It’s you. Lord above, it’s all you.
“I’m not flustered.”
He looked away and nodded, but kept that sinful, crooked smile on his face. I wasn’t sure if he was giving me a few moments to settle my thoughts, or himself.
Finally, he turned back. “How about we finish up lunch and keep on hiking to the next falls?”
“Okay,” I said softly. I picked up a strawberry, looked at it, then quickly put it back in the container and grabbed another finger sandwich. Good Lord, I was never going to be able to look at a strawberry again without thinking about Hudson’s lips wrapped around it.
Hudson
Greer and I finished our picnic, packed up everything, and headed back up the trail. After the way she’d licked her lips and softly moaned when I ate the fucking strawberry, it had taken every ounce of power I had to try and make my dick go back down. She clearly didn’t even realize that she’d let that moan slip free, and when she’d stumbled on her words, I had to fight the urge to pull her into my arms.
I had never been this attracted to a woman before in my life. Sure, I’d seen beautiful women whom I’d had dirty thoughts about, but with Greer, it was different. It felt like my heart had woken up from a long winter’s nap or something. With each smile she gave me, I felt myself falling a little bit more—and that was a problem. Not because I was afraid of it; because I wasn’t even sure what in the hell I wanted anymore. I wanted Greer, that was a given. But the idea of going back to New York full time was not something I really wanted to do anymore, and this woman sitting here was one of the reasons.
She was passionate, full of life, and so damn adorable. And the more time I spent with her, the more I realized I didn’t want to walk away at all.
Shaking my head, I forced myself to stop thinking about Greer and focused on the beauty around me. Beech, yellow birch, and maple trees were all beginning to show the upcoming change in seasons. The abundance of trees still gave enough room for the sun to shine through, and every now and then it hit Greer’s hair, making her blondish-red highlights glow. I wondered if that was natural or if she colored her hair. It looked so damn soft, and all I wanted to do was run my fingers through it.
“Fuck,” I mumbled as I felt my cock go hard again.
“Everything okay?” Greer asked over her shoulder. “It’s just around the bend.”
We hadn’t even been walking for that long, but this part of the trail was definitely more of a steep climb. We had to scramble over a few boulders, and I watched Greer navigate them as if she’d been on this trail a thousand times. “I’m fine, thought of something I forgot to do,” I lied. I couldn’t very well tell her my cock was getting hard from thinking about her.
We came around a bend and I stopped in my tracks. All thoughts of my hard-on vanished at the sight before me.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, immediately picking up my camera and starting to take pictures. We were now surrounded by evergreens with a sharp drop down to the brook below. The views up and down the ravine were breathtaking.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Greer moved to the side and let me snap pictures like a madman.
I had clearly inherited my love of photography from my father. Had I not found my passion for writing, I was fairly certain I would have followed in his footsteps and become a nature photographer. “It’s stunning,” I said.
We started back down to the bottom of the ravine, walking the trail closely along the brook. I stopped several times to take a picture of a leaf wandering down the water, or a bird sitting in a tree. My father was going to freak when he saw these.
We finally climbed down to the stream and stood at the bottom of Cloudland Falls. It was magnificent. I had traveled to a lot of places around the world, but this little corner of New Hampshire had stolen my heart.
Or maybe it was the woman standing next to me who made it all seem utterly beautiful.
“If you do decide to come back in the winter, it’s the most breathtaking thing you’ll ever see. The water is transformed into ice that looks so blue it takes your breath away. In certain spots, you can even see the water flowing behind the ice curtains. It’s so beautiful that I doubt you’d be able to capture all of it in a photo.”
I raised a single brow. “Is that a challenge, Ms. Larson?”
Her face erupted into a smile that made my knees feel weak. “I guess it is, if you dare to accept it.”