We stand on the porch with his forehead against mine until the light changes. The sun drops behind the ridge and the temperature follows, and neither of us has moved, and I don't care. His hands are still on my face, and my hands are still wrapped around his wrists, and I can feel every callus, every scar, every rough edge of a man who has built his entire world out of things that can't leave him.
I don't want to leave him.
The thought is so clear it startles me. Not the wanting. I've been wanting for weeks, lying awake with his name in my mouth, aching in places I'd closed off, I'd forgotten they were there. But the clarity of it. The absolute, bone-deep certainty that this scarred, shaking man with his hands on my face is the safest place I've ever stood.
"Come inside," he says. Low. An offering.
"Yes."
He drops one hand from my face and takes my hand instead, and my throat tightens at the simplicity of it. He leads me through the cabin door, and Chief lifts his head from his bed and watches us pass, and sets his chin back down with a sigh that sounds, absurdly, like satisfaction.
The cabin is warm from the wood stove. The light is amber and low, and the only sounds are the fire and the wind outside and the blood in my ears.
Rhett stops in the middle of the room. Turns to face me. His hand is still holding mine, and his eyes are dark and open, and I can see the war in them. The part of him that wants this fighting the part of him that thinks he doesn't deserve it.
I step closer. Close enough that my chest is almost touching his. Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to look at him, and the height difference sends a slow heat pooling at the base of my spine.
"Rhett."
"Yeah."
"Stop thinking."
Something shifts in his face. The war quiets. Not gone, but paused. He looks at me the way he's been trying not to look at me since the clinic doorway, and this time he doesn't shut it down.
He kisses me.
Not carefully. His mouth covers mine and his hand comes to the back of my neck and he pulls me in, and the sound I make against his lips is something between a gasp and a sob because I have been waiting for this, waiting without letting myself know I was waiting, and the reality of his mouth on mine buckles something in my knees.
He tastes of coffee. He smells of wood-smoke and cold air and something underneath that's just him. His other hand finds my waist, and his fingers press into the curve of my hip, and I feelevery single one of them through the thin fabric of my scrubs. Five points of pressure. Five points of heat.
I open my mouth and he groans.
The sound goes through me like a current. Low, rough, pulled from somewhere deep in his chest. His tongue finds mine, and the kiss deepens, and my hands are fisting the front of his flannel, pulling him closer, needing him closer, needing the weight and the heat and the solid, undeniable reality of his body against mine.
He walks me backward. Slow. His mouth never leaving mine, his hand never leaving my hip. One step, then another, and I feel the edge of the bed against the backs of my knees, and he stops.
He pulls back. Just far enough to look at me.
"Bianca." His voice is wrecked. Rough and low, and unsteady. "Are you sure?"
I look up at him. His face in the amber light, the scar, the stubble, the dark eyes that have been watching me since the first day I sat at that clinic desk and felt the weight of a stranger's gaze through glass.
"I'm sure," I say. "I've been sure."
He exhales. A long, shaking breath. And then his hands go to the hem of my scrub top and he lifts it over my head, slow and deliberate, unhurried the way he is with anything that matters. The air hits my bare skin and I shiver, and his eyes drop to my body and his expression is something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.
Reverence. He's looking at the curve of my waist, the fullness of my breasts in a plain cotton bra, the soft swell of my stomach, and the look on his face says he can't believe he's allowed.
"Jesus," he breathes. His hand comes to my ribs. Traces the curve. His thumb sweeps the underside of my breast, and I arch into the touch. "Look at you."
My instinct is to cover myself. To cross my arms and deflect and say something self-deprecating about the body I've never been comfortable in, the one that's too soft and too round and too much.
I don't.
I reach behind my back and unhook my bra, and let it fall.
His eyes close for a second. When they open, they're darker than I've ever seen them, and the restraint in his jaw is costing him.
