5. Reese

CHAPTER 5

Reese

A s soon as the door closes behind her, she starts to strip out of her coat and outer wear and as every curve is revealed, I can feel my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, my dick surging in my pants like it’s raring to go and my whole body flooding with want.

I can’t believe first shot and I’ve got the woman that I know is meant to be mine. She pulls the hat off her head and her soft, light brown curls fall down her back, a little wet and tangled but still so damn pretty that my fingers tingle with the need to touch the silky length. And when she looks up at me? Her eyes are the softest, smokiest gray. Like the color of cooled ash after a barbecue.

I snort to myself. A poet I am not. But damn she’s beautiful! Her cheeks are pale but with a delicate pink tinge to them when she glances down and wrings her hat in her hands. There are freckles across the landscape of her cheeks and dainty little nose and I want to trace them with my lips, following them right down to the full, pouty pink lips that beg for a man’s touch. My touch. Not just any man’s.

Because if I catch another man making eyes at my girl I’m gonna hurt a fucker bad. Real bad.

“Go ahead and get comfortable.” Take off all your clothes and curl up in my lap, maybe.

I shake my head, trying to clear the fog of watching her figure revealed out of my head. I can’t say stuff like that or she’s gonna run screaming back out into the night.

I turn around and head for the door. “Go take a shower,” I say roughly. “I’m gonna see if I’ve got enough wood for the fire on the porch. I may be gone awhile.”

Like long enough for my fucking dick to stop slamming into my zipper like a dog lunging for a steak.

Once again, the picture’s I’m bringing up in my head are not very damn romantic. Not that surprising. I’m a big, rough guy. Not a romantic. I don’t know a damn thing about being soft and sweet for a vulnerable, pretty little thing. I don’t want to hurt her. It would kill me.

I nod my head at her and then open the door, stepping out into the swirling, whirling world of white. It sucks the breath right out of my lungs.

Gasping for breath, I stomp up to the covered wood on the porch, noting that I could use a little extra but for now I’ve got plenty. I turn my face back to the cabin and unable to resist, I make my way back to the window of the cabin. Looking through, she’s still staring there, her shoulders slumped. Basically every piece of her is limp and dejected-looking.

What did I do? Have I already broken her? I mean, what the hell is wrong with me? The woman just got here and I’ve already broken her spirit.

Or at least it looks that way.

But then she seems to shake herself out of whatever spell she’s under and she finishes pulling her wet outerwear off. Glancing around, she spies my rudimentary hooks on the wall and moves towards them. She hangs up her coat and hat and gloves and I grin when she almost has to jump up until she spots a stepstool and drags it over. She’s a tiny little woman. My eyes drag down her strong back and shoulders and down to her lush ass.

My dick knocks at my zipper again. She’s so lovely that it’s hard to look away from her. And then add in the buxom curves that she’s rockin’ and it’s a wonder that I can even walk with how hard I fucking am!

She finally wanders off and I’m assuming that she found the bathroom because after she disappears down the hallway, she doesn’t immediately come back out.

I push my way through the door again and stand by it for a moment, surprised how different my cabin already feels. It’s like she’s not just lit up my body and soul, she’s lit up my whole cabin. It almost feels like a real holiday in here.

It’s been a long time since I celebrated Christmas. A long time since I’ve even been interested in celebrating.

But for her…I’d do a helluva lot for her. I will do a helluva lot for her. She looks like a woman that likes traditions. Likes to be treated like a queen and receive gifts and love.

I shake myself. How do you love a woman you just met? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But as soon as I saw her, I knew. I knew that she was going to be the most important thing to me. In my world.

Not even Cord really knows who I am. I don’t advertise it. Mainly because I’ve had so much trouble for such a long time.

I’m an author. Or I was an author. Until the absolute shit-show that was the release of my first book. A thriller romance that took off even before it was officially out. The damn thing went viral as soon as it was sent to reviewers.

And then it all went to hell in a hand basket and I found myself being stalked by crazy-ass women everywhere I went that thought I was just too damn sexy for words. Because I wrote a book.

And once it came out, you couldn’t put that shit back in the bottle. I was a catch. Rich beyond my imaginings. It was all too much. I didn’t want the damn fame or the money. I just loved to write.

I grew up in a household with very little money. We didn’t have extras. What we had stretched to food and bills. That was it. So I got hand-me-downs from garage sales and I was happy with it. Because I couldn’t not be.

What was I going to tell my poor mom? That I wanted new? My sister didn’t get new.

My mother worked her ass off to get us a clean, relatively safe home and neighborhood.

But it broke her when my sister hit her eighteenth birthday and took off running. To marry some guy. She died from pneumonia the next year at Christmas, broken-hearted. We never heard from Bethany again.

I shake myself out of my stupor. It doesn’t matter anymore. Bethany’s probably dead and buried somewhere and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

But I have a chance at happiness right here, right now. I just have to convince this woman that although we just met…there’s something here. Something worth staying to find out what it is. Something real and lasting and perfect.

Just like she is.