Page 13 of Rough Cut Mountain Man

I get her jeans off. Her socks, which is undignified and makes her laugh again. Then I lay her back on my own coat spread on the counter and stand between her knees and look at her for long enough that she goes pink.

"Are you going to do something or are you appraising me?"

"Both."

"Gideon."

"Say it again."

"Gideon."

I put two fingers in her and my thumb on her clit and work her that way, slow and steady, watching her face the whole time. She's wet almost immediately. She reaches back and grips the edge of the counter and her hips start chasing my hand.

"You're going to make me — right there — don't change it —"

"I'm not changing it."

She laughs and it turns into a moan halfway, and she comes like that, on my hand, in the office where I do the payroll, with the low October sun across her stomach.

I get my belt off. She sits up and pulls my shirt over my head and puts her palms flat on my chest, and then she does the thing that takes the top of my head off — she leans in and kisses the scar on my forearm, the one from the head rig in '09, without asking about it.

"Faye."

"Mm."

"Come here."

I pull her to the edge and push into her standing, her legs around my waist, her arms locked behind my neck. She's warm and tight and she makes a sound against my shoulder that I want on a loop for the rest of my life.

I move slow. Deep and unhurried, all the way out and all the way back, and she holds on and takes it and doesn't tell me to go faster.

"I want you in my house," I say against her ear. "Not visiting. In it. Your boots by the door and your coffee cup in the sink and your name on the mail."

"Gideon —" She moans as if that’s the sexiest thing she’s ever heard.

"I'm not asking you to stay for me." My hand spreads over her back and I hold her against my chest and keep moving. "I'm telling you I want it. I've spent three years not wanting anything and I'm done doing that. You can do what you want with it."

She pulls back to look at me. Her eyes are wet and she's smiling anyway, and she puts both hands on my face.

"Seven o'clock I said no to Northbend," she says. "Seven-fifteen I called Victoria and gave notice."

I stop dead.

"You what."

"Four weeks, consulting through the spring on the campus job, my desk cleared by December." She's laughing and crying at the same time and it's a mess and it's the best thing I have ever seen. "I did it before I drove up here. So it would already be true when you tried to be noble at me."

I don't have anything to say to that.

So I don't say anything. I get her off the counter and I turn her and put her hands flat on my grandfather's counter and take her from behind with one arm banded across her ribs, holding her back against my chest.

"Oh.."

"This all right?"

"Yes."

I go slow again first, all the way in and all the way back, because I want to feel her take it that way. Her head drops between her shoulders. Her fingers go white on the edge of the wood.