Page 23 of My Mountain Man Stalker
“You good?” I ask, because I need the word even when her body is telling me yes a hundred different ways.
“Yes,” she says, voice soft and wrecked, eyes on mine. “Don’t stop.”
I don’t. I follow the path she gives me, hands sliding under cotton, up warm skin, down again. The soft hitch of her breath teaches me more than any map could. She moves like tidewater until the space between us is nothing but heat and friction and the clean relief of being exactly where we’re supposed to be.
She sits back a little, bracing her hands on my chest, hair a dark spill over her shoulder. The sight of her looking down at me stills the world. I palm her hips and guide, slow and deeper, and she answers with a roll that makes my vision blur at the edges.
“Hale,” she says, and hearing my name like that does dangerous things to my control.
“Wren.” It’s a vow, a warning, a thank-you.
We move together, unhurried but inevitable. The rhythm builds, not frantic—steady, sure, ours. Every sound she makes, everycatch of breath, every stuttered sigh, I collect and keep. I tip her forward and kiss her again, and it’s teeth and tongue and gratitude. Her fingers lace with mine, pinning our hands above my head, and the restraint hits me like a match to dry tinder. I could flip her, take over, burn the morning down. She has me caged instead, and I let her, because trust looks good on both of us.
“Look at me,” she says, and I do. I don’t look away while she chases the edge with my name on her mouth. When she breaks—soft and sharp, a tremor rolling through her—I feel it like it’s happening inside my own skin. I follow a breath later, the world going bright behind my eyes, and the only thing keeping me grounded is her weight, her hands, heryes.
The room comes back slow. Wind in the pines. The faint tick of the baseboard heater. Her heartbeat settling under my palm. She collapses onto me, boneless and laughing under her breath, and I wrap her up, dragging the sheet higher like that can keep the whole world out.
“You weren’t planning on leaving the bed anyway,” she murmurs, smug.
“Not a chance,” I say, kissing the corner of her mouth. “I’m exactly where I belong.”
She traces the scar on my shoulder, light as a thought. “You okay?”
“With you like this? Better than okay.” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and let my thumb linger along her jaw. “You?”
She nods, nose nuzzling my throat again. “Mm. Safe.”
The word lands right in the center of my chest. I pull her closer, greedy for the warmth. “Good. That’s the point.”
We drift there, dozing in pieces, trading lazy kisses that aren’t headed anywhere and still feel like everything. When she eventually starts to slide off, I hook an arm around her waist and haul her back.
“Breakfast?” she asks, smiling into my skin.
“In a while.” I roll us so she’s under me, caged by my arms but free to move. Her grin turns reckless. “I’ve got other priorities.”
“And what are those?” she teases.
“Memorizing,” I say, kissing my way down the line of her throat. “Reinforcing.” Another kiss, lower. “Revisiting.”
She laughs, breath hitching when my mouth finds the place that makes her go soft. “Professor,” she says, voice shaking. “I didn’t know this was a study session.”
“It’s a master class,” I murmur, and feel her shiver.
Outside, the day can do what it wants. Inside, the two of us make a small, bright world under rumpled sheets. We’ll get up when we have to. We’ll face whatever comes. But not yet.
Not when she’s wrapped around me.
Not when I can finally, finally take my time.
By late afternoonthe cold has teeth. The kind that bites through flannel and finds your bones. I set another log in thestove and let the room warm while I step out onto the porch with the sat phone, the antenna angled toward the thin blue slash of sky over the trees.
I call family first.
Not blood. Better.
“Yeah?” Nate answers like he hasn’t slept in a week. With him, that’s not a tell.
“Status,” I say.
