Page 30 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

His mouth found my neck. He kissed the hollow below my ear, the line of my jaw, the sensitive place where my neck met my shoulder, and each point of contact sent a cascade of sparks through me that gathered low in my belly and pulsed. I gripped his shoulders, feeling the muscles bunch under my hands, and tipped my head back to give him more room.

“Bedroom,” I breathed.

He didn’t need to be told twice.

He stood with me in his arms like I weighed nothing at all, my legs locked around his waist, my arms around his neck. He carried me across the cabin in four strides, his mouth never leaving mine, and when my back hit the bed, the cool sheets pressing against my heated skin through the flannel, the sudden change made me gasp.

He stood over me, breathing hard. His hair was disheveled where my hands had been, his shirt pulled loose, his eyes tracking over my body with a hunger that was almost reverent. Like I was something he’d been starving for and had denied himself for so long that the sight of me laid out on his bed was almost more than he could process.

“Tell me to stop,” he said. His voice was low and raw and shaking with the effort of offering an exit he clearly did not want me to take. “Tell me to stop and I will.”

“Don’t you dare stop.”

I reached for the buttons on the flannel shirt. His shirt. The one he’d given me when I was soaked from the rain. I undid them slowly, one by one, holding his gaze as each button gave way and the fabric parted. I wasn’t wearing anything beneath it. I watched the realization hit him. His jaw clenched. His hands curled into fists at his sides. The sound that came from his chest was something between a groan and a growl, rough and involuntary, like something primal had been let off its leash.

I let the shirt fall open. His eyes traveled the line of my collarbone, the curve of my breasts, the flat plane of my stomach, and I could feel his gaze like a physical touch, warm and heavy and hungry. It made me feel powerful and vulnerable and wanted in a way that reached deeper than skin.

“Come here,” I whispered.

He pulled his shirt over his head in one motion. The sight of him stole the air from my lungs. He was built like the mountains that surrounded this town, broad and strong and carved by something primal. His chest was wide, his shoulders thick with muscle, and scars marked his skin in pale, raised lines, souvenirs of a life that had been harder than anyone deserved. I reached for him, my fingers tracing a scar that ran across his ribs. He shuddered at the contact, a full-body tremor that told me no one had touched him like this in a very long time.

He lowered himself over me and the full-body press of his skin on my skin was so overwhelming that I arched into him involuntarily, my back bowing, my breath catching. He was warm. So warm. And solid in a way that made me feel held and surrounded and consumed all at once.

His mouth found my throat. He kissed a path from the hollow below my chin to the spot behind my ear, slow and deliberate, each one placed with the precision of a man who did everything with his hands and did it well. His lips moved to my collarbone, my shoulder, the swell of my breast. When his mouth closed over my nipple, I cried out, my fingers digging into his back, and felt his answering groan vibrate against my skin.

He didn’t rush. He worshipped. He kissed every inch of skin he uncovered, his calloused hands sliding the borrowed sweatpants down my legs with a patience that was devastating. His palms traveled the length of my thighs, rough against smooth, and the contrast sent sparks racing along every nerve I had. He kissed my hip. The inside of my knee. The arch of my foot, which made me gasp and then laugh, and his mouth curved against my skin in something that might have been a smile.

He worked his way back up. When he settled between my thighs, his breath hot against my most sensitive skin, I trembled. He looked up at me, those green eyes dark and burning, and held my gaze as his mouth found me.

The first touch of his tongue pulled a sound from me that I didn’t recognize. He was slow at first, learning me the way he learned everything, with thorough, focused attention, reading my body’s responses and adjusting with a precision that was maddening. When he found the rhythm I needed, my hands fisted in the sheets and my hips lifted off the bed. He pressed one arm across my stomach to hold me there, his mouth relentless and sure.

The pleasure built in waves, each one higher than the last. His fingers joined his mouth, one sliding inside me, then two, curling against a spot that made stars explode behind my eyelids. The sound I made was something between a scream and a sob.

“Let go,” he said against me, and the vibration of his voice was the final push.

I shattered. The orgasm crashed through my body in rolling, pulsing contractions that made my back arch off the bed and my thighs clamp around his head. He held me through it, his mouth gentle now, easing me down with soft, slow strokes that drew out every last tremor until I was boneless and gasping and blinking at the ceiling of his cabin like I’d forgotten what planet I was on.

He kissed his way back up my body. My stomach, my ribs, the valley between my breasts, my throat. When his face was above mine, I pulled him down and kissed him hard, tasting myself on his lips, and the intimacy of it sent a fresh surge of heat through me that had no business existing after what had just happened.

“Your turn,” I said against his mouth, and pushed him onto his back.

He went, surprise flickering across his face for half a second before I straddled him and it was replaced by something much darker. I kissed his jaw. His throat. The scar on his collarbone. I worked my way down his chest, my lips and tongue tracing the ridges of muscle, the lines of scars, the trail of hair below his navel. I tugged his remaining clothes off, and when I wrapped my hand around him, his head fell back against the pillow and the sound he made, low and broken and desperate, was the most honest thing I’d ever heard come out of Sawyer Cole’s mouth.

I stroked him slowly, learning him the way he’d learned me, watching his face for every twitch and clench and sharp inhale. His hands gripped the sheets. His abs contracted. His hips rocked into my touch with a rhythm that was involuntary and raw, and the sight of this man, this controlled, guarded, iron-willed man, completely undone by my hand was intoxicating.

“Chloe.” My name came out strangled. “If you don’t stop, I’m not going to last.”

I kissed his hip bone. “Then don’t last.”

“I want to be inside you when I finish.”

The words hit me like a match to gasoline. I released him and he flipped me onto my back in one fluid motion, settling between my thighs, and the press of him against my entrance made us both go still. We looked at each other. Rain on the roof. His heartbeat against mine. The entire world compressed into the space between our bodies.

“Now,” I said. “Please.”

He entered me in one long, deep stroke that made my mouth fall open in a silent cry. The stretch of him filling me was intense and overwhelming, my body opening around him in a way that felt like being completed, like a missing piece clicking into place. He buried himself to the hilt and held there, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding still.

“God,” he breathed against my skin. “Chloe. God.”