She laughed, the full-bodied, soul-emptying kind of release.
“Because Mae brought us to this moment. And there’s a heart inside the pupil because I love you, more now than I ever have. And I want you to take that with you.”
“I love it,” she whispered. “Thank you. You know, eyes are a symbol for enlightenment.”
“See? Sometimes enlightenment comes in the most unexpected places.”
January opened her journal to a fresh page, placed it in his grasp, and nestled her head on his thigh. “It sure does, Hugo.”
Nat didn’t seem to hate the name so much anymore. He put pen to paper and wrote.
She yawned and drifted asleep, content.
* * *
“I can’t do this,” said Nat.
His insides felt like a python had been let loose, alternately squeezing and releasing internal organs. They had doused the stove, shuttered the window, remembered to grab Riders of the Purple Sage because he wanted to reread it for inspiration. Their coats were donned, her pack weighed his shoulders, their pointy boots already aimed toward the door.
Still, he couldn’t leave.
January glanced around at the cabin’s interior, her expression as vacant as the space. “Do what?”
“I can’t leave here without…ah, Jesus.” The only speech his brain rehearsed made him sound like a pervert. Or a greeting card.
“For someone so gifted at words, Nat, you’re losing me.”
He set down the pack and paced the stripes of orange light that dawn pushed through the cabin slats.
“Be careful,” she said in a half-joking, half-genuine tone. “Floor might have wood rot.”
“I don’t care.”
“Nat, what’s wrong?”
“That’s just it—nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right. For once in a goddamned decade, everything is right. This morning, I crawled up on a wet roof after a rainstorm, and I watched a sunrise with the most important person in the world to me, and I wrote. God Almighty, the scene that had been giving me problems for eight months poured out of me like…like every sentence I’d written up to that point led to right here, right now. It was spontaneous and brilliant, and it was all because of you.”
“What are you saying, Nat?”
“I want more. More spontaneous. More brilliant. I want the taste of you to be more than a memory. I want us to make up for lost time and stop dancing around each other like we don’t know what the other wants because we do—we’re just too damned afraid of what comes next. And I’m okay with that. If you can gather moments and ink them into your skin, I can gather moments with you and ink them into my heart. At least they’d be there, which is more than I can say for being stubborn and letting you walk away without showing you how much you mean to me.” He was breathless, spent, but regret wasn’t an option. Before he lost his courage, he pushed forward. “I’m saying that I intend to make love to you, right here, right now, all over this cabin, so if you have any objection, you’re just going to have to stop me.”
7
January’s full bottom lip went slack. Totally fucking kissable.
Nat shed his jacket to the floor and strode toward her.
Not one to be outdone in the spontaneity department—or in the nudist camp—January matched him one jacket tossed to the floor and raised the stakes two boots, one over shirt, and the fastest shedding of second-skin jeans he had ever witnessed. By the time their lips met and she began to scale him with a well-placed knee around his hip, she wore lace panties and a sheer under shirt that was more a figment of imagination than actual cloth.
His cock jerked in anticipation.
Nat wanted to match her, skin for skin, but the longer he remained in clothes, the longer he held off ten years of pent-up desire. The absolute last thing he wanted was to leave the heat of her mouth, but the insistent, scorching
way her tongue jockeyed with his threatened to make him come before he followed through on his promise—to make love to her, all over this cabin. Nat never reneged on a promise.
“We gotta slow this down, J.” He backed out of the kiss until his lips were a whisper against hers. “It took us ten years to get here. It shouldn’t last ten minutes.”
She bit her bottom lip, now swollen and ripe with color, and nodded. Hair swept across her hungry eyes in disheveled waves. Never had she looked more exquisite.