Cora's Heart: A Cypress Hollow Yarn

by Rachael Herron

  Cora knew that if she stood, she would be making one of the biggest choices of her life. Closing her eyes briefly, she told herself to go slowly. To think this through.

  But she’d been thinking about being with Mac for fifteen years. She’d thought about it on the worst nights, the darkest ones, the nights she knew she shouldn’t ever think about him. She’d thought about what his touch would be like, how his lips would taste. She’d thought about losing herself with him.

  Mac’s eyes darkened, and his broad chest rose with a deep breath.

  Cora made the choice.

  She stood. She took one step toward him. Then another. His arms stayed at his sides, but she saw his fingers stretch out.

  The next step toward him, and then she was in his arms, his mouth against hers, and yes, yes, she fit against him like she was made to be there. Like she’d always been next to him.

  “Cora,” Mac said. “Oh, Corazón.”

  Then it was impossible for either of them to speak.

  His lips were hot and his tongue was fire stroking hers, and the flames inside her built, burning down the roadblocks she’d put in place so long ago. Her fingers knotted in his hair and her breasts pushed against his chest in something that was like pain, but better.

  She wanted Mac Wildwood in her bed. God help her, but it was all she wanted in the world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  You are the best knitter in the world. This I know with all my heart. – E.C.

  Mac knew he had to stop the kiss. But Jesus, the woman lit a bonfire inside him that blazed like the ones he used to start on the beach with gasoline. The heat roared through him, and he couldn’t stop his hand from skirting the side of her breast as it skimmed down to her waist. For a glorious second, with her mouth against his, as she bit his lower lip lightly, he had a completely X-rated image of her beneath him, her perfect, round, womanly curves naked under him as he took her.

  Logan’s wife, Logan’s wife.

  Cora raked her fingernails against the short hair at the back of his neck, and chills danced down his spine.

  She’d just said…what was it that she’d said? Something that implied she’d been – interested? In him, so long ago?

  As she moved to put her arms around his waist, to pull herself more tightly against him, she tilted her hips into his, and he knew she could feel exactly what she was doing to him. God, he was hard.

  He wanted her. Completely. Mac wanted all of her.

  This had to be a dream. Didn’t it?

  Dragging his lips from hers, he straightened his back. “I should,” he started. “We have to –”

  “Come inside,” she said.

  She was serious.

  “Are you sure?” He had to ask it.

  “Yes.”

  “Totally sure?” Was there anything she could say that would convince him that she hadn’t just lost her mind temporarily? That she wouldn’t haul off and slug him another time?

  Instead of answering, Cora kissed him again. And it was all there in her kiss, everything he needed to hear, every word he didn’t know he’d been wishing for. For perhaps his whole life, he’d been waiting for this moment.

  He took her hand, noticing how small it felt in his, how soft her skin was even though he knew how hard she worked. She led him inside. At one time, when Valentine and Logan lived here before Val had moved to her own house, he’d known this place almost as well as he’d known his own. Mac knew that Logan and Cora’s marriage bed had been in the room Logan had as a boy, something that had delighted Logan as an adult.

  Cora led him up the stairs, through the dark, and into the bedroom with the ocean view. Not Logan’s old room.

  “You moved,” Mac said lightly, but his heart soared.

  “It’s not even the same bed,” she said with a calm smile, but her voice shook.

  Good. This was affecting her as much as it was him. It shamed him, somehow, how glad he was about that, but he couldn’t help it. Bedding his dead cousin’s wife was one thing. Doing it in the man’s bed, where they’d lain together for years, where he’d probably died for Christ’s sake, would have been too much.

  “Cora.” He didn’t ask the question, but he knew she read it in his eyes.

  She led him to the bed and answered, again, with a kiss. She leaned in to him so that he sat on the edge. Then she straddled him until she was sitting on his lap, her legs hanging over his. Biting her bottom lip softly, she looked at him as if examining his face for the first time. She was thinking something, and she needed time to do it. Even though he strained against her, feeling himself throb with heat, he held himself perfectly still and waited.

  Finally she said, “I want you. I nee–” She cut herself off halfway through the word, as if it weren’t something she’d meant to say out loud.

  “Cora. It’s okay. You’ve gotten used to not needing.” He paused, taking her measure. “Is that right?”

  Cora shrugged. “I try not to. I try really hard not to.” She pulled up on his belt loops and tilted her hips against him. Mac gasped but remained motionless.

  “It’s okay to need,” he repeated.

  Cora didn’t say anything, just searched his face again. Was she looking for familial resemblance? Mac had never thought he looked much like Logan, but others had mentioned in passing that they shared something in the eyes. Was it this that she was fascinated by? He wanted to ask, but she was so skittish he didn’t want to risk spooking her.

  “It’s okay to ask. To want.”

  She frowned, and instead of saying anything in response, she bent forward and kissed him again. The heat of it went nuclear, instantly. The way she moved her mouth in rhythm with the rocking of her hips could make him come, just like that, the layers of jeans and flannel still between them, like he was a teenager who didn’t know any better. He rode his hands up the robe, over her pajama top, traced the outline of her breast and then over the fabric, thumbed her nipples. She caught a cry in her throat.

  He wanted more, more of that from her, more of that noise, and he wanted it now. Mac slipped his fingers under her pajamas until he could hold her breasts, feel the weight of them, the skin that was so soft he could barely feel it. Her nipples tightened into small peaks under his thumbs, and it just made him harder.

  Cora slipped off her robe and unbuttoned her pajama top, dropping it onto the floor behind her. Then she took his shirt off, and it followed hers to the hardwood at their feet.

  Mac swallowed. He hoped Cora wouldn’t mind, but he needed a second to look. Nothing he could have imagined – and he’d imagined her a hell of lot of times – could have prepared him for the sight of her. Her breasts were perfect, full and heavy, tilted up at their tips, her nipples the same flushed pink as her lips and her cheeks.

  She started to wriggle against him to go for his belt. He said, “Wait.”

  “Oh,” said Cora. “What’s wrong?”

  He stifled a moan as she rocked into him again. “Nothing. I just want to look at you. Wait.” He looked at each breast, touching the sides as lightly as he could, then tested her nipples with a flick of his fingertip. They rewarded his inspection by tightening even more, and Cora gasped and closed her eyes.

  Mac leaned forward, trailing kisses from underneath her jawline to her clavicle, then to the top of her breasts. While one hand teased her right nipple, pinching and twisting lightly, he sucked her left one into his mouth. He was promptly rewarded for his action. Cora ground her hips so hard into his that he saw lights behind his eyes and had to focus again on not losing control. Slow, take it slow. He kept his tongue moving, circling the tight skin, sucking her in and then biting gently until her breathing told her she couldn’t take much more of this game, either.

  Cora lowered her head so that her mouth was next to his ear. “Please,” she whispered. “I want you.”

  Her nipple slipped from his mouth and he licked it, flicking it with his tongue for good measure. “How?” Mac’s hand moved to cup her ass, drawing
her hard against him. “How do you want me?”

  She dipped again, and her lips were warm heat on his earlobe. “In me, Mac. I want you inside me.”

  A low rumble caught in his throat, Mac stood, Cora’s leg’s still wrapped around him. “Down, woman! If we don’t get these jeans off of us…” He ran out of breath and out of thought, as Cora sucked on a sensitive part of his neck. She laughed as her legs released, grabbing at his waist as she stood.

  In what felt like seconds, he’d shucked his jeans, and she’d wriggled out of her PJ bottoms. Panties hit the floor, followed by his boxers. They stood naked, a foot apart.

  A shadow crossed Cora’s expression. “Oh, God. I shouldn’t want…” she started, and then she folded her arms over her breasts, over those beautiful breasts that he couldn’t get enough of.

  Mac sat on the bed again, and grabbed her hand, pulling her with him. In one easy motion, he rolled her to her back, and he pressed his length against her. For a moment, none of this need mattered. Only Cora. Only she mattered.

  “It’s okay to want, Cora.”

  Her eyes were closed and she shook her head.

  “You should want. You should ask. It’s okay to ask.” He pressed a kiss to a soft, short red lock at her temple.

  “You get to ask me what you want. You get to ask me for help or for space, or to be touched, for me to stay, or for me to go. And if you want something, you’re allowed to take it.” Mac took a measured breath. These words were important. “If you ask me for something, anything, I just want to give it to you.”

  She opened one eye and looked at him suspiciously.

  “I’m not just talking about sex. If you ask me for a jump-start, I’ll be there with cables. If you ask me for money, I’ll give you my PIN code. We’re friends.”

  Cora nodded, slowly.

  “We’ve been friends since we were kids. You ask friends for help. You can ask me for anything. Anything, Cora.”

  Both eyes slowly opened, and they were a dark, iridescent blue, a color he’d never seen before.

  “I want you to fuck me,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Joy is handspun knitted to gauge. – E.C.

  She thought the words might not fit in her mouth, but it turned out that they fit just fine. Mac moved so fast she barely had time to notice that he was gone before he was back.

  Cora laughed, looking at the blue packet. “Was that really in your wallet?”

  “What? Isn’t that where the cool kids keep them?”

  “I don’t know. Seems awfully prepared.”

  “You’ll remember I was an Eagle Scout.” Mac took her hand and assisted her in helping him. Jesus, he was big. Cora had been with two men after Logan died, one a very brief affair to try to get back into the swing of things, and one had been more serious, lasting a few months, but none of the men she’d ever been with compared to Mac’s girth. Or, God help her, length. With Mac flat on his back, Cora finished the job of assisting in unrolling the condom, pushed his hand aside and said, “Are you kidding me with this?”

  His laugh was a dark rumble above her. “Is that okay for you?”

  “Honestly?” She ran her fingers down the length of his cock, feeling him jerk in response. “I’m a little intimidated.”

  “We’ll just have to take our time, then.”

  Cora, though, had other plans. “We could,” she said, putting one leg over the breadth of his thighs. She placed her hands on his chest and reveled in the feeling of the muscles that roped from there down to his hips, over his flat stomach. This was a man who used his body to move horses around all day. He was so fit that it made her conscious, for one second, about her curves. Then she looked at his face and saw how he was still transfixed by her breasts, now hanging over him.

  “I don’t want to take our time,” she said. Saying the words out loud made her even wetter than she already was.

  “We can go slowly. Just ask me for what you want, Corazón.” His voice was strained, as if he were standing on the very brink of losing control, and the fact that she was the one who had brought him to this was a heady rush.

  “I don’t want to ask,” she said. She slid up, feeling his length with her body, then opened her legs and drove herself down onto him in one slick thrust.

  It was so much pleasure mixed with a too-full feeling of pain that Cora closed her eyes to capture it all – she needed to feel it all at once. Mac inside her was like a sound, a thunderclap she felt instead of heard. It was similar to the time she’d fallen out of a tree onto her back – all her breath was gone, but she wasn’t scared. She knew it would come back. For now, though, she held it, and rode up him, slowly this time, until she was at the end of him. And then she drove back down again.

  “Velvet,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on hers.

  “Mmm?” She lifted her body and pushed back onto him again. She was getting the hang of this. Her breath came better now. Less pain and more and more pleasure was making her rock steadily as she moved. He followed her, his hands firmly attached to her hips.

  “You’re hot, wet velvet. The softest, hottest fucking thing I’ve ever felt. Don’t stop, Cora. Please don’t stop.”

  Fire filled her then, a heat that lit from her hair to her toenails. Nothing could cool it, nothing but continuing this motion. After a length of time Cora couldn’t begin to measure, Mac’s hands lifted from her waist and slid to her shoulders. He drew her down to him so that he could kiss her, and she met him, their mouths a tangle of heated passion that matched their joined thrusting. Losing track of where her body ended and where his began, Cora felt her climax build. She rode it – she rode him, and the whole time she knew that she was safe. No matter what, it was Mac that was with her in this, with her in her bed, with her in her home – her home – that she hadn’t shared with anyone for so long.

  Then he clutched her and let out a low roar, and she rode with him over the edge, keeping pace, keeping time, as they tumbled over the cliff they’d raced up, falling into a sweet, sticky heap at the bottom.

  It was long minutes before Cora’s heart stilled enough to draw a full, complete breath. As she lay on top of him, her fingers laced loosely with his, she felt him breathing the same way, deeply, into his chest. She rose and fell with him in subtle suggestion of how she’d moved with him moments before.

  Home. Home, home, home. It was the refrain her heart sang, a ridiculous song, one she never would have guessed she knew the tune to. With Mac, she was home. With Mac, in his arms, she was where she’d always been supposed to be. When Logan had lived here, it was first his home, then theirs. After he died, Cora spent years making it completely hers.

  But Jesus, it felt like she’d been making it for them, for Mac and herself. As if this was exactly what she’d been waiting for all this time.

  “God,” he finally said. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  Mac pushed her gently off him, rolling to his side. In the dimness of her room, his eyes glinted. “You’re telling me you knew I’d come over here.”

  If Cora had been asked, even two hours ago, if she’d known it, she would have denied it to her very last breath. But now it seemed as if it had been inevitable, and she’d just never taken the time to notice it, like she’d never taken the time to wonder if the waves would keep rolling to shore. She just knew.

  “Not like that,” Cora said. Oh, God, what if he thought she’d been planning it? “I didn’t ever consciously know it. Or even hope it.”

  His eyes fell to the pillow she’d propped herself up on.

  “You hoped it,” she said.

  Mac nodded, once.

  He was braver than she was. Cora couldn’t admit, even to herself that she’d hoped it. “You don’t think we should… feel guilty?”

  With a sigh, he sank back again so that he was looking up at the ceiling. “You kidding me? I keep thinking he’s going to walk in here. And if he did, I still wouldn’t want to move. I’d w
ant to stay right here.” Without looking at her, he reached a strong hand out and rested it on the curve of her hip. “While he went to get his gun.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Mac raised his eyebrows. “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t think he’d want to kill you.”

  “Maybe not. But he’d want to wound me. Deeply, with much loss of blood. That much I can say for sure.”

  Cora smiled – she couldn’t help it. “Graze you with the bullet.”

  “In a place where the sun don’t shine, probably.”

  “Logan was never jealous,” Cora said. It struck her, lying there with Mac, that maybe that had been an odd thing. Most people were at least a little jealous, weren’t they? But Logan had never acted as if he felt threatened by anyone, not once.

  Mac’s voice was tender. “Logan was a cocky sonofabitch.”

  He had been. The cockiest person Cora had ever met. From the moment she’d told him she was pregnant with their child, the one they’d created that single night they’d ‘helped’ each other lose their virginity, he’d made up his mind that they’d be together, and it never crossed his mind that he needed to ask her, just like it never crossed his mind that wearing spurs during all waking hours wasn’t the best idea since sliced peaches.

  Cora should have minded. But she felt chosen somehow, even though he’d never actually said the words out loud. I choose you.

  The slight line of tension that had crept onto Mac’s face relaxed. “Remember the way he’d puff up right before he went into the ring to race barrels? He looked like a little rooster, the way he’d stick his chest out.”

  Cora followed his line of sight to the ceiling which she’d stared at for years, always, until now, alone. The crack that ran from the fan to the edge seemed wider now. One morning, would it just fall on her while she slept? Could it kill her? She didn’t have anything in her book about What If A Ceiling Fan Falls but she would by tomorrow. That was what the internet was made for.

  Mac went on, “And the way he always winked.”