"Tell me this is a real yes," he growls as he kisses my throat. "Eyes open. Everything on the table. Tell me you know what you're choosing."
I get my hands in his hair, both of them, and I tip his face up to mine.
"I know I don't have the whole story," I say. "And I remember that it's going to break my heart once I hear the end; you told me so yourself. All those things in your past that haunt you, I see them, even if you won't give me the details." His jaw flexes under my hands, but I don't let him look away. "But I'm choosing you anyway. With my eyes wide open. There isn't a single version of this story where I don't."
He goes still one more time. Just one. I can feel his heart slamming against mine. I understand that I've said the thing he's been waiting half his life to hear and never once let himself believe.
"You were made for me and me alone," he breathes.
And then there's no more talking, no more deciding, no more half-inches.
He kisses me again, slower this time. His hands move down my sides. He finds the waistband of my pants and pulls them down over my hips. I lift up so he can get them off. My socks go, too. Now I'm naked on the blanket with the fire next to me and the snow coming down past the edge of the tarp.
He pulls back to look at me. His eyes go over every exposed part of me.
"Cold?" he asks.
"Not as long as you're here with me."
He puts his mouth on my collarbone. Then lower. He kisses down between my breasts. He takes one in his hand and brings his mouth to the other. His tongue moves over my nipple. I arch up. He does it again, slower. His other hand kneads the breast he isn't using his mouth on. His thumb rolls my nipple, tweaking it into a stiff and almost painful point.
I reach for his sweater. He lets me pull it up and off. The thermal disappears next. Now, his chest is bare against me, the hair rough on my skin, the scar low on his side, the old swallow tattoo. I run my hands over all of it.
He moves down to feather light kisses across my stomach. He kisses one hip, then the next, like putting an offering on an altar. Then he pushes my knees apart with his hands and settles between them.
I want to moan his name, but he doesn't even give me the chance before his mouth is on my clit. He goes slow at first, one long lick up the length of my lips, then another, with only the teasing tip of his tongue. He pins my hips down with his forearm across my belly. I'm writhing against him as his tongue works tight circles.
Then he closes his lips around my clit and stays there, vacuum-sucking as little skitters of sensation go pouring and dancing throughout my body. I get a fist in his hair, because the forearm isn't enough to ground me. I need more of him, his strength, his solidity.
But no matter how hard I buck, he doesn't stop. He's too experienced for that. Without stopping his hungry licking, he pushes one finger into me, then a second. He curls them upagainst the front wall, right on my G-spot, while his mouth keeps working. My hips grind against his arm and he holds me flat so he can continue to devour me.
It's no surprise that I cum fast. I bite down on my own hand to keep quiet; after all, we don't know who's out in the woods or how close they may be. My whole body shakes through it. He keeps his mouth on me until it's too much and I push at his head, desperate for a moment to breathe.
He rises up. His beard is wet.I did that,I think to myself with satisfaction.Or did he do that to me?He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he kisses me again, salty and starving.
I reach for his jeans. Unlike last time, he lets me. I get the button undone and the zipper down, then he helps me push them off along with everything under them.
When his cock springs out, it's hard and hot in my palm. I stroke him slow, savoring the velvety feel of him. Every twitching spasm makes me greedier for more. Will he fall apart for me? I want so badly to find out.
His breath catches. So I do it again, with two hands this time, watching his face. His eyes close. His hips push into my fingers.
"Caroline, I'm warning you…"
"Yeah?"
"If you keep doing that?—"
"Then don't make me wait anymore."
He moves over me. He settles his weight on me, careful of his hip even now, one elbow braced beside my head. He reaches downbetween us and lines himself up. I feel him there, blunt and ready, and I tense up for only a moment before the fear passes.
"Yes," I moan. "Yes."
He pushes in. Slow. He stops halfway and lets me adjust. Then he goes the rest of the way. I wrap my legs around him. I feel all of him.
He stays still for a second. His forehead drops to mine. His arms shake against the blanket.
"Look at me," he says.
