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She pulls me up. Kisses me fierce and deep, tasting herself on my mouth and not caring, wanting it. Her hand slides down my stomach, past my belt, wrapping around my cock through my jeans. My forehead drops against hers.

"Selene."

"Now." Her fingers working my zipper. "I need you inside me."

Jeans gone. Condom from my wallet. Her hands helping me roll it on, fingers shaking, and the intimacy of her touch nearly ends this before it starts. The way she handles me. Careful and wanting at the same time.

I slide inside her slow. Inch by inch, feeling her body open around me. Her eyes locked on mine, not looking away, not hiding. Every emotion crossing her face. When she takes me all the way in, her eyes go liquid and her mouth opens and she exhales my name like a prayer she's been holding back for months.

"Don't stop." Her voice breaking. "Don't you dare stop."

"Never." My forehead on hers. "Right here. Nowhere else I'd ever be."

Slow at first. Finding her rhythm, her pace, the way her body moves underneath mine. Watching her face until I find the angle that makes her gasp and grab my shoulders and dig her nails in. Then harder. Deeper. Hips rolling, her clit grinding against me with every thrust, her legs locked around my waist.

"Fuck, Jake, right there, right there..."

She comes again with a cry buried in my shoulder. The clench of her pulling me over the edge with her. Hips stuttering, emptying into her, release so intense my vision goes white and my arms shake with the effort of holding myself above her.

Tangled in moonlight. Breathing hard. Heartbeats slowing. Her head on my chest, my fingers in her hair, the cottage quiet except for the wind in the pines and two people relearning what it sounds like to breathe.

"Jake."

"Yeah."

"That was not boring."

Laughter. Real, full, shaking through both of us. She smiles against my skin. Unguarded. Permanent. No armor in sight. My arms tighten. Lips pressed to the top of her head.

Gonna spend my whole life making sure this woman never settles for boring again.

Chapter Eight

Selene

Morning. Flannel sheets. Warm skin.

Jake's arm heavy across my waist, chest pressed to my back, breath slow against my neck. Mountain light pouring through the window, October gold turning everything soft. The peaks dusted with first frost, white against blue sky.

For a few seconds, not a single reason to be afraid.

Then the fear.

It starts small. A flutter behind my ribs, familiar, chemical. Richard's voice, smooth and reasonable, sliding into my thoughts like it always does when I'm close to happy: You'll be back. You don't know how to want anything for more than a week.

Counting weeks. Four since the sandwich. Four since a twenty-seven-year-old lumberjack grinned at me over a stolen turkey club and refused to disappear.

Jake stirs. His arm tightens, pulling me closer. Something soft against my hair that might be my name or might just be a sound that means stay.

Eyes closed. Letting the warmth hold me. Just for now.

The week between that night and the festival passes in sandwiches and Jake's hands and the growing terror that I am falling in love with a man eight years younger who treats the age gap like a fence he stepped over without looking down.

He doesn't push. Doesn't move in, doesn't stake claims, doesn't rearrange my life around his presence. Shows up at Shelton's with the sandwich. Texts good morning with whatever ridiculous thing the sunrise is doing over the ranch. Picks me up Saturday, works the festival setup shoulder to shoulder with me without ever making it feel like a date. Touches me like something he's been given permission to hold. Carefully. Gratefully. With the same precision he gives every board he places.

But in his eyes, every single time. Depth. Certainty. Looking at me like I'm the clearing at the end of a timber run. The open sky after the last tree falls.

He's in love with me. Hasn't said it. But it's in every sandwich. Every sawdust-curled text. Every time his hand finds the small of my back and stays there like it belongs.