Page 62 of Claimed on the Ridge

"Gone." I drag my mouth down her throat. "All of them."

"How long?"

"Long enough."

My hands work the buttons of her flannel. The fabric parts and I spread it open, and her skin underneath is warm and flushed. I press my palm flat between her breasts and hold it there, covering the center of her body, holding the rhythm of her breath under my hand.

She pulls my shirt over my head. Her hands land on my shoulders, then slide down across my torso, tracing the lines of muscle with the focused attention she brings to everything. The way she touches me is an inventory. She learns what belongs to her now and commits it to memory. The methodical thoroughness of it drives me out of my mind.

I pull her flannel the rest of the way off. Unhook her bra with one hand and let it drop. She's bare from the waist up in the firelight, and the sight of her stops my hands for a fraction of a second. The place where Gary's bruise lived is smooth and unmarked. Clean skin. The last trace of him gone from her body.

Good.

I lower my mouth to the spot. Kiss it slow and deliberate, the same attention I gave it the first time, tasting the skin that is healed and mine. She makes a sound, quiet, raw, and her hand grips the back of my head, pulling me closer.

My mouth moves lower. Down the curve of her ribs, across to the swell of her breast, and I close my lips around her nipple and suck until her spine snaps straight and her grip in my hair goes tight enough to sting. The sound she makes is low and guttural and vibrates through her ribcage into my mouth. I press my tongue flat and drag it across the peak, and she shudders.

I give the other breast the same treatment, slower, rougher, using my teeth until she hisses and her hips roll against me. The friction of her body grinding against mine through two layers of denim sends a pulse of heat down my spine that settles in the base of my skull. My cock is straining against the denim, and the pressure of her hips rolling against me is borderline painful. The ache of it makes me want to strip her bare and bury myself inside her until neither of us can think.

Then I stop being slow.

I pull her off the chair arm, one arm under her back, and lay her down on the couch. I lay her down and follow her, covering her body with mine. The full-length press of skin against skin is gasoline on a fire that's been building since I saw her hand close around her own wrist on the porch.

She's wearing jeans. I'm wearing jeans. The logistics of denim and belt buckles and the narrow couch require more coordination than the urgency allows, and we work them off each other with the efficient gracelessness of two people who don't care about elegance. Her boots hit the floor. Mine follow. Denim gets kicked toward the hearth.

Skin. All of it. The length of her under me, lean and strong, the body that has survived on intelligence and refusal. My hands run down her sides, across her ribs, over her hips. I feel the muscle in her thighs when she wraps them around me, and the strength there tells me she's holding on, pulling me closer, taking what she wants.

Her hand wraps around my cock. The grip is firm, deliberate, and the contact after the ache of waiting sends a jolt through my abdomen that makes my hips jerk forward into her fist. She strokes once, slow, her thumb dragging across the head, and the noise I make is raw enough that I don't recognize my own voice. She does it again, watching my face with the same razor concentration she uses to take apart a room, tracking what her hand does to me with an attention that borders on clinical.

I catch her wrist. Pin it above her head against the armrest. If she keeps touching me, this ends before it starts.

I brace one hand beside her head on the couch cushion. The other slides between her thighs. Her pussy is wet and hot and swollen, and the first stroke of my fingers makes her gasp hard enough that my teeth clench in response.

Her face while I work her is worth every second of restraint. Two fingers pressing in, curling, finding the ridge of tissue inside her that makes her breath catch and her thighs fall open wider.

Her head tips back. Her throat stretches long and exposed, and I put my mouth on it because the heartbeat slamming against my lips is proof that the composure she wears like body armor is falling apart under my hands.

I keep my fingers inside her and use my thumb on her clit, circling slow and firm while she writhes beneath me. Her hips lift into my hand, riding the pressure, chasing it when I ease off. I don't ease off for long. I give her a rhythm and then I break it, watching her react, gauging by the flex of her abdominal muscles and the grip of her fingers on my shoulder how close she is. She gets close. I pull back.

She swears, one sharp word that sounds like it was dragged out of her against her will.

"You're going to come when I'm inside you," I tell her. My fingers slide back in, slow, curling against the spot that makes her spine arch. "Not before."

The frustration on her face sharpens into focus. She holds my gaze and the defiance in it makes me want to keep her on the edge until she's shaking.

"Alex." My name comes out broken. "Now."

The word is a command. From a woman who has spent years obeying commands, and who is choosing, right now, in this moment, to give one. The reversal hits harder than her hands on my body, lands somewhere behind my ribs where I don't let people reach.

I line up and push my cock into her in one long stroke. The noise we both make fills the quiet lodge. She's tight and slick and the heat of her pussy gripping me is so consuming that my arm shakes where it holds my weight. I can feel every inch of the fit, the pressure of her body adjusting around me, the wet friction when I pull back a fraction and push deeper.

"You feel like this every time," I say against her ear. "Every time. And I'm never going to get enough."

I hold still for a breath, not to be gentle but to feel the full scope of what I'm inside of. This woman. This body. This choice she keeps making, to stay and let me in with the full knowledge of who I am and what I'm capable of.

Then I move. The pace I set is hard and deep, and she meets it. Every thrust, she lifts her hips to match me, and the rhythm we build has the urgency of the adrenaline that started it. Faster than the firelight scene, rougher than the slow mapping of territory. This is the collision of threat and want, the physical expression of what I will do to keep this woman alive.

"Mine," I say against her throat. The word lands rough and certain, pressed into her skin between her jaw and her collarbone. "This is mine."