Page 12 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Mountain Man

"You drove five thousand kilometers to fix my coffee."

"Among other things."

The air shifts. She holds my gaze. The dimple is gone. Her mouth is serious. The tank top strap has slipped down one brown shoulder and every nerve ending in my body fires at the sight of that bare skin, that single exposed collarbone, the soft curve where her neck meets her shoulder.

Two months. Two months of midnight texts, of truths told through a screen, of falling for a voice I'd never heard saying things nobody else ever said. And now she's here. In my kitchen. Five feet away. Smelling like road trip coffee and something warm underneath.

"Mara."

"Yeah?"

"I need you to know something before any of this goes further." My hands are in my pockets because if they're not, they're going to reach for her, and once I touch this woman I'm not going to be careful about it. "I haven't touched anyone in five years. Haven't wanted to. Haven't let myself. The last woman who stood in this kitchen was my wife, and she never left it."

Her face doesn't change. No pity. No performance. Just stillness. The same stillness she gives me in text when I say something that matters. She just holds the moment steady.

"I know."

"You drove here anyway."

"I drove here because of that." She sets the mug down. Steps away from the counter. One step closer to me. "You told me the hardest thing about yourself, and you didn't hide it. You didn't clean it up or make it smaller. You just said it. My wife died. Three words. The bravest thing anyone's ever trusted me with."

Another step. Three feet between us. Two. The kitchen isn't big enough for both of us and all this want.

"I'm not trying to replace her, Holden. I'm not trying to fix you. I just want to be in the same room as the man who texts me at midnight."

My hands come out of my pockets.

"Come here."

She does. One more step and she's against my chest. My arms close around her, one hand at her lower back, one at the base of her skull. She's warm. Solid. Real in a way that the texts never were, all that honesty given a body, a heartbeat, the rise and fall of her breathing against my ribs.

"You're shaking," she whispers.

"Yeah."

"Me too."

My mouth finds hers.

The kiss starts slow. Careful. Testing. Her lips part and the taste of my terrible coffee on her tongue is somehow the best thing I've tasted in five years. Her hands flatten against my chest, slide up to my collar. Her fingers curl into the flannel. Pull me closer.

The careful part lasts about four seconds.

Then her tongue strokes mine and my hand tightens at her lower back, pulling her hips flush against me, and the sound she makes, this quiet, broken little moan, detonates everything I've been holding in check since she stepped out of that car.

I lift her. Her legs wrap around my waist. Her back presses against the refrigerator hard enough to knock a magnet loose. My mouth drops to her throat, her jaw, the soft spot below her ear. She arches, grinds her hips forward, and the friction against my cock sends a jolt up my spine.

"Bedroom," she breathes.

"Down the hall."

"I can walk."

"No." I carry her. Her laugh vibrates against my neck. Her fingers are in my hair. The hallway is twelve steps. I've walked it ten thousand times in five years. Never like this.

The bed is unmade. She doesn't care. She pulls the tank top over her head before I set her down, and the sight of her bare breasts, full, dark nipples already hard, brown skin glowing in the morning light through the window, stops me.

Just stops me. Standing at the edge of my bed, looking at this woman, the first woman to make me want anything since I stopped wanting everything.