Twisted Strands

by Lilia Moon

There is nothing simple about this woman.

  She wobbles when I don’t expect it, and then solidifies and surprises me just when I’m starting to catch glimpses of some of her underlayers. However, now is a really dumb time to be thinking philosophical thoughts. She’s looking at me, amused and interested and inviting, and that has just turned this boat shed into a really sexy place.

  I step into her, partly out of habit, and partly to walk through the door she’s opened. Her eyes widen a little as I close in, my hands reaching to steady her. That’s not necessary, but it’s habit. The women I kiss are usually a lot more tied up than this.

  They’re also really distant memories. Liane is pure sensory pleasure in my arms, strong and curvy and smelling faintly of waffles and huckleberries.

  Her hands slide up to my shoulders, her eyes glued to the neckline of my t-shirt.

  I can feel the nerves—hers and mine. And the desire.

  I exhale slowly. First lesson of the nawashi. There’s beauty in tension. Never rush it.

  Two more breaths, three, and then, ever so slowly, her chin begins to lift. It kills me to wait, but I want to see what lives in her eyes when they make it all the way up.

  She gets about as far as my morning scruff and pauses, a wry smile on her lips. “You’re not taking over and making this easy for me. I thought Doms were bossy like that.”

  We come in as least as many flavors as ice cream. I lean in and brush my lips along her cheekbone. “Some things get better with time to feel into the journey.”

  Her head turns slowly, her cheek rubbing against the stubble on my chin. One of her thumbs starts tracing my collarbone, sneaking under the neck of my shirt.

  I breathe into taste and touch and berries. Into nuzzling that moves our lips closer with the painstaking, careful slowness of a very first knot.

  She makes a sound of hot, low need, and my cock tries to annihilate my pants. I groan and pull her more snugly against me, which doesn’t do anything to end the cock torture, but it sure as hell pleases the rest of me. Her hands have made their way under my t-shirt, using my back for leverage as we try to meld ourselves together.

  I keep one arm around her waist and let the other one travel up to that gorgeously wired left nipple I discovered yesterday. Which isn’t hard—the woman currently doing wickedly wonderful things with her tongue isn’t wearing a bra.

  She squeaks as I cup her breast, my thumb brushing over her nipple, saying hello. Grateful, for once, for the lack of ropes and impediments in my way. I deepen the kiss again as my fingers play, finding the touch she likes.

  I grin as she squeaks again. Light touches and firm ones. No middle ground for this woman.

  My other hand is sad it doesn’t have a sexy plaything, so I pivot the two of us slowly, backing Liane up against the wall of the shed. She laughs as it creaks ominously. “It’s better built than it sounds like.”

  It probably wasn’t built for this, but I’m far more focused on the delicious, husky tones in her voice. She’s aroused—massively so, and very pleased with herself.

  That makes two of us. I skim my hands up under her shirt, cupping both breasts. Her hands fly to my shoulders and her head tips back against the wall.

  I brush her nipples. I want her eyes for this. “Look at me, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes open, slow and languid and half drunk, even though the rest of her is practically quivering.

  I place my bets and give her nipples a firm, sharp tug, first the right, then the left. I take a second to grin at the very successful outcome and then my mouth is on hers, traveling with her as she explodes over the edge she didn’t know was nearly that close. I can feel the utter shock in her—and the cocky arrogance in me that hasn’t realized yet that we can’t fuck in her boat shed.

  Well, we probably could, but I’d rather a bed, or at least a sunny patch of grass. Somewhere I can take my time and not have to stay on my feet for the whole thing.

  I snort as I gentle the kisses. Those weren’t factors I took into account even a few years ago. Sometime in the last decade, I’ve turned into an old man. One capable of giving a woman a really good orgasm and saving the rest for later.

  I nuzzle into Liane’s neck. She smells of sweat and surprise along with the huckleberries now. Just like her ropes, she gets better and more interesting with use.

  She rocks gently into my cock. “That’s twice now. This is getting really lopsided.”

  It takes a moment to figure out what she means. Vanilla people have such strange logic. “There’s no scoreboard.” I lift my head up so she can see I mean it.

  Her eyebrows slide up skeptically.

  I lean in and kiss one of them. “If you think that wasn’t fun for me, you’re doing the math wrong. My cock is only one of my body parts.” Which will probably send him off in a sulk, but I’m not wrong.

  She softens in my arms and I go still, trying to figure out what just happened. And then it’s obvious, as our body parts arrange into a new configuration. One driven by Liane. She nuzzles in under my chin, very gingerly seeking.

  I don’t question what the hell has happened in the life of this woman that she has to ask so carefully for a hug. I just deliver. Two arms around her back and a chest that’s more than happy to be her pillow.

  She exhales, and for the first time, I get a taste of what it is when Liane Granger is willing to lay her strength down and let someone else’s bones support her.

  I hold steady as the power of that rocks me right down to my core. Which shocks the hell out of me, because I’m a guy who’s really good with moments and with hugs, but this is different. Because she is. Because there’s something going on here that’s far deeper than attraction and copping a feel in the boat shed.

  Something that feels bigger than a week.

  I lay my cheek on the top of her head. Damn. I walked us right into this because I live in a world where you can play with someone for a week and then kiss them fondly at the next club members’ night and all is well. It’s time to open my eyes and keep them that way. There are two hearts in this, and neither of them are going to roll all that well with the fond-kiss-at-the-end part.

  I don’t know what that means, and I don’t need to know yet. I just need to take care.

  There’s a small explosion behind me and we both jump. I shake my head as Trouble sneezes again and goes right back to sleep. He’s a tiny creature with really interesting timing—but he’s not wrong. Every new place we venture, I get to learn more about the woman in my arms. Time to try one that isn’t full of dust or reminders of work to be done.

  I kiss her cheek, steadying both of us. “Let’s go for that paddle.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Liane

  He’s an interesting guy.

  I stare at the nicely rippling muscles of the shoulders in front of me, wishing my uptight rules about safety weren’t impeding my view. Life jackets are not optional, especially for a guy who drops like he’s been shot when my boat rocks a little as he climbs in.

  I grin. The good news is, he definitely listened to my speech about keeping his center of gravity low. I showed him the same way to sit as my grandfather taught me. Knees down on the inner hull and far enough apart to control the rocking or play with it. I adjust the leather sling seat under my butt—it’s meant to lean against more than sit on, but I’ve gotten lazy. Too many days paddling on my own.

  Matteo isn’t lazy at all. We’re storming up the bay at speeds I rarely go. He may not have spent much time in tippy canoes, but the man knows how to apply force to a blade, and he’s morphed my quietly offered suggestions into some really decent paddling skills in the time it’s taken us to get within eyesight of my two nearest neighbors.

  A man with power who listens.

  I shake my head. He might be too darn attractive for my own good. A visitor who wants to feel my life from the inside, and who somehow keeps enticing me to show it to him. Which is fun and heady and absolutely something I should get to play with ever
y so often. But it’s like conditioning a hemp rope with flame. A little burns off the fuzz and leaves smooth strength behind. Too much and I have crispy rope that will fray and break long before it should. I can’t help but wonder who I might be with some of my fuzz burned off, but I have a deep desire to avoid crispy.

  Which shouldn’t be too difficult today, because we’re one hard knee lean away from ass-over-teakettle into a really cold lake. Something I haven’t done on purpose for at least a decade, but it’s oddly tempting right now, and not because I enjoy freezing my ass off. Some parts of me are uncomfortably hot, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

  Matteo changes his paddle to the other side with a fluidity that doesn’t look like a beginner at all. I switch behind him. He’s a strong enough paddler that my need for steering strokes is minimal. Which is fun. Usually I have Daley’s ten-year-old grandson Lee in the boat with me, sitting backwards and chattering up a storm and mostly forgetting to use the paddle in his hands, or at least that’s the story he tries to sell—and he’s cute enough I usually let him get away with it.

  I snort as Matteo’s cadence picks up. He’s definitely not the lazy, chatty, paddling type. “You can ease off a bit there, mister. I wasn’t actually looking for a race.”

  He casts a rueful glance over his shoulder and backs off considerably. “Sorry. I do that to my climbing buddies sometimes too—my body tends to move at the speed of my thoughts.”

  My brain isn’t the empty mellow it usually is while I’m paddling, either. “Feel free to chatter out loud. The lake’s heard lots of stories.”

  He chuckles and faces forward again. I could show him how to turn around and paddle backwards, but I’ve always found pleasure in the intimacy that happens when two people aren’t face to face. The feeling that I’ve been granted the special privilege of listening in on someone talking to themselves.

  “My head chatter doesn’t belong out here,” he says, watching the patterns his paddle makes as it dips into the water. “And I like that it doesn’t. You have a little bit of paradise here, Liane. It’s not hard to understand why you stayed.”

  It has the thorny parts of paradise too—any tiny town in the middle of nowhere does. But they’re my thorns and I like them.

  I catch movement off to our left and grin. I’m not sure if Beatrice Monk counts as a thorn, but she’s definitely local interest. She’s down on her landing, waving at us. I wave back. There’s no hiding on some stretches of Crawford Bay, and this is one of them. “Hey, Bee. What’s up?”

  “Morning!” Her voice carries easily across the water, the upside of being a retired opera singer. “Daley wants you to know she’s dropped your little monster off with Lee.”

  Lee is Daley’s grandson, and if he and Trouble are on the loose together, I hope someone glued an emergency-locator beacon on at least one of them.

  “Good morning, gorgeous.” Bee blows kisses at the man in the front of my boat. “Daley’s also going to leave the two of you a picnic basket at the hideaway beach.”

  The most private little nook of white sand on this shore. I snort. The grapevine is in fine form this morning. I cup my hands around my mouth—I don’t have Bee’s skill with projection. “Thank you.”

  She blows us one last kiss and turns to head back up to her cabin.

  Matteo swivels to look at me. “Are all the locals this friendly?”

  “Pretty much.” I offer him a wry grin. There’s only one way through this, and he might as well know. “They also think I need a man in my life, so if you make a run into town for coffee or groceries, you’re likely to get accosted.”

  His lips quirk. “Noted.” He eyes Bee’s cabin as we paddle by, with her big deck that stretches out of the trees and over a beautiful fall of rocks down to the water’s edge. “Just how much of this bay can she see?”

  I dip my paddle into the water, amused despite myself. “A lot of it. Not my boathouse and not the hideaway beach, if that’s at all comforting.”

  He makes a noise I can’t interpret.

  I don’t know how to explain nosy neighbors with hearts of gold to a big-city man. “It’s probably a lot different than what you’re used to.”

  A long silence, with something growing into it. When he speaks again, the words have that sense that he’s talking more to himself than to me. “I grew up in farming country. I had two best friends, and we pretty much ran wild, but we used to swear our parents could talk to the cows or maybe even the hay. They always seemed to know where we were.”

  I find that a charming part of small-town life, but it doesn’t sound like he did. A man who walked away from the constrictions I’ve chosen. Which fits him. That focused lightning of his feels urban. Other. A world apart from my lake and my neighbors who gossip and make impromptu picnic lunches and keep track of a ten-year-old and a kitten all day without either of them feeling smothered.

  He’s a guy who once knew this kind of life and left it. Which means I’m on a canoe ride with a lot of interesting crackle—with a man who has his life on the exact opposite trajectory to mine.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Matteo

  She thinks really loudly, and I can’t see her, which is hampering my ability to translate the noise into meaning.

  I grin. She probably doesn’t think of her canoe as kinky, but it is. Power exchange, sensory deprivation, the lurking threat of unpleasant consequences for wiggling too much.

  I’m not used to being on this end of all of those dynamics.

  We suddenly veer sharply toward the shore, and I blink. I don’t doubt, because it didn’t take more than thirty seconds on the water to understand Liane is as good at paddling as she is at making rope, but right now we’re headed straight for a rocky high bank and some scruffy overhanging trees, and this is a really nice and very fragile boat.

  “Paddle up.”

  She doesn’t sound concerned at all, so I follow instructions and take my paddle out of the water. I settle it gingerly in my lap, ready to be useful and trying not to cause trouble otherwise.

  At the very least, I can probably keep us from pranging on a rock.

  Ten feet from a nasty collision, the boat executes a sharp ninety-degree turn and slides into place against a big fallen log, coming to a precise stop under a dappled umbrella of tree branches and bright-green leaves.

  “Wow.” My paddle somehow left my lap and is hanging uselessly in the air, but it’s really clear I’m superfluous. “Nice parking job.”

  She chuckles behind me. “Thanks. There are ways of getting here that aren’t so flashy, but I like putting my boat through her paces every so often.” She shifts behind me and the canoe rocks a little. “I’m going to tie us off so we can laze and have a snack without ending up at the mouth of the bay.”

  Every part of that sounds good.

  I eye the scruffy rope lying on my end of the log. It’s seen better days, and there’s not a lot of it, but a man works with the tools he has. Reaching it would involve shifting my body way more than feels sane, so I try to hook it with the grip of my paddle.

  A snort from the woman who got us here, and it’s definitely amused. “One tie-off is plenty on a day like today, but if you want more, fill your boots. There’s a couple hundred feet of parachute cord in the rope bag behind you. Lop off a chunk if you want. I keep it handy for this kind of thing.”

  A woman who travels with two hundred feet of spare rope is totally my kind of woman.

  A hand on my shoulder makes me jump hard enough to nearly send us headlong into the drink. It’s almost worth the embarrassment to hear Liane’s peeling laughter as she drops the rope bag in my lap. “If you turn around, I’ll show you how to rig up your lifejacket so you can lean back against the bow. It’s almost as comfortable as a hammock.”

  I pause on my dive into the rope bag as that visual lands and the rope artist in me comes fully alive to the possibilities in this moment.

  I turn gingerly, surveying the canoe’s dimensions. I run my fin
gers through the contents of the rope bag. Five-millimeter poly cord. A little thin, but workable. I can feel my brain doing the math. I’ll need at least half the rope for the canoe, which won’t leave me much for the rest of my plans.

  Then I spy the rope she used to tie us off in the back. It’s at least as scruffy as its cousin on this end of the log, but there’s a ton of it. Forty feet, maybe more.

  I hop out of the boat onto the log, trying to keep my intentions out of my eyes. “Why don’t you take the hammock seat. I’m going to set something up so that I don’t dump us and our snacks into the lake.”

  She eyes me like I just turned into an oversized frog.

  I grin. Suspicion is part of the fun for a rigger, especially one about to improvise his socks off. “Go on. Get settled. I want to see this hammock deal.” I do, but probably not for the reasons she expects. I’m also studying the rest of the canoe with entirely different eyes than before. I’d idly noticed the metal loops evenly spaced just under the top edges of the boat, but their possibilities are growing more interesting by the minute. I reach out and touch one. “What are these for?”

  She pauses, half out of her life jacket. “Attachment points. On a long trip, I use them to rope everything down. They’re overkill, really, but they save me from having to tie anything off to the boat itself.” She lifts the lifejacket over her head and dangles it down behind her as she leans backward. “Cedar strip canoes are beautiful, but they’re finicky. This way I have to sand fewer scratches out of my finish every fall.”

  Noted. Be nice to the canoe.

  I watch appreciatively as my guide arranges herself. She’s laid back on the skinny part of the front of the boat, her head and shoulders nicely padded on her lifejacket, her ass still on the canoe seat. I grin as she lifts up her legs, crosses her ankles, and props them on the far side of the boat. That will work nicely. I’ll be rearranging her legs some, but the rest is a very nice set-up indeed.