Page 16 of A Mountain Man Walks into a Library

“Come up here,” he says, and he helps me get back on my feet.

My knees are sore from the tile, and the heat makes me dizzy and a little lightheaded, but then he’s kissing me again, and all other physical sensation melts away.

“I think I promised you something,” he mutters against my mouth, “and there’s no reason not to start in this room.”

I flush. “No books in here, though.”

He shrugs. “A technicality. Turn around, gorgeous.”

And I do. I do it so fast that I almost lose my footing on the slick floor. Sam steadies me with a hand on my elbow and holds on as he kisses down the length of my spine. He hesitates at the swell of my ass, his breath landing on my skin, shooting electricity along my nerve endings, and then he bites one cheek and then the other. My hips jerk, my dick sliding along the slick tile wall.

Sam kneels behind me, trails his lips down my ass, down the back of one thigh, pausing to lick and nibble behind my knee. Then he moves onto the other leg and works his way up. I want him. I want him to keep kissing me and touching me and stroking me—and I want him so deep inside me that I am filled completely. The tenderness and the heat: I want it all.

I haven’t had sex since moving to Granite-Glacier. Too busy, too shy, too awkward. But now, with Sam’s tongue laving into the dip at the small of my back, I don’t know how I went so long without this.

Because it had to be Sam, some soft voice inside my head supplies. I think it might be right.

Sam rises behind me. He molds his body to mine, his chest to my back, his thighs pressing to mine, and he uses his feet to kick mine apart. Then his dick slots into the crease of my ass, and he leans over to whisper into my ear.

“Sweetheart, tell me you have lube,” he says, his beard scratching along the shell of my ear and the curve of my neck.

I nod. “Cabinet above the sink.”

Sam reaches out the shower door, stretching one long arm to the cabinet. When the door snaps open, my heart panics for a moment at what he might see, but a moment later, he returns without a word. He sucks on the back of my neck for a moment as he messes with the bottle.

When his fingers find the crease of my ass, they are cool and slick. He slides and massages until he finds my hole and he rests the pads of his fingers there. I swear I’m pulsing against him, and the suspicion is confirmed when Sam begins tapping gently in rhythm with my heartbeat. Each firm contact sends jolts of pleasure zinging through my body, and I press back against him.

Sam opens me with a careful insistence, the heat and breadth of his fingers a delicious intrusion that has me panting against the shower wall. He keeps his other hand flat on the plane of my stomach. I’m sure he can feel the muscle twitching beneath his touch, the nerves, the need, the pleasure—all of it, everything that he’s making me feel.

“Remy, relax for me, baby,” he whispers and I do. I make myself release the tension in my body, and his fingers slide deeper in. I groan, and he smiles against the back of my neck. “That’s it. There you are.”

When he finally drags his fingers from my body, I’m a humiliating mess of sweat and flushed skin and rapid breaths. My lips sting from how I’ve been biting them. Sam worked me longer than anyone ever has, a caretaking sort of kindness and a torturous tease at the same time. I’m so ready for his dick that I’m prepared to beg for it.

I don’t need to.

There’s the sound of the condom wrapper, and then Sam shifts carefully behind me, using his hand to line the head of his cock up with my opening.

“Can I?” he asks. His voice sounds like someone dragged it behind a car for hours. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” I pant, “now.”

Sam bends to kiss my neck one more time. “Whatever you need, gorgeous,” he says, and then he presses inside me.

He takes it slow. There’s a lot of him, and he doesn’t know my body yet—yet,yet,I’m already thinking of this thing like it has a future—and I stretch around him, feeling myself straining around the length of him.

When he’s finally all the way inside me, his groin pressing against my ass, Sam wraps both arms around my waist. He holds me a several long moments, his face nuzzled into the sopping mess of my hair. I shift my feet apart another couple of inches to settle us as close together as possible.

“Thank you,” Sam whispers into my hair.

And I laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

I feel him smile against me. “I mean it. Thank you for everything. For trusting me. For letting me earn this.”

My heart folds in on itself, a fresh origami construction, too new to be comfortable in this unfamiliar shape, these sharp creases.

“I’m so into you,” Sam says. It’s such a simple statement, so plain and unadorned, and it makes me want to throw away every lovingly handwritten card he’s given me. Every line from a book that some skilled author agonized over, revised and finessed, until the line glimmered with artificial intensity.

I’m so into youis the most beautiful confession I’ve ever heard.

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