Page 38 of Autumn With The Grumpy Mountain Man

“That was one,” he said.

I lifted my head and stared at him. “One?”

He just looked at me. There was a little bit of wickedness in his eyes I’d only seen once before, in my narrow bed the night of the paint fight.

My heart thumped hard. My body, which I’d been sure was finished, woke right back up.

“Okay,” I said. “My turn.”

I pushed his jacket off his shoulders. Then his flannel, unbuttoning it with fingers that were still shaking but steadier now. When he was bare to the waist, I put my hands flat on his chest the way I had that first night in my apartment, and slid them down slowly, and watched his eyes close.

I went to my knees in front of him.

His eyes flew open. “Hazel.”

I reached for his belt. “Let me make you feel good too.”

I’d never done this before. Not really. Definitely not with somebody I loved. My hands weren’t perfectly steady on his belt buckle, but I got it open, and the button on his jeans, and I pulled everything down his hips. He was hard and thick and so much bigger up close than I’d let myself think about. I wrapped my hand around him and stroked him slowly, base to tip, and he swore under his breath and braced one hand flat against the door above my head.

I looked up at him. He was looking down at me with an expression I’d never seen on anyone’s face. Like he couldn’t believe I was real.

I leaned in and took him into my mouth.

He made a sound I’ll remember the rest of my life. Low and broken, half a groan and half my name. His free hand went into my hair, not pushing, just holding on. He tasted like salt and skin. I took him as deep as I could and slid back up slowly, swirling my tongue around the head, and I felt his whole body shake.

“Hazel,” he gasped. “That’s⁠—”

I did it again, slower. I found a rhythm with my mouth and my hand together, and I listened to every sound he made, learning him the way he’d learned me that first night. When I swirled my tongue under the head, his hips jerked. When I hummed around him, he groaned and his fingers tightened in my hair. I’d never felt so powerful in my life.

I could feel how close he was getting. His breathing was ragged. His thighs were trembling under my hands.

Then he pulled me up off my knees.

“Not like that,” he said hoarsely. “Not this time. I need to be inside you.”

He kissed me, hard and deep. Then he bent and picked me up again, and this time he carried me across the cabin, past the table and the woodstove, through the bedroom door.

His bedroom was dark. He set me down on the edge of a big bed with a heavy quilt and turned on the lamp on the nightstand. The light was warm and low, and I could see everything. A wide bed. A window looking out over the dark hollow. A carved wooden chest at the foot of the bed.

And on the nightstand, a familiar box.

I’d left it there a week ago and forgotten all about it. He hadn’t moved it.

He saw me looking and raised an eyebrow. “An optimist,” he said.

I laughed. Then he tugged my sweater over my head, and I stopped laughing.

He undressed me slowly this time, nothing like the door. He unhooked my bra on the first try, and I gave him a look, and he said, “I’ve been practicing,” so seriously that I laughed again. He slid the straps down my arms and kissed each bare shoulder. He knelt and pulled off my boots and my socks and peeled my jeans down my legs, and then my underwear, kissing my knee, my hip, my stomach. When I was naked, he stood and kicked off the rest of his own clothes and looked down at me sitting on the edge of his bed.

“You’re beautiful,” he said quietly. “You know that?”

My throat went tight. “Come here.”

He laid me back on the quilt and stretched out over me, skin to skin, all that warm weight pressing me down into the mattress. He kissed me slowly. Our legs tangled. I could feel him hard against my thigh, and I slid my hand between us and wrapped my fingers around him, and he groaned into my mouth.

“Hold on,” he said.

He reached over to the nightstand, tore a packet open, and rolled the condom on. Then he came back to me and kissed me again, and I expected him to settle between my legs.