She got me out of my jeans and went to her knees and took me in her hand first — slow, watching my face — and then her mouth closed around the head of my cock and I put my hand flat on the wall above her and breathed through it.
She took her time, learned what worked, stayed with it — the drive-through instinct, I thought, and almost laughed, and then couldn’t think about anything at all. I was bracing against the wall with both hands after about ninety seconds. She took me deep, the wet heat of her mouth moving with a rhythm that was exactly wrong for my ability to stay in control of this situation, and I caught her hair in my hand and said her name and she took that as the feedback it was and kept going.
"London." I pulled her up. "Not yet."
She came up and I walked her back to the wall again and she wrapped her leg around me and I drove into her and the breath left her body in a sound I was going to be thinking about for a very long time. She was slick and tight and every inch of her was pressed against me and I held there for one long second, forehead against the wall above her.
"You feel incredible," I said. "So fucking good."
"Don't stop." Her nails were in my back. "Don't you dare stop."
I didn't stop.
I set a pace that wasn't careful and she took it with everything she had, matching it, her hips moving against mine, her mouth at my ear telling me exactly what she wanted in terms I was happy to follow. The wall behind her took the impact and she was loud and unself-conscious and completely present, and I'd been in enough situations to know the difference between someone performing and someone actually there, and London Grant was entirely, absolutely there.
"I've been thinking about this for three days," I said. "Every part of it. Exactly this."
"Yeah?" Her voice was breathless and very satisfied and she pulled me harder. "Good."
"Making it impossible to think straight. You've been doing that since Beverly Hills."
She laughed — short, unguarded, real — and then any remaining conversation became logistically complicated.
I moved her to the bed.
She came willingly, pulling me down with her, and I stretched over her and took my time. The urgency had run itself out against that wall and what was left was something slower, more deliberate — the specific kind of attention that meant something different than what had happened in the last twenty minutes.
I took her wrists and brought them above her head, fingers interlaced with hers, a light hold. She let me.
Her eyes stayed on mine.
I moved inside her at a pace that wasn't about speed and she matched it, her hips rising to meet mine, her breath going uneven in a way that had nothing rushed in it. The light coming through the window was the late afternoon mountain kind — long and gold and particular — and it ran across her face and I watched her and she watched me back and neither of us looked away.
"You're doing it again," she said.
"What?"
"Looking at me like that." She shifted under me, a small rolling movement that made both of us hold still for a second. "It's very inconvenient."
"Get used to it."
Her breath went out and something in her eyes opened all the way and then she pulled me down and kissed me and I felt her come around me, her whole body going tight and then releasing, and I was right there behind her.
Afterward we lay in the mountain quiet. Her head was on my chest and my hand was in her hair and the light had shifted from gold to something thinner and bluer. Neither of us talked for a while.
She found the fortune slip in the pocket of my jeans, which were on the floor. She held it up and read it without comment.
"The best things in life cannot be planned," she said.
"Apparently not."
She set it on the nightstand. Then, after a moment: "Tell me something true about Montana. Something you haven't told anyone."
I thought about it. "In winter, up here, there are nights where it gets so cold and so quiet that you can hear your own heartbeat. Just that — nothing else. No wind, no animals, nothing. Just your heart and the dark." I paused. "First time it happened I thought something was wrong. After that I started looking forward to it."
She was quiet. Then: "That doesn't sound lonely."
"No." I looked at the ceiling. "It doesn't."
