“Harder,” she gasped.
That word snapped something. I gripped her hips, angled deeper to hit that spot inside, and fucked her with purpose—hard snaps of my hips, grinding against her clit on every downstroke. Skin slapped against skin.
The friction built, her walls dragging along my length like they didn’t want to let go, milking me on the outstroke. I could see it all—her belly tensing, thighs quivering around my waist, her face twisting in ecstasy—brows furrowed, eyes squeezing shut, then flying open to lock on mine.
She was loud now—moans turning into cries. “Yes—fuck—right there—don’t stop?—”
I felt her tightening, walls rippling stronger, gripping me in waves that made my balls draw up tight. I continued rubbing tight circles over her clit, watching her climb inch by inch—lips trembling, chest flushing red, her whole body arching like a bow.
“Come on my cock,” I growled in her ear. “Squeeze me. Milk it.”
She came—hard. Her whole body locked up, pussy clamping down in violent pulses, gushing around me in hot rushes that soaked us both. She screamed my name, nails raking my back, legs shaking and locking around my hips like a vice.
The sight of her—face wrecked, mouth open in a raw cry, eyes blind with pleasure, tits pressed up against me—dragged me over the edge. Every squeeze of her cunt sent fire through me, the heat and rhythm too much.
I buried deep, hips jerking, and came with a guttural groan. Hot spurts flooded her, pulse after pulse, her fluttering walls pulling every drop out of me until I was spent, my cock throbbing inside her still-clenching heat.
I collapsed half on her, breathing ragged, still twitching inside her. Sweat slicked our skin.
For a long time after, we lay tangled together, my weight half on her, half on the mattress. Her fingers traced lazy patterns on my back. My face pressed into the curve of her neck, breathingher in—sweat, warmth, and the faintest trace of the mountain she’d tried to conquer today.
I lifted my head and looked at her. Her hair was a mess, her cheeks flushed, her eyes soft and satisfied and a little stunned. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Stay,” I said.
Not for tonight. Not until her ankle healed. Forever.
She touched my face, her thumb tracing the line of my jaw through my beard. “I live four hours from here, Ridge.”
“I know.”
“I have a life there. A job. Friends. An apartment with actual matching furniture.”
“I know.”
“And you live on a mountain with one mug.”
“I’ve got two mugs.”
She laughed—a real laugh, surprised and warm—and it was the best sound my cabin had ever held.
“Let me win this scavenger hunt first,” she said. “Show me the orchid. Help me find the rest. And then we’ll figure out the rest.”
I kissed her forehead. Her nose. The corner of her mouth. Each one a promise I intended to keep.
“First thing in the morning,” I said. “I’ll show you everything.”
She curled against me, her head on my chest, her breath slowing toward sleep. I lay awake in the dark, listening to the cabin settle and the creek murmur through the open window, and I felt something I hadn’t felt in seven months.
Not peace. Not yet.
But the possibility of it. The promise of it, supported by the weight of a woman sleeping against my chest who’d fallen off my mountain and landed in the exact center of my life.
I’d spent seven months hiding from the thing that had broken me. And in one day, a woman with borrowed boots and a half-charged phone had walked straight into the wreckage and made it feel like a place worth rebuilding.
She was the one. I knew it the way I knew the mountain—by heart, by instinct, by the deep animal certainty that lives underneath thought.
And I was done hiding.