“I’m told my pupils are back to normal size.”
“The group headed home. I told everyone you were convalescing under expert care.” He toed the suitcase. “So do I load this back on the truck, or…?”
The or hung there in the yard.
I opened my mouth — and Garrick moved. Down the steps, across the grass, and he picked up my bright blue piece of luggage and my orphaned shoe, carrying them past Jared, upthe steps, past me, and set them inside the cabin door. Then he came back out onto the porch and stood behind me with one arm across my collarbones.
“She’s staying.”
A hummingbird went by. The creek ran. Jared took his aviators off slowly, the better to enjoy the scene being played out no doubt.
“You don’t say.”
Garrick gestured with his head. “Thanks for the bag. Goodbye.”
Jared sighed, backing toward the truck with his hands up, grinning like a man who intended to dine out on this for a decade. “Rafting discount for life, Amy. Family rate. I’m basically the godfather of this entire — okay, okay, I’m leaving — “
The truck rumbled off down the road, and it was just us and the cabin. Again. Just the way we both liked it.
Garrick’s arm was still across my collarbones. “So,” I said. “I’m staying.”
“You’re staying.”
“You know what this means. The world is going to find out Bigfoot is real. There will be sightings. Blurry photos of you buying flour in town. Entire cryptid forums descending on this mountain with night-vision cameras, and I —” I turned around in his arms so I could watch this next part land “— I am going to confirm everything.”
To his eternal credit, he didn’t flinch. “They’ll never find the cabin.”
“They don’t have to, because I did. I fell into the river and Bigfoot saved me.”
“So, I did.” He picked me up and carried me into the kitchen, sitting me on the counter.
“This is becoming a habit.”
“What? Me making you breakfast?” He put a pot of coffee on and took eggs and bacon from the fridge.
“No, the lifting. The relocating. I’m luggage to you—”
“You talk too much, Minnow.”
I stopped. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Minnow?”
“Small. Loud. Slippery in water.” His hands slid up my bare thighs, thumbs tracing the inner seams of them, easing them apart, his eyes going exactly where his thumbs were headed. “Swims like a rock.”
“That’s — okay, one, minnows aren’t loud, that’s not a thing, and two, I am not small, I am —”
“You’re small to me.” Flat. Final. The way he said everything true. One big hand settled warm between my thighs and a finger slid up the slick seam of my pussy just like it had in bed, slow, parting me, and my argument dissolved into a whimper against his mouth. Because being a woman my size and getting a nickname that meant tiny thing I fished out of the river and kept — he was never getting rid of me now.
“Garrick,” I managed, as he pulled me to the counter’s edge and took off my shorts before going down on his knees on the kitchen floor.
“I didn’t go anywhere.” He looked up at me and I read the promise in his eyes.And I never will.He made me speechless yet again.
He hooked my knees over his shoulders. Pressed a kiss to the inside of one thigh, then higher, his beard soft against skin already humming for him, his breath hot against my center. “Now let’s finish what I almost started in bed.”
And then his mouth closed over me, certain and entirely unhurried. I had to brace myself against the counter with my hands to stay semi-upright.