Page 13

“Autumn.”

Quiet. Almost a warning. One I was not going to heed.

“Off,” I said.

He hesitated one second longer, then reached back and dragged the shirt over his head.

I’d known the scar on his face was only the start of it. I was still not ready for the rest. Not because it was ugly or repulsive. But because I could not imagine the pain he must have endured.

The scar on his face didn’t stop at his jaw. It ran down the side of his throat, over the heavy muscle of his shoulder, and down his ribs in a broad, uneven track, as if something had tried to open him and hadn’t quite finished the job. Pale against the rest of him. Brutal. Real. The rest of his chest was unmarked, covered in dark hair and muscles that came from work and not a gym. He just stayed there on one forearm and let me look. Let me touch. His jaw was locked, but his gaze was on my face now, steady. Checking to see if I was okay with what I was seeing.

I sat up enough to put my mouth on him.

Not the pretty part. The tight, shiny pull along his ribs. I kissed it the way he had looked at my stretch marks, without hurrying past. Open. Unafraid. I followed the line up with my mouth, slow, to the notch of his collarbone, to the edge of the scar on his throat, and felt his breath go ragged against my hair.

“You don’t have to—”

“I know.” I kissed the place where face-scar met throat-scar, then the unscarred corner of his mouth. “You looked at me like I was something you wanted. Just so we’re clear? I want you too.”

He tugged me down with the quiet strength that wrecked me, and then he was kissing me again.

My hands were on bare skin now — scar and muscle. Man. “And just for the record, mountain man, that’s not the only place I want to kiss you.”

I pressed my palm to him through his jeans.

He went still again. “Careful,” he warned.

“Or what?”

“Or I stop thinking about anything except getting you naked on this bed.”

“Do it.” I rocked up, shameless, dragging my aching center along the thick bulge behind his zipper. The friction was a spike of pleasure so sharp I had to close my eyes for a second.

His hand found my jeans. Button. Zip. Then his fingers were under the fabric, under my underwear, and he found me already embarrassingly wet and swollen.

The sound he made against my mouth was possessive enough to leave no doubt how much restraint he was using.

He slid two thick fingers into me in one slow, breath-stealing thrust. I cried out into his mouth and my body clenched around him hard. God, I needed that. But I needed more. I needed him inside me. His thumb found my clit and circled, slow but relentless, while those fingers worked me open like he was learning the shape of me from the inside.

“Fuck,” he said, his voice like shadows closing in around me. “Do you want me to finish what I started last night?”

“Yes.” I didn’t have the pride left to lie. “Yes. Don’t stop—”

He didn’t. He hooked his fingers inside me and rubbed and I came apart with a violence that shocked me, thighs shaking, sobbing his name, my whole body bearing down on his hand like I could keep him there.

He eased me through it. Kissed the corner of my mouth. Forehead to mine. Still so hard against my hip it had to hurt.

“Autumn.” Rough. Strained. “I need you to hear this clearly, because I want to keep going more than I have wanted almost anything, but I am not going to let a storm and a power outage make this decision for you.”

I blinked up at him, dazed, aching, empty where his fingers had been, and understood even through the fog. He was stopping. Not because he didn’t want it — the evidence was a thick, insistent line against me — but because he wanted me to choose it in daylight-clear terms.

“That’s either the most respectful or the most frustrating thing you’ve said to me, twice now.”

“Both.” He pressed one more slow kiss to my collarbone, holding my gaze.

Zelda had said I would meet someone. She hadn’t said what I’d do once he was there.

“The storm didn’t cause this,” I said, before he could talk either of us out of it. “I’m choosing it right now and nothing is forcing my hand except that I want you inside me.”