My panties were no longer a neutral party. One word — my name — in that voice, and we had a situation. We were negotiating a landscaping deal. I needed professional help.
"Then we have a deal." I stuck out my hand before the entire field of botany could embarrass me any further.
He took it. His hand was rough and enormous, closing all the way around mine. The contact went through me: palm to wrist to chest to the pit of my stomach, and lower. I held on exactly one second too long before I pulled back.
Flora: three. Atlas: two. He got a point for the eyebrow.
The inside of his cabin smelled like woodsmoke and honey and the quiet of a man who lived alone and liked it. I'd been inside once before, briefly, for the trout dinner, but this was the first time I really looked. Bookshelves crammed with no organizing principle I could identify: a varroa mite management guide next to a Louis L'Amour paperback, a dog-eared Beekeeper's Handbook, and what appeared to be a college entomology textbook with sticky notes poking out of every chapter. Honey jars on the kitchen shelf, lined up lightest to darkest, pale spring wildflower to deep amber buckwheat. A wood-burning stove with a coffee pot that looked like it had been on since the Clinton administration. Two place settings on the counter. He'd put out two before I'd said I was staying.
He handed me a mug without asking. Strong, black, and hot enough to strip paint. I drank it and it was terrible and perfect.
"I'm making venison," he said, pulling a wrapped package from the freezer. "Backstrap. And there's honey for the glaze if you're willing to handle prep."
"You're asking me to help you cook?"
"You keep telling me you can cook. I'm calling the bluff."
"It's not a bluff. I'm an excellent cook."
"Then you won't mind the knife work." He slid a cutting board across the counter. Root vegetables, parsnips, carrots,a few small turnips, and a loaf of sourdough that looked homemade. "Rough chop. Everything gets roasted."
We cooked. Side by side at the counter, his cabin kitchen not built for two people to move without touching. He was at the stove, searing the venison in a cast-iron skillet. I was at the cutting board. The space between us was maybe eighteen inches, and it kept shrinking. He'd reach past me for the honey jar, his arm brushing my shoulder. I'd lean over him to grab a towel, my hip grazing his. Each accidental contact sent a jolt straight down my spine that I had to pretend was not happening.
He drizzled honey over the venison. Slow. A thick golden thread from a wooden dipper, catching the light from the stove. He tilted the dipper with the same focused attention he gave the hive frames. I stared at his fingers and thought about them on my bare skin, drizzling honey across my stomach, following it with his lips. I chopped a parsnip so aggressively it shot off the cutting board.
"You alright?" he asked, not turning around.
"Fine. The parsnip had it coming."
We talked while we cooked, and the talking was easier here, looser, the way conversation gets when your hands are occupied and you're not staring directly at the person wrecking your composure. I asked about the sticky notes in the entomology textbook. "Disagreements with the author," he said. I laughed and he smiled — a real one, brief, gone almost before I caught it — and it did more damage than a full grin from any other man alive. He told me about his honey varietals: wildflower, clover, buckwheat, the late-season goldenrod that tasted like autumn and smelled like wet socks. Apparently normal. Not a quality control issue. I told him about a client in Portland who'd wanted a "pollinator garden" that was actually just lavender in rows because she'd seen it on Pinterest. The sound he made, a low short huff through his nose, was the closest thing to a laugh I'dgotten out of him. I wanted to chase it. I wanted to make him do it again.
The cabin was heated from the stove. The venison was resting. The roots were in to roast, the sourdough sliced, honey on the table, a jar of spring wildflower, the pale gold one, the one I'd tasted from the comb two days ago. We were facing each other at the table, actually eating, and my body was vibrating at a frequency that made chewing difficult.
After dinner he opened the jar. Dipped a clean spoon, held it out to me across the table.
I took the spoon in my mouth and the honey hit my tongue, floral, golden, sweet in a way that spread through my whole chest. My eyes closed. I couldn't help it. The sound I made was soft and involuntary and completely inappropriate for a dining situation.
When I opened my eyes he'd moved. He was beside my chair. Close. Close enough that I could smell woodsmoke and honey and the clean scent underneath that was just him. His thumb traced the corner of my mouth where honey had caught.
"I've been wondering," he said, low, unhurried, his eyes on my mouth and done pretending otherwise, "if you taste as sweet as that."
My breath stopped. My brain stopped. The professional boundaries, the reconnaissance mission, the resolution not to sleep with my sperm donor — all of it evaporated. What was left: his thumb on my lip, his eyes on mine, and the fact that I wanted this man so badly my hands were shaking.
"Only one way to find out," I said, and my voice came out barely there.
He kissed me.
Not tentative. Not careful. He kissed me with the full force of what he'd been holding back, one hand cupping the back of my neck, the other gripping the edge of the table. I tasted honeyon his tongue and made a sound I would never admit to under oath. My fingers found his chest, felt the heat of him through the cotton, the solid wall of muscle. I curled into the fabric and pulled.
He lifted me. Palms under my thighs, picked me up off the chair, set me on the kitchen counter. I locked my legs around his waist on pure instinct and pulled him in. The kiss deepened. His hands slid up my thighs, my hips, rucked up the hem of my shirt. Everywhere he touched lit up, rough palms on bare skin. I arched into it, greedy, gone.
"Wait," I gasped, pulling back just far enough to see his face. His eyes were dark. His breathing was ragged. His hands had stopped the instant I said wait, but they were still on my skin, steady. I could feel him, hard, pressed where my legs were locked around him. The size of what I was feeling made my thoughts go briefly, spectacularly offline.
"If you stop now," I said, "I will break something in this kitchen. I want you to know that. Appliances will be harmed."
He smiled. "Noted."
"I'm serious. That coffee pot is not safe."
