Signs of Life

by Sloane Reynard

  When it was over, Corinne’s stomach grumbled again, so Wyatt made lunch while she turned on the generator and ensured it worked properly. They were quite pleased when the heat came back on and the cabin returned to its former toasty self.

  They hauled the mattress back to its normal home on the bed, and then Wyatt climbed onto the roof with a shovel to clear out the satellite dish so he could use his phone and internet once more. That accomplished, Corinne busied herself with getting the laundry from the previous day washed— it had dried as stiff as a board, slung over the shower rod— and Wyatt fired up his computer and dashed off an email to Tyler.

  We’re all still alive. Plenty of food, generator’s working again, nothing to worry about.

  When he was done, Corinne approached him, waving her phone bashfully at him. “Mine has no service. I think the cloud cover is too dense, or we’re just too far from a cell tower. Can I use yours? I have to tell the cabin rental agency to just give up on my reservation.”

  Eagerness leaped within him. She was giving up on going to the cabin she’d rented? She was willing to spend her entire vacation here, with him?

  But then she continued.

  “Once it’s safe to travel again, I’m just… going to go home. I had thought that a change of scenery would make the holiday seem less solitary, now that I’m the only one left in my family, but…” She shrugged. “Alone is still alone, no matter where you are.”

  Wyatt tamped down his disappointment that she intended to leave as soon as she could, though… was it really a surprise? Hadn’t that always been her intention? His intention, as well? This had just been a nice interlude for each of them.

  Then she shocked him by flashing an impish smile.

  “Turns out all I needed to feel better was some quality time with a new friend.”

  “Is that what we are?” he asked, his tone lighter than he felt. “Friends?” He tugged her down on the sofa with him, stretching out sideways until, somehow, they were both crammed onto it, pressed close together.

  “Aren’t we?” Corinne countered. “I’ve always thought ‘fuck buddies’ and ‘booty calls’ were sordid names.” She bit her lip, making it even redder. “This doesn’t feel sordid to me.”

  Wyatt had to kiss her for that, and then he had to kiss her because she kissed him back, and—

  “If you keep that up, I’ll never get to call about the cabin,” she protested breathlessly, pulling back to bury her face against his shoulder. But she made no effort to detach herself from him, and in fact kept moving her fingertips over the back of his neck in a particularly enticing way.

  “I’m not holding you back,” he replied, and indeed, his hands only rested lightly at her waist, more for the pleasure of touching her than to put any force into keeping her close.

  “I need you to bolster my willpower,” she murmured, a smile in her voice. “I don’t seem to have any, where you’re concerned.”

  Nor any sense of self-preservation, it would seem. Nor did he, for that matter. A frisson of panic slid down his spine, again, like an icy finger. Everything about the situation was too much, too fast, too good. Corinne was too good, sweet and innocent, and he had a sudden, unpleasant realization that the world, which he had found so unbearable, likely had been even worse to her.

  Maybe he could convince her to stay here, with him, far away from everyone else?

  “Okay, then,” he told her with a final kiss, and helped her lever herself off him and back onto her feet.

  He had until the roads were clear again to convince her.

  He wasn’t going to waste a second of it.

  The days passed. After a week, roads remained impassable when more snow fell, and more besides. They celebrated Christmas together, the most peculiar Christmas Wyatt could recall, even weirder than the ones he’d spent by himself with just Leo for company. Corinne turned out to be a crack shot and, once her ankle was fine again, took his rifle and disappeared into the woods while he was in the shower. He’d emerged to find her on the back porch, by the merrily-humming generator, plucking the feathers from a half-dozen quails with their heads neatly shot off.

  “Two for each of us!” she announced, apparently including the dog in those who would feast, and indeed, roasted they had been very fine as a holiday dinner.

  It went far in showing Wyatt how complex she was; tender-hearted to a fault, but at the same time, tough as nails, imminently practical. Blindly stubborn when her blood was up, but perfectly reasonable and agreeable when approached with respect.

  Corinne was the most intriguing combination of shy and bold; she was far too timid to initiate sex, but capitulated within moments when he made an overture. And once she got started, she forgot herself enough to let her passion have free reign, whispering to him what she liked, what she wanted, how he was making her feel; her hands, strong and yet exquisitely gentle, would be greedy on him as they touched and grasped and stroked.

  She was open-minded and let him talk her into any number of diverse acts a couple could enjoy, though honestly nothing about what they did together could be termed ‘kinky’; as long as the sex was good and no one felt like shit afterward, Wyatt didn’t need anything fancy or exotic. Fortunately, Corinne appeared to agree, never seeming unsatisfied or frustrated if they didn’t get up to anything unusual. She was openly shocked at his attraction to her, he could tell, and almost humblingly pleased that he would have anything to do with her in a physical way.

  Which was nearly criminal, because she was a powerhouse of tightly coiled sexual energy; once roused, she was single-minded in her pursuit of coming and making him come, an admirable quality he indulged. But perhaps after the initial eagerness of being together had blunted somewhat, he could teach her to slow a bit, to tease, to wander and explore instead of pelting straight for the finish line. It was something he looked forward to greatly.

  Except that there didn’t seem to be any blunting in sight; their lust for each other continued unabated as the days passed, libidos cranking from zero to ohGodyes in mere seconds, hands clawing at each other’s clothing in their haste to position him for the thrust. Wyatt had never felt anything as good, as right, as the way Corinne took him deep, her inner muscles sealing tightly around him. Her voice in his ear, begging him to touch her, to fuck her, to come in her…

  Wyatt gave a little cough and shifted on his side of the couch. Corinne sat on the other side, legs turned inward and her feet tucked under his thigh. She was reading from his tablet, one hand dangling down to idly pet Leo’s head, and Wyatt felt a surge of happiness at the peace and domesticity of the moment. It was nice to see her so relaxed, because as the days passed, instead of feeling more at-ease with their cohabitation and togetherness, Corinne only seemed to grow more and more uptight.

  With little to do besides the daily chores, they’d spent the week talking, gradually revealing more and more about themselves until they had no secrets left. It had been somewhat terrifying, Wyatt being convinced that the next revelation would disgust her, drive her away, but it seemed Corinne had depthless wells of empathy and compassion in her, never judging him.

  But now that they’d revealed all of themselves to each other, there was nothing new to share. She was likely bored, without things to do, places to go. And what if she were becoming tired of him? Wyatt was not terribly interesting, he had to admit. He was the stupidest Lindstrom, as his sister and father and sometimes even Tyler had reminded him prior to his self-extraction from the world, and hadn’t paid attention to current events once hidden away on the mountain.

  Plus, there was the possibility that she felt he was too old for her; Corinne was a mere babe of twenty-six while he was, at thirty-four, knocking on the advent of his fifth decade. Perhaps she found him an adequate playmate for the duration of her enforced stay with him, but once that was no longer the case…

  Wyatt pushed down the unsettled feeling in his stomach and stood.

  “I’m going to get more firewood,” he murmured. Cor
inne looked up from the tablet and offered him a little smile and a nod. Leo shuffled to his feet and gave Wyatt a wag of the tail, interested in a change of scenery. The dog pelted out into the snowy yard the moment the door was open wide enough for him to shimmy through.

  Wyatt stepped out, pulling the door almost closed, but instead of gathering any logs, he just stood there and gazed out over the vast stretch of white between the cabin and the edge of the woods, broken only by Leo’s ecstatic romping. The sun was beginning to set over the trees, painting the sky peach and gold. It wasn’t all that cold, compared to the night before, and the air was fresh in his lungs when he gave a deep inhalation. He felt almost perfectly happy, except for one little something lacking…

  Then she was there, slipping past the barrier of his body in the doorway to stand at his side.

  “You’re letting the heat out. Or the cold in. Or both,” she told him, but her tone was gently teasing, and when he looked at her, she was smiling, just a little, before she looked around as he’d just done.

  Wyatt watched Corinne, instead of their surroundings, as she gazed at the purpling twilit sky. He was taken by a sense of hyper-awareness, of immediacy and clarity. Time seemed to slow. His arm apparently decided to act without his conscious direction, wrapping around her waist and pulling her close. As a testament to how closely aligned they were in that moment, she didn't stiffen in surprise or pull away; instead, she slid her own arm around him in return, and leaned her head against his.

  There, that's what had been missing; the heat of her body against his, and the clasp of her arm to let him know that he wasn't alone in that place, with the stars starting to wheel overhead and the smell of snow and pine in the air. She seemed just as content to stand there in the cold, observing the world with him— she wasn’t bored in that moment, or disgruntled that they weren’t doing something more ‘fun’, which usually meant costly or noisy or able to be shown off for others to envy.

  Then Leo barked, off to the side, startling them into laughter. He trundled through the white drifts to join them on the porch, giving himself a brisk shake that showered them with snow before shoving past them to enter the house.

  “I think he wants dinner,” Corinne said, slapping at her arms and thighs to brush off the snow Leo had so kindly shared. Then she rubbed her belly, lowering her voice as if confiding a secret to him. “I do, too.”

  When she turned to go in, for a moment, her back was to the sky and he saw that her eyes were the same vivid color as dusk began to fall in earnest, a blue both deep and clear.

  “What?” she asked with a confused little laugh, when she realized he was staring at her. “Did Leo get snow in my hair, too?”

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, and kissed her.

  Chapter 9

  “You’re beautiful.”

  Corinne was so taken by surprise, to hear Wyatt speak of her looks, that she just stood there, silently, like a fool for long seconds as he kissed her, as she processed what had occurred. They’d been having a wonderful moment, something that even she, in her romance-deprived life, could recognize as special and intimate.

  And then he had to ruin it with his—

  —with his honesty, sarcastic though it might have been. Not like she could deny what confronted her in the mirror every day. She’d just… hoped he’d be above the mockery.

  And then to kiss her right afterward. Did he honestly think she’d want anything to do with him after he’d just said something cruel?

  She had been teetering on the edge of something terrifying, some emotion she hadn’t ever dared consider she might be lucky enough to feel— and it just might be reciprocated. That frightened her most of all, that Wyatt might be feeling the same storm of emotions he whipped up in her. There was something enormous there, unwieldy, trembling, shining and beautiful…

  The knowledge that the kiss was empty of even a sliver of affection— for how could there be any, if he could mock her so easily?— made something within her, something that had kindled into a fine little glow, sputter and die.

  Wyatt didn’t seem to notice. He drew the kiss to an end with a smile she could feel against her lips, and leaned his forehead against hers. Their breath mingled, blowing white puffs into the narrow space between them.

  “You’re shaking,” he murmured, running his hands from where they’d been holding her elbows down to her cold-reddened hands. “I shouldn’t have kept you out here so long.”

  She dared to glance at him then, to see if he’d noticed anything different, and sucked in a shocked breath, because he was looking at her with an expression of such tenderness that, if she were someone else, or looked differently, or they had known each other longer than a week, she’d have sworn was… loving.

  He wasn’t mocking me at all, she thought in astonishment. He actually meant it.

  “What?” he asked with a slight frown, because she was staring at him with what had to be the stupidest expression of amazement.

  Corinne had thought she’d never experience what it was like to be wanted and desired, for herself, not because she was convenient, and resigned herself to the mediocre climaxes she’d been able to give herself. She’d expected to go her entire life in a state of love unanswered, had expected to eventually take up with someone she barely tolerated, since the alternative was to be alone.

  Instead, there was Wyatt.

  She doubted he’d ever realize how profoundly he had affected her. Even if their… whatever it was… went nowhere at all, what he’d given her more than made any upset she’d suffer when it was over entirely worth it. To have a man genuinely want her, especially a man like him…

  Corinne lifted trembling hands to his face, his short beard silky against her palms, and just… looked at him. He was ludicrously handsome, his eyes a lambent green and hair gleaming darkly in the waning light. He was watching her, lips parted, and a little frown starting between his eyebrows.

  “What’s wr—” he began, cut off when she kissed him.

  She closed her eyes, completely lacking in self-consciousness and embarrassment just for being her, and put all her gratitude and desire and affection into it. At first he just stood there, probably a bit surprised and confused— he’d been the instigator in most of their kisses, thus far. She’d usually been too apprehensive and embarrassed at her lack of physical charms to initiate.

  But swiftly he rallied, arms wrapping around her and pulling her close, answering her in kind. Their momentum built, passion flared, and when they drew back they were both panting, lips reddened and eyes bright.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said breathlessly. “You just looked—”

  More than his gorgeous appearance, however, was the depthless well of gentleness and affection she could see in him, that he had shown her in the last week, as if he’d been storing it up for years and couldn’t be more pleased to finally have the opportunity to lavish it upon someone. A man like that was made for love, for giving and receiving it, and to know he’d secreted himself away on a mountaintop rather than risk being hurt again made her chest ache.

  “Looked how?” Wyatt asked, puzzled.

  Like you could love me, she thought. Like someone I could love.

  “Beautiful,” she ended up telling him. “You looked beautiful.”

  Wyatt swallowed heavily, his gaze searching hers for… something. She didn’t know what, precisely, but he seemed to have found it, because he gave her the sweetest smile and said, “Right. Well, dinner’s going to be late.”

  Then he took her hand and pulled her behind him into the house, kicking the door shut behind them.

  “Late?” Corinne said, confused by the abrupt shift from tender moment to brisk action and change of plans. “Why? I thought you were hungry.” No answer. He just kept marching through the main room. “I’m hungry.” Nothing; he merely pulled her into the bedroom. “Wyatt?”

  “I just realized that I haven’t made love to you yet this afternoon,” he announced, and set about undr
essing her.

  It did not escape her that he called it making love and not fucking, as he had before, and she found herself as eager as he, hands greedy as they pulled off his sweater, pushed down his sweatpants and briefs, slid over his warm skin and pulled him close.

  When they got onto the bed, however, they slowed, the edge of lust softening into something more patient and exploratory. Wyatt’s touch moved up, across the cap of her shoulder and down between her breasts to the faint ridges of her belly, which he traced with reverence.

  “I love how strong you are,” he murmured against her throat.

  “Most men prefer when women are softer and weaker than they are.” The muscles under his hand tensed, and not because she was flexing and showing off. Even when she knew he did not see her as others had, the emotional flinch was instinctual.

  His shrug was casual. “How do you like your men? Strong and fit, or some flabby weakling who couldn’t do this?”

  In a flash, he had rolled to his back, pulling her atop and astride his thighs.

  “Besides, I’m not ‘most men’, I think you’ll agree.” His breath was coming faster and she doubted it was because of his exertions: he was hard as steel between her legs, and she let her weight press her against that thick ridge. “You’re strong. But you’re gentle. You could hurt me, but you don’t. All that… controlled force.”

  His voice was deep and rough, like amber velvet brushing over her nerve endings, sending shivers trilling down her spine. She rolled her hips as he began to work himself against her.

  “All that controlled force,” he repeated softly, “and instead of fighting me, you moan as you take my cock.”

  Her breath hitched, desire a flashfire through her, to hear him speak so plainly.

  “Well, what— what about you?” Corinne shot back, sounding winded even to her own ears. “You’re not some flabby weakling. You’re strong enough to hurt me, but you don’t eith— ahhh.”

  He’d slid his fingers between her legs to find her clit with unerring aim. She knew he could tell how wet and hot and ready she was for him. It only seemed fair that she return the favor, and she filled one hand with his cock and the other with his balls.