Page 12 of Hard Cider Mountain Man

"Why?"

"Because Tuesday I had a countdown." I look up the length of her. "This is different."

She puts her hand over her eyes.

"Don't do that," I say. "Look at me."

She moves her hand.

I go down between her thighs and open her with my thumbs and put my tongue on her, flat and slow, and she says oh in a voice she hasn't used before, quieter than the other one, less braced.

I work her like that for a long time. Two fingers in her, curled, my mouth on her clit, and she comes with her thigh shaking against my ear and her hand holding the back of my head, and she's still going when I put my mouth on her again and take her through a second one straight off the first, and that one makes her swear at me properly.

"Enough — Orrin — get up here."

I come up over her. She's flushed all down her throat and her hair's a disaster and she's grinning at me like a woman who's turned down a wire transfer and doesn't regret it.

She's not done with me. She sits up and puts me on my back and works her way down my chest with her mouth, unhurried, taking her time about it the way I took mine, and when she gets her hand around my cock and her mouth on me I lose about a minute entirely. I get her hair back off her face so I can watch. She looks up at me the whole time, which is a thing she does now, and which is going to be a problem for the rest of my life.

"Enough," I say, when it stops being a decision.

"Rude."

"You want me finishing in your mouth on a Saturday morning or you want the rest of this?"

She considers it, honestly, which nearly ends me on the spot.

"The rest," she says.

I turn her over.

She goes up onto her elbows, knees under her, and looks back at me over her shoulder, and I put one hand between her shoulder blades and press her gently down into the blankets and take hold of her hip with the other.

"Like that?" I say.

"Like that."

I push into her slowly, all of it, and she groans into the mattress. I hold there, buried, feeling her adjust around me, my thumb moving on the base of her spine.

"You feel that?" I say.

"Yeah."

"That's mine now." I start to move. "Say it."

"It's yours."

"Say the rest."

She turns her face out of the blankets. "I'm staying."

I lose my rhythm entirely for two strokes, and she laughs, breathless.

I get my hand around into her hair and gather it and hold, and after that it's the two of us and the cold coming in the window and the sound of skin.

I keep it slow long past when either of us wants slow. Long enough that she starts pushing back against me, setting her own pace, telling me exactly where — there, that, don't change it — and I do what she says because she's right, and because there's nothing left in this room that either of us is negotiating.

I get my hand under her and find her clit with two fingers and work her there while I move in her, and she braces both palms flat against the headboard and swears at the wall.