Page 28 of Trapped with the Mountain Man

Silence stretches out between us. I shift a little, trying to put some physical space between us, but Hunter draws me in closer. His finger finds my chin and draws my face up towards his. He studies me for a minute. It reminds me of the first time we met and I fell, right before I passed out. That wasn’t all that long ago, I remind myself.

Hunter’s expression is impossible to read as he looks at me. I don’t try to rearrange mine into a smile for his benefit.

“I’m going to miss you,” he repeats. It’s the same words but spoken entirely differently. This time, it stings in an entirely different way.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

Hunter presses a kiss to the top of my head as we settle together again. I could easily doze off to sleep in his arms, but I’m also emboldened by his earnest admission. If we both agree that we’ll miss this, maybe it doesn’t have to be entirely over. Some glimmer of hope for a future with Hunter rises up inside me. I’m not sure what that future would look like – maybe a long-distance thing, a visit every once in a while, the eventual promise of something more. Hell, I’d take an annual booty call at this rate.

Anything that means tonight won’t be the last one I ever spend with him.

“Do you think you might ever visit Portland?” I ask tentatively. It’s the least intrusive way that I can conjure up to ask him about a future – any future – between us.

And this time, it’s Hunter’s turn to nervously stall.

Chapter 16

Hunter

Holy shit.

Spanking isn’t exactly new to me. I’ve had girls ask for it before, but it was always random hook-ups who seemed to be putting on a show for my benefit. Something about being the rough, outdoorsy type seems to make women think that I’m into that in the bedroom. But I’m not.

Or, at least, I wasn’t…until now.

Watching Abby blush and stiffen at the mention of it. Watching her crawl obediently into my lap. Watching her shake and beg and come all over my fingers. All of it will be forever burned into my brain.

The worst part is knowing that I’ll never be able to recreate that feeling with anyone else. No one else could ever compare to the feeling of Abby across my lap.

So, I guess my spanking career will be short-lived.

Even the way she curls into me afterward is incomparable to anyone else. It’s easy to be with her. It’s easy to fall into something resembling a relationship with her, even after just a couple of days.

This thought jolts something loose inside of me, and I respond by doing something Ineverdo: blurt my feelings out.

“I’m sure going to miss you.”

There.

I said it.

And it sounded so…wrong.

I physically cringe as the words hang between us. There’s no mistaking how cheap they sounded. It was like I was wishing my favorite stripper goodbye on her last night at the club. If I ever went to strip clubs, that is. This is why I never talk about feelings. It always comes out wrong and ruins the moment. And this…whatever this is…is the last moment I want to tarnish with by capping it off with such an idiotic outburst.

When Abby shifts beside me, I know it’s because I made her uncomfortable. Hell, I mademeuncomfortable.

But I refuse to ruin the moment.

I tilt her chin up towards me and look at her. It wrecks me when I see the hurt and sadness in her eyes. I grasp at some combination of words that might make things better but come up short. It takes me way longer than it probably should to realize that I already said exactly what she needed me to say, just in the wrong way.

“I’m going to miss you,” I say again, desperately hoping that it comes out right this time.

And it does. I can tell by the way she looks at me afterward.

Abby settles against my chest. Her breath changes and I think she might be dozing off to sleep. I take the opportunity to admire how at ease she seems here. After the initial shock wore off, she hasn’t complained at all about being here. She even seems like she might enjoy it. The quiet suits her, too. She knows how to exist in it in a way most people don’t. She doesn’t grow impatient with it or try to fill it up with noise.

I’m so lost in thought that I startle when Abby speaks again.

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