Page 5 of Pucked Mountain Man (Cold Mountain Nights #6)

FIVE

STEVIE

The cabin is quiet in that way storms create—like the world is under a blanket.

After tidying up the kitchen, we said goodnight and went our separate ways. To separate rooms. Separate beds. Just like responsible adults.

I last ten minutes.

Because there’s light under the crack of the den door, blue and unkind, and a sound I recognize even before I see the remote in his hand: the soft click-drag of someone scrubbing through a video, then pausing at the same second over and over like repetition can change the ending.

I hover in the doorway. The TV glow cuts his jaw into planes and shadow, his hoodie pushed to his forearms. On screen, a rink—bright, pitiless—his number streaking across the blue line. A tangle of bodies. A split-second rut. A hit that changes everything.

“Grady.” My voice is quiet. The fire throws a last handful of sparks in the hearth, low and red.

He doesn’t look at me. He rewinds. Plays it again. I walk closer and ease onto the arm of the sofa, careful. He keeps his eyes on the screen like it owes him something.

“You don’t have to keep watching it,” I say.

He swallows. The tendons in his neck flex. “I need to know if it was my fault,” he says, voice scraped raw. “If I was a step too slow.”

“You didn’t lose,” I tell him. “You got hurt.”

“Same thing,” he says, bitter. Then, smaller: “Feels like the same thing.”

I pick up the remote, thumb the volume down until the arena sound is a memory. The fire settles. Wind noses the window. “You’re still here,” I say. “You’re still you.”

He huffs something that isn’t quite a laugh and rubs a hand over his face. “Some days I’m not sure who that is.”

“Then let’s learn him,” I say, and when he looks at me—really looks—something in my chest tugs loose.

We sit with it, the not-talking and the talking underneath. Finally he exhales and drops the remote on the cushion between us like surrender. The screen times out into the TV’s moody saver: stars sliding across a black field. It paints him softer. It paints me brave.

“Come here,” I say, and scoot down to the couch. He hesitates—old habit, new fear—and then he comes, careful with the knee, settling back so I can tuck myself against him. My hand finds the muscle above the brace and I squeeze, grounding. “How bad?”

“Not bad,” he says. “Just… talks.”

“Then listen,” I say, and slide my palm up to the quad, thumb pressing gently where the PT videos said to. “Bend?”

He moves slow, obedient. The joint creaks in protest, then eases. He groans—half pain, half something else—and my heart lurches.

“Again,” I say softly. “Don’t chase it. Just breathe.”

He does. In. Out. My breath syncs without asking. The fire lists, gives us a little more orange. The storm hushes the rest of the world and leaves us with the sound of his lungs and my pulse.

He tips his head, studying me. “You always like this?”

“Bossy?” I ask.

“Gentle,” he says, and something inside me blooms.

“Only for patients who follow instructions,” I say, and he laughs, the low rumble of it sinking straight into my bones.

The stretch becomes a touch becomes something that hums under my skin. He turns his face toward mine. I don’t know who moves first—maybe both of us—but the kiss is there before I think about it, and then it’s all I can think about.

This one isn’t tentative. He’s hungry and careful at once, like I’m breakable and he already cares that I don’t break.

I open for him. He makes a sound I want to learn by heart.

When he tries to coax me back into the sofa cushions, to cover me like he’s done that a thousand times, his knee seizes and he sucks in a breath, sharp.

I catch his cheeks in my hands, hold him there. “Hey. Look at me.”

He does. The frustration in his eyes is a storm front. “I’m fine?—”

“You don’t have to prove anything,” I say, firm, tender. “Not my brother’s way. Not your team’s way. Not the old way.” I slide my thumb across his lower lip, a promise. “Let me take care of you.”

His jaw works. I see the fight and the want. He nods once.

I guide him back against the corner of the couch, where the arm meets the cushions. “Good,” I whisper. “Now sit.”

He obeys, breath hitching. I climb into his lap, straddling his thighs, careful with his leg position, immediately, instinctively finding the angle that won’t make him pay for this later. His hands hover at my hips like he doesn’t trust himself with gravity.

“Stevie,” he says, awed and rough. “You’ll ruin me, Rockstar.”

“Maybe I’ll fix you instead,” I murmur, and feel the tremor that goes through him like a yes.

I kiss him again. It’s slower now, deeper.

His hands settle—finally—spanning my waist. He lets me set the rhythm and the pace; he lets me lead.

When I rock forward, testing the give of the couch and the line of his body, he exhales like prayer.

I feel, more than hear, the moment he lets go of the need to be the one holding the house up. He lets me.

“You already have,” he says into my mouth, voice low, reverent. “More than you’ll ever know.”

Heat pools low and bright. I take his wrists and lay his palms flat against my ribcage under my shirt. His fingers are warm and callused and reverent in a way that makes my throat tight.

He goes very still. “Stevie.”

“It’s okay,” I whisper, and peel my shirt over my head, the fire gilding everything in copper. The storm mutters at the windows and I forget there’s a world beyond them.

His gaze drops. He sees it—the teeny, tiny notes, black ink tucked just under my left ribs, right where the breath is shallow when I’m nervous. The opening of “Landslide.” The first song I ever learned all the way through. The first song Mom taught me to sing like a lullaby and a dare.

He touches the ink with his thumb, careful, tracing the curve of the notes like they’re a coastline. Something like wonder crosses his face. “Rockstar,” he says softly. “It suits you.”

“My brother doesn’t know where it is,” I confess, a small smile tugging. “He’d combust.”

Grady huffs, eyes never leaving the tattoo. “I’m very glad I know.” He bends, kisses the ink like a promise, and I shiver so hard I feel it in my knees.

“It’s ‘Landslide,’” I tell him, voice unsteady. “The start. So I don’t forget to begin.”

He looks up, and I’m not ready for what’s in his eyes: pride, yes, and heat, yes—but something steadier too. “You don’t need a reminder,” he says. “You were born in the middle of it.”

I laugh for one bright second and then forget how because his mouth is on my skin again, and his hands are learning me, and the fire is a drum in my ears.

I find the hem of his hoodie, tug. He lets me pull it off, breathless, tattoos catching light—the cross near his heart, the script he pretends he doesn’t regret, the spread of wings across his back I want to trace like a prayer.

I do: I lay my palms on his shoulders and slide them down, slow, feeling the strength there and the surrender.

He shivers, surprised, when I kiss along the edge of the cross, and it undoes me, how tender he is when no one’s looking.

The couch creaks when I move. His leg twinges once and I shift, immediately, instinctively, guiding his thigh where it needs to be, bracing with my calves. He groans—this time it’s not pain—and my name is a grit-edged vow.

“I’ve got you,” I whisper. “I’ve got you.”

“Yeah,” he says, and it’s a sound I want to keep.

He slides his fingers to the apex of my thighs. He groans. “You’re so wet.”

“I’ve been wet for days.”

“Thinking about me?” He finds my clit.

Nodding, I gasp as he applies pressure.

“Is this what you want?” He teases it. Strokes it. Makes me wild with need.

My hips move back against him, and I croon with my growing need.

“You’re so fucking sexy.” He nuzzles my neck. “I want…”

“What do you want?”

“I want to feel all of you.”

“I want that too.” Moving back, it’s my turn to slide my hand between his thighs.

His cock his long. Impossibly hard. And oh so thick. I press my free fist to my lips. God he’s going to feel so good.

I give him a squeeze and take delight in watching his eyes roll back.

Fumbling for a condom which—thank God, the cabin owner seems to have stashed everywhere—I slide it over his thick cock.

He grips my hips and lifts me up. Our gazes meet as I slide down onto him. Groaning as I stretch to meet his gaze.

What happens next is heat and rhythm and the kind of closeness that makes conversation unnecessary. I keep it gentle on his knee and greedy everywhere else, and he lets me set every rule, then breaks all of them with the way he says my name.

We collapse into each other and the couch, breathing like we just outran weather. The fire’s a bed of coals. The storm’s a lullaby. His hand is heavy and warm over my ribs, thumb idly stroking along the notes like he’s still reading them.

“Hey,” he says, low. “You okay?”

“Better than,” I say honestly, and then, because bravery is a muscle and mine needs work: “I want this to be more than just cabin weather, Grady.”

His chest rises under my palm. “I know.” Then, quieter: “I want that too.”

I could cry with the relief of it. Instead I let my fingers wander his chest ink, teasing. “I’m pretty sure this one’s misspelled.”

He groans, laughing. “Don’t ruin the mood, Rockstar.”

“Impossible,” I say, and tuck myself closer, listening to his heart even while mine climbs the walls of my throat.

He kisses my hairline, a soft, unguarded thing that makes me ache. “You make me forget it hurts,” he murmurs.

“You make me feel seen,” I confess, so quiet I barely hear it myself.

The wind keens once, distant, then settles back into its steady hush. We lie there, warm and bare and a little undone, and I try not to count the hours until roads clear and the world intrudes. I try not to tally all the ways I could lose this.

Am I enough for him beyond this cabin? The question flickers and fades with the embers. I press my palm over the tiny notes on my skin, feel his hand cover mine, and decide—for tonight—to begin.