Page 8 of Harvest Moon Mountain Man

Rourke

Morning light's coming in low through the curtains when I wake up, and she's still there. Curled into my side, one hand splayed flat over my heart like she fell asleep checking it was still going. I lie still a long minute just watching her breathe, hair a mess against my pillow, and think that I have never once in my life woken up and wanted to stay exactly where I was instead of getting up and getting to work.

I get up anyway. Make coffee. Bring two mugs back to bed instead of drinking mine standing at the counter the way I always do, and she stirs when I set hers on the nightstand, blinking up at me like she's trying to remember where she is and deciding she likes the answer.

"Morning," she says, voice rough with sleep.

"Morning."

I sit on the edge of the bed, and she pushes herself up against the headboard, quilt pooling around her waist, and for a second I just look at her — messy-haired, sun coming warm across her shoulders, mine in every way that matters even if neither of us has said the word yet.

"You're staring," she says.

"I know."

She smiles into her coffee, and I reach over and tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, and the two years I've spent not telling anyone about the cider suddenly feel like the easiest thing in the world to finally say out loud, here, in this bed, with her.

"I've been thinking about the cider."

"Yeah?"

"Two years I've had Orrin asking. Two years I've had every excuse ready." I turn my own mug in my hands, not drinking it yet. "But it was never really about the cider. It was about letting somebody in on the parts of me that aren't easy. My grandfather's press. My call on the blend. Once it's got a label, it's not just mine anymore — people get to have opinions about it, get to be wrong about it in some review I can't argue back against."

"You already let me in on it." She says it soft, tracing the rim of her mug with one finger. "First night, in that barn. Before you'd decided anything about me either."

"That's different."

"Is it?"

I don't have an answer that isn't the truth. "No. It isn't."

She's quiet a second, the kind of quiet that means she's deciding whether to say the next thing. Then: "The piece I filed isn't the one my editor asked for."

"What'd she ask for?"

"Heritage orchard profile. Eight hundred words, three quotes, a photo of you looking rugged next to a tree." She smiles, tired and real, none of the polish I bet she uses on people who aren't me. "What I actually wrote is about a man who spent two years scared of a decision, and how one long night finally taught him the difference between careful and afraid. It's not what she asked for. It's better."

"You wrote about me."

"I wrote about all of it." She sets her mug down, reaches for my hand instead. "You're just the part I couldn't leave out."

I set my own mug down too. Pull her into my lap instead of answering, her knees bracketing my hips, quilt sliding down to pool somewhere around us, and this time when I kiss her there's none of the distance left that was there four days ago — just her hands sliding into my hair, already sure, already home.

It’s slow. Morning-slow, sun-warmed, unhurried in a way last night wasn’t.

She undoes nothing because there’s nothing left to undo—we’re already bare, already tangled—but she takes her time anyway. Palms flat against my chest, fingers tracing the lines of muscle like she’s learning the shape of me by heart, because she has all the time in the world to do it now.

I can feel every small shift of her weight, the soft press of her thighs against mine, the way her breath catches when her hips brush the hard length of me.

I lay her back against the pillows. She pulls me down with her, and when I settle over her she looks up at me steady, sun catching her eyes, nothing held back at all. The light turns her skin gold. I can see the faint marks I left on her throat last night, the way her chest rises and falls a little faster the longer I just look at her.

“I’ve got you,” I say, and mean it as more than the morning.

“I know.”

I take my time. Mouth first—tracing down the line of her throat, lingering at the soft spot just under her ear until her breath stutters. Collarbone next, then lower, open-mouthed and unhurried, until I’m between her breasts and she’s arching up off the sheets, one hand sliding into my hair.

I keep going, kissing down the soft plane of her stomach, nuzzling the warm skin just above where she’s already wet for me.