The cabin wasn’t the same.
The bones were. Same timber frame I’d built over two summers. Same stone foundation. Same tin roof that drummed in a rainstorm like a heartbeat. But Brooklyn had changed everything inside it, and some things outside, and most things about me. By this point, I’d stopped keeping track of the renovations because the woman was a force of nature that made the actual forces of nature look like mild suggestions.
The kitchen had matching mugs now. Six of them, because Brooklyn insisted on owning mugs for “guests,” even though our only regular guests were Evan and Paisley, who brought their own coffee in travel mugs because they were that couple, and Dash and Hartley, who showed up with baked goods and spreadsheets, respectively.
The bookshelf in the living room had doubled. My books on one side, hers on the other, the overflow stacked on the floor in a system only she understood. The porch had chairs now—two Adirondacks she’d found at a yard sale in Hartsville and painted slate blue, positioned to face the mountains. A toy chest sat between them, its lid perpetually open, spilling wooden blocksand a stuffed bear that our daughter Josephine refused to go anywhere without.
In four months, we’d need a second toy chest. Brooklyn was sixteen weeks along, just starting to show—a soft curve under her sundresses that she rested her hand on without realizing she was doing it.
Josie was two. She had Brooklyn’s dark hair and my eyes and a personality that could only be described as the mountain’s revenge on me for being a hermit. She was loud, fearless, and constantly attempting to climb things that were not designed for climbing. Chairs. The bookshelf. The dog. The woodpile.
The dog was a hound mix named Fern, so named because Brooklyn had found her as a puppy tangled in a fern thicket on the trail behind the cabin. Fern was enormous and gentle, serving primarily as Josephine’s preferred mode of transportation.
I was still catching my breath from the sanding when Brooklyn stepped through the workshop door. The afternoon light slanted in behind her, catching the loose strands of her dark hair and turning them gold at the edges. Five years of her walking into rooms like this, and my breath still caught every damn time.
She didn’t say anything at first—just crossed the floorboards with that slow sway in her hips that told me exactly what she’d come for. I set the sandpaper down.
“Nap’s started,” she said, her voice low.
“How long?”
“Forty-five minutes if we’re lucky. Thirty if Fern decides a squirrel’s worth barking at.”
I caught her by the waist and lifted her onto the empty workbench at the back wall—the one I’d cleared earlier without admitting to myself why. Her thighs parted around my hips like they belonged there.
I pushed the soft skirt of her sundress up to her thighs, bunched the cotton against her skin, and hooked my thumbs into the waistband of her white cotton underwear. One tug, and they were off—sliding down her legs, tossed toward the scrap pile. She laughed, soft and breathless, already reaching for my shoulders.
I dropped to my knees between her thighs.
The first taste of her—warm, slick, sweet from her own arousal—made my head spin. I dragged my tongue up the length of her, slow and deliberate, then circled her clit with the flat of my tongue until her fingers twisted hard in my hair.
No teasing today. I wanted her fast. Shaking. Coming apart.
I sucked gently, then harder, flicking quick and precise until her hips jerked and her thighs clamped around my ears.
“Fuck—right there,” she gasped.
I gave her exactly that until her whole body bowed off the bench, a sharp, broken cry ripping out of her as she came against my mouth, pulsing hard, flooding my tongue. I kept going through the aftershocks until her grip loosened and she was whimpering, pleading.
Only then did I stand.
I tugged the neckline of her sundress down over her shoulders in one firm pull. Her breasts spilled free—heavy, swollen from the pregnancy, nipples already dark and tight. No bra. Just soft, full curves that made my mouth water all over again. I palmed one roughly, my thumb brushing the sensitive peak, and she arched into my hand with a low moan.
Her fingers were already fumbling at my belt, working the button of my jeans. We shoved denim and boxers down to my thighs together.
My cock sprang free, thick and aching. She wrapped her hand around me, gave one slow stroke, then leaned forward and took me into her mouth.
The wet heat of her tongue swirled around the head, teasing the slit, then sliding down until her lips met her fist. She hollowed her cheeks, sucked, bobbed shallowly while her other hand cupped my balls, rolling them gently, tugging just enough to make my hips jerk. The vibration of her hum shot straight up my spine.
“Jesus, baby,” I groaned, my voice rough. “That mouth—fuck, you’re gonna kill me.”
She did it again—a slow drag of her tongue along the underside—and I was too close, too fast. I pulled back with a hissed curse, caught her chin, tilted her face up to mine.
“Need to be inside you. Now.”
She nodded, her eyes dark and glassy.
I stepped between her thighs again, hooking her legs around my waist. She locked her ankles at the small of my back, one hand braced on the workbench beside her hip, the other guiding me to her entrance. I pushed in slow—inch by thick inch—watching her lips part on a long, shaky exhale.