“Around eight,” I guessed. This time of year, it stayed light until almost ten, but the sun was gone from sight much earlier than that.
“I slept a long time. I’m still dealing with jet lag. Sorry.”
I coiled the rope into long loops in my hand and walked toward her. “What are you sorry for?” I asked.
She’d tugged her hair from the ponytail and it fell over her shoulders, tangled and wild. Like she’d been through a rainstorm and wildly fucked. My shirt hung long down her thighs, but knowing she was bare, what her breasts looked like beneath, had me going instantly hard.
She bit her lip, glanced around, up at the sky. Then at me. At my bare chest. I had on my jeans, nothing else.
“That you had to wait for me. I assume you want to get back.”
I crooked my finger and she came down the two steps and onto the damp grass, her feet bare. From twenty feet away, I could see her hot pink toenails, her toned calves, the way her fingers nervously plucked at the hem of my shirt.
“While the weather’s better, it’s late. If we left now, we wouldn’t return to the ranch until after dark. We’ll spend the night here.”
“Won’t they be worried where we are?” she asked, biting her lip.
“I called the front desk, let them know we were here, that you were fine and also that the cabin was occupied.”
She frowned. “You called?”
“There’s no electric or water, but there’s cell reception,” I explained. “Matt and Ethan—the owners—have it so there’s service anywhere on the Hawk’s Landing property. All employees have phones with them for safety, but don’t usually tell the guests about it.”
“We’re staying the night. Here. Together?” The last word came out as a squeak.
I cocked my head toward the cabin. “Micah and I can sleep outside if you want, but I have to admit, I’d rather be in that big bed with you. Between us.”
“Oh,” she murmured.
“You’re blushing.” After what we’d done, I was surprised I’d scandalized her.
She looked at the coiled rope in my hand, then at me.
“This isn’t me. Really. I don’t…I don’t sleep around.” She tossed her hands up. “God, I don’t—didn’t used to—sleep with strangers.”
No, I didn’t think she ever did. She wasn’t a virgin, but she needed at least a connection with the man—or men—she gave herself to. Trust. “After what we did, I don’t think we’re strangers, do you?”
She cocked her hip and bent her knee, shifting her weight. My question made her blush even more. “I wanted some fun and it’s over. You got what you wanted.”
I heard the defensiveness in her tone. Reflex or avoidance of the truth? “If I couldn’t see that you’re embarrassed by what we did, I’d take offense to that.”
“Well, you did,” she countered, her hands going to her hips. “Got what you wanted, I mean.” The move made my shirt ride up her thighs an inch or two. I saw her stance as more endearing than argumentative.
“And so did you, if I remember correctly. What was it, five times?” I could think of every single one of them.
She looked away, anywhere but at me.
“There’s no reason to be embarrassed about what we did. What we made you feel.”
“I’m not like that,” she said, repeating her earlier words.
I nodded once. “I believe you. And that’s one of the things that’s so appealing about you. You’ve had some time to think and are wondering why you said yes to us.”
“Yes,” she agreed, dropping her hands, going over to the porch rail and wrapping her fingers around it. I ached to go to her, to bend her over that rail, watch my shirt ride up and then fuck her. Out in the open where her screams would echo off the mountains.
“To two men,” I added. I was saying what she wouldn’t, but I wanted to get all her worries out in the open. To address each one and put it behind us. Unless she was wildly open to threesomes—which I knew she wasn’t since she’d admitted to never being with two men before—or she grew up in Bridgewater, this was going to be a struggle for her. This meaning being with both Micah and me. Permanently.
“Yes!” she said, her voice rising, her hands going up in the air.