Page 33 of Hard Wood Daddy

My mountain man has been drawing me.

I vividly imagine him gripping the stump of broken pastels between his massive fingers, tongue caught between his teethas he scribbles. He’s done it over and over again. When I pick open crushed paper left on the floor, I find more of his attempts. Whatever he’s been trying to capture about me, he hasn’t been satisfied.

There’s hours upon hours of work here.

Even though he’s dead silent, I still sense him coming up behind me. There’s his warmth but something else, more a vibration, a connection that I feel like a pressure down into my ear drums when he’s close. I ease back, my back meeting the solid expanse of his rigid muscle. He wraps his arms possessively around my shoulders, his forearms covering me from shoulder to shoulder. I’m encased in him and I take a long moment to close my eyes and feel the way he’s changing me in so many ways.

“You’re amazing, Rutger,” I say.

He stoops to rest his head on my chin. I’m fully enveloped. “I can explain…this.”

“It explains itself.” I pivot inside the circle of his arms, loop my hands around the back of his neck.

Rutger kisses me, soft like an apology, letting his hands sweep roughly down my back, one grabbing my ass, then another grabbing my tit, shoving a thigh between my legs, his thick muscle spreading my thighs. “I want more. Again. Now.”

“Aren’t you making breakfast?” I ask with a giggle, taking in the lingering scent of my sex on him and the savory smells of the food.

“Bacon’s getting just right,” he says. “Pancakes are on the warmer.”

“So…we don’t have time unless we want the bacon to burn.”

“It can burn,” he rumbles.

Honestly, I’d let him do it. But my stomach chooses that moment to announce its deference to the potential side track Rutger is pursuing. “I’m so hungry,” I admit, embarrassed.

“Then I’ll feed you.” His eyes are bright when he steps back, brushing his hands down his chest, and I snort, looking at the drape of the apron now exposing his rising erection.

“Who’s in all your photos here?” I gesture to the walls, trying to distract myself from taking a ride on his hard-on and saying to hell with what my stomach wants.

“I got this cabin from my grandparents. All the land came from my grandparents. Look.” He points to a big oval frame underneath a deer head mounted on the wall. “This is Grandma. This is Grandpa.”

“They’re a beautiful couple. You look so much like both of them.”

He brightens. “I do?”

“You have your grandfather’s jawline.” I glance around, then meet his gaze again. “What about your parents?”

His eyes darken, and I sense him almost turn away.

For a moment, my heart skips a beat, torn between the instinct to apologize for obviously saying something upsetting and the reflex to run and hide from the mistakes I’m making.

I’m pretending to be someone I’m not. And when Rutger finds that out, he’ll wonder what else I’m lying about. I should tell him the truth, right now, rip the band-aid off and take the consequences, but I know those consequences might include losing him.

And I’m a coward.

“I’m sorry,” I say after too long a pause. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Dad’s dead,” he grumbles, his jaw tightening with the words. “He died when I was ten. And my mother…”

I expect to see sadness in his eyes, but I don’t. Instead, they turn to hard, angry flint as he mentions his mother, and he gives a slight shake of his head like he’s tasted something bitter.

“My mother was a city girl, born and raised. She never liked it here, and she grew to dislike me too. She waited only a fewmonths after Dad died. My eleventh birthday came and went, and she decided she’d had enough, packed her bags and headed back to the city.”

“Rutger…” I reach out, my fingertips finding the patch of skin just over where his beard starts under his cheekbone. Every part of him turns to wired tension. But the anger is masking something deeper. Rejection. Loneliness.

I want to take it all away for him. I want to make him see that the world doesn’t have to be such a hard place.

“Grandpa and Grandma raised me,” he says, and as he does, his face softens and I realize what love he has for them, even if they’re not here anymore.

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