"Good," I say.
He laughs, low, surprised, and then he's between my thighs. I reach down and guide him and he pushes into me slow and full and I make a sound I don't bother controlling.
He's big and he takes his time with it and I dig my fingers into his back and pull him deeper and he obliges, sinking in until there's no space left between us, and holds there a moment before starting to fuck me in a slow devestating way that makes my eyes roll back.
Deep, steady strokes that I feel everywhere, his cock filling me just right, his weight exactly what I want pressing me into the mattress. I wrap my legs around him and match his rhythm andthink:this is what it's supposed to feel like.His body and mine and nothing held back.
I push at his shoulder.
He reads it immediately and rolls, taking me with him, and I'm on top of him with my hands on his chest and he looks up at me in the dark like I'm something he's been waiting for.
I sink down onto his cock and our eyes lock in the dim light.
Then I start to move and his hands grip my hips and his jaw tightens and I find my rhythm and chase it — selfish, deliberate, exactly what I want at exactly the pace I want it. My body. My choice. My pleasure.
"God," he grits out. "Hallie.Yes, good girl. Take it."
I roll my hips and his grip tightens and I lean down and kiss him hard and keep moving, faster now, chasing it, and he thrusts up to meet me and slides his hand between us to press his thumb against my clit and I break apart, loud, shaking, my pussy clenching around him as I come and he follows me hard, his whole body going taut beneath me, his hands holding my hips down against him as he comes inside of me.
I collapse onto his chest.
His arms come around me. Big and warm and certain.
We lie there and breathe. Outside the cabin the valley is quiet. The woodstove ticks down the hall. Somewhere in the spare room Boots shifts and settles and is still.
I put my face against his throat.
"I'm staying," I say. "In Silver Ridge. I'm not leaving."
His arms tighten.
"I know," he says.
"I just wanted to say it out loud." I laugh into his neck and he tips his chin down and kisses my hair and we stay there while the cabin breathes around us, and I feel the thing I drove two days to find without knowing I was looking for it.
Not a place. Not a vacancy sign.
Justthis.
Ronan
One Year Later…
Theofoundasalamandertwenty minutes into a hike and we haven't moved since.
He's flat on his stomach on the trail with his face six inches from it. The salamander is on a rock being extremely patient. Boots is sitting behind Theo with her ears forward, also watching, because she takes wildlife seriously. Biscuit — eight months old, forty pounds, a shepherd mix with no concept of personal space — saw the salamander, lost interest in the salamander, and is now trying to fit his entire head into a hole under a tree root that is clearly not big enough for his head.
"He's waiting," Theo says, about the salamander.
"For what?" Hallie asks. She's crouched beside him with her hand on his back.
Theo thinks about this. "For us to leave." He doesn’t move.
Biscuit gets his head stuck. Not “stuck” stuck, just… committed. He backs out with a mouthful of dirt and looks around to see if anyone noticed. Boots noticed. She looks at himthe way she looks at everything he does, with the patience of someone who has accepted that this is her life now. The life of a disgruntled big sister.
I put my hand on Hallie's shoulder and she leans back into it and we stand there in the August morning while our kid talks to a salamander and the dogs have their separate crises and the mountains do their thing in every direction.
The salamander eventually has enough and disappears under the rock and Theo accepts this with the equanimity of someone who has learned that wild things come and go on their own schedule. We eat lunch at the flat rock by the creek.Theo named it Big Rock, which I respect. Hallie unpacks the bag before I can get to it. She's been doing that lately, this quiet taking over of small things, and I let her because she wants to and there's a difference between wanting to and being made to and she knows I know the difference.
