Page 69 of Whiteout

Ian got down on his haunches and took her hands in his. “It was an accident.”

So everyone said, anyway.

“His car slid off the mountain.”

Ian stood behind her. He watched Breanna, her face upturned as she peered through the glass, waiting for a snowflake to tumble from the sky. Subdued, she’d hardly spoken since they left her father’s room. He didn’t get her mother’s logic. What reason could she possibly have for withholding Shane Dalton’s life, and how he died, from their daughter?

Breanna wasn’t a child—if she were, maybe he could understand it. She was a grown woman, and she deserved to know the man her father was. The family stories that Valerie could have shared with her. Gone now. Lost forever. It made him angry she never got to hear them.

Wrapping his arms around her, Ian kissed the top of her head. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

He shot her a look, lifting his brow.

“No, really, I am.” Breanna smiled a little, fingering the collar of his sweater. “I have his words, and you have no idea what that means to me. It’s like he left a piece of himself behind.”

“Words on a page live forever,” he said, holding her hand to his chest.

With a nod, her smile grew brighter. “I’m going to get his novel published someday.”

I know you will.

She turned back to the window. “Look, baby, it’s snowing.”

“So it is.” Kissing her neck, Ian caressed her breasts. “Did you know every single snowflake is different? Not one is like another.”

“I’ve heard that, but I don’t understand how that can be.”

“It’s true,” he said, his hands sliding under her sweater to feel soft, warm skin. “Even snowflakes from the same cloud will have different shapes and sizes.”

He kissed her then. There would never be another like her, either. And she was his, dammit.

Hera pawing at the door, Breanna pulled her head back. “I think she wants to go out.”

Ian opened the glass door, and leaving it ajar after the dog scampered off, returned to Breanna. He didn’t say a word, and neither did she, as he took off all her clothes. Like the first time he gazed upon her naked and beautiful in a cabin in the storm, he wrapped her in a throw.

“C’mon.”

He brought her outside, removed the blanket, and tossing it to the sofa, Ian assisted her into the steaming water.

After stripping off his clothes, he eased himself in behind her, holding her back against his chest. She looked up at the sky to watch the snow gently tumbling from the clouds. “It’s so pretty.”

“Each snowflake takes its own path to meet the ground. That’s what makes each one distinct and uniquely beautiful.”

Strumming her skin, slippery beneath the water, Ian tasted the salt on the curve of her neck. He kissed his way up the column of her delicate throat to her jaw, before she turned her mouth toward his, and he tasted the tears on her lips.

Her head falling back on his shoulder, Breanna held his hands to her breasts and squeezed. “I need you to fuck me, Sin.”

Gladly. His teeth sinking into her flesh, he groaned.

“And when I scream, fuck me harder,” she said, nipping at his mouth. “The only thing I want to feel is you.”

He’d always give her anything she wanted, whatever she needed. Easing his dick inside, he thrust upward slow and deep. Even when he met the resistance of her body, he pressed farther.

“Fuck, yes, keep going. Just like that. It hurts,” she sobbed. “But I need it to.”

He didn’t want to hurt her. Not like that. It wasn’t what she needed. He pulled out.

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