Page 13 of The Mountain Man's Secret Star
"Beautiful," he murmured against my inner thigh, pressing soft kisses to my heated skin while I came down from the high. "Love watching you come apart for me."
But he wasn't done. His mouth found me again, gentler this time, working me through the aftershocks and building me toward something even more intense. When the second orgasm hit, it was deeper, longer, leaving me boneless and gasping beneath him.
"Think you can handle more?" he asked, kissing his way back up my body, and I could taste myself on his lips when he claimed my mouth.
"I can handle anything you give me," I managed, though my voice was shaky with satisfaction and renewed want.
He shed the rest of his clothes with economical movements, and when I saw him fully naked in the comet light, my breath caught. He was beautiful—all lean strength and masculine grace—and when he settled between my thighs again, the weight of him felt like coming home.
"Are you sure?" he asked, his voice strained with the effort of holding back, the head of his length pressing against my entrance, making me whimper with need.
"I've never been more sure of anything," I said, reaching up to cup his face. "Make love to me, Gavin."
He entered me slowly, giving me time to adjust to his size, and the sensation of him filling me completely made me gasp and arch beneath him. He was perfect—the right size, the right pressure, the right everything—and when he started to move, I thought I might die from the sheer perfection of it.
"So good," he groaned against my throat, his hips setting a rhythm that had me climbing toward something transcendent. "Feel so good around me. So tight, so perfect."
The comet light painted everything in warm gold, and I felt like we were making love inside a Christmas miracle. Every thrust sent pleasure racing through my veins, and when he angled his hips just right, hitting that perfect spot inside me, I cried out and dug my nails into his shoulders.
"There?" he asked, and when I nodded frantically, he smiled and did it again, and again, until I was trembling on the edge of release.
"Let go," he whispered against my ear, his voice rough with his own approaching climax. "Come for me, Sadie. I want to feel you come around me."
The combination of his voice and his perfect rhythm and the way he was looking at me like I was everything he'd ever wanted pushed me over the edge. I came apart in his arms, crying out his name as pleasure crashed over me in waves that seemed to go on forever. He followed me over, groaning my name as he found his own release, filling me with heat.
Afterward, we lay tangled together in the comet light, our breathing slowly returning to normal. Through the window, C/2022 X1 Kringle continued its ancient journey across the winter sky, and I felt like we'd just participated in something cosmic and eternal.
I traced lazy patterns on his chest, marveling at the way his skin felt under my fingertips, at the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my palm. Outside, snow continued to fall, muffling the world in perfect quiet.
"Gavin?" I said softly, my voice still rough from crying out his name.
"Hmm?"
"I'm not going back to Nashville. Not yet." The words came out of me like a decision I'd made somewhere deeper than conscious thought. "I want to stay here. Figure out what comes next."
He went very still beneath me, and I could feel the moment he decided to trust what was happening between us despite every practical reason to protect his heart.
"How long?" he asked quietly, his hand stroking through my hair.
"I don't know. Long enough to see if this is as real as it feels." I propped myself up on my elbow to look at him, taking in the way the comet light caught the silver in his pewter eyes. "Long enough to write songs from the heart again instead of from a contract."
"What about Keisha? The labels?"
"They'll wait. And if they won't..." I shrugged, surprised by how little the thought bothered me. "Then maybe they weren't the right opportunities anyway."
He reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, his touch gentle and sure. "What are you really saying, Sadie?"
"I'm saying I want to choose this. Choose you. Choose whatever this is we're building together." I leaned down to kiss him softly, tasting promise and possibility on his lips. "I'm saying I want to stay and see what happens when someone doesn't leave."
"Show me what it looks like when someone stays."
I answered by kissing him deeper, my body already responding to his nearness again, already craving more of the connection we'd discovered. When he rolled me beneath him, his hands and mouth worshipping every inch of my skin, I realized I'd already found what I'd been searching for my whole life.
Above us, the comet blazed its path toward Christmas Eve, carrying wishes and cosmic dust and the dreams of everyone brave enough to believe in impossible love stories. And wrapped in Gavin's arms, surrounded by warm light and Christmas magic, I finally understood what home was supposed to feel like.
It felt like choosing love over fear. Like staying instead of running. Like finding someone who saw the real you and wanted her anyway.
It felt like this.
