“Mm.”
“And sold it.”
“For enough to build a homestead and stop looking at screens.” He glanced over at me. “I told you I don’t like my phone.”
I laughed before I could stop myself—a real one, surprised out of me—and he smiled, finally, a full one, and it rearranged his face into something that made it hard to look away.
The sun had dropped behind the ridge and the spray off the falls was cool on my skin, and I was sitting on a rock next to a man who’d built an empire and traded it for a mountain and thought my tattoo was native and not wild, and I was not moving away from him.
Not even a little.
4
HARLAN
The sun had dropped behind the ridge, but the light hadn’t gone yet—that long, slow mountain dusk that turned everything gold and then amber and then a soft grey-blue that made the waterfall look like something out of a painting.
Riley was still sitting beside me on the rock, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her shoulder against mine, and neither of us was in any hurry to break whatever this was. I’d stopped trying to label it. I knew, deep down, what it was.
“I want to wade,” she said.
I looked over at her. She was already reaching down to unlace her sneakers, matter-of-fact about it, like she’d made a decision and wasn’t interested in talking herself out of it.
“It’ll be cold,” I said.
“I know.” She pulled off her sneakers and set them on the rock, then peeled off her socks and tucked them inside. She looked up at me with a flicker of something—not quite a dare, not quite an invitation. “You coming?”
I came.
The bank below the rock was a narrow strip of smooth river gravel, the stones worn flat by centuries of water, cool and solid underfoot. The pool at the base of the falls spread out wide and dark, and the spray caught the last of the light. Riley walked to the edge and stepped in without hesitating, and I heard her pull a sharp breath at the cold.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s cold.”
“Told you.”
She looked back at me over her shoulder, and her expression was so unguarded—laughing at herself, pleased with herself, completely present—that I was already moving toward her before I’d decided to.
I rolled my jeans to the knee and stepped in, and the cold hit and I let it. We stood there in the shallows with the waterfall pouring down in front of us and the mountain going quiet all around.
I looked at her and she looked back at me and I said, “Riley.”
Just her name. That was all.
She closed the distance.
Our mouths met, hard and hungry, like the kiss had been waiting years instead of minutes. Riley’s hands fisted in my shirt as I walked us backward, step by careful step, over the smooth gravel until my heels hit the narrow strip of bank.
We never broke the kiss. Her tongue slid against mine, tasting faintly of mountain air and want, and I groaned into her mouth when she nipped my lower lip.
My fingers found the hem of her shirt, tugging it up and over her head in one motion. She helped, arms lifting, then yanked at mine in return.
Skin met skin, cool from the water but fever-hot underneath. Jeans came next—buttons, zippers, clumsy with urgency—until we were bare except for the last scraps of underwear.
I grabbed our discarded shirts and spread them on the gravel to make something softer than stone, then sat, pulling her with me. She straddled my thighs, knees bracketing my hips, and I could feel how wet she was through the thin fabric still between us.
I kissed her again, slower this time, then trailed my mouth down her throat, her collarbone, tasting salt and river spray. Lower.
I hooked my fingers in her panties and slid them to her thighs. She climbed off of me, and I took that as my cue to stand, as well. My boxers and her underwear landed in a pile next to our shirts, and then she followed my directions to lie down on the clothing so I could settle between her legs, letting her thighs frame my face.
