Page 7 of Falling for the Mountain Man
It’s a sight for sore eyes. One I don’t ever want to give up, even with the future being so murky. I need her to know that she doesn’t ever have to worry about being alone. She’ll always have me and my terrible dinners. The thought of her out in the world, untethered, is a physical ache under my ribs.
“You know you’re free to come here, right?” Keeping my voice even is a strenuous effort; I don’t want her to hear the raw, pleading need behind my words. “You’re one of us. So, if there ever comes a time when you need somewhere to go, and Kallie isn’t around, my home is always open to you.”
Her eyes grow wide, and I realize why. It’s always my daughter who’s saying these words on repeat, but I’ve never openly given her the offer myself. This is from me. Just me.
“I don’t want to be a bother.” She turns away, busying her hands with throwing the gravy together. Her fingers have a little tremble to them. It’s a tiny, vulnerable tell that undoes me. It’s a miracle she doesn’t drop the dish in her hands when she pops it in the microwave to cook. “We still have two more years left before graduation. Who knows where we’ll be by then?”
I know where I want her.Right here.Fuck, I don’t like the thought of losing her. The idea is a cold void, a hollowed-out future in this cabin.
Reaching out, I stop her with a light graze of my hand. A barely-there brush against her arm, but her body acts like she’s run into a wall. She freezes, a sharp, quiet intake of breath hissing between her lips. She catches her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying the soft flesh, and the sight sends a jolt of pure heat straight to my gut. She looks nervous. Aroused. Something.
Shit, it’s because I’m pushing. I’m coming off too rough. But I can’t make myself pull back.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to put you on the spot there. I just…care for you.” The words come out choppy, a pathetic understatement for the storm she unleashes in me. “Plus, it gets a little lonely up here. I enjoy the company.” Her company.
If I keep at it, I might as well spell it out to her how I feel. How I lie awake at night imagining the weight of her in my bed, the sound of her breathing in the dark. At that point, something tells me she won’t consider coming back. She’d run.
Her cheeks grow pinker, a deep, blooming rose color, but she doesn’t pull away from my touch. Rather, she leans into it, a subtle arch of her spine pressing her cool skin more firmly against my fingertips. Her body is cold, and it’s like she’s seeping the heat from my hand, drawing the fire out of me.
I don’t realize my touch is drifting up, my thumb stroking a slow, absent circle on her skin, until I’ve reached the delicate curve of her shoulder.
“Won’t it be a little weird? I mean, we’re…” Her eyes fall as she searches for the right word. Her voice is a husky whisper, scraping over my nerves.
I don’t see Zaria as another daughter. The mere idea is obscene. From the way she’s leaning into my touch, her pulse fluttering like a trapped bird under my thumb, I’m hoping she sees me as I want her to. As a man.
A man who aches with a longing so deep it feels like a permanent part of his skeleton.
“We’re two adults, Zaria.” The words come out soft, low, with a hunger I’m no longer trying to hide. My gaze drops to her mouth. “I’d never ask for anything in return, you know that.” I’d beg. I’d get on my fucking knees if I thought it would get her to stay.
Just having her near me is a torment I’ve willingly signed up for. I’ll convince myself that I’m satisfied by just having her by my side, even if it kills me.
Her eyes lift, wide and dark, the pupils swallowing the brownish-green. Something flashes past her eyes. A mix of surprise and something much deeper, hotter. Recognition. Longing. Answering need.
“I…” She leans in, just a fraction, blinking up at me. Her lips are slightly parted. “I would really like that.”
Fuck. Can’t she see what she’s doing to me? My blood is roaring in my ears, my every muscle pulled taut. My free handfists at my side to keep from cupping her face, from pulling her against my body so she can feel exactly what her words do to me.
Does she even have a clue?
Pull away, idiot.
But I don’t. Instead, I trace the curve of her bottom lip with my eyes and wonder if her mouth is as soft as it looks. I wonder what sound she’d make if I closed the distance between us and found out.
The microwave beeps, a shrill, mundane interruption from a world that has completely ceased to exist. Neither of us rush to pull out the gravy. We’ve completely forgotten to start the mashed potatoes.
“I should get that.” Ever so softly, she says the right words, but her feet don’t move. Instead, she’s taking in my face like I’m taking in hers—my eyes, my mouth, the desperate set of my jaw. Her gaze is a physical caress.
It’s like she wants me, too. The realization is a dizzying, dangerous high.
Whatever this force is pulling us closer and closer together is suddenly put at a halt at the sound of Kallie’s return, her footsteps a careless thunder in the hall.
“So, I stole a pair of your socks, just a heads up. Oh, and I found this long sleeve that’s missing a few buttons—”
Zaria jerks away from my touch as if burned, turning her back to the both of us after only one frantic, guilty glance at my daughter. Without a word, she shuffles toward the microwave, her ears and the back of her neck the same shade as ripe strawberries. The space where my hand was feels cold and abandoned.
Kallie looks between us, a slip of confusion forming before she’s smiling, like she didn’t just almost catch us in the act of doing something we shouldn’t be. “You forget how to sew?”
Clearing my throat, I try to remember how to form words, how to breathe like a normal man and not one who just had his every fantasy dangled inches from his grasp. The ghost of her skin is still on my fingertips. “Lost my needle and thread ages ago. Still a good shirt.”
