Colt drove the way he did everything — controlled, unhurried, completely certain. He didn’t fill the silence. He never filled silence. The mountain road unspooled ahead of us and I watched the trees and thought about the days leading up to this. The second bet we’d made, my determination not to give in too easily. The kiss against the wall. And the way he’d touched me on top of the bar counter…
I was not nervous.
I was absolutely nervous.
“You’re quiet,” he said.
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
I looked at him sideways. In the dark of the cab, he was all jaw and shadow and that particular contained quality that made him look like something the mountain had made rather than a person who’d chosen to live on it.
“I’m thinking about the bet,” I said, which was true. “About what comes next.”
He reached over and took my hand. Just picked it up off my lap and entwined his fingers with mine.
I stopped thinking quite so loudly after that.
The turn off to his cabin finally appeared. We went up a long driveway surrounded by large pines that kept out the rest of the world. Of course, I’d been imagining where he lived — I’d been imagining everything about this man for weeks. The reality was quieter and more permanent than I’d pictured. This looked like the kind of place built by someone who intended to stay.
He killed the engine and turned to me. The look in his eyes was very steady. “After tonight it’s different.”
This was the man who’d sat into that back booth every Friday for six weeks barely touching his beer, who’d shown up Saturday with his toolbox, who’d had his hand down my jeans on Sunday and walked away afterward like he had all the time in the world, who’d thrown me over his shoulder without a single apology.
“I’ve been sure for a while,” I said. “I was just making you work for it.”
He gave a small huff that made me smile.
He was out of the truck and at the passenger side before I’d reached for the handle. I’d barely registered the door opening before his hands were at my waist and he was carrying me to the door. Not over his shoulder this time, but like a bride being carried over the threshold. I put my arms around his neck because it seemed like the thing to do.
“I’m not going to run away,” I said, my fingers tunneling through his hair.
“I know.”
Inside he didn’t bother to turn on the lights.
He walked me through the dark living room and all I got were impressions — stone fireplace, shelves, windows showing nothing but trees and moonlight. And then we were in the bedroom. He laid me back on the bed and stood over me and just looked at me.
That was somehow the most intimate thing that had happened yet. Just him looking.
We didn’t say anything, but that was us. I breathed a sigh of relief as he came down over me. I didn’t want him to change his mind about collecting on the bet.
He held his weight above me and kissed me slowly. Not like in the storage room — that had been urgency and interrupted want. This was deliberate. Painstakingly deliberate. I pressed up into him and he pulled back, not letting our bodies touch.
“Tonight,” he growled. “Tonight, you do what I tell you.”
I held his gaze in the dark as my breathing quickened. Those words did all kinds of things to me, starting with making me wet. Wetter. I arched an eyebrow. “And if I don’t?”
“Then we find out what happens.” His mouth found my jaw, my throat. “But I think you’re going to like what I tell you.”
The shiver that went through me was involuntary and he felt it and I felt him feel it. Understand it.
He kissed me again and this time there was nothing slow about it. His mouth found mine, his tongue thrusting deep and hard. He licked the roof of my mouth, snaked it along my teeth. He held himself up with one arm, the other going behind my back so he could pull on my hair. He held me in place for the kiss. I grabbed his shirt with both hands and kissed him back with everything I had plus all the imagination I’d been storing up for six long weeks.
When he finally lifted his head we were both destroyed.
It was time for me to pay my debt.
