Page 11

"Stay away from me," I pant, and it's a lie, and we both know it's a lie.

The lantern ahead of me goes out.

I didn't see his hand. I didn't see anything. One second it's glowing at the end of the row, and the next the dark closes over it like water, and I skid to a stop in the black between two walls of corn with my heart trying to climb out of my chest and my thighs slick under my jeans. I've never been this frightened. I've never been this wet.

Something closes around my wrist.

His hand, through the stalks. Warm and huge and dry, wrapping all the way around my wrist and holding, not pulling. I yank. He lets me go, and I bolt, blind, around a corner and another, until the corn opens out without warning into a round clearing with a ring of straw bales and a single pumpkin burning on the tallest one.

The centre. I made it.

I turn around, gasping, and he's already there.

He steps out of the corn behind me, big and dark and silver-bearded in the orange light, his breath going up white. He doesn't come closer. He stands at the edge of the clearing with his hands open at his sides, and they're shaking.

"You were right," he says.

I can't speak.

"I kept you so I'd never have to ask for anything." His voice is rough, torn up the middle. "My mother lay on that ward six hours with her thumb on the button, and nobody came. I swore I'd never be the one waiting. So I made myself the one who comes." He swallows. "But I'm the one waiting now. I've been lying at the bottom of your ladder for ten days. I need you, Sloane. Not rested. Not well. Here."

He takes one step.

"Stay," he says. "And take care of me back. I don't know how to let you. Teach me."

I cross the clearing and put my hand flat on his chest. His heart is slamming under my palm.

"One-forty," I tell him, and my voice breaks. "That's terrible."

"Stay."

"Yes," I say. "I'm staying. Lie down."

He stares at me with a question in his eyes.

"Lie down," I say again, softer. "My turn."

He spreads his coat over the straw bale beside the pumpkin and lies back on it, this enormous man, and lets me climb on top of him. The cold is sharp on my face and the straw crackles under us and the one candle throws its light up over his face.

I undo his shirt and push it open and put my mouth on his chest over his heart. Over the fine-lined leaves and roots across his ribs. I kiss down him slowly, the way he'd do it, reading every hitch in his breath, and when I get his jeans open and take his cock in my hand, he says my name like he's in pain.

I stroke him. I take my time. I watch his face while I do it, the way he watched mine from the chair by the stove, and I learn what he likes — a firm grip, a slow twist at the head, my thumb dragging through the wet at the tip. His hands clench in the coat beneath him. He doesn't touch me. He's letting me.

I stand and strip my jeans and underwear off in the freezing air, fast, and climb back over him, and his hands come up to my hips at last, shaking.

I sink down onto his cock.

Slow. Inch by inch, stretching around him, my breath going ragged and white in the dark, until I'm seated all the way and he's so deep in me I can't think. I stay there. I put both hands flat on his chest and feel his heart hammer.

"Let me," I whisper.

"Yes," he says. "God. Yes."

I ride him. Slow, rolling, lifting almost all the way off and taking him back, while the corn hisses around us and the candle gutters and his hands grip my hips hard, digging into flesh.

I set the pace. I keep it slow even when he groans and pushes up into me, even when I'm shaking, because for once I'm the one tending and I want to do it right.

"Sloane." His voice is wrecked. "I can't—"