Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
And I let him. I let him map my skin with his hands, let him lose himself in the shape of me. I met him kiss for kiss, sigh for sigh, until the only thing I could feel was the slow, sweet ache of falling.
When we finally moved together, his body under me, inside of me, it wasn’t about release. It was about being known. Being chosen.
Afterward, tangled in the quiet with the cool drafts through the log walls mixing with the heat from the stove, I felt the rise and fall of his breath beneath my cheek and knew.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
No matter how stubborn this man could be. And no matter how much he might try to backtrack when the cold light of reality burst into our little fantasy world on top of this mountain.
He was mine, and I was his.
No matter what.
25
FOSTER
It had been a long time since I’d taken a punch. Long enough that I’d forgotten what it was like waking up the day after.
The radio squawked, waking me from a dead sleep, but it was my attempt to jolt upright that truly got my attention.
“Fucking fuck!” Every muscle ached. My body felt like it had been pummeled by boulders—which, of course, it had.
“Radio,” Tommy murmured next to me. I glanced down at him and noticed he was wearing a comical amount of the warm clothes I’d brought in my pack. I vaguely remembered waking up during the night to take a piss and deciding to bundle him up before stepping outside.
Now that I was freezing and mostly naked, I wondered at my reasoning. Chickie’s judgmental eyes said she wondered the same.
“Radio,” he said again without moving or even opening his eyes.
I reached for the radio hanging on one of the pegs.
“Blake here.”
“Helo inbound to your location. Ten minutes out. No need to scout a landing spot. I’m not taking any chances. Hoist or hover depending on the wind when they get there.”
“Copy that. We’ll be ready. Request K-9 harness if possible.”
I could rig Chickie to me with the webbing I had on me, but it wouldn’t be pretty.
“Already loaded. Will be good practice for your students. Let’s hope they like the two of you. Over.”
Tommy’s warm body moved against my back as he sat up and leaned forward to place a kiss on the back of my neck. “You got any extra clothes? Because I’m not willing to share. The comfy fairy visited me in the night, even though I didn’t do a damned thing to deserve it.”
I turned around and pulled him in for a real kiss. “I might beg a visit to that big family lodge of yours later just so I can soak in a deep tub with the hottest water I can stand.”
He shook his head and tsk’d. “No submersing those lacerations for several days, Sheriff. But I promise to find other ways to warm you up. Deal?”
“Mpfh.”
He pressed a final kiss to my cheek and stood, moving to my pack to dig around for more clothes.
In the end, I was able to put my original clothes back on, surprisingly warm and dry from being hung near the stove. While I yanked on a clean pair of socks, Tommy fed Chickie pieces of his protein bar.
“She’s going to start begging at the table,” I grumbled. “People food is a bad idea.”
“Maybe if you’d packed some dog food instead of five pairs of socks, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
The whir of rotors reached us through the drafty door and walls. We finished packing up, leashed Chickie, and made our way out to the scree field in front of the hut.
Monroe and his bird appeared within seconds, hovering a hundred feet above us. His voice came over the radio as he commanded the scene. I could see the excitement on the faces of the students as they worked together to bring down the harnesses and get us and our gear hoisted up.
“Fucking sick, dude!” Cody said, reaching out to fist-bump me.
“Easy with the victim,” Tommy said over the noise of the blades, grabbing my jacket and shoving me down onto a nearby seat. “Strap in.”
Once he fell into the seat next to me, I leaned over. “What happened to going easy on the victim?”
He grinned, his face golden in the morning sunlight. “Who said you were the victim?” He ruffled Chickie’s ears where she was tucked safely between us, scanning the inside of the helicopter with her sniffer working a million miles an hour.
When Sierra finally slid the door closed, the wind stopped stinging the skin on my face.
The ride back to the landing pad at SERA went by quickly. Trace was waiting for us when we landed and tried insisting I head to the medical clinic in town “just in case.”
Tommy shook his head. “He’s fine. Already treated him and assessed him for a head injury. All he needs is a hot shower, a decent meal, and sleep.”