Page 16 of Prospect’s Curvy Beekeeper

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t apologize for pulling my control out of my hands. He doesn't ask permission for what comes next. He’s simply waiting for me to give him the battlefield.

I swallow hard. The taste of my own arousal coats my tongue. I turn on my heel. My boots crunch over the dead pine needles, loud in the stark silence of the morning. I march past the windbreak he built with his bare hands in the dark. I march past the white wooden boxes of Colony D. I march past the farmhouse where he spent last night out on my porch with a knife under his pillow.

I head for the back of the property.

The honey shed.

My sanctuary. The one place on this mountain nobody else goes. Not since Grandpa died. Not in three years.

Silent footsteps follow me. He tracks my path with the silent, terrifying grace of a wolf. I reach the wooden door of the shed, grabbing the iron latch. I throw it open. The familiar, sweet smell of the room hits me instantly. Warm beeswax. Raw clover honey. The sharp tang of smoke bleeding out of my cold smoker.

I step over the threshold. I reach up into the shadows and yank the string pull.

The single overhead bulb flickers to life. It swings slightly, casting harsh, moving shadows across the cramped room. The cast-iron uncapping tank squats in the center. The hand-cranked extractor gleams in the corner. Stacks of empty wooden supers line the far wall, waiting for the summer flow. Through the single paned window, the jagged, indifferent peaks of the eastern ridge loom against the pale morning sky.

Alas steps inside. He kicks the door shut behind him. The bang echoes like a gunshot.

The lock clicks. The finality in that sound drives a spike of heat between my thighs.

I kick my boots off into the corner. I don't break eye contact with him. My hands reach for the brass zipper of my suit. I drag it down, peeling the stiff canvas off my shoulders. I step out of it, leaving the bulky fabric in a pile on the floorboards.

The floor is coated in a thin, permanent layer of beeswax. A decade of drippings. It scrapes warm and tacky against my bare heels. I stand before him in nothing but a thin gray ribbed tank top and cotton underwear that is ruined, soaked through with my own slick.

Alas stalks forward.

There’s no hesitation. No gentle approach. He crashes into me, his body driving me backward. The heels of my bare feet slide against the tacky wax until my spine hits the wooden workbench. The cold, unforgiving edge of the cast-iron uncapping tank bites into my left hip. The cold metal sends a shock up my spine that instantly collides with the blistering heat radiating off his chest.

He grabs my hips. His palms dig into my skin. He lifts me clean off the floor, planting my ass on the edge of the wax-scarred wood. My bare legs dangle over the side. He steps into my space, his thighs parting mine, pressing me back against the wax-scarred bench.

He grabs the hem of my tank top. He drags it up over my head in a violent motion, tossing it into the shadows. The cool air hits my bare breasts. My nipples instantly tighten into hard, aching peaks.

Alas doesn't look at my face. He drops his head to my neck. His mouth opens against the soft skin right under my jaw. He bites down. Hard.

A sharp gasp breaks from my lips. The sting is immediate, deep enough to bruise, feral enough to claim. A noise vibrates deep in his chest against my bare skin. The bees never sting him. They land on him like he’s a piece of the earth. He’s perfectly, impossibly still for them. But he isn’t still for me. He needs something to bite. He needs an outlet for the obsession boiling in his blood.

He sucks a violent bruise into the side of my neck. My hands fist in his dark hair. The smell of his sweat, sharp and purely masculine, mixes with the sweet clover honey and beeswax surrounding us.

His hands drop to my waist. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my soaked underwear and yanks them down my legs. They catch on my ankles. I kick them away.

I’m bare for him. Spread open on the scarred wood of the bench.

For two years, I fought everything alone. Seven hundred and thirty days of hauling sixty-pound supers, smoking angry hives, and walking the southern trail in the pitch black to pull down the Crimson Hollow Syndicate's neon orange markers. I built a fortress of isolation. I convinced myself that asking for help meant failing. Letting someone carry the weight meant losing the war. I wore my exhaustion like armor because it was the only thing holding me together.

His rough hands grip my bare thighs, spreading my legs wider. The cold cast iron of the uncapping tank digs sharper into my hip, grounding me in the physical reality of this room.

He reaches for his leather belt. The sharp clink of the metal buckle echoes over the howling mountain wind outside the window. He yanks his zipper down. The harsh, metallic sound is the most beautifully violent sound I’ve ever registered.

His cock springs free. Thick. Veined. The blunt tip weeps a drop of clear slick that slides down the underside of his shaft.

He doesn't step back to let me admire him. He doesn't ask if I’m ready. He wraps the length of himself in a calloused hand and drags the blunt head of his cock through my slick folds. Slow. Devastating. He parts me open with the tip. Coats himself in my arousal. The wet, obscene sound of his cock sliding through my soaked cunt fills the small wooden room and layers under the howl of the wind.

He doesn't enter me.

He grinds the head of his cock against my swollen clit. My hips jerk forward of their own volition, chasing the friction. He pulls back. I whimper. He drags the tip down through the slick again, teasing the slit, dipping the head in a half-inch before pulling out.

"Alas." My voice fractures on his name. "Please."

He catches my hips with a crushing hold, angling my pelvis upward.