"You're gonna give me one more," he says against my throat. "Tied up and full of my cock. Let me feel it."
"I can't, I can't, it's too much."
"You can." He shifts, grinds his pelvis against my clit on every stroke. "Trust me. Let go."
And I do. The orgasm tears through me so hard my vision goes white at the edges, and I'm crying out his name with my arms bound and my whole body wide open to him, and he follows me over with a low groan, buried deep, his forehead dropping to mine.
He unties me slow afterward, careful at every knot, rubbing feeling back into my wrists and shoulders, pressing his mouth to each place the rope left its pink ghost. Tucks a blanket around me. Brings water. Lies down and pulls my back into his chest, his arm heavy across my waist, his breath slowing against my neck.
I'm wrecked in the best way. Floating still. And in the quiet, with his heartbeat steady against my spine, the truth surfaces before I can stop it.
I'm falling for him. Not falling. Already fallen. Two weeks, and I'd burn the return flight if he asked me to. The thought should terrify me. It just feels like standing in the sun.
So I let myself have it. For one minute I let myself imagine staying. A kitchen of my own down in town. This bed every night. His quiet filling the spaces my noise leaves behind.
"What's got you thinking so loud back there," he says into my hair.
My heart climbs into my throat. "Just figuring out how I'm gonna explain to Renata that I burned my entire life plan down for a man who barely talks."
It's a joke that isn't one. An open door. The closest I've come to saying the real thing, and he had to feel it, the weight under it, the question I didn't ask.
He goes still behind me. Half a beat too long.
"Twelve days left," he says finally. Light. Easy. "Better make 'em count."
He kisses my shoulder and settles like he's done, like that was the right answer to a question about laundry.
Twelve days. He didn't even pause over the number. Had it ready. He's been counting it down the same as me, except where I've been pretending the count could stop, he's been using it to keep the exits clear.
The warm floating place in my chest goes cold at the bottom.
This is what I do. I pour myself out and call it love, and the man on the other end takes the pour and watches the clock. Kieran's not cruel. He's honest, which is somehow worse, because honest men don't lie to you about whether they'll catch you when you jump. He just told me the truth the only way he knows how. Twelve days. Make them count. Then she leaves,and he goes back to his wood and his dog and his lovely self-contained life, and nobody up here gets scraped clean except the woman who forgot her own rule.
I press back into his warmth and let him think I'm asleep.
The leaving was always the deal. I'm the one who moved the line. And the worst part is I can't even be angry at him for keeping it exactly where we drew it.
His arm tightens around me in his sleep, pulling me closer, his hand splaying flat over my heart like he's keeping it somewhere.
I lie awake a long time after that, doing math I don't want to do, listening to a man hold me like he means it while I count down the days until I make myself stop.
CHAPTER FIVE
KIERAN
She's pulling away. I felt it start the night I said twelve days.
Now it's six, and the cabin's got boxes in it again, and yesterday I watched her on the phone with a realtor in Denver talking square footage for a place that isn't here. She didn't think I heard. I hear everything up this mountain. That's the problem with quiet. It leaves you nowhere to hide from what you already know.
So she's going. Always was. I knew the deal walking in and let myself forget it anyway, and that's on me.
The text comes in while I'm planing a board I've already planed twice.
Heard you've been seen around town with someone. A summer girl? Cute. You always did like a project you could control until they got bored and went home. Some things don't change, Kier.
Vanessa. A year and a half of silence and she still knows exactly where to put the knife. I delete it. My hands don't go back to steady.
She used the trust I gave her like a crowbar. Told me a soft limit was a hard one so she'd have a wound to nurse, then spent six months making me responsible for it. By the end I didn't trust my own read on a room. The one thing I'm supposed to be good at, holding a woman's safety in my hands, and she made me doubt I could do it without hurting somebody.
