It was wonderful. But it was terrifying all the same. There was nobody else that this could have ever happened with. She was so certain of it now. How would she have been so stupid to think that it could have ever been Travis? It couldn’t have been.
It was Hunter. It was always Hunter.
He slid his hands down her back, her butt, and around her thighs and lifted her off the ground, wrapping her legs around his waist and walking them both over to that big bed.
She shuddered as he laid her down on the soft mattress, his hard length sliding through that slick cleft at the apex of her thighs.
It was wonderful.
Pleasure and pain all rolled into one, like everything of value ever was and ever had been.
But this wasn’t like anything else. She was on the edge of something terrifying, the edge of something that might destroy her. And he was holding her. So strong. So gentle. All at once.
She never had somebody there to walk her through slowly.
She had brothers who had thrown her into the deep end of the swimming hole. Who had challenged her to run faster, push farther.
Hunter wasn’t doing that. Hunter was giving her all of the tenderness required, along with exhilarating joy. Pleasure. His hands were rough on her skin. She knew her hands were rough too. Because they both worked. That same kind of work. That was where the similarities ended. Because his whole body was hard, sculpted muscle.
She felt small and fragile by comparison, and it didn’t scare her.
Being with him like this didn’t scare her at all. It made everything feel wonderfully right and it made her feel more like a woman than she ever had. Made her understand why it was a glorious thing.
It never felt like an advantage to her. It had only ever made her different.
Younger and female and more work for Sawyer and Wolf, even if they had never treated her that way.
But she loved being a woman in this moment. Held like this by Hunter McCloud.
And her throat was thick with emotion.
She remembered that moment back in the bar when she had thought about him leaving with another woman and she’d felt like prickles had broken out on her skin. It had felt uncomfortable.
And she wondered if it had been this way then. And she just hadn’t been able to admit it. If she’d thought that it was Travis, because she had thought that some blue-eyed greenhorn with an angelic face was easy.
And nothing about this was easy.
But it was exquisite. And she wanted it.
Wanted him.
“I was going to open a bottle of champagne,” he said, his lips hovering over hers, his body pressed against hers, chest to chest, side and thigh.
“I don’t care about champagne,” she said. “I just want you.”
It felt like such an enormous weight on her chest. Driving them both forward. She knew that he felt it too. Felt this keenly as she did. That he wanted her exactly how she wanted him.
And even if she didn’t know the way that need coursed through a male body, she knew the way that it moved through her soul, and for some reason right then, looking at his eyes she knew that their souls were one. That they matched.
That they were the same.
She knew it as surely as she knew the sun would rise tomorrow. Back at Four Corners, and over this city that was new and strange and nothing like she’d ever been in before.
This was like nothing she’d ever had. She really understood now. Why he felt the need to do this. Because they weren’t together for familiarity. Or because there was no one else.
They had made this choice together. She wanted him because she did. And it didn’t matter if there was a whole lineup of hot cowboys, or any other kind of man. Hockey players, basketball players. Tall, athletic, whatever. She didn’t want him because he was a cowboy. She didn’t want him just because he was in proximity. She wanted him because he was Hunter.
“You know that it’s going to hurt, right?”
“Everything you learn hurts at first,” she said, thinking back to getting thrown off a horse for the first time, or learning to cope with being saddle sore. Pain didn’t bother her. Not at all.
He shook his head. “What a world, that you had to learn to be okay with that.”
“Just makes you stronger,” she said.
“You’re as strong as they get.” He kissed her neck, her collarbone. “But I’m going to make you weak.”
The promise was wicked, the words making her shiver. And he went down and fastened his mouth to her breast, licking and sucking her until she was trembling.
He was right. She did feel weak, but she felt strong all at the same time. Felt like she might tremble all apart, but be put back together as something new.
Something better.
All the pieces fixed back into place with magic.
And the magic was him.
Them.
He kissed his way down her body in an erotic choreography, down the skin of her tender thigh, and back to her center.
And she gasped. Hunter wasn’t tentative there. He took her. Tongue going deep, his mouth certain as he zeroed right in on that source of her pleasure, as he tortured her in the most divine fashion she could’ve ever imagined. Then he continued to laugh at her as he added his hand, pushing a finger inside of her and stroking her deep. She squirmed, a whimper rising in her throat.
And there was nothing outside this. Nothing outside of him. If Four Corners existed, it was less than a memory. That place where she had spent so much of her life was somewhere far off in the distance, and all the people who had always been there... They were so dim in the face of this moment. The brightness that she found here.
He added a second finger, and she felt herself stretching slightly, her hips bucking up off the bed. And it did hurt a little. But it was glorious. And she found herself lost in it. In him.
Begging, moving her hips in time with his thrusts, when her release broke over her. Shocking her. She grabbed the back of his head, arching her hips and holding them steady as a sharp gasp escaped her lips.
He rolled away from her and looked up, his expression so wicked that it made the bottom fall out of her world.
She moved down the bed to him, stroking his face, moving her hands through his hair. She knew him this way now.
Hunter.
No one else ever touched her like this, let alone tasted her like that. She knew what it was like when he desired a woman. She knew.
Right now she felt like she might know everything.
She lowered her head and kissed his mouth, tasted her own desire there. “Take me,” she said, words coming from somewhere inside of her she hadn’t even known existed. “Please.”