So when we step back inside Holler’s cabin, I don’t go straight to her. I don’t let myself move like this is normal. Like I haven’t already crossed lines that don’t uncross.
I scan first.
Windows. Porch rail. The thin strip of treeline visible through glass. I watch for a shadow that holds its shape too long, for a shimmer that doesn’t match wind, for the wrong stillness that means somebody is holding their breath out there.
Nothing.
Still, I shut the door. I lock it. Then I pull the curtains closed one by one, slow and deliberate, like I’m sealing a wound before it bleeds out.
Behind me, Brittany shifts on the edge of the bed. I hear the rustle of cotton. My shirt hanging off her, bare legs tucked under her like she is trying to decide if she is allowed to take up space.
“Paranoid?” she asks softly.
“Alive,” I answer.
When I turn back to her, everything’s changed. Outside was impulse, bark and adrenaline. Her mouth on mine like she was tired of being polite about wanting me.
In here, it’s deliberate.
In here, the consequences have four walls.
I cross the room slowly. She does not step back. Does not flinch. She tilts her chin up instead, daring me to be what everyone already thinks I am.
“You check under the bed too?” she teases, like she is trying to keep it light so it won’t shake apart.
I don’t smile. I grab her hips and lift her onto the mattress like she weighs nothing. Like the world ain’t going to watch my hands on her later and decide what it means.
Her breath hitches.
“I should stop,” I tell her, because I ain’t stupid and I ain’t a teenager with no patch and no responsibilities.
“Then why ain’t you?” she asks, and there ain’t no joke in her voice now.
Because I can’t.
Because I already lost this fight somewhere between dragging her out of dark water and watching her walk around with another man, trying to be good like good has ever protected anyone in Hell.
Because every time I try to put space between us, the world finds a way to shove us back together and make it feel like fate, when it’s really just danger with good timing.
I slide my hands up her thighs, slow this time. Controlled. I want her to feel the difference. I want her to understand that I’m choosing restraint on purpose, not because I don’t want her.
“Do you even know what you're doing to me?” I murmur.
She reaches for the hem of my shirt, the ones she’s wearing. I’ve not even seen her naked yet.
“You’re the one who locked the door,” she says.
Fair.
I strip my shirt off her and toss it aside. The cabin is warm, but her skin is colder than it should be, goosing up, like the lake followed her in. My eyes land on her two pink peaks, hard and her perfect breasts, soft. Rounder than I imagined them on her small frame.
Magnificent.
Then my gaze drops to her sticky abdomen where I just shot my wad and to her hairless sex where I just buried my cock.
Her eyes flick over my bare chest, over the scar at my collarbone, over the muscles in my stomach that tighten when she looks like that.
I lose my jeans.
