If I was going to assess it from a scientific standpoint, I’d know it had something to do with the chemicals in my brain. If you scanned me right now, my head would be lighting up like a fucking Christmas tree, flooded with feel-good endorphins.
This must be what people feel like when they shoot up. Like I’m lifting out of my body, yet impossibly grounded to it at the same time.
When I drive into her, Lola wraps her legs around my waist, her heels digging into my lower back. She drops her head back and gives me access to her neck, which I scrape my teeth across while thrusting, trying to get deeper with each stroke.
“Rowan,” she gasps. We’re all breath and teeth and lips and tongue, her body slick with sweat against mine, her limbs loose and hot and happy. Her fingers dance over my back, gripping, then relaxing, her nails not scratching but dragging lightly over my skin, driving me fucking insane.
“You take it from me so well,” I say, not because I’ve thought it in my head, but because somehow, it’s gone directly from my cock to my lips.
Distantly, I’m aware that this is insane. That it doesn’t make sense for the best sex of my life to be with a woman I hardly know. After years with Hannah, itneverfelt like this. And now, here I am, both losing and finding my sanity buried in Lola Kennedy.
“Keep talking,” she whispers hoarsely, her eyes jerking to the ceiling. “I’m going to…”
“You’re so tight,” I say, because it’s true. And then, instead of the three words that pop to my mind first — which reallyareinsane — I say, “I want you to come for me, Lola.”
“Oh!”
She does, tightening impossibly around me, which sets me over the edge, too.
We cling to each other, riding out the waves of our pleasure, and when it’s over, there’s a split second in which we’re just together, breathing, nothing but the sounds of nature outside the cabin around us.
I can practically feel her brain starting up, thoughts whirring in her head, and I don’t like it. I don’t want her to start thinking about all the reasons why this is a terrible idea.
And, frankly, I don’t want to think about them, either.
So instead, I gather her up in my arms and lift her up off the couch.
“Rowan!” she laughs, throwing her arms around my neck. “What are you doing?”
I grin down at her. It feels good to hold her in my arms so easily. Out here, I’ve gotten strong, filled out my frame, grown five years older and five years of manual labor stronger. My reward is the feel of her arms around my neck, the admiration shining in her eyes.
Casually, I shrug one shoulder, and start walking toward the bathroom. “I thought you might like a shower.”
Her eyes darken, and she nuzzles her face into my chest, kissing and nipping at my skin.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice muffled, her hair wild around her face. “You read my mind.”
CHAPTER 17
LOLA
When I wake up this time, it takes me a moment to realize I’m not at home, cuddled up in my bed in Seattle. And I’m not on the couch in Rowan’s living room.
I’m tucked under his arm, warm and cozy, my heart beating loud in my ears.
He’s hard against me and rousing himself, and as though right now is just a continuation of last night, he rocks into me, growling into the nape of my neck.
The morning sex is even better than the night before. No, that’s not true, but it’s stillreallygood. When we’re done, panting and spent, I turn in his arms and tip my chin up, catching his lips with mine.
“Good morning,” he mumbles, and I catch that with my lips, too.
I love you, I think, then startle and blink, shaking my head. What the hell was that? It came to my mind so easily, so openly, but that’scrazy. I’m not the kind of girl who jumps into things like that.
I must be confused. I love this moment, this feeling. I love being pressed up against him and waking up already moving together. I love the way he grips my hip, his warm eyes and that smile. I love the scrape of his beard against my skin. I love the tickle of it through the back of my T-shirt.
And I’ve loved being here. Maybe last night I was even dreaming of what it would be like to stay here. I might have thought about the logistics of making trips up the mountain. The world’s most effort ever given for a booty call.
I would answer every time, I realize, if only Rowan had the signal to make the call in the first place.
