Page 5

At ten past one, the handle turns.

He comes in slow and quiet, and for the first time I see him.

He's enormous. I'm amazed by the width of him in my small doorway, the way he has to duck his head under the lintel. Weathered skin, close-cropped hair, a full beard gone silver at the chin. When he kneels to open the stove, the firelight catches his forearms, and they're covered in ink — leaves and stems and roots in fine black line, precise as the plates in an old botanical book, every vein drawn. He feeds the fire with hands that could span my waist, one piece at a time, as carefully as if the wood might bruise.

Then he stands, and turns, and sits down in the chair by the stove facing the ladder.

He doesn't leave. He sits there with his elbows on his knees and his big hands loose between them, and looks up at the loft, and waits. I don't know if he can see me in the dark.

I think he can.

I think he knows exactly where I am.

My heart is beating so hard it hurts. I should roll back from the edge. I don't. I stay flat on my stomach with my chin on my arms and my eyes barely over the lip of the loft, and I watch him watching for me.

It goes on for a long time. The fire crackles. He doesn't move except to breathe, slow and deep, his chest rising and falling under a work shirt pulled tight across his shoulders.

Then he leans back in the chair, and his hand goes to his belt.

I stop breathing.

He undoes it slowly, with his eyes on the loft the whole time. The buckle. The button. The zip, one tooth at a time, a small metal sound that goes through the quiet cabin. He reaches into his jeans and draws out his cock.

I've been a nurse for fourteen years. I've seen more naked men than I could ever count, in every state a body can be in, and not one of them has ever made my mouth go dry. This one does. He's thick and dark and heavy, already hard, and when his hand wraps around himself it doesn't come close to covering him. He strokes once, root to tip, slow, and the firelight slides along him, and a sound catches in my throat that I bite down on so hard I taste blood.

He doesn't look away from the loft.

He strokes again. And again. Slow and firm and completely unhurried, the same way he fed the fire, and I lie frozen on my stomach at the edge of the dark with my fingers knotted in the quilt and my hips pressed down into the mattress, and I can't look away either. The ink on his forearm moves as his hand moves, leaves and roots rolling over muscle. His thumb drags across the head and comes away wet and shining. His other hand closes on the arm of the chair until the wood creaks.

"You're not asleep, Sloane."

His voice comes up out of the dark, low and rough, and every muscle in my body locks.

He knows my name. He knows I'm here. He's known the whole time.

"Don't," he says, when I start to pull back from the edge. It’s quiet and intense. "Stay where you are. Watch."

I stay.

He doesn't speed up for a long while. He lets me look. Then his breathing changes, goes rougher, and his hand starts to move faster, working himself in long, tight strokes, and his head tips back against the chair but his eyes don't leave the loft. I can hear it now, the slick sound of his fist, the harsh breath through his nose, and I'm so wet it's almost painful, and I haven't touched myself once. I don't dare. I lie there with my whole body burning and my heart slamming against the boards and I watch a stranger in my chair come apart for me.

"Sloane," he groans.

He comes with his jaw clenched and his eyes open on the dark where I am, a long, low sound dragged out of his chest, his hips jerking up off the chair and his fist working him through it, spilling over his knuckles in thick pulses that catch the firelight.

Then he sits there, breathing hard, with his head back.

After a while he takes a folded handkerchief from his shirt pocket, as neatly as if he'd planned it and cleans his hand, and fastens his jeans, and buckles his belt. He looks up at the loft.

"Breathe," he says. Calm. The voice you'd use on a patient who's panicking. "You're holding it."

I let it out. It comes out of me shaking, half a sob.

"Now sleep," he says.

The door opens and closes. The deadbolt slides home.

It takes me an hour to stop shaking, with my face pressed into the pillow and my thighs pressed together and every nerve I have lit and throbbing. Then I sleep the whole night through, deep and dreamless, for the first time in months.