Page 51 of Claimed on the Ridge

The sight of her stops me in the doorway. My hand finds the frame because the alternative is crossing the room before she's finished watching me decide.

She holds my gaze. She doesn't reach for the sheet.

"Close the door," she says.

I close it. The latch catches. The sound is small and final, and the smile that pulls at my mouth is slow because I want her to see it forming. I want her to watch the exact moment I decide to cross this room.

She watches.

I cross the room. Each step lands heavy on the floorboards. The fire throws her shadow long across the wall behind her, and the light catches the planes of her body in ways that make my hands ache. The dip of her waist, the line of her collarbone, theway she sits straight-backed with her shoulders open and her chin level.

She is not hiding. She is done hiding. The woman who arrived at my lodge with a borrowed name and a bag packed for running is sitting naked in my bedroom because she chose to be here. The choice is the thing. The choice is what makes my blood move.

My shirt and jeans are still on, boots still laced. She is bare and I'm fully dressed. The imbalance between us is deliberate on her part. She could have waited under the covers. She could have kept the flannel on, left something between her body and my reaction.

She left nothing. She wants me to see every inch of her before I touch any of it.

I stop in front of her. She has to look up to hold my gaze from the edge of the bed, and the angle puts her mouth level with my belt. She knows this. I can see her knowing it in the way her breath changes.

My hand comes up. I find the line of her jaw and tilt her face higher. Her skin is warm from the fire. Her pulse beats under my thumb, fast and steady, and the rhythm of it fills my palm.

"You lit my fire," I say.

"You took too long coming upstairs."

"I was giving you time to change your mind."

"I changed it the day I stopped running. Everything since then has been waiting."

I lean down and kiss her. Her mouth opens under mine, no hesitation, no testing. She tastes like the coffee she drank after dinner and something underneath that belongs only to her. My hand slides from her jaw into her hair, and my fingers close at the roots. She exhales against my lips, and the sound carries the weight of a woman who has been holding her breath for years.

I kiss her harder. She answers it. Her hands come up to the front of my flannel and she pulls, dragging me closer. I let her pull because letting this woman move me is a specific kind of surrender I'm learning to tolerate.

Her fingers work the buttons. She's efficient. The flannel opens and her hands press flat against my abdomen. The contact sends heat down my spine. I shrug the flannel off. It hits the floor.

Her hands explore. She traces the lines of my torso with a focus that tells me she's mapping what belongs to her now. The thought hits harder than expected. The possessive runs both ways, and the territorial pull of it is as strong as anything I've felt for the land under this lodge.

I press her back. She goes, lowering onto the mattress, and I follow her down. My weight settles over her, one knee between hers, and I hold myself up on one forearm so I can look at her.

The firelight moves across her skin. She is lean and strong, the body of a woman who has survived on stubbornness and whatever version of living Gary Simmons permitted. The thought of his hands anywhere near this body tightens my jaw until the muscle aches.

My free hand starts at her collarbone. My fingers trace the ridge of bone, down between her breasts, following the midline of her sternum. She watches my hand move. Her breathing has gone shallow.

I find it. The bruise has almost disappeared. A shadow of yellow-brown along her lower ribs, the last trace of what Gary Simmons put on her body before she ran. It is barely visible in the firelight. If I weren't looking for it, I would miss it.

I don't miss it.

My thumb traces the edge. She goes still under me. The stillness is not a flinch. It is attention, focused and absolute, theawareness of a woman who remembers what happened the last time a man's hand found this spot.

I keep my thumb there. I hold her gaze.

"This is mine now," I say. My voice comes out low and rough, and I mean every syllable. The bruise, the ribs underneath it, the body that carries them. Territory I intend to defend until the last man standing on this ridge stops breathing.

"Yours," she says. The word is quiet and certain.

I lower my mouth to the bruise. My lips press against the fading mark, and I feel her ribs expand under me as she takes a full breath. The skin is warm. I trace the outline with my tongue, unhurried, tasting the place where someone hurt her and replacing it with the heat of my mouth. Her fingers slide into my hair and grip.

I keep going. My mouth moves from the bruise down the curve of her waist, across the jut of her hip bone, and she arches into the contact. I press her hip flat with one hand, holding her against the mattress. The sound she makes when I pin her is low and throaty, and the surrender in it tells me she likes the weight of my hand keeping her still.