Page 63 of Relief Pitcher

“Stick to the left at the fork ahead. You’ll love this.” I squeezed his hip.

He followed my directions. “Holy shit,” he said when he saw it.

Ty turned off the engine, and I hooked my chin over his shoulder to take in the sight before us. In the distance was a hill covered with towering Douglas Firs. It was a dense patch of green, except for the edge that had been taken by a wildfire before we’d bought the house. The rolling hills of trees were one thing I loved most about Oregon.

“Right? It’s breathtaking.”

We sat in silence for several minutes. Birds flew overhead and a trio of deer scampered across the path about fifty feet in front of us.

Ty reached back and gripped my thigh. “Have you ever fucked out here?”

I scooted closer until my thighs cupped him. I reached around and gripped the tops of his thighs. “Not with you.”

Ty chuckled. “Of course you two got it on out here with your kink for trees and Aleck’s kink for murder forests. I would be disappointed if you hadn’t. So, you into it?”

With Ty? Always. “Yeah, I’m into it.”

Ty somehow turned around in the seat. Tight squeeze was an understatement, but when Ty was horny, he always figured it out. We’d gotten inventive in his Toyota.

His lips crashed against mine as his hands slid under my coat and hoodie to my stomach. I sucked it in at the cold touch, but his skin quickly warmed to my now overheating temperature. Ty turned me on something fierce. I pulled him until he was basically on my lap. Our kisses grew needy and sloppy as the rain began. As I was about to reach for his zipper, the rain fell even harder, like a faucet had been turned on. It was always a risk heading outside in an Oregon spring.

Ty pulled back and pressed his forehead against mine, breathing hard. “Cockblocked by the rain. We could be boring and head back to your bed?”

“I don’t mind boring.” I gave him a quick kiss. The uncontrollable need to do it had bubbled out of me. I was elated that he was not only at my place again for the first time in over two months, but thathe’dsuggested it. Honestly, I was shocked Ty kept spending time with me at all. I’d believed him when he’d said that he never messed around with the same person more than once, and I’d heard stories from people on the team who were familiar with him. But he showed no signs of getting tired of our friends-with-benefits arrangement.

The more time we spent with each other, the more it felt like the friendship was shifting into something deeper. Especially as he stared at me, smiling wide, raindrops catching on his long eyelashes. He looked up at the sky and laughed, then shook the rain from his head like a dog.I can’t get enough of this man.I wanted to tell him I was developing feelings for him, but it would likely scare him away. The selfish part of me wanted to hold on to him for as long as I could. Our current situation might end when the season did and Ty found something, or someone, to move on to. Why expedite the process when he was the part of my life bringing me the most joy?

He stood and adjusted himself. “I gotta say, this place isn’t too bad for a creepy murder forest.”

I pinched his hip. “High praise.”

He tilted his head and looked at me. “This is giving me sexy flashbacks to the day we met. You all big and rugged and covered in wet rubber rescuing me and my cheese from certain death.” He pulled out my hair tie. “Your hair is unbelievably sexy when it’s wet.”

I could deal with hypothermia if it kept Ty looking at me like I was the cherry on top of his sundae.

Ty navigated the ATV back under the carport a bit too close to my truck. He hopped off, wiped the rain from his forehead with the back of his hand, and beamed at me. There was something about the way Ty smiled at me that made me reckless. Craving more from him than I had a right to. When he gave an inch, I wanted a mile.

“I want to show you something.” I led Ty away from the house to my studio. It was time he knew about that part of my life.

“Ooh, are you finally going to show me the secret building where you keep your dead bodies?”

“That’s in the cellar under the house, obviously. Hides the smell better. This is my art studio.” I unlocked the padlock and gestured for him to go in ahead of me.

“Art studio?” His eyebrows pushed together.

I wanted to tell him how connected I was to him, how I wanted to flay myself open and show him every part of me, how the way he made me feel was an addiction. Instead, I went simple. “All the people I’m close to know about it. I want you to be among them.”

As Ty turned toward the door, I caught his surprised smile. He moved slowly through the space where I had a half dozen projects in various stages of completion. He peeked inside the toolbox that held my carving knives, chisels, gouges, and other odds and ends. He smiled at a photo of Aleck wearing a crown while sitting on the stump by the creek I’d carved into a throne.

“Can you tell me about what you create?” His voice was unusually soft.

I cleared the lump from my throat and took a deep breath to calm my pulse. “I carve wood, but I suppose that’s obvious. I do small pieces, but I especially enjoy working with large pieces and tree trunks.”

“Did you make the piece holding the address signs at the highway?”

“I did.”

The corner of Ty’s mouth turned up in a soft, closed-mouth smile. “That’s what made me turn down the road when my car was acting up.”

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