I shifted on his lap, rocked myself up and forward so that I could get some leverage on the ground and began to ride him—hard. I plowed my fingers in the soft hair at the base of his neck, put the other on the side of his face so he couldn’t move as I lowered my head to devour his mouth with wet, aggressive kisses. It was my turn to speak to him sweetly while I fucked him wild.

I rocked my hips back and forth and kissed his cheek so that I could get my lips next to his ear. I licked the outer edge and then whispered softly, “You can have me any of the ways you want me, Quaid. I’m happy to let you in, as long as you know what’s waiting for you once you’re inside.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the words or the image that went along with them, because even though I’d never let anyone touch me in the places he had hinted at, the thought was intriguing and almost dangerous, so it had my spent and sated nether regions perking up with renewed interest as his hips bucked up hard to meet my final downward thrust. He roared into the wilderness like the primitive, animalistic man he was here, in this place with me, and I felt his entire, big body shake as his orgasm rolled over him. I could feel his cock kick and jerk inside of me as his hips stopped moving and as his eyes quit burning.

His chest was billowing in and out like he had run a mile, so I grinned up at him as he slowly lowered me the rest of the way to the rocks, making sure the heavy material of his jacket protected me as he settled into the cradle of my hips where we were still joined.

He lifted a hand and used it to push my now hopelessly tangled and snarled hair off of my face. He brushed the pad of his thumb over the crest of my flushed cheek and breathed, “My mountains are still standing after my hurricane blew through them.”

I shivered and felt my heart squeeze tight at the possession in his tone. I lifted my arms up so that I could hold him to me. “At least, this time, there was minimal destruction.” We both knew I was capable of so much more.

When he lifted his head to look at me, his eyes had shifted back to the unusual grayish-blue and there was an emotion in them that I didn’t recognize.

“Don’t be so sure about that, Avett.”

Not liking the seriousness on his face after what had been some of the most astounding sex in the world, I kissed him softly and rubbed the end of my nose against his.

“For the record”—I lifted an eyebrow at him and used my body to squeeze him where we were still connected on the inside— “I’m always going to jump and think the risk is worth it. That’s part of who I am.”

I couldn’t tell by his expression if he agreed with me or not about the risk, but when I mentioned that I was on the pill and had gotten myself checked out as soon as I realized how deep into his addiction Jared was, his head jerked up and he seemed a whole lot more interested in the different kinds of risks we could take that involved having no kind of protection between us at all.

CHAPTER 14

Quaid

I was surprised how easily I slipped back into the role of the guy that knew how to do without and how to make the most out of very little. The two days spent in the tiny cabin with nothing more than a roaring fire and Avett for entertainment were some of the most peaceful, relaxing, recharging days I’d had in … I couldn’t remember how long. I thought she was the one that needed escape from the commotion of her life but it turned out I was the one that really benefited from the forced unplugging and isolation. The quiet used to haunt me and taunt me with the emptiness and memories; now it soothed all kinds of ragged edges that I thought I had ruthlessly polished off. Plus, the way my name sounded when Avett screamed it or whispered it was so much better with nothing around for it to get lost in.

I felt like two parts of my soul that had always been ripped apart were slowly being stitched back together, but Avett seemed no different than she was deep in the heart of the city. She went fishing with me without complaint and didn’t even balk when we had to clean and cook our own dinner. She tromped through the woods with me, her pink hair getting tangled with pine needles and bark as the trees reached out to touch her like I felt compelled to do. I took her out to the makeshift firing range that had been an integral part of my youth and was shocked and, admittedly, impressed that she handled my firearm almost as well as I did. She laughed and told me that when you were the daughter of a badass, things like spot-on aim and not being squeamish at the sight of blood came with the territory. The only thing she complained about was having to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and it wasn’t even that she had to use the rickety outhouse; it was the fact that she was afraid of mountain lions and bears that made her grumble. All we had with us was what we packed into the backpacks the Ducati forced us to use and still she didn’t seem to be missing a thing. She was content with me and the woods for company and that did something fundamental to all the truths I had been holding up as my reality for so long.

I wanted possessions to matter because I’d had so few of them growing up. I wanted stuff to make me important and to fill all the empty voids my childhood, the fallout with my folks, and the sham of my marriage had left in my life. I wanted to have so many things and obvious material objects so that no one could ever doubt my success or my worth because I lived in a constant state of fear that someone, like my ex-wife, would decide I wasn’t enough. I was smart enough to know it was a deep-rooted fear that came from growing with parents that were more interested in teaching me how to survive than they were in teaching me how to love or how to be a good man. Because I wanted an education, because I wanted a way out, because I wanted more than they thought I needed, they always considered me the weakest member of the family. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t resilient enough. I wasn’t solid enough or brave enough to be the man they wanted me to be. So I chased after a girl that I knew would never settle for the kind of life I came from. I threw myself into a fight for a government my family abjectly disapproved of. I went into a career that was all about rules and order and I took up on the side that was guaranteed to put me in the press and in the crosshairs of ethics and morality. And I got the stuff. Submerged myself in the things because I had something to prove.

Only now, I wasn’t sure who in the hell I was trying to prove any of it to.

The girl that currently had every single piece of me tied in knots and broken me down to my most basic, my most pure self, apparently didn’t care about any of the shiny and opulent things I was surrounded with. She was happy with me wherever I happened to be, so there was no need to kill myself trying to show her the finer things in life.