Page 6 of The Mountain Man’s Retribution (Summer in the Pines #7)

Chapter Six

BODIE

I jerk off in the shower, feeling disgusted with myself. But I can’t remember the last time I stood in the same room as a naked woman. And no matter what Fawn thinks, she pleases me beyond measure.

My eyes close, thoughts dancing over her pale, dirt-streaked skin. Memories roving again over her generously curving tits with rose-tipped nipples, narrow waist, broad hips, and impossibly long, thick hair. And God, that gorgeous swatch of brown hair covering her pussy could be my undoing.

I long to clean her myself, let my soapy fingers slip and slide over her tempting curves and through her soft folds, preparing her for my mouth. Buried tongue-deep in her mound, I yearn to show her how things can be between a good man and his woman.

But wouldn’t that make me just like Big Man? Or even worse? For desire already grips me, wanting far more than a look.

This curvy, beautiful woman must go to town as soon as I’m finished with this shower.

No matter what she says. No matter how fearful she acts.

There’s no other way. I can’t have her undressing in front of me without warning, making me feel things buried in the deepest, darkest parts of me.

My home should be a sanctuary, not a place of excruciating, endless temptation.

I dress quickly, my mind made up. Glancing at the clock, I see that I’ve got two hours to get her to the sheriff’s department. Of course, I can also call the after-hours hotline. But this needs to happen in person.

I enter the living room, eyes scanning until I see the brunette with damp curling locks seated before the hearth. My heart stops in my chest, my need for her unraveling me from the inside out.

When she turns, her eyes wash over my frame hungrily, searing my naked torso and tight-fitting jeans, making no compunction of eyeing the ridge already growing behind the zipper.

My skin crawls at my need. What in the fuck is wrong with me? As much as I long to live in nature, removed from the world, have five years in seclusion turned me into another backwoods animal? No less driven by instinct than Big Man?

“Come on,” I order gruffly, straining into the T-shirt I carry in my hand as her eyes continue to devour me. “We’re going into town.”

“No.” Fawn gasps, face agitated, eyes dripping with fear. “Please, Bodie, no.”

I shrug, refusing to look at her.

“Please,” her chin and bottom lip tremble, her face fighting for control as she scooches around to face me from her seat on the carpet. “I will do anything you ask. I can be useful … a hard worker. But please don’t make me go.”

“Come on,” I repeat more firmly.

The woman sits back, face gripped by terror. Suddenly, a glint of anger overtakes her desperation. Like a lit fuse signaling a chain of events, it transforms her face. One spark ignites her resolve. “No, I won’t go.”

“Woman,” I growl, scrubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands. Frustration seizes me.

How do I make her understand? How do I make her see that town is her salvation?

Sitting ramrod straight, her face impassive and her lips firm, she repeats, “No. I’m not ready for town.

If you don’t want me here, I’ll go. I refuse to live in terror any longer, though.

I refuse to beg for crumbs of mercy, so few and far between.

What I said a moment ago, that I’ll do whatever you want is a lie.

It’s all I’ve ever known. The words a habit.

But, in truth, I’m done with blindly appeasing others.

Like a snake’s skin shed during my escape.

Now, will you be a man of your word and uphold our original deal?

Room and board as your homesteading partner? Or shall I leave?”

Fawn makes it sound so simple. Like we can easily coexist as man and woman in this small cabin.

But temptation lingers everywhere, exacerbated by her beauty, my years of self-deprivation, and our different expectations for modesty.

“You would do better in town, Fawn. There, you can sort out your identity and past without relying on any one person. Don’t you see? ”

“So, you would put my happiness before your own?” she asks, knitting her forehead and biting her thick bottom lip.

“Always,” I grumble, staring at the ground as electricity arcs in the air between us. Never have I felt such intense chemistry—the last thing my greedy flesh needs. My dick throbs, my balls tingling. “You must go to town,” I urge.

But her face firms, resolve in her gaze.

“No,” she says, pressing her pretty cherry-stained lips together.

“I must do what I need to, when I need to. For the first time in my life. Right now, that feels like staying here with you, existing for a time in the half-world between the backwoods and town. But if I’m not welcome here, I’ll go.

And I’ll return these clothes later, once I have my life better straightened out. ”

Staring at her long and hard, scrutinizing her porcelain face, her thick brown eyebrows, her mane of hair that I want to bury my head in, her excruciatingly sculpted lips that I long to taste. I cannot make her go into town, though every part of my brain cries out the necessity of it.

Standing up quickly, I adjust my cock as her eyes go boldly to the hard bulge, her cheeks darkening. “Then, no more undressing in front of me. You understand? I’m not like Big Man, and I don’t want to watch. I want to respect you.”

Her eyes round, and she quirks her mouth, nodding.

“Now, I have more wood to chop. Please, make yourself at home.”

“But my chores?” she asks.

I look around, shaking my head. “Dishes, cleaning, weeding, gathering eggs. Like we discussed.” I head for the door without looking back, needing a break from this magnetic woman and the desire exploding inside of me.

I spend the remaining hours of sunlight chopping every piece of wood I can find, every branch, until the stack along the side of the house is huge. The hot sky darkens mercifully above me as I work, bare-chested and driven by the need to distract and exhaust myself.

I feel her eyes on me, through one of the cabin’s windows, with a tempting urgency in her gaze.

I could take her, make her mine. Maybe even make her happy.

But the discrepancy between her innocence and my worldliness is monumental.

It sickens me to think about exploiting her in her naive state. Especially after all she’s endured.

She should go to town. That’s the bottom line. But do I drag her there kicking and screaming? Piling a tepee of firewood in the rock circle out back where I do control burns and keep fires when the weather’s nice, I set her clothes on fire, filthy beyond cleaning.

As the flames lick higher and higher, straining towards the sky, Fawn sprints toward me, her stockinged feet thudding along the ground as she screams, “No. My pages!”

She looks ready to dive into the fire. I grab her at the last second, pulling her back.

Her ass slides over my cock, and I’m back to the sheer torture of her presence, wrapping my arms tightly around her torso, uncertain of what she intends to do.

She melts against me resignedly as my dick digs into the small of her back.

Her shoulders shake as she watches the flames.

“What are you doing?” I scold, pressing her desperately against me and burying my face in her silky locks. “You can’t go near the fire. You know better.”

“I do,” she sobs, tears rolling off her nose and chin onto my straining forearms. She feels too good in my naked arms. Like she’s meant to fill them.

“My pages.” She shudders as I tentatively let go with one hand, holding her tighter with the other as I rifle through my pocket, producing the folded pages.

“Your clothes were filthy, Fawn, beyond cleaning or repair. But I’m sorry. I should have asked first.”

“Burning the clothes is fine,” she says, eyeing the folded pages. “I want to burn my memories of Big Man, his cabin, and his sons in the fire, too,” she whispers, her voice tight.

“Then, let us do it together, now, Fawn. We’ll burn your past and mine, too, as we watch these flames,” I say gravely, kicking myself for taking the impetus for this from her.

“What do you want to burn in the fire?” she asks, eyeing me curiously as I continue to hold her tightly against me, though there’s no longer any need.

“My childhood. My life before I came to the mountain.”

Fawn chuckles. “Then, we are opposites. I’m burning my life on the mountain, and you’re burning yours from before.”

I nod. “The pain, the affectionless upbringing, the superficiality, commercialism, materialism, betrayal, and heartache.” I stare at the golden dancing flames transfixed. Teasing, I whisper against the shell of her ear, “Is there room for all of that in your fire?”

Her hand comes up unexpectedly, palming my cheek and running her fingertips through my beard as her face calms and relaxes. My shoulders and jaw follow suit as I realize how tense I’ve been all afternoon.

Silence passes between us as I savor the feel of her nestled against me, watching the flickering, hypnotic flames of the fire.

Eyeing me curiously, she whispers, “There is room for all of it in the fire, so that we can focus on new beginnings.”

I frown. “At least, for a time.”

She side-eyes me for a long, breathless moment. “It’s like you said when I first met you. You don’t trust easily, Bodie.”

“That’s right,” I confess.

Done fighting her over town, I give in to this temporary plan. It has taken me all day to get her clean. To make her trust me enough to wash up and put on fresh clothes. I cannot take giant leaps backwards after so few, hard-fought steps forward. Even if what’s best for her gnaws at me.

If Big Man could show enough self-control not to touch her, I can do the same. Simple. And unlike that fiend, whoever the hell he is, I’ll also show her respect, honor, safety, and faithfulness.

No matter how it pushes me to the edge. No matter how badly I want her. Because even more than my animal needs, I must make her secure, happy, and able to trust. Maybe for the first time.

She wiggles in my arms until we stand face to face. My grip loosens, ready to pull back, but she launches unexpectedly onto her toes, planting her soft lips on my bearded cheek.

“What’s that for?”

“It is to thank you for being my Mr. Darcy and my Mr. Rochester. I hoped to find one or the other. But not both in the same man. I don’t know if I can be Elizabeth and Jane for you in return, but I promise I will try.”

Her words stun me into an awkward silence.

I’m a highly educated man. Raised in an affluent family and sent to the best boarding and military schools my father could afford.

I rejected that life and my past to come live on this mountain, but never did I imagine finding a woman so attuned to nature, my secluded lifestyle, and my education all in one delectable body.

The warmth that floods my core is more than sexual tension this time.

It’s a delight at finding something that I never thought existed, and it screams far louder than anything else this woman has made me feel today.

I can’t ignore it, sensing there’s more to Fawn hiding in the hollow log in front of my house than maybe I currently understand.

Before I start judging everything at face value, I need to relax and give Providence time to show me what’s really going on. Her eyes flood with mirth until we laugh together. I’m not sure if either of us knows why.

“May I?” I ask, grabbing the folded book pages from her hand.

She nods, eyeing them intently.

I carefully straighten and flatten them, finding the ballroom scene from Pride and Prejudice and the second proposal.

Her eyes swim as she turns sideways, watching my fingers work, her face stuck somewhere between hope and fear.

Perusing the next two pages, I find the proposal from Jane Eyre and the reunion.

God, this woman is precious. The backs of my eyes sting as I wonder how, despite a lifetime of seeing the worst from men, she still cultivates such hope, such faith in something better.

Her finger comes up, brushing a teardrop from my cheek and licking it quickly from her finger.

She smiles at me, a newfound strength rising that may be the sexiest thing about her to date.

Gruffly, I whisper, “You don’t need to be Elizabeth or Jane. I want you to be yourself, Fawn. No matter what.”

With a melancholy grin, her teeth slightly crooked, adorably so, she whispers, “I fear I cannot be myself in town. At least, not yet. But with you, I am certain I can.”

I nod, emotion rolling over me as I will myself to be the man she needs, rising above my own selfish desires. I swore to protect this little forest creature, even if it means going against my own impulses and inclinations. Whatever she needs from me, I make an internal promise to give.

She swipes at my face again, licking her finger, convinced that this is the custom in my household.

Part of me feels horrified that I accidentally taught her this move, and another part wonders if consuming each other’s sorrows and wrapping each other in our shared strength isn’t exactly what nature wants us to do.

As if reading my mind, she circles her arms around my waist, drawing so close, I hold my breath, trying to keep my rock-hard rod at bay.

God, I need a distraction and to jack off again …

alone. Away from her prying eyes until she has a better sense of what decency is and the respect she should demand from all men.

Clearing my throat, I offer in growly tones, “I have both books and more inside.” My eyes glance back towards the house. “Choose one, and I will read to you after dinner.”

“Really?” An effortless grin captures her pretty pink mouth begging for a kiss.

I can’t help myself. Just one. My lips brush over hers softly, well aware this may be her first kiss. Today, it is enough between us.

“Really.”

When I inch back, lost in the satisfaction of this newfound intimacy, her eyes are closed, her face flushed and happy. I’ve done right. No matter what recrimination my second-guessing head screams.

She sighs softly, eyes fluttering open, melty and swirling with warmth. “And they lived happily ever after,” she whispers.