Page 37 of Into the Mountains (Blue Grove Mountain #3)

“Grab the oar and steer, honey,” I say sweetly. The endearment affects him the same way it does me if not more. The path nears and the outside world begins to quiet until we finally pass the opening of a narrower stretch of river and it feels like there’s not a soul besides us in the water.

For a moment, we stare at each other and take in the silence, and the unspoken agreement to say nothing hangs between us.

The path is straight for now but up ahead is a small turn he will have to navigate through.

“Pay attention to the road,” I joke as I pull my hair back and tie it in a ponytail, the life vest making my movements more clumsy than usual.

Elias ignores me and keeps his eyes fully on me.

“You’re going to get us stranded.”

“I think I’d be okay with that,” he says softly. I might actually agree with him. Make it a never-ending camping trip and we can spend our days with orgasms and laughter without worrying about anything outside of that little bubble.

My hands move to untie his swim trunks and tug them down just enough to expose him. I’ll have to hold the elastic with one hand to keep him exposed, but I don’t care. I just want to see him come undone, like he made me when he got me off in the woods.

“You actually do have to steer, Eli.”

“I’d much rather watch you suck my cock, but alright. I make no promises we don’t end up completely turned around though.”

There’s already a small drop of moisture at his tip, shining in the rays of sunlight peeking through the trees. I bend down and lick it off, and Elias doesn’t bother to hold back his moan.

Since I don’t have that much time, I waste none of it on the teasing I would usually do to draw out the pleasure. Wrapping my other hand around the base of him, I place him in my mouth and suck. Up and down. Up and down, moving my hand along with it. He pulses and grows harder in my mouth.

“I don’t think you’ll have a problem getting me off quickly.

” I look up at him and see the struggle to focus on steering.

I also see the muscles under his skin moving back and forth as he moves the oar into the water.

He meets my eyes for a second and I take that moment to take as much of him as I can until he hits the back of my throat.

Keeping his eyes on mine, his breathing is shallow and I can tell he’s already close.

He takes one hand off the oar and places it behind my head, grabbing my hair and pulling me to him.

On his knees now, he’s thrusting into me, oar abandoned.

I take him deeper and his body tenses, the orgasm coursing through him.

The taste of him is salty as it hits the back of my throat and I swallow.

I straighten up to my knees and look over my shoulder to see we are just at the end of the narrow patch, a few yards away from the next wider spot in the river.

Elias grabs my waist and pulls me to him.

His body is warm and I don’t second guess anything, letting my arms wrap around him, my cheek on his chest. The beat of his heart pulses against my skin and I feel his lips press against the top of my head.

“No, not that way!” Avery’s voice echoes through the woods along with Jacob’s laugh.

“You’re going to get us stuck here.”

“No, you are if you don’t steer to your other left, Jacob.”

Elias embraces me tighter before he lets go, pulling back a few inches. “We better get going before they catch up, yeah?”

I nod and get back into my spot as he settles back into his, not before he steals a kiss from me though as we pass each other.

It’s quick, but it’s not just a peck on the lips.

He grabs under my chin and opens my lips with his tongue, his other hand coming around to my ass.

The temptation is too much and he gives it a smack before returning to his seat.

Once we are out of the path, we row together and put a few more yards between us and the two that caught up.

I wonder how far back Hudson and Sky are or if they even managed to get on the water.

Elias may have gotten off, but I didn’t and all I can do is watch him move the oar from one side to the other, his muscles moving against his skin.

Damn, if I wasn’t turned on before, I definitely am now.

He must feel my stare on him. Taking a break from rowing for a second, he looks back to me. “You okay back there?”

“Yep.”

“You sure?”

“Just…watching you,” I admit.

“Like what you see?” He smirks over his shoulder. It should be illegal the way his damp hair shimmers in the sunlight.

“Not in the slightest.” I turn my head toward the water and make a weak attempt to focus on my task with the oar. Half steering, half rowing. The water flows against it as I pull, creating small waves to merge with the current.

After a few more minutes, an embankment that comes into view with other kayaks and canoes pulled to shore. I turn around and see only open water. The others must be further behind than I thought.

“Well, we are the clear winners.”

“As if there was any doubt.” He flashes me a sideways grin over his shoulder and if I could melt right now I would. Call me the Wicked Witch of the West and you could defeat me with that grin.

A few feet away from where we can get out, I see movement from the corner of my eye.

From the way Elias screeches, he must have seen it too.

He scrambles away from the water snake slithering on its way and loses his balance.

All I can do is watch as he panics over a harmless creature and subsequently tips himself right into the river.

Now my laughter is wholly because of him. He’s scrambling in the water, trying to swim back to the canoe to get back in, but almost tips me in with him. Taking mercy on him, I hop out and help him push it to an empty spot next to the others.

We manage to get the canoe pushed securely onto the muddy shore and I collapse in a drier spot a few feet away.

I wish I could say I held back the laughter bubbling in my chest, but I let it boil over and simmer in the air until he walks over.

Dust clouds around him as he sits next to me, not even an inch of space between us.

“I can’t believe you’re laughing at me right now.” He tries to be serious, but a smile cracks through his facade. “After the heroic act I performed when it came to your fear of birds, you laugh at me for having a very rational fear of snakes?”

“Hey, my fear of birds is rational. And that snake was harmless.” I point over to it, now floating near the canoe. “Because it’s a stick.”

“Well, I didn’t know that! I don’t know different types of snakes, either. When I see one, I stick to my number one rule.”

“And what’s that?”

“Run the other way. Or in this case, swim.” We descend into laughter again.

“Alright, alright. So birds and snakes can’t be future pets, got it,” I say before I have a chance to think about my words.

“Definitely not,” he agrees as we both ignore the implication that we have some sort of future together.

My ears perk at the birds chirping in the air, which would usually cause me to tense, but they’re in the trees.

I think I’m safe. Plus, I have an oar. Suddenly, I picture us being swarmed by birds with nothing to defend ourselves but two oars, and we both swing them back and forth at the demons trying to peck us to death.

“What could you possibly be laughing at now?”

“You don’t want to know.” My mom always talked about how active my imagination was.

She’d constantly be amazed about the stories I managed to create when we were playing pretend.

I don’t think she ever realized just now vividly my mind actually worked.

And still does. I can create the scenes in my head and picture them as if I were in a theater watching them on a screen in front of me.

“I actually do want to know,” he insists.

The embarrassment starts in my ears and spreads its way down my neck and into my chest. Sometimes I can’t really help the images that I picture.

Most of the time, I run with them, and other times I let them pass and move on to focus on a task I need to check off my to-do list. This one seems so outlandish though, the idea of speaking it out loud is actually mortifying.

“I physically don’t think I can get the words out.”

“Why not?” Bless him, he sounds so genuine. Like he really does want to know.

“It’s going to sound insane and then you’re going to look at me like I’m crazy.”

“What if I promise to not do that?”

“You’ll end up breaking it.” The hurt in his face when he turns his face toward mine strikes me in the chest like an arrow to the heart.

I didn’t think about my words before I said them and I wish I could pull them back in, tuck them away in the file cabinet of things that shouldn’t be spoken. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay. For what it’s worth, I do want to know, even if it’s embarrassing and I really do promise I won’t give you shit for it.”

“Alright, fine. But keep in mind my imagination is weird and I’ve always been the weird girl.”

He doesn’t say anything, just waits patiently. I explain to him the bird noises I heard and described where my thoughts went from there. I can tell he’s trying to stifle some laughter, but there’s no way he’s not going to cave.

“That’s uh….” He covers his mouth with his fist, biting his knuckles to keep from laughing.

“Ridiculous?”

“A little ridiculous, yeah.” Our laughter mixes together and tangles in the air, a web of combined bliss.

“That’s just how my mind works.”