When his lips brush mine, tentative at first, it’s like time slows, stretching out, my head panicking to try and catalog every second of the touch. I feel the rough scrape of his beard against my chin, one of his hands sliding around to the small of my back, expanding, his fingers stretching like he’s trying to claim more of my skin.
And then, just before we make full, real contact, Evan pulls back.
For a moment, I panic. Did I read everything wrong? Embarrassment flushes through me, making me feel even more hot and flustered than I was before.
“Oh, God, sorry,” I mutter, stepping back, shaking my head and bringing my hand to cover my mouth. “I?—”
“Amy.”
I stop, blinking, staring at the floor. My eyes are hot; my entire body is hot. I barely know this man. Why would I think he’d want me to come on to him?
The first thing he did was close the door in my face. What part of that am I not getting?
“Why are you…” Evan starts, his voice trailing off, thick and gravelly, choking out. Like a pen running out of ink mid-sentence.
“Oh.” I clear my throat, shaking my head, feeling completely unmoored. What was Ithinking? Of course it would be wrong tostep into him like that. To try and kiss him. When he’s been kind enough to offer me somewhere to stay, and I’ve done nothing but disrupt his schedule and, frankly, ruin his day. “I don’t know. I’m sorry?—”
I’m part of the problem. Working for the company that’s been trying to take his land—land that has belonged to his family forgenerations—from him.
But when I look at him, he doesn’t look like a man who didn’t want to be kissed just now. Actually, he looks like a man who very much wants to kiss me, his lips slightly parted, his eyes dark and trained on me, his fingers curled into loose fists at his sides.
“Amy,” he says, stepping forward and taking my chin in his hand, tipping my head up so I’m looking at him. If someone had asked me if I’d like something like this, I’d tell them no—that a dominant move like that wouldn’t do it for me.
And I would have been wrong. Because I melt at the direct gesture, the way his eyes hold mine.
Evan goes on, “I’m asking you why you’re doing this, because I don’t want you to feel pressured. Or like you have to do anything.”
I blink, not quite following, and he works his jaw for a second, then goes on, “I want you. But I need to know that this isn’t about me offering you a place to stay, or any guilt about…” He glances to the right, toward the side of the cabin and, somewhere beyond it, the spot where the tree was in the road.
“It’s not about that,” I rasp, a shiver running down my spine again when he shifts his hand, sliding it into my hair, his thumb swiping a lazy path just in front of my ear. “It’s—it’s?—”
I cast about in my head, trying to figure out how to tell him that it’s not about the way he pulled me out from under the tree. How he brought me in and fed me, gave me dry clothes despite the fact that he didn’t have any reason to.
How to tell him that it’s about catching the fish. Cooking dinner together. The strange, consuming sense of calm that I’ve achieved next to him that I’ve never felt before in my life.
But apparently that’s enough for him, because he saves me from trying to articulate all that by stepping toward me and pressing his body into mine. He makes a sound low enough that it could be a growl, using his hand to tip my head up to his, taking my lips with his own.
His other hand is on the small of my back again, holding me firmly against him as he kisses me. He kisses me like he’s trying to drink me in, his tongue persistent and thorough, each little jut of his chin like a wave crashing over me.
My breath comes fast, and thoughts fly out the window.
Back in the city, I have some time for the occasional hookup. But those are usually short-lived, unsatisfying, and more work than they’re worth. Before having someone over, I’d shower, shave, exfoliate, scrub, and douse myself in perfume. Not tromp around in the snow for an hour, sweating inside a coat that’s far too big for me and does nothing for my figure.
But Evan doesn’t seem to have qualms about any of that. His large hands are insistent, thorough. He tugs at the hem of my shirt and slides it over my head. I return the favor, and when I pull back to get a good look at him, the way the light from the fire plays over his chest is practically erotic.
He’s a hairy man, and up until this moment, I would have claimed that as a turnoff. But I am not turned off by the hair over his chest, and down the expanse of his stomach. When I run my fingers over it, a shiver dances down my spine, and I open my mouth in a gasp that he swallows.
We’re so caught up in each other that when we hit the couch, and he lowers me back onto it, it feels like an automatic movement. Like something we’ve done again and again, the two of us memorized in this dance, in our steps.
“Fuck,” Evan says, his voice impossibly low, deep, and rumbling through me, almost more vibration than sound. “You’re gorgeous.”
The pleasure is quick and immediate, lighting through me, and I see him notice my reaction, see him make a note and continue whispering his praises and compliments to me as he works off my shorts—hisshorts—and trails his hot mouth down between my breasts and over my stomach.
“Where did you even come from?” he murmurs, before sucking one of my nipples into his mouth, his beard brushing against the soft, sensitive skin of my breast. I arch up off the couch, wrapping my legs around him, moaning softly, trying to stay quiet.
“Let it out,” he says, smiling up at me, his blue eyes lighter now, his pupils flickering in the light from the fire. “You don’t have to be quiet, Amy.”
This is wildly out of character for me. I’m aware of that as I work my fingers into the waistband of his pants, tugging them off, gasping when his cock springs free, pressing against the inside of my thigh. I’m aware of how this choice lies outside my normaljudgment when he growls and buries his head in the crook of my neck.
