Page 7 of Hard Cider Mountain Man

Her coat's off. That's new.

"You do that a hundred times a night," she says. "The name thing. You knew every person who came in."

"Small valley."

"You knew the mechanic's daughter's flute teacher."

"That's a stretch. I knew she'd taken up the flute." I hang the last towel. "You're stalling."

"I'm building a picture."

"Of what?"

"Of what it costs you." She turns the stem of her empty glass. "You're on all night. Every person, every time. And then they leave and you don't say anything for ten minutes."

"I like them."

"I know you do. That's what makes it interesting." She sets the glass down. "You're the warmest person I've met in a decade."

I don't answer that. I come around the end of the bar instead, and I stand in front of her, and I put my hands on the bar on either side of her, not touching her, and I let it be as obvious as it is.

Her chin comes up. "You've gone quiet," she says.

"Yeah."

"You did it in Hettie's office. When I said the buyer's name."

"Yeah."

She reaches up and takes a handful of my shirt at the collarbone. Doesn't pull. Holds it, like she's testing the weight of it. "You gonna elaborate?"

"Come here."

I get my hands under her thighs and lift her off the stool onto the bar, and she makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight down my spine. Her coat's on the floor. Her knees come up either side of my hips and her boots hit the bar front and she laughs into the kiss, once, low, and then stops laughing.

My beard's against her jaw and she tips her head back for it, so I take her throat, slow, the whole line of it, and her fingers go into my hair and close.

She's got both hands on my belt buckle before I've finished with her collarbone, and I take her wrists and put them back on the bar behind her.

"Leave them," I say.

"That's a lot of instruction from a man who—"

I bite the muscle where her neck meets her shoulder and she stops arguing mid-sentence.

I get her sweater over her head. Under it she's warm as anything, and the room air hits her and she shivers hard, and I put both hands flat on her back to feel it happen. Her bra goes on the pile. I take one nipple in my mouth and she swears at the ceiling, both hands braced behind her on the bar, back arching so far I have to hold her hip to keep her on the wood.

"Orrin!"

"Say it again."

"Orrin."

I get her jeans open. She lifts for me, one hand on my shoulder, and they come off with her boots and hit the floor, and then she's on my bar in nothing at all with cold coming up the cellar stairs and heat coming off the stove and every inch of her skin standing up between the two.

I put my hand between her legs and she's already wet.

"Knees apart."