We got back in the truck. She was in the passenger seat and I was behind the wheel and the distance between us — fourteen inches, maybe, shoulder to shoulder — was considerably more charged than it had been for the last three days, which was saying something.
I pulled onto the highway.
She didn't say anything. Neither did I. The cab had been small before. It was smaller now.
The cabin turnoff came up forty minutes later. I left the highway for a two-lane that climbed through lodgepole pine, then left the two-lane for a gravel road that switchbacked up the ridge. I'd bought this property four years ago, before I had any idea what I was doing with it — just the sense that it was the right place, the quiet of it, the way the sky opened up above the treeline. I'd built it out slowly, over three winters, until it was what it needed to be.
I pulled up in front and cut the engine.
London was looking at it through the windshield.
The cabin was small and set low, built from timber that had darkened over the years, a porch running the length of the front, firewood stacked under the eave, a tin roof that amplified the rain when the rain came. The pine came close on three sides and the fourth opened to the valley and the view.
Her face went simple. The LA calculation, the running commentary, the constant operational layer — all of it droppedaway and what was left was something genuine. She liked it. She liked it immediately and without reservation, and it got to me in a way I wasn't going to examine in the parking area.
"Key's under the third step," I said.
She got out of the truck. I watched her go to the step, find the key, look at it in her hand for a moment. She went up the porch and unlocked the door and pushed it open.
I got the bag from the truck bed and followed her in.
She was standing in the center of the main room, turning slowly, taking it in — the stone fireplace, the built-in shelves, the table and two chairs by the window with the valley view. The kitchen was at the back, small and fully stocked, the counters clear. The light came in through the west window and ran across the floorboards and she stood in the middle of it.
She turned around and found me behind her.
The space between us was different here than it had been anywhere else on this trip. The truck had been close quarters and the motel room had been close quarters and those had carried a certain charge that I’d been managing for three days. This was my space. My quiet. And she was standing in the middle of it looking at me like she was exactly where she’d decided to be.
She crossed to me.
I walked her backward to the wall.
She went easily — not passively, not as a concession. She let herself be moved and then her hands were at the buttons of my overshirt, working them open, and her mouth was at my jaw and then my throat.
"I want to know where," she said against my neck.
"Right here." I braced one hand against the wall beside her head. "We've got time."
She got the overshirt open and pushed it off my shoulders. Her hands ran up under my thermal and found skin and shepulled back enough to look at me, and the green in her eyes had gone dark.
"I want you to fuck me against that wall," she said. "Right now. Don't be careful about it. And tell me what you're doing to me — right now. I want to know."
My hands went to her hips. I pulled the flannel up and off and her hands went to my belt and she was fast and direct and not wasting any time — and then she went still for exactly one second, her hands at my waistband, her breath going out on something that wasn’t quite a word. She pressed closer anyway. I lifted her and got the jeans unzipped and down.
"You've been driving me insane for three days," I said. "Since the moment you opened that door."
"Good." Her hands were in my hair. "I want to hear all of it."
I dropped to my knees.
I pulled her underwear aside and found her with my mouth and she was already wet, slick and warm, and she made a sound above me that I intended to hear again. I took my time. She wasn’t quiet about it — she wasn’t quiet about anything — and the sounds she made ran down my spine and told me exactly what was working and what she wanted more of. I gave her more of it. My hands held her hips in place and she had one hand in my hair and was directing with a specificity and at a volume that left no room for interpretation, and I followed every instruction she gave me with absolute attention.
She came with her thighs clamped around my face and my name on her mouth.
I gave her ten seconds. She was still breathing hard and her hand was still in my hair when I stood up and she reached for me and then stopped.
"I want—" She met my eyes. Her voice had an edge in it that wasn't authority and wasn't question. "Can I?"
"Yes."
