“You like them?” Concern tinged her voice.
“Love them, Ivygirl.” My gaze met hers. “Love everything about you. Always have. Always will.”
She gave me a small smile. “Good, cause you’re stuck with me.”
I shook my head, moving lower. “Nothin’stuckabout it, darlin’. You’re mine.”
“Yeah,” she breathed as my lips trailed along the plane of her stomach, pulling her bunched-up dress down her legs. “I am yours. Always have been.”
Her panties joined her dress soon after, leaving her bare and spread out for me. I ran my hands up her thighs, spreading them. “Could look at you ‘till the day I die.”
“Stop looking and do something,” she demanded, needy.
A shocked laugh slipped past my lips. “You turned into a bossy little thing, didn't you?”
“Mhm,” she nodded in a daze, watching with hooded eyes as I slipped my jeans off. I settled on top of her, her skin soft and warm against mine.
The feel of her beneath me was familiar, yet somehow brand new. She was my other half and a stranger. A foreign language I’d mastered only to forget with the passing of time. But it was coming back to me now.
“I need you,” she whispered.
I leaned down, our noses brushing. “Never could tell you no,” I replied, just as soft. I reached between us, running my cock along her entrance. My hands shook with anticipation, my heart beating like a drum against my ribs.
I pressed forward slowly, watching the way her eyes widened slightly, how her lips parted as her body gave way to mine. Our moans blended together in perfect unison as I filled her. This was different than the barn. That had been a combustion of anger and grief. This was coming home. A reclaiming of everything we’d lost. A promise to never let it go again.
“God, I’ve missed you.”
“Show me how much.”
I pulled back only to surge forward again, harder this time. Ivy cried out, clinging to me as I drove into her, slow and deliberate like I’d promised. The truck rocked under my movements, the shocks creaking with each one.
I took her hands, pinning them over her head with just one of mine. The other went between her legs to her clit. “Wyatt,” she gasped when I started rubbing little circles.
“Need you to come again.”
“I can’t,” she whimpered. But it didn’t matter. I felt her getting tighter, heard the hitch in her breath that always gave her away. She ground her hips into mine, trying to take me deeper, faster, harder. She was just as desperate as I was, wanting this just as much.
“You will. You’re gonna be good for me and come. You’re gonna take everything I give you, aren’t you?” I picked up my pace now. My muscles burned with effort, my skin prickled with sweat.
Her voice shook. “Oh God.”
“Aren’t you, Ivy?” I repeated through gritted teeth.
“Yes!” she cried out. “Yes…yes, I’m gonna—fuck, I’m coming!” Her head tilted back into the blankets, heels digging into my ass. Her body shook beneath mine, thighs clamped around my hips as if she were afraid I’d vanish. But nothing could pull me away from her. Not now. Not ever.
I shattered right along with her. Shattered like glass, only to come back together into something completely new. Something that had her name written all over it.
We lay tangled afterward, the blanket pulled over us against the cooling night air, her head on my chest where she could hear my heart still racing. The creek sang its approval, or maybe I was just projecting onto nature the rightness I felt in my bones.
She lifted her head to look at me, hair wild around her face, lips swollen from kissing. "Take me home, Wyatt. To our cabin."
Our cabin. The words settled over me like a physical touch.
We dressed hastily, laughing when my shirt was inside out, and when she couldn't find her panties. The drive to the cabin was shortbut felt eternal, her hand on my thigh, my body still humming from her touch.
I'd left the porch light on, and it cast a warm glow as we pulled up. The cabin sat perfect in its setting—cedar logs gone silver with age, stone chimney reaching toward stars, windows reflecting the night like knowing eyes.
"It's exactly what we planned," Ivy breathed, standing beside the truck, staring at it. "Every detail."
