Page 27

I was enjoying cotton candy from the rodeo while also dancing on clouds. I could not let him, or this moment, go. I was going to squeeze out every second of it. I felt him grin when I sniffed at his chest, breathing him in.

He needed no instruction from me on how to get to the hot spring further into the property. I did not travel alone there because of the wildlife. Bison. Bears. Mountain lions. Coyotes. Moose. Wolves. Rattlesnakes. Nothing I preferred to deal with on my own.

I was good with a gun, but I would rather defend myself against a man than a wild animal with it. This was their land, and I was just trespassing on it. I was thankful we made it to the hill without incident. It was tucked away in a secluded spot.

Mariano had my bag slung over one shoulder, and he adjusted it and me before he started the climb up.

From so many visitors climbing to get to the warm pool, rugged steps had been carved out.

I wiggled in his arms, telling him I could walk it, but he refused to let me.

He said he enjoyed carrying me. I settled, not worried about him hauling me up.

He was strong and able. He did not even break a sweat by the time we reached the top, where he set me down on my feet.

I wasted no time removing the sweater, setting it on top of my bag. He removed his sweatpants, leaving his swim trunks on this time. He held my hand as I stepped directly into this warm abyss. I moaned a little at the feel of it, and he stilled, his muscles straining against his skin.

Something else strained against his pants. The hammer that had whacked me in the head.

I averted my eyes, swimming around nature’s warm tub. He stepped in, submerging himself up to mid chest, coming toward me.

It was the most natural thing. How he reached for me, and how I went into his arms. Only a couple of days before, I would have turned and left the creek.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, and we stared at each other as the sun set and the stars came out above our heads. Even though the weather was warm, a light misting of steam rose around us.

“Will you sing me the song you sang at the auction?” I whispered.

He cleared his throat. Sang to me. His voice was low, raspy, and so real. And I almost moaned. I could orgasm just listening to him talk. Singing brought me to another level. I was that sensitive to him.

After the first song, he started to hum the song I had sang to him on the way to the auction, changing “baby” to “my Annie”. When he sang about living to love and dying to keep, he held me so tightly, I felt as if I could not breathe.

My breaths were escaping in cool pants, and he seemed to be basking in them, my heart pressed against his.

He swam us to the side of the spring, resting his back against the bank, while my back rested against him. I lifted each leg out of the water, watching while the clean water ran down them. He tucked his face in the crook of my neck, and I sighed when his cool breath washed over my pulse.

I did not consciously register how it happened, but one moment he was skimming my skin with his warm, calloused fingertips, and the next, I was turned in his arms, my nipples pressed against his chest. My mouth was pressed against his, and I was making noises that rivaled the ones wild animals made in the woods at night.

The kiss from the auction seemed to pick up where it had left off.

Nothing had cooled.

If anything, it seemed as if there was a reserve of heat rushing through our veins.

His mouth was a magnet to mine; my mouth was the home to his. We were feeding each other all we had.

We could not stop.

Our tongues were rolling. Our hands exploring. When he traced the shape of my breast, his fingertip barely grazing my nipple, my heart felt like it had stopped and restarted in the span of a heartbeat. My breath shuddered out. I moaned. Ground myself against his knee, searching for friction.

My body went with what felt natural. What it needed to be satisfied. I had never felt something so delicious before. I had never tasted anything as wonderful as him.

He seemed to be starving. I was making noises in my throat that he seemed to devour. He was wild. Feral.

He stuck my chin up, his mouth finding the rapid pulse in my neck, and he growled over it. “ Mine ,” he rasped out.

I wanted to respond yours , but my breaths were coming out too fast to catch. I could not manage anything but breathing and moaning. My nails were sinking into his wide shoulders.

“That’s it, Annie,” he barely got out. “You’ve already marked me below skin; now you mark my skin for the world to see.”

I scratched him, and he groaned. I used my other hand to drop below the water, and, emboldened by what we were doing, I gripped his hard cock. He closed his eyes, groaning louder this time, pushing into my touch. He was long and thick and so perfect.

He positioned me with my legs around his waist. “Fucking perfect,” he breathed against my mouth. He tasted of salt from our sweat and mint from the leaf he had at lunch in the sweet tea.

In a rush, he lifted me from the springs, steam wafting from my body.

My culo was partly on the bank, partly pointed toward the water.

He ripped the thin gold bikini bottom from my bottom.

He directed my legs toward his shoulders, and once over them, he opened me up to him.

I was almost sliding off the side, so full of want, I was grinding against the ground. Incoherent with desire.

He was my central point—all else had faded.

“Still,” he said in Italian.

“I do not think I can,” I said, speaking some language. Could have been my first, second, or third.

“Still,” he said again, this time more forcefully.

My eyes slowly roved to his, and his met mine.

I moaned, licking my lips. Trying to be in the moment.

To absorb it. However, I could not be stopped.

I needed this from him. He seemed to read the signs from my body, and when his head came in between my legs and he started to kiss me there, using his tongue…

My eyes rolled, and my head felt dizzy.

Perhaps I was having an out-of-body experience, though I was so inside of myself, every nerve felt as if it was exposed to him. I do not know how long I lasted, but it was not long.

Or perhaps it was.

Time did not exist when we were this way.

His tongue was the ruler of my body, and it went to him in a rush I could not control.

My skin, my nerves, were as virginal as I was.

I released a cry that seemed to be as pent up as my first orgasm had been.

My entire body shuddered and shook around his face.

It was buried deep between my trembling thighs.

His eyes slowly came to mine, and he took a step back, licking his lips. I could not tell if it was sweat or me glistening over his mouth. I realized in that moment what a hunter Mariano Fausti was. I, his long-awaited dinner.

“You are all meals,” he said, seeming to read my mind.

Or perhaps I had whispered it. The word for hunter in Italian was cacciatore . Perhaps, since my mind was still spinning, my body along with it, I had confused the word for Casanova.

“You are so beautiful, Sistine. So beautiful to me .” He hit his chest. “ Mine .”

I sat up some, reaching for him, and his mouth came straight to mine. What he did to my body did not feel as if it were enough. I needed more.

I wondered if what existed between us could ever fade. It did not feel as if it had an end. Only endless space that would continue to stretch and grow over time.

The thought scared me.

The alien feelings terrified me.

He had not touched me beyond what we had done, but just the thought of him making love to me, then becoming separate from me, did things to my body that did not feel normal. I began to shake.

I never imagined this would ever exist for me.

Especially not with a Fausti.

Fausti.

We were going to become a war between his family and mine.

“Tell me,” he said in Italian.

He wanted me to tell him what was on my mind. I swallowed hard, playing with the ends of his hair. He shivered, then leaned in, placing a kiss between my breasts.

“Make love to me,” I breathed out. I translated to Italian.

His passionate eyes came to mine, lowered almost to closed.

I barely nodded, gaining the courage to add to the plea. “Make love to me, Mariano. Perhaps…” I swallowed hard “…we will get it out of our systems and life will go on, better for everyone.”

His eyes stilled on mine, and in that second, the hot passion was run out by frigid intensity.

He was pissed, but the feeling of it came out as cold as a Wyoming wind in winter.

I shivered, and instinctually, I went to pull close to him.

He removed my hands from around his neck and hopped out of the warm pool as if he was a monster emerging from it.

His eyes.

Those light eyes were deceiving.

His temper lived in the depths. Perhaps some would call it a monster.

To add to the imagery, smoke drifted from his skin before it faded into the night, a cold ghost from yesteryear detaching itself from him.

Suddenly chilled to the bone, I covered my breasts, looking everywhere but at him. After a minute, I chanced a look. He was holding out his sweater for me. I took it, slipping it over my body, and although it landed at my thighs and swallowed my hands, I was still cold.

It was not the weather.

It was him.

I understood in that moment what Hannah had meant.

Her warmth had come from her husband, and after he left her, he took the warm winds with him.

She was perpetually stuck in winter without his love to warm her.

Only the tapestry of their life together kept her here—perhaps her breaths continued to come for her daughter of the heart, her grandchildren.