Page 17 of Match Made In Growl

"Not here," she managed, though her body was making a compelling argument for exactly here, against this exact wall, in this exact rain.

"Cabin's ten minutes."

"Make it five."

They half-ran through the rain, cutting through side streets and across the square, and she didn't remember most of it afterward except the cold rain and the warmth of his hand locked around hers and the way he kept pulling her against him at every dark corner to kiss her again like he couldn't stand even ten seconds of not touching her.

They hit the cabin porch soaked through and panting, and he fumbled with the door while she pressed against his back, mouth on his neck, hands sliding around his waist and up under his shirt where his skin was furnace-hot and the muscles of his stomach tensed under her palms.

The door opened and they were inside, and she had about two seconds to register that the cabin before he turned and lifted her, hands gripping the backs of her thighs, and her legs wrapped around his waist on instinct. He carried her like she weighed nothing, mouth on hers, walking blind down a hallway until his shoulder hit a doorframe and they were in a bedroom.

He set her down and she pulled his shirt over his head in one motion. The dim light from the window caught the planes of his chest, lean and cut, the kind of body built from work and movement rather than a gym. A thin trail of golden-brown hair ran below his navel, and she followed it with her fingers while he stripped her jacket off and peeled the wet thermal up and over her head, leaving her in a plain black bra that was soaked through and not remotely designed to be sexy, which didn't seem to matter because the sound he made when he saw her was guttural and involuntary.

"God," he breathed against her collarbone. "You're..."

She pulled him back to her mouth before he could say anything else.

They shed the rest of it fast, graceless and urgent, wet denim peeled off and kicked away, boots thudding against the floor. When his hands found bare skin, all of it, she stopped thinking about the dig and the rain and Grant and every reason she had for not doing this and let her body take over.

He was thorough. That was the word that surfaced later, when she could form words again. Thorough and focused and almost unbearably attentive, reading her responses like someone fluent in a language he'd been studying all his life. When he laid her back on the bed and kissed his way down her stomach, fingers tracing the line of her hip, she twisted the sheets in both fists and forgot how to breathe.

His mouth found her and she came apart fast, faster than she'd expected, the orgasm crashing through her with enough force that her back arched off the mattress and her hand found his hair and gripped. He didn't stop. He worked her through it with his tongue and his fingers until she was shaking, oversensitive, pulling at his shoulders because she needed him up here, needed all of him, now.

He rose over her, and she could see the restraint in the cords of his neck, the locked jaw, the way his arms trembled slightly where they braced on either side of her head. His amber eyes were nearly black and his breathing was ragged, and when she wrapped her hand around him and guided him forward, the groan he made almost cut Steph loose right there again.

He pushed into her slowly, and her body opened around him, stretching and full and so intensely right that she gasped and grabbed his shoulders, nails biting into skin. He held still for a moment, forehead pressed to hers, both of them breathing hard, and then she moved her hips and whatever leash he'd been holding snapped.

He drove into her and she met every thrust, hips rising to match his rhythm, her legs locked around his waist. The bed creaked and the rain hammered the roof and none of it was loud enough to drown out the sounds they were making, skin against skin, ragged breathing, and the low, desperate noises that came from somewhere deep in his chest every time she tightened around him.

She came again with his hand between them, his thumb finding the exact right spot while he buried himself to the hilt, and this time it was slower, deeper, rolling through her in waves that made her clench around him until he shuddered and followed her over with a groan that she felt reverberate through her entire body.

They lay still for a moment, panting for approximately ninety seconds before he rolled her onto her stomach, brushed her hair aside, and pressed his mouth to the back of her neck. His hand traced down her spine, over the curve of her ass, between her thighs where she was still wet and swollen and sensitive.

"Again?" she breathed into the pillow.

"Again."

She lost count after that. The hours blurred together in a haze of heat and skin and the particular madness that happens when two people who should not work together turn out to be devastatingly compatible in the one arena that doesn't require conversation. He took her from behind with his hand fisted in her hair and his mouth on her shoulder. She rode him with her palms flat on his chest and his hands gripping her hips hard enough that she'd have bruises in the morning. They ended up against the wall at some point, her back pressed to the wood and her legs around his waist, and when she came that time she buried her face in his neck and tasted his salt.

Sometime around three in the morning, they finally stopped. He was asleep within minutes, one arm heavy across her waist, his breathing slow and even against the back of her neck. The rain had gentled to a soft, steady patter, and the cabin was warm and dark.

Steph lay still and listened to him breathe. His body curved around hers, all that heat and muscle and the faint, lingering spice of his skin, and she could feel the pull to stay. To sink into this warmth and this quiet and the uncomplicated comfort of another person's body and not think about what it meant.

But she'd made that mistake before. Comfort was a trap. It made you soft, made you stay in places you should leave, made you build a life around someone else's gravity until you forgot how to orbit on your own.

One night. That was the deal. She hadn't said it out loud, but she'd said it to herself, and she kept her promises, especially the ones she made in self-defense.

She eased out from under his arm. He stirred once, murmured something she couldn't make out, and then his breathing settled again. She found her clothes in the dark by touch, dressing quietly in damp jeans and the thermal that smelled like him now, like cedar and spice and sex.

She didn't leave a note. Notes implied continuation, and this was a period, not a comma.

The rain had stopped by the time she stepped off the cabin porch. The sky was still dark, but the eastern horizon held the faintest suggestion of grey, dawn about an hour out. The air was clean and cold and smelled like wet earth. Steph pulled it into her lungs and held it there, letting it flush out the warmth and the want and the dangerous comfort of Criss Holt's bed.

She walked back to the inn with her jacket over her arm and her boots squelching on the wet trail and her body still humming with the ghost of his hands.

It changed nothing. Today looked promising and she had work to do.

10