, she lies there with her arm thrown across her eyes, her chest rising and falling fast, breathing like she’s just run a mile through the snow.

“That’s not fair,” she tells the ceiling, her voice raspy and wrecked.

“I’ve had three years to think about it,” I say, my voice so deep and rough I barely recognize it.

She pulls her arm off her eyes and looks at me. Whatever smart remark she was going to make dies right there in her throat when she sees my face.

She reaches down instead, grabbing my wrist with hands that are trembling violently, and pulls. I come up her body, heavy and starved, and she reaches for my belt. Her fingers are clumsy, shaking so bad she can barely work the buckle, and watching her lose her cool—watching this fierce, brilliant woman lose her mind for me—makes my whole chest ache. I have to lock my jaw and hold dead still just to let her finish.

Then I shift up over her. I catch her gaze and hold it, making sure she’s looking right at me, and I push in slow.

Nothing between us. No rubber, no distance, no three years of silence. Just her.

The slick, searing heat of her wrapping around me stops the breath dead in my lungs. My vision actually goes dark at the edges for a second from the sheer intensity of it. It’s too much—too tight, too hot, too right. She arches up, wrapping her legs around my waist, and pulls me the last agonizing inch home.