Page 4 of Under The Mountain Man’s Spell

Nobody here knew me. That was the strange gift of it. She hadn't come to the tent for the chief, or the council seat, or the guy who'd straightened himself out and been held up as proof ever since. She'd picked a stranger in a mask and asked him to dance, and Wyatt had stood there with his mouth open watching me do it, and I'd be hearing about that for a year. A stranger had nothing to live up to. For one night I wasn't the man everybody counted on. I was a man in a room with a beautiful woman, hard and aching and half out of my mind, with a hunger way too big for one night. I told myself two years without anybody would do that to a man. I wasn't cheating on anyone. The only woman I'd ever have held out for had said flat out on Thursday that she wasn't interested in anybody, and I'd stood there with my hand on a rail and heard it.

Then the stranger crossed to me, firelight sliding over the red dress, and laid both palms flat on my chest, and I quit thinking. She was shaking, a fine tremor high in her shoulders that I could feel through my shirt. I covered her hands with mine and held them against me, small hands but strong, her pulse going hard where our wrists crossed. Even that much of her touching me had me half gone.

"Tell me what you want, sweetheart," I said. "Exactly. I'll take it from there."

Her breath went out in a rush I felt through our joined hands. "I want you to tell me what to do," she said. "I want you to take charge. I want—" Her chin came up, and behind the mask her shadowed eyes held mine. "I want to be told. If that works for you."

My cock jumped so hard it hurt. She was handing me everything and shaking while she did it, wanting it and nervous about wanting it, and both things pulled at me: the need to take her apart, and the need to make it easy for her. I slid my hand into her hair, heavy and warm, so much of it my fist disappeared, and closed it slow, just enough for her to feel held, and tipped her face up.

"It works," I said. "Rules first. You say stop, everything stops, no questions and no sulking. You say wait, I wait. Everything else, you give me, and I'll take care of you. Say you understand."

"I understand." It was barely air.

"Good girl. Now take that dress off for me. Slowly. I've been watching it all night, and I want to watch it leave."

She reached behind her for the zipper with her eyes never leaving mine, and the dress slid down her body and pooled around her heels. She stepped out of it in nothing but skin and firelight and that mask. There wasn't a stitch under it.

"Nothing?" My voice came out rough.

"Nothing." The corner of her mouth tipped up, shaky and brave.

"I walked you through that tent knowing that." I let my gaze go down her, and I took my time about it. Soft and full everywhere a man could want. Hips that flared wide from a waist built for my hands. Heavy breasts with the firelight laying gold along their undersides and her nipples already drawn tight, thighs I wanted around my ears, my waist, everywhere. A flush was spreading down her throat and across her chest, and she stood there letting me look with her spine straight and her chin up while a tremor ran through all that softness. She was as brave as anyone I'd ever watched walk into smoke, and the want that went through me wasn't polite. My hands flexed at my sides to keep from grabbing.

"Look at you," I said, and it came out gravel-low, half a growl. "I don't know what I did to deserve this, and I don't care. Come here before I lose my manners."

She came, and my manners didn't survive the first touch. I kissed her the way I'd wanted to all night, deep and rough, my fist in her hair and her mouth punch-sweet and opening under mine with a moan I swallowed whole. The woman in my arms kissed me back like she was starving and trying to hide it, and I quit hiding mine. Her nails dragged down my chest and went for the hem of my henley, and I let her drag it over my head, and then her palms were on my bare skin, sliding down my stomach, greedy and unpracticed at being greedy. My muscles jumped everywhere she touched.

I got my hands under her thighs and lifted her. God, the feel of her. Solid and warm and real, an armful, pressed against me from chest to hip and heavier than she looked and exactly right, her legs locking around my waist.

"You can't just—I'm not exactly light," she gasped against my jaw.

"Sweetheart, I carry men out of burning buildings." I squeezed the backs of her thighs, felt the flesh give under my fingers, felt her shudder at being gripped like that. "You're the first thing I've picked up in years that I wanted to keep carrying. Hold on."

I walked us to the couch and laid her out across the cushions, and I made myself slow down. I was one thin thread from rushing her, and she deserved every inch, in order. I took her wrists, one at a time, and set them on the wooden armrest above her head.

"Hold this. Both hands. You don't let go until I tell you."

"Yes." Her fingers closed around the wood, and her breasts lifted with the stretch of her arms, and the sight of her laid out like that, hands exactly where I'd put them, had me gritting my teeth.

I started at her throat, where her pulse was racing against my mouth. Then her breasts, full in my hands, overflowing them, and I worked her nipples with my tongue and my teeth, soft, then less soft, until she was twisting under me and making a high, startled sound, like she hadn't expected it to feel that good. I stayed until I'd learned the exact weight of them and the way she arched when I sucked hard. Then I went down the give of her belly with my hands spanning her hips, squeezing, and she was soft skin over solid muscle everywhere, a body that worked for a living and had never once been worshipped for it. I was going to fix that if it took until sunrise.

"Every damn meeting," I said against her hip bone, and then I stopped. For half a second I saw Molly across the council table with her pen between her teeth, and I went cold and a little sick. It felt like dragging a friend into a stranger's bed, and I hated myself for it. Two years without anyone, and now I was thinking about her in the middle of this. Fucking hell. I shoved the picture down hard, because Molly deserved better than to be a fantasy while my mouth was on another woman's skin, and I put the words somewhere they belonged. "God, these hips. I could stay right here all night."

I settled between her thighs and pushed them wide with both palms, feeling them tremble, feeling the heat of her against my mouth before I ever touched her. I looked up the fire-lit length of her, her chest heaving, the mask tilted down to watch me.

"Ask me," I said. "I want the words."

"Please." No hesitation, no games left in her. "Please, your mouth. I need your mouth on me."

"Where?"

"Between my legs. On my—" She swallowed. "On my pussy. Please."

"Good girl."

I gave her what she'd asked for and then past it, and I wasn't gentle, because gentle wasn't what was in me. I spread her open with my thumbs and looked first, pink and glistening and swollen with wanting me, and then I licked into her, long and deep and greedy. She tasted sweet and salt, and I told her so against her skin, and I told her I could do this all night. Her hips were already grinding up against my tongue, and when she bucked I pinned her to the cushion with my forearm and held her open and took her apart, working the flat of my tongue over her clit in slow, hard circles. Her thighs clamped against my ears, trembling. When I sucked her clit between my lips and slid two fingers into her, she gripped me knuckle-deep with every pulse, so tight and so wet there was no resistance at all, and I curled them up toward her belly and found the spot that made her whole body lock.

"There," she said. "Oh God, there, don't⁠—"