Anything to keep me busy.
And then I remembered I should call my father and let him know where I was and that I was okay.
I gathered a handful of ingredients to make a vegetable stock that I could turn into soup or a casserole later or tomorrow, depending how long I was destined to be landlocked on this ridge, and poured the base ingredients into a pot and turned the heat on the burner.
Fishing my phone out of my back pocket, I frowned when I realized I had no service. I couldn’t call if I wanted to from this ridge. I wondered if there was a fine line to all this privacy Maverick claimed to crave. At what point did the insulation become suffocating?
I had a feeling I was approaching my limit, especially when the man of the hour had run off down the mountain as fast and as far from me as his boots could take him.
* * *
Twelve hours and two tall mugs of hot cocoa later, I was too nervous to eat any of the chicken and dumplings I’d slow-simmered on the stove all day. My mind on one man, I curled up on the couch with the fuzzy blanket he’d used for sleeping last night, the silver moonlight stretching across the floor and slipping the cabin into deep shadow. Every angle felt like it hid new secrets and the sun set early on the ridge—half of the hours were spent shrouded in deep darkness.
The ridge was harsh and savage in its beauty by daylight, just like the man who called it home, but by night, it was downright scary.
Giant evergreen boughs swayed in the constant wind that whipped down the ridge, the soft needles brushing the windows like fingertips all night long. I curled into the corner of the couch, frowning when I heard the faint strings of violin music enter my mind again.
Teeth on edge, I stood, wrapping myself in the blanket that still smelled like Maverick, and cursed him for not coming home.
I then began to wonder if he’d been hurt, If I’d been stubborn and stupidly irresponsible letting him stay away all day. Maybe he’d gotten hurt fixing that drain ditch and now it was all my fault.
The slow bleeding strains of a haunting and romantic classical song I’d heard before grew louder, and I began to grow sure that I was conjuring the entire audible daydream.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, certain it was coming from the same room as last night, the one he claimed had been locked.
The young face of the bride in the photo downstairs flirted with my vision, her long hair swaying in the wind as the notes of her violin carried into the air. I blinked, wondering if this was all some sort of waking daydream, the temptation to climb the stairs and follow the music was powerful.
I gripped the worn wooden rail, Maverick’s warning surging through me before the violin grew to a fevered pitch, a ravaged crescendo of a sound that caused a crack of pain to halve my mind like a lightning bolt.
“I need Maverick,” I said to myself, crushing my eyes closed and backing away from the stairs. The violin music grew louder in my mind, unbearably high pitched, only fading as I backed out of the house and down the main steps of the cabin.
The wind whipped my hair around my shoulders, a chill coursing down my spine as I turned, relieved when I found Maverick's truck still parked where he’d left it after rescuing me.
Wherever he’d gone, he was within walking distance.
I clung to the edges of the looming evergreen boughs, comfortable as I walked down the steep driveway. The rain had turned to a soft mist, milky clouds of fog hanging low to the ground and adding a sinister quiet to the ridge. I picked slowly down the path, coming to the corner that veered sharply to the right, where I’d lost control on loose gravel, washed away by the storm and taken out the ditch, causing more washout.
“Maverick?” I breathed into the night.
Only the salt-damp breeze off the bay answered me.
I followed the edge of the moonlight, walking carefully to avoid the slippery washed out edge of the road. When I came to the sunflower field, my car was parked just as I’d left it, along the edge with one wheel in the ditch.
Even in the darkness the sunflowers looked beautiful, the undersides of their petals silvered in the moonlight.
“Such a beautiful, sad place to live,” I hummed to myself, turning to take in the sparkling moonlit bay the sunflower field towered over. I walked across the gravel road, sneakers damp in the grass that ran along the shoulder. And then a dip in the grass nearly tripped me, and covered like a sunken grave, the body of a grown man in a sleeping bag sound asleep at its center.
“Maverick?” I bent, pushing the top of the sleeping bag down a fraction to reveal his dark hair. I shook him softly, hating to wake him, but hating to see him out here in the elements too. This man lived like he punished himself, I didn’t know why and I didn’t care, but I wouldn’t let him do it in my presence.
“Wake up,” I whispered at his ear, finally waking him.
His eyes fluttered open, confusion chasing away the sleep before they grew dark and angry. “What are you doing?”
“I came to ask you the same question, at least we’re on the same page about something,” I teased, rubbing my arms as the damp chill settled into my bones. “What are you doing out here? Trying to catch your death?”
His eyebrow arched before he turned back to the bay. “Maybe.”
“Come on, please come back to the cabin, I can’t stay there alone, the ghosts will get me.” I pushed at his shoulder, trying to get him to loosen up. He was tense, muscles bunched like marble. “Looks like they already claimed one victim tonight.”
That earned me a reaction, a ravaged grunt before he whipped the sleeping bag off of him and flung it around my shoulders. He moved quickly, zipping me up inside and then rubbing my shoulders as I stood in front of him.
“Come back to the house.”
“I can’t sleep there.”
“I can’t either.”
“The sound of the waves are the only thing that clear my head.” His confession surprised me.
“Maybe I should try it then.” I dropped to my bottom, trying to relax into all the stillness around us. The bay sparkled, the tiny marina lit in the distance as a single boat patrolled the bay.
“I need the quiet to hear myself think.” He crouched near the dying embers of his campfire, poking it with a large stick until the flames grew brighter.
“I think that’s why I stopped coming up to the ridge; so much...quiet,” I mused, thinking back on the camping trips Dad and I had spent up here, not far away at a campground a mile closer to Cherry Falls.
He nodded.
I sucked in a soft breath, air filled with the scent of him. Leather and woodsmoke and perfection. I wondered what he tasted like.
“Sometimes I think it’s my fault this place is so dark and...haunted.”
I didn’t reply, eager to hear him and afraid of his next words at the same time.
“You said the ridge had ghosts—there’s only one.” He sat in the damp grass at my side. He gave me one long gaze, something that burned down to the depths of my toes before he tucked himself at my side. Another breath. More leather and wood smoke.
I crammed my eyes closed and fought the smile, desperate not to make a fool of myself.
“Can I?” He gestured with his big arm.
I nodded, curling into the crook of his arm and trying to steady my heartbeat.
He was so warm. So much like home.
“You smell nice, Petal.” His words were gruff.
“Thank you,” I uttered.
“I was lucky the first time, too lucky. Aspen’s mom grew up in Syn City but she loved the peace and quiet, spending most days in her garden or tending that sunflower field behind us. I hate looking at it, but I can’t bear to take it down either.” His rough knuckles grazed the edge of my wrist. His hard body pressed close to mine felt illicit and wrong, and exactly right. He trailed the pad of his thumb along my ring finger and continued. “I’m sure your dad told you at some point that my wife, Aspen’s mom, passed away when she was giving birth.” He said the wor
ds in rush, like he couldn’t wait to get them over.
I didn’t reply, only let the night silence stretch between us.
His chest vibrated with energy, the gentle movement up and down as he breathed, measured and low, and I draped my palm along his flannel-covered stomach.
“I've never forgiven myself and I-I’ve been shaming myself since the minute you stepped foot on the ridge for being drawn to you like I am.”
“D-drawn to me?”
“You’re so damn young—I shouldn’t—”
My heart rattled, drowning out his words as my own focus became every single nerve humming to life inside of me as he draped his thumb across my wrist with absent-minded tenderness.
“And to the Captain’s daughter on top of everything else—”
“Everything else?” I stammered. “I don’t think any of that matters.”
He paused, stroking his thumb along my jaw and forcing my eyes to meet his. “You don’t think so?”
I shook my head, eyes still locked with his. I felt his gaze everywhere, like shimmering glints of stardust swirling through my bloodstream. I was pulled to Maverick on a magnetic level, every cell of him finely attuned to me. Our energies hummed like a frequency from another planet, one filled with possibility and excitement.
Maverick caught my wrist, turning it in his hand, and brought it to his lips. The stubble of his beard tickled my skin and sent a flood of emotion through me. He pressed a kiss at my throbbing vein, the source of my life’s blood tied directly to my beating heart. Like an arrow, his kiss sank deep inside of me.
“You should ask me how old I am, Petal.” His voice was deep and throaty and I felt it down to my toes.
“Does it matter?” I gulped, too turned on by him to think straight.
“Yes.”
My stomach dropped with his one-word answer.
He tipped his head, moving closer as his fingertips rubbed the ends of my hair. He paused, dropped the slender threads, and then asked, “Do you like when I touch you?”
“Yes,” I answered earnestly.
“Do you want me to keep touching you?”
“Yes.”
“Then ask me how old I am.”
I clamped down on my bottom lip, not caring about his answer, but only that he seemed to care. “How old are you?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but stroked the pad of his thumb across my naked collarbone.
I took a swift breath, then shuddering, repeated: “How old are you?”
“So shy…” He stroked across my bare shoulder bone. “I’m forty-eight.” His eyes caught mine, intense and heavy. “Am I too old for you?”
“No.”
“No?” he asked.
“No,” I confirmed.
He placed a finger under my chin, tilting it softly and breathing. “I feel it too.”
“You do?” I asked, hushed.
He nodded silently. “Yes.” His gaze dropped to my lips. “I feel you.”
I didn’t reply, struck by the way his hands on my skin felt so...natural.
He leaned close to my ear. “You feel familiar.” His fingers linked at my wrist. “Love begins with a lump in the throat…” he recited, pressing a kiss at my wrist, turning it and dotting in a slow circle.
“You read poetry?”
“No.” His beard tickled as he spoke, dotting a few more slow kisses up the underside of my arm, eye soldering mine as he did. “There’s only been one other time I felt this feeling.”
He was so rough, so warm, so sensual.
“I like the way you smell.” His words were low and quick, like he’d been holding his breath. “I like the way you look, the way you laugh, and the way you smell,” he uttered. “You’re going to destroy me.”
I sucked in a breath, the scent of him on my tongue sending tingles like waves through my system.
“You don’t even know me.”
His lips lingered at my throat. “Don’t I?”
My heartbeat hammered, the feel of his lips against my hot skin made me dizzy with desire.
I felt his ragged breath against my chest. All of him was so virile, so barbaric, so enthralling. He laid a kiss against my neck and I tilted my head, allowing him the access. His palm splayed across my back, his fingers pressing into my flesh and stealing my breath with his dominant touch.
“Look at you, so pretty in the firelight. So pretty it haunts me.” His hands gripped my arms, pulling me to him. “You’ve caged me, Petal.”
He locked my other hand with his. I let him. I would let him do anything.
“I haven't been with anyone in two decades.” He took my other wrist in his hand, turning it gently, and then pressed another kiss there. “You make me want things I never thought I’d want again.” His words burned through me like lava. “Will you have me?”
I nodded, unable to form a thought, only aware of the feeling that I knew in the marrow of my bones. I was made to be his, he was made to find me, we were made to be here together.
“If I have you,” he kissed up my other arm, “there will never be anyone else. You, Petal, are already my obsession.”
He stirred something to life inside of me with his words, the need to feel him overpowering me as he slipped his hands under my shirt and kissed his way along my neck and around my jaw.
I felt his heartbeat under my palm, the hard marble of his muscles warm against my skin. “Being yours sounds like a dream come true, Maverick.”
He paused, as if my words had stunned him like a gun. His eyes dropped, a breath sinking his chest before he nodded and smiled. “Good.”
“Please, touch me everywhere.”
A rumble vibrated through his chest with my words. He pressed his lips on me then, sinking his tongue past the seam of my lips and hauling me to him in one swift movement. My hips arched against him, seeking his friction as his hands held my face still for his kiss.
“I need to show you what that means.” His words came out ragged as one of his hands slipped between us, sliding against the waistband of my pants before sliding beneath the fabric and using his fingers to find my wetness.
I groaned softly, pleasure rippling through my body as I rode his hand eagerly, his stubble rasping at my cheek as he brought me to a slow and quiet release was almost enough to shatter me.
“I’m not done earning my stripes yet.” His heavy hands caught my thighs, spreading me for him before his lips snaked down my torso, around my navel and then landed at the soft triangle of curls between my thighs.
“Mm, so soft and pretty.” He tugged delicately before burying his nose in my scent and inhaling. “My own private flower patch.”
His tongue darted out in a deft stroke, licking softly and lighting my nerves on fire. I arched and groaned, but his hands held me close to him as he tasted me eagerly. The tip of his tongue hit its target, singeing my flesh with pleasure and driving me deeper into Maverick's brand of bliss.
Tremors of uncontrolled release tightened and quaked my muscles as he sped his swipes and added his thumb to the assault on my body. He was amazing, a work of art and so attuned to me. His hands were in my hair, our breaths mingling, our bodies quaking with need.
I was humming. I felt alive. I felt totally owned by him. And then the stars burst behind my eyes and Maverick melded his mouth to my core as waves of sweetness rolled through me. He licked and moaned against me, forcing me to take more of his assault even though every nerve in me felt overworked.
“Love the sounds you make when I taste this pretty petal.”
And then he laid me back, slipping one hand between us and yanking his zipper quickly. A moment later, his body was on me, his torso held taut above me, rigid as steel as he clenched his jaw and watched me with a tortured gaze.
“Are you ready for us, Petal?”
I didn’t answer, my overwhelming need to convey my feelings too tightly wound in my throat.
“Petal, trust me, I need to hear it.”
“Yes, Maverick, I wan
t you. I want you now, tomorrow, always.”
His forehead dropped to mine, a kiss claiming my lips as one palm gripped my hip and held me still, the other guiding our bodies together until the hardness of him was between my thighs, slipping past my entrance, and stealing me.
I gasped into his mouth, his hands and lips moving across my body and easing me into a slow dance of sensual rhythm.
Maverick made me his, sank inside of my soul so slow and so deep, I’d never be the same. Maverick was the piece I hadn’t known I was missing, the haunted hole in my heart that's never been filled until this moment.
He sank deeper, catching my ear in a breathless pant. “You’re everything to me.”
CHAPTER NINE
Maverick
“You rotten son-of-a—”
Cold steel dug into my neck. I jerked awake, eyes landing on the man on the end of the barrel of a gun.
Captain O’Henry.
“Get off my ass, O’Henry.”
“Get out of that sleeping bag and face me like a man.” He dug the barrel deeper into my neck.
“Dad? Dad, put your gun away!” Poppy screeched.
The man’s eyes were hard on mine. I gnashed my teeth together, unpeeling myself from Poppy’s form and leaving her the sleeping bag to wrap herself in. We were both fully clothed, but just hours ago we’d been hot and sweaty together, the scent of our shared intimacy still lingering on our skin.
“You don’t know what you’ve done, Poppy.” Anger vibrated through his voice.
“Please don’t do this, not again,” she pleaded, trying to wedge herself between me and her father.
“How could you?” His anger was directed at me, gun still drawn and stance steady. “After everything?”
“What is everything?”
“Unless you have a warrant you need to get the hell off of my property.”
“This is a public road,” Captain O’Henry grit.
“The hell it is. Why am I the only one maintaining it then? Poppy can make her own decisions.”
Poppy pushed my chest away, fire lighting her pretty irises. “I can fight my own battles.”
It took every ounce of control in my body to stop myself from fighting this one for her.
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