Page 56 of Broken Cedar

Colt pulls back and looks at me. His eyes are dark, heavy-lidded. “I want to remember this,” he says. “Every second. I want to remember how you look right now.”

“Then look,” I whisper.

He does. He looks at me the way Colt looks at things that matter–completely, without reservation, like looking is its own form of touching. He keeps looking at me, taking in every inch of me as he slowly undresses me, removing my sleep shorts, then my shirt.

I study every inch of him too. His rounded shoulders, the flat plane of his abs, the deep V that disappears beneath his boxer briefs as I remove them. We drink each other in, memorizing every detail.

Then he’s kneeling between my thighs, lifting my legs, hooking them around his elbows. He looks down as he guides himself. The tip nudges against me, and I’m already slick, already aching, my body responding to him the way it always has–immediately, completely, without the courtesy of consulting my brain first.

He pushes in slowly and my breath catches. Colt makes a low, ragged, sound as he sinks into me, all the way, until there’s nowhere else to go, until we’re joined completely, and the feeling is so much it whites out my brain for a second.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmurs, pulling out. He slides back in. Deeper. His arms push my thighs wider. “So perfect for me, aren’t you, baby?”

I can’t answer. Can’t speak. My head is back on the pillow, my hair a wild tangle, and all I can do is feel Colt inside me, filling me, reaching places that make coherent thought impossible. He pulls out completely. Just to watch me take him again, my body opening for him, clenching around him, and the sight of it—his cock pushing into me, the wet sound of it, the way my hips lift to meet him—draws a groan from him that I feel in my chest.

He thrusts harder. My legs tense. A gasp tears from my throat. My hand finds his neck, pulling him down. “Fuck, harder. Oh my god.”

He slams into me. The bed creaks. I bite my lip to keep from moaning too loud, and Colt notices, his thumb finding my mouth, pulling my lip free.

“Let me hear you,” he says. “Please. I want to hear you.”

So I do. I moan. Loud. Colt answers with a groan of his own, his hips driving into me with a rhythm that has me clutching at his shoulders, my nails digging into his skin, my body rocking to meet every thrust.

“Fuck,” Colt grits out. “Oh fuck, I’m about to—”

“No,” I cry, my nails clawing at his back. “Oh fuck, Colt, don’t stop, please, don’t.”

He grits his teeth as his rhythm falters. He’s trying to hold back, and I can feel it—and then it hits. My orgasm crashes through me like a wave breaking, my pussy convulsing around his cock, and the pleasure is so intense it blurs the edges of the room. Colt groans as his control shatters. He comes inside me with a shudder that I feel in every cell, his hips jerking, his forehead dropping to my shoulder as he empties himself with a final, ragged thrust.

We stay like that. Connected. Breathing heavily. His weight on me, his cock still inside me, both of us trembling. I can feel his heartbeat against my chest. Or maybe it’s mine. Hard to tell where I end and he begins.

Eventually, carefully, he pulls out and drops beside me. I pull him back into my arms, neither of us ready to let go. His mouth is soft as he kisses me back.

“Colt,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around his neck to hold him there. “I-I wish…”

He knows what I’m going to say. I can see it in his eyes. He wants to say it too. The words I’ve always imagined him saying: Stay. Please stay. I’ve waited eight years. I can keep waiting, but Christ, Hallie, I’d rather not.

He doesn’t say it. I don’t say it. We made a promise. One week. No strings. No expectations beyond the boundaries we set. And the boundaries we set did not include permanence. Did not include tomorrow, or the day after, or the catastrophic rightness of loving each other in a way that the world might not understand.

So we lie there. His arm around my waist. My face against his chest. The lamp casting long shadows across the wall. Neither of us moves to turn it off.

Eventually, we shift onto our backs, and Colt’s hand finds mine under the sheet. His fingers thread through mine.

“Talk to me,” I whisper. Not because I need him to talk. Because I need the sound of his voice.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Anything. Nothing. I don’t care. Just talk.”

He’s quiet for a beat. Thinking. Colt thinks before he speaks. Has always thought before he speaks. It’s one of the things I love about him, and also one of the things that drives me insane, because sometimes the space between thought and speech is so long, I forget what I asked.

“The chestnut mare,” he says finally. “The one you’ve been riding. I think she’d make a solid lesson horse. For the summer camp, if your mom ever gets it off the ground.”

I smile against his chest. Of course. Of course Colt’s idea of idle conversation is to talk about horses.

“Mom’s been saying she’s gonna start that summer camp for years,” I say.

“Yeah, she has.” He shifts, rolling us both. My back to his chest. His arm around my waist, heavy and warm. His knees fit into the hollow behind mine. His lips find the top of my head as he presses a kiss there.