Page 14 of Autumn With The Grumpy Mountain Man

I hadn’t heard him follow me.

“Here.” He took the blanket and carried it back to the boy’s mother, and then he came back. He leaned against the side of the truck next to me with his hands in his jacket pockets.

“You came,” I said.

“I figured they’d need more seating. Might as well get some extra use out of these bales.”

“Shepherd.”

He looked down at me, and my heart stopped.

“You came because I asked you to,” I said.

He was quiet for a long moment. I could hear the fire crackling across the field and somebody laughing.

“Yeah,” he said.

I put my hand on his chest. I felt him go still under my palm. Then I went up on my toes and kissed him.

For one second he didn’t move. Every muscle in his chest was locked tight under my hand. His mouth was warm and completely still against mine.

I started to pull away.

He made a low sound in his throat, and his hands came out of his pockets.

One of them slid into my hair and closed around the back of my head. He tilted my face up and opened his mouth over mine, hot and deep. I grabbed the front of his jacket with both fists. He turned us without breaking the kiss. The cold metal of the truck door pressed against my back, and the whole hard length of him pressed against my front.

He tasted like cider and woodsmoke. He kissed me slowly at first, dragging his lower lip over mine. Then his fingers tightened in my hair, and it wasn’t slow anymore.

A sound came out of me, soft and needy. He swallowed it.

His other hand found my waist. His fingers slipped under the hem of my sweater and touched bare skin, rough and warm, and I gasped into his mouth. He spread his palm flat across the small of my back and pulled me in until there was no space left between us.

He was hard against my stomach. I felt it and pressed closer, and his breath shuddered out against my lips.

“Hazel.” My name came out of him rough, almost a growl.

He gripped my hips and lifted me. Two steps, and he set me down on the tailgate. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him in, and he groaned and put his mouth on my neck, right under my jaw. He kissed his way down until my sweater collar stopped him. His thumbs stroked slowly up my ribs, one rib at a time, until they brushed the lace edge of my bra.

I arched into his hands. I wanted him to keep going so badly that I was trembling.

He stopped.

He pressed his forehead against mine. His chest was heaving. He pulled his hands out from under my sweater and gripped the edge of the tailgate on either side of me, hard enough that I felt the truck shift.

“We can’t,” he said.

“We can.” My voice shook. “We really, really can.”

“You’re my intern.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

He closed his eyes. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you,” he said, quieter.

I knew what he meant. The internship, my portfolio, my last semester, and everything I’d come here to prove. He thought this would get in the way of all of it.

“That’s my choice to make,” I whispered.