by Jadyn Chase
What? How much I what? I wanted to bow down and make her understand that I worshiped her in return, that if anyone in this cabin deserved worship, it was her, not me. She didn’t want that, though. She wanted me. She wanted me to lie back and receive her devotion. She didn’t ask me to return it. She merely asked me to receive it from her.
How did I know all this? It came to me in wordless clouds of understanding I could never articulate. It hurt worse than my shoulder, though, to think someone could feel that way about me. My heart twisted in knots realizing someone on this planet actually wanted to touch me like this and did it spontaneously, without being asked.
9
Piper
I raised my head. Through the veil of hair cascading over my eyes, I beheld Wyatt’s face contorted in agony. I sucked in my breath. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He gulped and cracked his eyes open. His fingers tightened on the back of my neck, and his voice changed to a high-pitched, painful croak. “God, don’t stop! Please don’t stop. That feels so good.”
I lowered my lips to his chest. He felt so incredibly good to me, too, that I couldn’t get enough of kissing him and stroking my face against his hair and skin. I mouthed his shoulders and ribs and belly. Every caress filled me to the breaking point with nothing but him.
My heart caved open in sheer, unrelenting desire—not for sex, but for something so much deeper and more important. I craved him, every inch of him, in my pores and in my blood. Every particle of him shone like finest gold. I could never express my feelings for him, not in a million years.
Kissing him, touching him, breathing on him—nothing would ever be enough. Not even sex would be enough to express how I felt about him. What a paltry, crude, bestial tool that was. It could never communicate all the emotions raging in my soul to get out.
How did I feel about him right now? I struggled to define it to myself. Saying I loved him didn’t come close to this. I revered him, venerated him—deified him, even. None of that had anything to do with where he came from or the fact that he was just a guy from the backwoods building a barn for his uncle.
When I kissed his body, I adored something so much more important about him. I saw the eternal man inside all those pesky external details. He deserved to be adored. He deserved all the devotion I could shower on him.
I laid my cheek against his sternum and rested my head there. My hair spread around me, but I couldn’t bear the overpowering intensity of this any longer. I needed to rest and try to understand what was happening to me.
Wyatt placed both hands on either side of my head, near my ears. He whispered, “Come here.”
That touch, that electrifying sensation of his hands on either side of my skull—I could never ignore that. Anything he said to me when he held me like that shot straight to my brain. It acted on my very being in ways I couldn’t resist.
He guided me up toward him. I saw his face coming closer, but I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop anything that was about to happen. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t about sex. I wanted to say so many things to him in that moment, but I couldn’t get my voice to work. Nothing I could say would ever be enough to express what I really meant.
He steered me up to his face, and his lips closed over my mouth the way they did on Smokey Ridge. The all-consuming catastrophe took over until I couldn’t comprehend anything anymore. I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t know what I was doing or why. Nothing made sense except that kiss.
I searched all the maps I knew to understand reality. This wasn’t on any of them. This didn’t exist in any known universe I ever encountered. This belonged beyond human experience. This superseded all the rules of engagement governing interactions between two people in isolated cabins in the woods.
He bent my head to one side. Those fingers in my hair grazed my ears. They dissolved the structures that would have allowed me to resist. I melted in his grasp. My mouth opened, and his tongue met mine. Blissful warm wetness poured through me. It burned my insides all the way down to my crotch. I wanted him, but I had to find some way to make him understand it wasn’t about that.
I couldn’t explain with his hands on my head and his lips nudging me to the brink of insanity. I couldn’t do anything but ride it to its natural completion.
I found a stable position straddling his waist, but my mind kept repeating inside my head, It’s not about that. How can I make you understand?
He caressed down my back to my waist. I was doing it with him. I already knew it, but it wasn’t about that. Did he understand? Did he know how much more it meant than just two bodies coming together in the night? I needed him to understand.
For a fraction of an instant, our lips came unstuck. I caught a fleeting glimpse of his eyes before the magnetic attraction sucked us back together.
In that instant, I saw way down deep to the uncharted corners of his being. He understood. I didn’t have to explain because he already realized in the same wordless dimension I did what it all meant.
This was no fly-by-night happenstance for him, either. This was real—real what, I couldn’t tell you. It was real, though—more real than anything that ever happened to me before.
He knew. He knew it wasn’t about sex. He sensed it building to that, but he saw the cosmic event horizon unfolding before him the same way I did. I beheld it all written in his eyes.
The next minute, our bodies joined together in the burning heat of mutual need and gratification. Now that I knew he felt the same way, I gave myself to it with all my energy. I needed him—all of him. I hungered for him. I just never knew it until now.
I devoured his mouth in ravenous bites. Without waiting for an invitation, I broke away and sank my teeth into his neck. I couldn’t understand the rabid compulsion sweeping over me. I bit his throat to the blissful skin along his wide expanse of a chest. I delivered hot, piercing bites sideways to his shoulder.
He gasped when my teeth nipped his skin, but I couldn’t stop now if I tried. I ached for any taste of him I could get.
I didn’t even care when he slid his hand up my stomach and pulled my shirt out of my jeans. I didn’t even care when he dragged his fingertips up my side to my breast. I didn’t care about any of it. I only wanted him, and I wanted him to want me in return.
He fought to tug my shirt up against my efforts to kiss him and bite him. Before I could stop him, he shoved me off and dove under my shirt. His mouth closed around my breast and firecrackers burst through me. I screamed in surprise, more from the overwhelming sensation than from his audacity at doing that.
Why should his actions seem audacious to me? Weren’t we making out in an isolated cabin in the woods? From the outside, the whole scene appeared so crass and clichéd. On the inside, though, massive universal forces brought us together in this mind-blowing cataclysm of tempestuous emotions and desires that changed the course of both our lives.
Wyatt reared off the bed. Without letting go of my breast in his mouth, he planted his hand against my back and vaulted upward. He flipped over and brought me down on my back underneath him.
He knelt over me. His smoky brown eyes drilled into my soul. The bandage and sling still held his injured arm against his midsection. In that moment, the volcanic passion driving us together cooled to nothing.
I stared up at him and he gazed down at me. The lamplight glowed on his rounded shoulders and his high, angular cheekbones. It wasn’t about sex, but something still remained unfinished between us.
Wyatt lowered himself on top of me. His lips found mine, and we floated into that dreamy space where nothing existed beyond the two of us. We would consummate our relationship—whatever that was. We would do it. I understood that now without a doubt.
It wouldn’t be any raging, lust-fueled bombardment of one body slamming into the other, though. It would look different, but it would happen. Nothing could stop it now.
10
Piper
I woke up to sunshine streaming
through the cabin window. I pried one eye open and peered around the room before I spotted Wyatt. He stood in the open doorway wearing only his jeans. He leaned one elbow against the door jamb and gazed into the woods beyond. The stark white of his bandage and sling contrasted with his tanned shoulders and back. His tattoos covered his back and ribs and swirled up to his neck.
“What are you doing over there?” I called. “What’s the point of hiding in a cabin if you’re going to get up at the crack of dawn?”
He snorted, glanced at me still buried under the quilts, and turned back to the forest. “Something’s out there—or someone.”
“Who?”
He growled low. “The Lynches.”
My eyes snapped open and I froze. I clutched the quilt against my bare chest. “Are you sure?”
“I heard them flying around last night. I’d say they found our tracks, which means they found us.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to think about the Lynches coming here. “If they found us, what’s to stop them coming after us?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “It’s only a matter of time. We can’t stay here.”
“Well, where else are we going to go?” I did my best not to let my voice rise to a screech, but I sure wanted to. “You said we couldn’t go up the Ridge. How are we supposed to deal with them on our own?”
“We can’t deal with them on our own and we couldn’t stay here. We have to warn the Clan that they’re out here. Even if, by some miracle, they didn’t attack us—which they will—they would eventually turn their attention to the Ridge. So far, you and I are the only people who know they’re here. The Clan would be taken completely by surprise. I can’t let that happen. I have to warn them.”
“How?” I asked. “You said you couldn’t lead the Lynches up there.”
“That was before I knew so many of them were fluttering around out there.” He waved his hand toward the door. “Now I have no choice.”
I gulped. “How many of them are fluttering around out there?” I didn’t want to ask.
He turned around, studied me hard, and then lowered his eyes to the floor. “About thirty, I’d say.”
“What?!” I shrieked. I shot out of bed and only just managed to hold the quilt in place to cover my nakedness.
He held up one hand. “I didn’t want to tell you, but you might as well know how things stand.”
“Thirty of those things!” I gasped.
He nodded. “I counted them last night while you were asleep.”
I smacked my lips. “Great.”
“I didn’t want to wake you up just to worry you,” he told me. “We have to warn the Clan before it’s too late.”
I stole a peek up at his face. “Can’t you just call them?”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it up for me to see. He twisted his wrist to reveal the screen and tapped his index finger against it. Nothing happened. “It’s dead and I don’t have any way to charge it.” He hastened to explain when I looked around the cabin. “This place doesn’t have electricity or a phone, and you don’t have yours. The only way to warn them is to go up there, but we would have to do that anyway. We can’t stay here. They’ll attack us as soon as it gets dark.”
My eyes crept back up to his face. I didn’t want to look at him, and I didn’t want to ask because I already knew he was right. “Are you sure?”
He crossed the room to the foot of the bed. He lowered his arms onto the mattress and crawled toward me until he kissed me. “I wouldn’t suggest it if I wasn’t sure. I would never put you in danger if it wasn’t strictly necessary. We have some time to prepare, but we have to make a run for it. We can’t stay here or we’re dead meat.”
I said nothing. His kiss occupied my mind in that delirious, unfathomable way. He glided up the bed and pushed me back until I reclined on the pillows. He sank on top of me, and unspeakable heat washed through me. It filled me with that liquid gold I experienced last night in the fathomless hours of lovemaking when all the barriers came crashing down.
Wyatt undulated on top of me, but the quilt held us apart. He lunged back, whipped it aside, and came back down on top of me with his rough jeans. I didn’t care. I wrapped my legs around his pelvis and hugged him in tight. A pair of jeans couldn’t touch this gnawing desire for him in my innermost soul.
After a few minutes of ecstatic kissing, he pushed himself onto his knees. I couldn’t keep still watching him rip his pants open and kicking them away. I seethed on the bed just waiting for him to return.
When he did, he descended into the moist center between my legs, into the black vault where all my most fervent needs lived. He filled me up and burned me alive with his hotness.
He punched a hole through the veil holding us apart and I spiraled off into the stratosphere. The instant he glided inside, my inner muscles clamped around him and I rocketed into a dizzying climax that blew my head apart.
Bubbly juices fizzed around his distended shaft, and spasms convulsed up my channel with every cruel stroke. He plunged to my depths sparking one blissful peak after another. Every thrust set off another chain reaction until I couldn’t stop it.
I clawed at his back for tenuous purchase. I grappled both arms and both legs around him to tow him in, but he moved to his own rhythm no matter what I did. The dizzying intensity of my reaction stopped me from doing anything effectively beyond receiving his powerful penetrations through my anatomy.
He braced his good arm against the bed. His muscles rippled down his chest and stomach to the dark root where his body met mine. From there, potent groundswells emanated outward through me and him to the rest of the universe.
I stared up into his eyes at the soul-shattering reality that became my world last night. Every time we came together like this, the untold truth of our union manifested itself in a way that wouldn’t be denied. It would never be denied.
His rod squelched into my saturated tissues to bury its wicked head in my fissure. Each time he entered me, my muscles contracted around him to grip him inside me just a little longer. When they did, another blast of scorching bliss enflamed my being. I couldn’t stop it. I screamed in piercing orgasms again and again. I lost count of how many times I peaked. Sometimes I remained in that life-altering state so long I couldn’t say exactly whether I was orgasming or not.
Little by little, his arm gave out until he collapsed over me. Sweat sealed his skin to mine, but still his iron muscle continued its inexorable beat to drive me out of my mind. He drilled deeper into territory that was beyond my body and far out in space.
His hand slipped under me to the back of my neck, and I went limp in his grasp the way I always did. He let his head fall on my shoulder. His body maintained its unrelenting throbbing pulse into me and over me and all around me. I lost myself in the waves crashing to my very bones.
All at once, he gave a mighty slam as deep as he could go and roared into the pillow next to my ear. Sweat sprang out on his back, and boiling lava poured into me where his torturous shaft pierced my soul.
Even after he finished, climax after climax seized me and refused to let me go. My muscles trembled around his member quivering with one orgasm following another. I couldn’t stop. Every droplet of his sweat thrilled me to the limit of my endurance until I climaxed at the very thought of them.
11
Wyatt
I sat on the edge of the bed and studied Piper’s drawn face. “Are you ready to do this?”
She got as far as putting on her jeans and bra. Now she hunched on the bed, half withdrawn from me. She raked her fingers through her hair and glanced toward the window. “I guess so.”
I grabbed her shoulder and darted in for one more kiss. I couldn’t let myself get distracted by wanting her right now. We already wasted too much daylight making love. If we were going to make a break for safe territory, we had to do it now before the sun went down.
I stuck my feet into my boots and stood up. I crossed the cabin to the closet and
opened it. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they show themselves as soon as they realize we’re running for it, so you’ll have to be prepared for that.”
I took a shotgun out of the closet and jerked the slide forward. I inspected the magazine to make sure there was a shell in the chamber. Four more shells filled the magazine itself.
I yanked the slide closed and propped the gun against the bed. Then I took out a semi-automatic .44 and popped the clip. That was fully loaded, too. I shouldn’t even have to check these. The Kellys always kept their powder dry and their guns loaded. They wouldn’t survive very long on this Ridge if they didn’t.
Piper stared up at me with her silken hair draped around her face. “You knew all along those guns were in there, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. Every building on the Ridge is armed for attack. They always are.”
She snorted and shook her head so her hair tumbled over her face. She snatched her shirt off the bed and pulled it on. When she looked up, I held out the gun to her. “I know you know how to use this.”
“Of course I do.” She plucked it out of my hand. While I watched, she popped the clip and checked the magazine herself like an expert.
I turned back to the closet. “We’ll need to take as many weapons and as much ammo as we can carry. We can expect it to get ugly out there, and remember, you’ll be fighting dragons, not people. Don’t hold back. Give them everything you’ve got and don’t ever stop running. If I fall, you break for the Ridge. Don’t stop until you get there. Understand?”
Her head shot up. “Do you think I’m stupid or something? If you fall, I’m not going to keep running. I’m not going up there without you. Don’t insult me.”
