My pulse kicks hard. “Slow dancing naked in the dark.”
He doesn’t answer with words. Just crosses the room in three long strides, kills the lantern, and the cabin drops into near-darkness except for the fire’s glow. He fiddles with the battery radio until it catches a crackly country station.
Flynn turns, the firelight across his chest and arms. He holds out one big, calloused hand.
I stand. The flannel shirt whispers off my shoulders and pools on the floor. He strips too—thermal peeling away to reveal miles of inked skin, sweatpants shoved down thick thighs—untilthere’s nothing between us but heat and the soft scratch of wool socks on pine boards. It’s too cold to take off the socks, too, and I’m sure we look ridiculous, but no one will ever see us this way but each other. This is a moment for just him and me.
He pulls me in. One hand splays across the small of my back, fingers spanning almost my whole waist. The other laces our fingers. We start to sway.
No real steps. Just the slow drag of feet, the hush of skin on skin, the rasp of his beard against my temple. His chest hair tickles my breasts, and my nipples tighten instantly against the warm, hard wall of him. His cock is already heavy and hot, trapped between our stomachs, sliding against my skin with every breath.
We move in a tight circle, barely more than rocking in place. The fire crackles, the wind moans low around the eaves, and on the radio, someone sings about missing someone at Christmas, and the steel guitar curls through the room like smoke.
I close my eyes and drown in sensation. The scratch of his beard when he turns his head, the flex of his back under my palms, the faint salt taste when I press my lips to the hollow of his throat. His thumb strokes slow, possessive circles at the base of my spine. My thighs brush the coarse hair on his, and every tiny shift sends sparks straight to my core.
The song ends, static hisses as we lose the station, but we keep swaying.
He lets me walk him backwards until his calves hit the bed. I push him down onto his back and straddle his hips, knees sinking into the quilt.
“Number ten,” I whisper. “I get to tie you up and make you watch without touching.”
I grab the red satin ribbon from the nightstand, the same one he used on me, and loop it around his thick wrists. The fabricwhispers over his skin as I knot it to the iron headboard. I know he could get out without any trouble, but he won’t.
His chest rises faster. The sharp V of his hips, the heavy, flushed length of his cock lying hard against his stomach call out to me.
I sit back on my heels between his spread thighs and let him look.
I cup my breasts first, thumbs circling my nipples until they’re tight, aching peaks. A soft moan slips out of me. His answering growl is low, animal.
I trail one hand down my stomach, slow, teasing, watching his eyes track every inch. When I finally part my folds and slide two fingers through slick heat, we both groan. I’m drenched. I circle my clit once, twice, hips rolling forward involuntarily.
“Fuck, Vixen,” he rasps, wrists straining against the ribbon, veins standing out on his forearms.
I sink two fingers inside myself, curl them just right, and my head falls back. I ride my own hand shamelessly, with slow rolls of my hips, thumb on my clit, soft breathy sounds I can’t hold back. Every time I get close, I stop, thighs trembling, breath hitching, until I’m shaking and he’s cursing steadily, hips lifting off the bed, cock leaking a shiny trail across his abs.
The fourth time, I break.
I crawl up his body, yank the ribbon loose with one frantic tug, and the second his hands are free, he flips us in a blur of muscle and heat. My back hits the mattress. He drives into me in one brutal thrust that punches the air from my lungs.
We both cry out.
He fucks me like he’s starving, with deep, punishing strokes that hit every sensitive spot inside me. One big hand pins both my wrists above my head while the other grips my hip hard enough to leave bruises tomorrow. I wrap my legs around his waist and meet him thrust for thrust, nails scoring down hisback, the Christmas lights flickering wildly across sweat-slick skin.
The headboard slams the wall in time with the creak of the bed and the soft flicker of bulbs. The air is thick with the scent of sex and pine and melted snow dripping from his hair onto my breasts.
I come first, clenching around him so hard my vision whites out, a broken sound tearing from my throat. He follows seconds later, burying himself to the hilt and pulsing hot inside me with a guttural groan that vibrates through my whole body.
He collapses half on top of me, face buried in my neck, both of us panting like we just ran ten miles uphill. Neither of us says a word. We don’t have to.
Ten down. Two to go.
Tomorrow is Christmas, and the sky outside is clear for the first time in weeks. The world is coming back whether we’re ready or not.
Flynn
I wake before the sun.
The cabin is still dark except for the low red embers in the hearth. The snow has stopped.
