Hard enough to make him think she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
“I can drop you at your parents’,” he said.
“My laptop is at the lodge,” she said.
He felt, suddenly, like a teenager, reading into what she was saying. Finding codes and messages in the tilt of her head. The clench of her hands in her lap.
The thing was, in his head, the closure of sex wasn’t as easy now. Now that he imagined her, for the last five years, alone. Sex, which usually felt like the most balanced, natural thing in the world, now felt…loaded and unfamiliar.
The lodge was quiet when they got there. Alice wasn’t in the kitchen. The fireplaces were cold. Through the back windows he could see Alice and Gabe’s cottage nestled into the V of the rolling hills, partially hidden by trees. The windows were lit up against the gloom, smoke rose from its chimney.
Snow was coming down hard and fast, gathering in the corners of the windows.
“Hello?” he cried. No one answered.
They were alone. And he didn’t know what to do. A grown-ass man completely thrown into chaos by this woman the girl he’d loved had turned into.
“Grab your laptop,” he said. “And I’ll take you home.”
Behind him she was silent and he turned, not wanting to hope. But she stood there, her desire plain on her face. He realized that seven years ago she’d said everything, pulling her confessions and feelings up by the roots to present to him. And he’d stayed silent. Or made promises about a day that had never come.
It was his turn to tell her a few things. Things he never got to say.
“You’re so beautiful,” he told her, and the corner of her mouth lifted.
He crossed the room to stand in front of her. Close enough to touch if she wanted it. He watched as he got nearer how her breath came in tighter and smaller, how she fisted her hands and then relaxed them at her sides, only to do it again like she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with them.
“I loved—”
She kissed him. Threw herself at him, really, like the girl she’d been, and he caught her against him like a man who’d been handed a dream. A dream he had to hold onto at all costs.
Oh god. She was going to be the end of him. The absolute end.
“Take me upstairs,” she said.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Because we don’t—”
Had that been him this morning? Thinking sex would be easy? Was he that fool?
“Please, Cameron,” she whispered.
Yeah. Game over. No more talking.
He lifted her against his body, her feet dangling over the floor, and carried her toward the stairs. Her hips bumped against his, that sweet roll, and he was hard between one breath and the next.
At the stairs he set her down and they ran, hand in hand, up the stairs to her room. That last room on the right where family always stayed at the inn. The room where it had all happened.
She hesitated, her hand clenching round his fingers.
“It’s just a room,” he said. Because he knew exactly what she was feeling.
“You’re right.”
And then they were inside. The curtains drawn across the window gave the room a kind of murky glow. A muffled quiet.
“Hi,” he said, smiling down at her face, so familiar.
“Hi.” Her smile was sweet.
“Just so you know…I’ve been thinking about this moment for a solid chunk of my life and I have a list of things I need to do to you.”
“Need?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He pulled her close, up tight against his body, and she let out a gasp. Surprised and turned on all at once. “For instance,” he whispered. “I need to kiss you here.”
He pressed his lips to the side of her neck, in that dip of tendons and bone where he could see her heart beating. “And here.” The base of her throat, that sweet valley where her collarbones met. It had a name, that place, he just could never remember. “And here.”
Her black shirt had buttons down the front and was made of some silky material, and he pressed a kiss to the place revealed by every V-neck T-shirt she wore in all the years he knew her.
“Cameron,” she breathed, her head falling back. Her weight in his arms was complete.
“I’m just getting started,” he said, and considering he was supporting her body in his arms and he had zero fucking patience left, he gathered one side of that silky shirt in his fist and just tore it open. The fabric ripped and the buttons bounced onto the hardwood floor.
The minor violence of it added gasoline to an already hot fire. He kissed his way down to her breasts, taut and trembling in a no-nonsense bra. He pressed a hand to her stomach just to feel the muscles there quiver against his palm. He sucked her tongue just to feel the vibration of her moan.