“You’re so fucking drenched,” he groaned, removing his hand from my jeans. I whimpered softly at this evil act, like a child whose lolly had been torn from their hands.

“I can’t wait anymore. Take me now,” I demanded, but even I knew it sounded more like a plea than anything else.

He gripped me tighter and slowly eased us down, inclining until his back was against the rough, wooden stairs. I fell into him.

Kissing.

Licking.

Biting.

I hurriedly unclothed him, and felt myself weaken when I pulled his jeans down off of him. Holy shit, he was hot. He was sex and love and pure heaven.

And he was mine. All mine.

I shimmied out of my loose jeans, throwing them without a care behind me. I kissed him hard, moving my hands along his hard abs and solid chest. He grabbed my ass and grinded me against his hardened length.

“See what you do to me?” he panted against me. “I can’t control myself.”

I felt him at my entrance and closed my eyes, waiting for him to plunge into me. The anticipation killed me. I wanted it hard. I wanted him inside of me in just one quick thrust.

He slowly eased in, torturing me and watching my pained pleasure with open fascination. I stared into his eyes, holding my breath as I remembered all the nights he filled me up like this.

This was perfection.

This was completion.

I moaned as he kissed my inner walls, seating himself all the way in. He stilled, and we said nothing for the longest time.

Just feeling. Yeah, we were just feeling each other. Feeling him inside of me like he always belonged there and it felt like home.

“I’m marrying you,” he hoarsely pronounced. “You’re taking my name.”

I gaped at him. And then I kissed the ever loving shit out of him. My lips trembled against his. I coated his face with my tears and he held me tightly against him with an arm around my back.

I didn’t want it hard and fast anymore. I didn’t want to get fucked. I wanted it slow and soft. I wanted to make love.

He sensed my need and obliged, thrusting in and out at a tender speed. He cherished me on those steps, stroking me and kissing me. He prolonged my peak by building my pleasure and slowing it down again. My body could no longer take anymore. My skin broke out in shivers as I clutched him hard against me and exploded. I hadn’t felt a release in so long, and it washed over me like the blinding light of morning – a boundless inevitability that I had no control over, seizing me in a temporary bubble of heaven before it washed away into mild contentedness. My lips quivered against his as I came down from my high.

Then I just… plopped there against his chest, like a bag of bones. The energy was zapped right out of me, leaving me feeling like a cloud in the air, floating away…

But he was still hard inside of me. I could feel him pulse with the need to continue.

“These stairs are giving my ass a cramp,” he muttered.

I smiled into his chest. “I can imagine.”

He slowly stood up, careful to keep me still against him. I brushed my hands through his hair and kissed his nose and the border of his face as he ascended up the porch and into the cabin. He returned the gesture, kissing both of my eyes and then the slope of my nose.

I didn’t realize how cool it’d been outside until we were enfolded in the warmth of the cabin. Jaxon carried me as if I weighed light as a feather to the bed and set me down. He pulled out of me and turned me around on my stomach. I was still blissfully content from my orgasm when he began kissing up my legs, brushing his hands over my ass and up my spine.

“Beautiful. You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

I felt revered, worshipped. I didn’t deserve to be so well cared for. I felt his love in every caress, and I remember thinking, I’m never getting out of this bedroom. Because the outside world was a terrible place; an unpredictable mess of choices and consequences filled with lies and deceitful people willing to tear you apart for their own selfish reasons. And in this bedroom, away from reality, was our world, and it was filled with love and soft kisses and tender moments that brought to the forefront the purpose of our life: each other.

Still flat against the mattress, he spread my legs apart. I felt his body heat envelope me as he pressed his chest against my back. Then I felt his tip at my entrance, and I shut my eyes serenely as he slowly eased himself back in.

“Fuuuck,” he moaned, his face hovering inches above my shoulder. He kissed my shoulder blades and slid a hand down my stomach and to my clit. He massaged me as he moved in and out of me, and the intensity of both acts felt like I was being licked by fire; a painful pleasure that burned and faded and burned again.

“Don’t stop,” I begged, breathing erratically against the sheets moistened by my open mouth. “Please, please, please.”

He moved faster within me, and each thrust forced my lower body to press against his hand that circled deliciously around my centre. I held my breath and felt my world implode; the second orgasm rippled rapturously within, feeling as though it were trying to find a way out until I sucked in a breath again, momentarily suspended in an aphrodisiac wonderland. I could do this again and again for I still felt aroused beyond measure soon after…

“Always you,” he groaned against me. “Perfection.”

He moved in and out of me for so long, prolonging his own peak over and over again until he couldn’t any longer. I delighted in his sounds, in his warmth, in the feel of him with me again. Finally, he stilled and tensed, biting softly at my shoulder as he grunted through his release. I felt his riotous heartbeats against my back and they lulled me into a half-conscious slumber. My energy levels were at a critical all-time low.

He moved off of me and I made a sound that resembled a tortured pup. I needed him. He lay at my side and trailed his hand up and down my back. I opened an eye and watched him. I could see his profile as he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling in deep contemplation.

“Are you okay?” I managed out.

He turned his head to me and smiled wistfully, dimples and all. “Yeah,” he softly replied. “I’m more than okay, Tiny.” I bloomed at his use of my nickname that only he has ever used.

“Did you mean what you said?” I bit my bottom lip and watched him in anticipation. People say shit when they have sex. Sometimes they don’t mean it after.

“What did I say?”

My cheeks heated. No way would I repeat it! If he didn’t even know what I was referring to then it was probably said in the heat of the moment. Damn.

His blue eyes, even radiant in the dark, eyed me mischievously. Then he smiled even wider. Bastard knew exactly what I was talking about…

He edged closer to me, turning onto his side. “You mean, do I want to marry you?” He rubbed his nose against my cheek. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

I sputtered out an unladylike grunt.

“Yeah,” he said, tracing circles along my spine. “I’m marrying you. No more of this crap between us. We need some stability after this. You won’t be able to run off when you have my name attached to you, and maybe everybody else will fuck off when you do. Til death do us part, right?”

I managed a nod. My throat felt tight. I would marry him right then and there. I even went all caveman-like thinking how amazing it would feel to be possessed by him. The feminist in me wanted to drown me in acid for such a thought.

“Almost six years apart from you and the second I’m with you it’s like I’ve never been away.” He finger combed my hair, splaying it out down my back. He watched me with this look of tenderness and something else entirely. He wasn’t like the others. I couldn’t read every part of him. Jaxon was a perpetually fascinating man; no matter how hard I might try to unfold every layer that is him, he would forever be unconquerable.

“Why do you love me?” I asked him, bewildered by my train of thought. “After everything I’ve done... After all I’ve put you through…”

“Because you’re my ultimate.”

“That’s not good enough.”

He chuckled. “What, do you want me to write you a love sonnet to express why I love you?”

“Go for it. I dare you.”

He cleared his throat and, with a deeper more baritone voice, spoke, “Her cunt-eth gleamed in the moonlight, her juices flowed therein, and I said unto her, ‘I would love… to eat you out.’”

I smacked him hard. “That’s not a love sonnet! Gross. You’re sick.”

His body shook in laughter. I bet he thought he was the funniest thing ever, and on that note, who the hell laughed at their own joke?

“Talking about my vagina is not a thing of love.”

“But I love you because it looks so good.”

I smacked him again. “You’re evil.”

“I’m a man with needs, you’re a woman with a tight little honey cave–”

“Mature, Jaxon, real mature.”

I waited a couple minutes until his laughter died down. It took everything in me not to smile. I had to pretend to be the mature one of us, so I continued to glower at him and then I raised my eyebrows up expectantly.

“Why do pigs roll around in shit?” His question confused me. I put more oomph in my glower now, but he looked solemnly at me. “Why do flowers need sunlight? Why do caterpillars turn into butterflies? These are all basic, living instincts; predispositions that aren’t in our control, but in our makeup. We don’t understand what propels us to certain things. Why does someone like this or that? I believe it’s wired in us. Just like I’m wired to you and you’re wired to me. It doesn’t make sense and we don’t understand it, but we’re propelled to each other. Be it a chemical reaction binding us, or a higher power that deems it so, we’re soul-mates. That’s why I love you. I can’t turn it off because I have no control over it, and I’d never want to anyway.”

His thumb stroked away the tear that fell from my eye. Then he gathered me and set me against him. I wrapped my arm around his waist, rested my head against his chest and listened to his heart beats. I listened and listened until the blackness took me away.

Twenty Two

“I don’t want to do this,” I whined coming to a halt. “I’ve got a cramp in my side and I’m tired.”

Jaxon turned around, one hand holding tight the backpack strap on his shoulder. He glared at me like I was a petulant child that was screaming for candy at the check-out aisle. The look alone had me moving my ass as if a herd of buffalo was after me.

We’d been trekking the woods for, like, an hour…

Maybe forty minutes, actually.

Okay, it was more like twenty minutes. Still. The physical exertion was new to me and it made my legs ache. It didn’t help my jeans were now whirling in the washer after last night’s adventurous bar rendezvous with the drunks. I’d found little jean shorts in one of the drawers and shot Jaxon a stink-eye. He simply shrugged, expressing he had no part in what clothes had been placed in them. The shorts comfortably fit, thank the heavens, but I had only baggy shirts to wear on top. I was currently swimming in a massive grey t-shirt that obviously belonged to an XXXX large person and getting the ever loving shit beat out of my legs wading through dense nature that harboured nasty branches and thorny bushes.

“We’re not far away, Tiny.”

Liar. He’d been saying that from the start.

“Do you know where you’re going? Or are we going to get lost out here?”

“I know where I’m going.”

I shot his back a dubious look. “What if we get lost?”

“We won’t.”

“But hypothetically, what if we do?”

He huffed in exasperation. “Then we’ll be Tarzan and Jane, mating like wildebeests and frolicking from tree limb to tree limb.”

“The Disney movie never showed them mating.”

“Jane was a hottie. Tarzan would have tapped that ass the second the credits came up. Now that’s a fact.”

“You have no proof.”

“Don’t need it.”

I grimaced. “You have forever ruined Tarzan for me.”

He laughed and turned back to me. His hair looked blonder under the sunlight and his eyes fiercer. I noticed the joy in them, too, and it made me smile hard at him. “Okay, we’re here, and if you shut your mouth for five seconds, you’ll hear the waterfall.”

“A whole five seconds?”

He shook his head in mock-irritation and extended his hand out to me. I took it and we walked in silence. The sound of rushing water drew nearer and nearer. Soon, it was a loud whooshing sound that was inescapable. We followed the noise until the fall came into view between the trees.

It was only a small waterfall, perhaps twenty feet high, flowing down a smooth cavernous rock and into a narrow river. We were close enough to feel the misty water against our skin and its coolness already had me shivering. I stepped back, away from the bubble of merciless cold, and found a dry spot in the grass a few feet from the lake.

Jaxon threw his bag off and unzipped it, removing a large blanket he’d found in the storage closet. He set it down where I stood and I sat down on it, crossing my legs like a kindergartener. I gazed up at the sky and the tops of the trees. It was a beautiful little spot, secluded and freshly green. Jaxon sat down behind me, legs spread against each side of me as he snuggled up against my back. His arms wrapped around me and I sank into him, resting the back of my head against his broad chest.

We sat in silence for several minutes, basking in each other’s arms and enjoying the waterfall’s soothing sounds as it deposited itself into the river.