Tate brings me to the precipice a third time. Tate groans as my walls squeeze his cock like a vice. Then with one final thrust, he spills into me.
Afterward, when our bodies have stopped shaking and the storm has settled into steady rain, Tate gets up, adds a log to the stove, and comes back with the spare flannel off the hook, holding it up so I can slide my arms into it. It’s so sweet, sodomestic, that it takes my breath away.
He climbs into bed, stretching out beside me on a bed built for one ranger, which means there is nowhere for me to be except mostly on top of him. He chuckles, “Who knew this bed would be the perfect size for us?”
His hand moves slowly through my hair, and I listen to his heartbeat as I drift to sleep.
CHAPTER 8
Tate
Byfirstlight,theworst of the storm has passed. Neely is already dressed, her hair twisted into a knot and her radio clipped to her belt, insisting we get back to Ponderosa Flats before I can remind her that the access road may be covered in debris.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Your campground host has a job to do, Tate. I need to check on my campers.”
My campground host.
I grin as I button my shirt. “You like it when I call you that.”
She rolls her eyes. “If you say so.”
“You kissed me on Main Street because of it,” I point out.
“I kissed you because you have ridiculously nice forearms.”
I look at her in astonishment. “Forearms?”
She laughs and throws my other boot at me. “Don’t yuck my yum, Mr. Benton. Just be grateful your forearms do it for me.”
I laugh, too, but the truth is Iamgrateful. I have never been more filled with gratitude in my life.
We take the drive slowly, stopping twice so I can drag fallen branches out of the road. The campground looks battered but intact when we arrive. Pine needles and small limbs cover the loops, a few tents have partially collapsed, and the Hendersons are already handing out coffee from a giant metal urn to campers who are awake.
The radio crackles to life.
“Tate, you awake?” Ollie asks. “Because we’ve got ourselves a situation.”
Neely sits up straighter. “A bear situation?”
“A tree situation,” Ollie answers through the radio. “That widow maker at site thirty finally came down.”
I reach for the radio. “Anyone hurt?”
“Nope. Fell right into the area you taped off. Didn’t hit a tent, truck, or human. Scared the daylights out of folks, though.”
The dead tree lies exactly where I hoped it would, stretched across the taped-off section behind site thirty. It crushed a picnic table and took out part of the split-rail fence, but nobody was anywhere near it when it fell.
Neely stands beside me, staring at the massive trunk.
“You knew it was dangerous,” she says.
“I knew it could be.”
“And you kept people away from it.”
“That’s the job.”
She turns toward me. Her hair is still mussed from sleep, and she’s wearing my spare flannel over her shirt because hers disappeared somewhere in the ranger cabin last night.
