Page 69 of Faultline

"You." The word is hoarse. Scraped out of him like something he's been swallowing for weeks. "I need you to stay. Not tonight. Not until the case is over. I need you to stay because this cabin isn't my home anymore. You are. And I don't have a contingency plan for that."

His mouth closes. His jaw sets. And then it opens again, as though the first admission broke the seal on something he's been holding even longer.

"I love you, Tosh." The words come out rough and startled, like he didn't plan them and can't take them back. His hands tighten on my waist. "I didn't plan on that either."

The exhale that leaves me isn't words. It's the release of a woman who has been waiting for this man to say something that costs him. The price is written in every line of his face.

His hand slides into my hair before I can respond, fingers closing at the root. His mouth takes mine with the hunger of a man who just ripped himself open and needs to put the pain somewhere.

His teeth catch my lower lip hard enough to sting, and the noise I make disappears into the kiss. His fist tightens in my hair, tilting my head where he wants it. The controlled redirection bypasses every rational thought I've had today.

He lifts me onto the table's edge. My thighs spread around his hips, and his cock presses against me through his jeans, thick and hard and unhurried. He rolls his hips forward once, grinding the seam of my jeans against my clit. The friction drags a gasp out of me that I don't authorize. My legs clench around him.

"You're my home." His hands pull the flannel and bra over my head. The cold air hits my bare skin and disappears under the heat of his palms. "You're the only thing on this mountain I didn't inherit and can't replace."

His mouth moves down my throat. His hands close over my breasts, the calluses dragging across my nipples with a roughness that arches my spine and drives my fingers into his shoulders. He rolls one peak between his thumb and forefinger with a pressure that borders on pain and lives in the territory just past it where my body stops distinguishing between the two.

Then his hand flattens against my sternum and presses me backward. Slowly. Deliberately. Until my shoulders meet the table and the cold wood presses the length of my spine and my case files crinkle beneath me.

He takes off my boots then strips my jeans and underwear in one motion. The air on my bare skin lasts exactly as long as it takes for his hands to slide up the insides of my thighs.

His fingers go to my clit first, swollen and slick. The groan he makes at what he discovers vibrates against my hip bone where his mouth has settled.

Two fingers push inside me. Slow. Deep. Curving upward with a precision that knows exactly where to press and exactly how hard. His thumb circles my clit in tight, relentless passes while his free hand pins my hips flat against the table. Every time the sensation threatens to bow me off the surface, he holds me down.

My fingers lock around his forearm. The muscles under his skin are cables, rigid with controlled tension, and what I dig into them tells him everything my voice can't manage.

He doesn't ease up. He adds a third finger and stretches me open, and the sensation makes my thighs shake against his wrists.

The orgasm tears through me. It pulls tight in my core and then breaks in a wave that runs from pelvis to scalp. My back arches hard against the table despite his hand on my stomach. What leaves my throat is raw and uncensored and louder than the wind pressing against the cabin walls.

He doesn't wait for me to come down. His belt buckle clicks. He toes off his boots before his jeans hit the floor. The thermal follows. He stands between my open legs at the table's edge. The fading kitchen light cuts across the planes of his body with an honesty that strips everything decorative away.

He's built by labor. Ridged with muscle, scarred by work and weather, thick through the shoulders and arms in a way that has nothing to do with a gym and everything to do with decades of timber and terrain.

His cock is hard against his stomach. The sight of him standing over me while I'm bare and open on his kitchen table sends a pulse through me that has nothing to do with the orgasm still echoing in my bones.

His hands hook behind my knees and pull me toward him until my hips are barely on the table, tilting me to him.

He wraps one hand around himself, guides the head against my entrance, and holds there. The blunt pressure of him against my slick, oversensitive flesh drags a whimper out of me that I can't control.

He leans over me, one hand braced beside my head, and his mouth hovers above mine. Close enough that the heat off his skin reaches me before his lips do. Close enough to see how little composure he has left.

He pushes into me slowly, and the stretch is devastating. My body opens around him by relentless degrees, and the sheer size of him this deep has my fingers clawing at the wood because there's nothing else to hold. He keeps pressing until he's seated to the root, filling me past the point where thought survives.

He holds there. Buried. His breathing ragged against my mouth. The muscles in his braced arm are shaking, and the tremor has nothing to do with effort.

"Mine." The word leaves him like something that fought its way out. Possession and surrender tangled together, the unguarded admission that claiming me has cost him every wall he ever built. "You're mine, Tosh."

"Yes." My voice is steady. Certain. The one part of me that isn't trembling. "I am."

He takes my jaw in his free hand and holds my face still. His eyes lock on mine, and the look in them is an order: stay with me. Don't look away. Watch what this does to me.

He starts to move. The angle is different with him above me. Deeper. He's braced over me with one arm, his other hand gripping my hip, controlling the tilt. Each stroke is slow and full, pulling back until the loss of him aches and then driving forward until he reclaims every inch.

His body covers mine. His mouth hovers close enough that I'm breathing the air he exhales, and every thrust pushes a sound out of me that I gave up silencing weeks ago.

His eyes don't close. He watches me take him, watches what each stroke does to my face. The fear underneath his focus is more exposed than anything his body has shown me.