Page 44 of Snowed In with Benefits

A slow, dimpled grin spreads across his face. Not his charming one, a different one. Something more authentic, something warm and uniquely Hunter.

“I can work with that,” he says.

He closes the distance between us. It’s not hard, there wasn’t much distance left. His lips touch mine slowly, almost tentatively, then more firmly. He’s kissing me deliberately, moving my face gently with his hands, lacing my hair between his fingers, tasting me.

I open my mouth to him, closing my eyes. The sensations of his touch wash over me, filling me with a heat that’s somehow comfortable. I want more. God, I want more. I want… I’m not supposed to want this.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” I mutter against his mouth.

He pulls back and grins at me, that dimpled grin that lights up every room it’s in.

“Forget should,” he says. “Do you want to?”

My breath catches in my throat. I lick my lips, tasting him on them. Meeting his warm, hazel green eyes, I nod.

“Good,” he breathes. “Because I do too.” He brushes the hair back from my face. “You’re so fucking gorgeous, you know that?”

A blush rises on my cheeks and he kisses them, one after the other.

“I want you.” His voice is spiced and just a little hoarse, washing warmth over me, through my skin, down my spine, pooling in my belly. “It doesn’t have to be serious,” he whispers.

I pull back, searching his face, and he lets me.

“It doesn’t?”

He shrugs. “I’m not looking for a relationship or anything. I enjoy living the hermit life with my brothers.” He brings my hand to his lips, his breath hot on my fingertips. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun. And this… this would be very fun.”

Something loosens in my chest. Relief, warm and immediate, flooding through me like a held breath finally released. No expectations. No five-year plan. No conversations about where this is going because it isn’t going anywhere. After a lifetime of being boxed into someone else’s future, the freedom of that is almost dizzying.

But underneath the relief, something else. A tiny sting I don’t want to look at. Not hurt, exactly. More like… a question I’m not ready to ask. I push it down. Not now. Not tonight.

I notice the way he said “my brothers.” Not roommates, not friends. Brothers. And the hermit life—chosen isolation, deliberate distance from the world. There’s a story there, something he’s not offering and I’m not asking for. But I file it away, the shape of the gap, the outline of whatever he’s protecting.

His words light me up from the inside. I kiss him again, releasing him when I’m breathless. “A one-time thing,” I breathe. “Just to get it out of our systems.”

“Just to get it out of our systems,” he agrees. “Just once. Just tonight.”

Just tonight. We both say it like we mean it. And I do mean it. I absolutely mean it. This is a one-time thing with a beautiful stranger in a cabin in the mountains and tomorrow I’ll go back to my disaster of a life and figure out who I am without Preston and this will be a memory. A really, really good memory. That’s all.

His hands slip under Emmett’s shirt and run up my body, lifting the fabric away. I’m in my panties in the low light, self-conscious, half-covering myself. He’s already hard under his sweats and he isn’t shy about showing it. He’s looking at me like I’m the only important thing in the world, and the heat from his eyes relaxes me. I let him take my panties off, kissing him as I slide out of them.

His mouth travels, down my neck, over my breasts, to my belly, and his hands follow. I know where he’s going and I tense up. I can’t help it. I want him—I want this—but there’s a knot of anxiety in my gut that I can’t shake.

It’s not about Hunter. It’s about every time before Hunter. Preston sighing through his nose after two minutes, pulling back, wiping his mouth. “I don’t think this is working for you, babe.” Like it was a diagnosis. Like my body was a problem he’d tried to solve and couldn’t. The time before Preston—Jake, junior year—who didn’t even pretend to try, who told me most girls can’t anyway, like that was supposed to make me feel better. And the quiet, creeping shame that settled in after each time, the conclusion I drew without anyone having to say it out loud: something about me is broken in this specific way, and the kind thing to do is stop making people try.

He goes lower. He’s kissing me now, my clit, my vulva, the insides of my thighs. It’s hot. I need to relax. I take a breath and close my eyes, deliberately dropping my shoulders, letting my head fall back. I’m taking deep breaths, trying to just focus on how good it feels and nothing else.

Then he stops. I open my eyes and look down at him. There’s a soft wrinkle of concern on his beautiful face.

“What’s up?” he asks.

I press my thighs together, cringing at myself. “I’m sorry. I should have said something earlier.”

He’s stroking my thigh slowly. Not seductively, but comfortingly.

“It’s okay. Tell me now.” He gives me an encouraging little half smile.

I could kiss him right now. Pull him up to me, wrap my legs around him, skip this whole conversation. I’ve done it before. It’s easier. “Let’s just have sex” is a sentence I’ve said more times than I want to admit, a redirect so smooth it never even registers as avoidance. But something about the way he stopped—not annoyed, not impatient, not performing patience while clearly wanting to move on—makes me want to try something I almost never try.