Page 63 of Claimed on the Ridge

Her answer is her body, rising to meet me, her legs tightening around my hips, pulling me in. "Yes."

One word. Given freely. The sound of it drives my hips harder into hers.

Her nails dig into my shoulders. The sting of it grounds me when the intensity threatens to pull me under. She drags her fingers down my back, and the scratch marks she leaves will be there tomorrow. I want them there. Evidence. Her marks on my body to match the ones my mouth left on her throat.

I shift the angle. Hitch her leg higher on my hip, hook my arm under her knee, and bury myself to the hilt. The changed position opens her up and I sink into her until my hip bones press against the inside of her thighs. She gasps and her back bows off the couch. The new depth pulls a sound out of her that's closer to a sob than a moan.

"Right there," I say. "Take it."

I find it again and I hit it again, deliberate, relentless. Her mouth falls open. Her eyes lose focus.

Her breasts move with every thrust and I lower my mouth to one, sucking hard enough to mark the skin while I keep the pace brutal and steady. The sounds she's making have gone beyond words, beyond control, and the loss of her composure, this woman who measures every room and calculates every angle, sends heat through me so fast it coils every muscle in my body.

"Look at me," I tell her.

She does. Her eyes find mine, and the connection between us in that second is more exposing than the physical act. The sharpness in her face is gone. The guarded focus, the constant scanning, all of it dropped. Just her, looking at me, with nothing held back.

I hold her gaze and I don't slow down. The pace stays hard, stays relentless, and I feel her build toward the edge. Her breathing goes ragged. Her hands grip my arms, fingers digging into the muscle, holding on. The flush that started at her collarbones has spread up her throat and across her face. I canfeel her pussy tightening around my cock, the internal grip that tells me she's close, the involuntary clench that pulls at me with every stroke. Her thighs are trembling against my hips.

"Let go," I say.

She doesn't need to be told twice. Her body locks around me, thighs clenching, spine arching, and the orgasm rolls through her in waves I can feel from inside, rhythmic contractions that grip my cock and release and grip again.

The pressure of her pussy pulsing around me shatters what's left of my control. The buildup that's been coiling at the base of my spine since she put her hand on me breaks loose all at once. Heat starts in my gut and tears through me until my vision whites at the edges. I drive into her one last time, deep, and hold there while the release rips through me in pulses I feel in my spine, my fists, the backs of my knees. The groan is guttural, pulled from somewhere below language, and I bury my face in her neck and let it take me apart.

The heat of finishing inside her, the slick grip of her body still contracting around me, keeps the aftershocks rolling until my arms give out and I drop onto my forearms. My forehead drops against her shoulder. Her fingers loosen in my hair. My breathing is rough, uneven, slower to settle than hers.

The fire pops. The sound is distant, ordinary, belonging to a world where two men aren't driving toward this ridge with professional patience and a photograph.

I lift my head. She's looking at me. The sharpness is coming back into her eyes, the tactical awareness reassembling behind the softness. The guardedness won't be down for long.

"Your back is bleeding," she says.

"Good."

The word is raw and satisfied. She reads my face, and the corner of her mouth lifts.

I pull back slowly. The separation sends a rush of cold air between us, and she shivers. I reach for the blanket folded over the back of the couch and pull it across her before I stand. Cover what's mine. She lets me. Not long ago, in the kitchen, she flinched when my hands got too close. Now she settles under the weight I put on her and closes her eyes.

I pull on my jeans. She watches me dress with the same attentive stillness she brought to watching me cross the room. Always paying attention, this one. I lean down and press my mouth to the side of her throat where her heartbeat is still hammering, and her hand comes up and grips my jaw for a second before letting go.

"Where are you going?" she asks.

"Office. I need to make a call."

The words are true and incomplete, and the pattern of partial truths between us is becoming a structure I can feel hardening under my feet. She'll test it soon. The'For now'had a deadline.

She pulls the blanket tighter and curls into the couch. Her bare shoulders above the blanket, the firelight caught in her hair, so far from the tactical reality I'm about to step into that my hands curl at my sides.

I walk to the office. The gun safe is in the closet, bolted to the floor joists where my father installed it. The combination is the date my mother left. He set it as a reminder. I never changed it because the reminder serves a different purpose for me than it did for him. For him it was a wound he picked at. For me it's the reason I'm standing here.

The safe opens. The rifles are racked and oiled. The ammunition is sorted by caliber in the steel boxes on the bottom shelf. I run my hand along the stock of the .308 and check the bolt. The action is smooth. The scope is clean.

I take it out. I close the safe and lock it.

The lodge is still. Through the wall, I hear Kendall shift on the couch, leather creaking and the blanket sliding. The sound is small and domestic, entirely at odds with the weight of the rifle in my hands.

My father's calm drops over me like a hood: the absence of hesitation, the state where every variable has been weighed, every action chosen, the only thing left is execution. He found this state early and stayed in it too long, and the cost is written across every one of his children. I don't have the luxury of examining that right now.