Chapter 215: She Had Plans for Those Hands

DOVE’S POV

Their cabin had one main room, a bed behind a curtain, and a tiny bathroom at the back. Dove opened the bathroom door first. There was a sink, a toilet, and a hook strong enough to hold her bag. Nothing moved when she switched on the light.

"We’re staying forever," she announced.

Thorne set their belongings beside the table. "You haven’t checked the bed."

"Let me enjoy not sharing a bathroom with twelve men for a minute."

He laughed and left her to it. That was one of the things she liked best about him. He could be so large that a doorway looked apologetic, then give her space without acting as if she had rejected him.

Dove used her basin for a small private wash, bringing out the water she needed before setting the basin beside the sink. Her body stayed in the cabin, her mind’s brief visit to the quiet pool leaving the room exactly where she had left it. She washed the dust from her neck and arms, then worked the day’s tangles out of her hair.

The fading color showed more clearly under the bathroom light. Pale roots, honey-blonde waves, ears still the shade from the color pill she had bought. She separated a lock with her fingers and tried to decide whether she wanted to change it again.

"Can you tell me how long the fur color lasts?" she asked Sprout.

"The label doesn’t give a date. I could help you choose your next color."

"You don’t know when this one wears off, but you’re ready to sell me another?"

"You asked about your hair."

"I asked a question. You opened a shopping cart." She caught herself checking the pale roots again and lowered her hand. It had no intention of giving her a straight answer tonight.

She did not need a new color tonight. She needed the hair off her neck and her husband within reach. Those were much easier problems.

When she came out, Thorne had put the clean blankets at the foot of the bed and placed her mug on the table. He was checking a rough edge on the folding chair before she sat in it. His thumb followed a small bent metal tab, and the tab eased flat beneath his touch.

"I could have survived a chair," she said.

"I wanted you comfortable."

That answer was so simple that she could not find anything clever to do with it.

She crossed the room and touched his forearm. "Thank you."

He looked down at her hand, then her face, as if the words mattered more because she had not tucked them inside a joke. Dove let them stay there.

Outside, someone called to another cabin. Plates rattled at the lodge. The campground was busy enough to feel lived in, but their door was closed, and nobody needed anything from her for the next little while.

She had forgotten how much she missed that.

Thorne noticed her looking toward the door. "He’s still across the road. Edrik knows."

"I wasn’t thinking about Ash."

"Good. Neither was I."

His smile made her suspicious. "You just said his name."

"I was hoping to finish saying it."

Dove laughed and took both his hands. She had watched them point out tracks in the dirt, turn food over the grill, carry their bags, and fix the stupid chair. Now she wanted them doing something he enjoyed too.

"Then come here."

He let her draw him closer. For a moment, she simply stood with him, her hands resting against his chest while he waited to see what she wanted next. It should not have felt unusual to be allowed to take her time. It still did, sometimes.

"You looked pleased with yourself at the sink," she told him.

"You were touching my ears."

"So that’s all it takes?"

"From you? Sometimes."

She tried to look stern. It was difficult when he was smiling at her as if she had brought every good thing in the room.

"You’re making it very hard to be mysterious."

"I’ve seen you threaten a breakfast burrito because the foil wouldn’t open."

"It was withholding important resources."

His laugh settled something inside her. She liked being funny with him. She liked not having to be funny too. She could stand there with a sore shoulder from the rifle and untidy hair, and he still looked at her as if coming closer was the best idea he had all day.

She kissed him, then rested her forehead against his chest. He held her without rushing the moment, his palm warm between her shoulder blades.

Her old life had contained plenty of things she wanted back. Tonight, wanting this life too did not feel like betrayal.

"I had a good day," she said.

His hand moved gently through her hair. "I noticed."

"I want another one."

"So do I."

She tipped her face up. "Starting with the rest of this one."

Her fingers find the hem of his shirt, and she peels it upward, inch by deliberate inch, her knuckles dragging against his skin as she goes. The fabric slides over his ribs, his chest, his shoulders, and she tosses it somewhere behind her without ever breaking eye contact.

Thorne lies beneath her, bare from the waist up, and he can feel the way her gaze moves over him like a physical thing. Like hands. Like teeth. She looks down at him and her lips part, and something about the way her breathing changes sends heat pooling low in his gut.

"Gods," she whispers, and her palms flatten against his stomach, sliding upward over the ridges of muscle there. His abdomen tenses under her touch, his six pack flexing involuntarily as her fingers trace the valleys between each defined muscle. "Look at you."

He swallows. His hands twitch at his sides, fingers curling into the sheets beneath him because she told him once, in a voice just like this, to stay still, and his body remembers even when his mind is burning.

She leans forward, her weight settling warm and full against him, and her mouth finds his ear. Her breath is hot and damp against the shell of it, and when she speaks, her voice is low, rough silk dragging across every nerve ending he owns.

"You’re so fucking sexy, you know that?" Her tongue flicks against his earlobe, and a shudder rolls through him like thunder. "All of this, every inch of you, mine."

Her hands slide up his arms, fingers tracing the thick veins that rope along his forearms and biceps, the hard swell of muscle beneath skin that she maps like territory she intends to claim. She squeezes his arms, digs her nails in just slightly, just enough, and his breath catches audibly in his throat.

She pulls back enough to look at him, and her eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, a hungry thing wearing the face of the woman he married. She drags her gaze down again, watching the way his chest rises and falls too quickly, the way his abs clench and release, the sharp V of muscle that cuts down from his obliques and disappears beneath the waistband of his pants.

"Don’t move," she tells him, and her voice is quiet but it isn’t a suggestion. "Be a good boy and let me enjoy my husband."