The Woodsman (Lust in the Woods Book 1) Read online

  Chapter Seven

  Katy

  “‘We’ll do something?’ That’s what he said? Like you’ll have sex again?”

  Charlie stared at me as I threw my bag into the back of my car and attempted to seem nonchalant about what I’d just told her. I wasn’t ready for the hour-long analytical conversation Charlie was going to force me to have as soon as I told her what happened with Sam. But I couldn’t keep it to myself. Especially when I could feel that delicious soreness between my legs with every step I took.

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”

  “Well, whatever happens, I’m going to need more details. I mean, not now. Now you have to go and see what ‘something’ means to Mr. Grizzly, but details will be required tomorrow.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek and spun around.

  That was not what I expected.

  I started up my car and headed home, trying to calm the butterflies in my stomach that had been there since Sam walked out last night. It was clear he wouldn’t stay. Even before we sat down for dinner, I knew that whatever happened, Sam wasn’t going to end up sleeping in my bed. I tried not to take it personally. Of course, that was a stupid thing to try, but I still did it. I didn’t pout or give him an earful when he quickly pecked me on the lips and walked out of my room before I’d even managed to regain my breath.

  Whatever was happening between us couldn’t be overthought. That much I knew. It was something carnal, almost instinctual, so much so that I didn’t dare delve any deeper. The rational part of my brain pushed against the edges of my more sensual instincts, reminding me that the last time I opened up to a man, things had not gone well. And right now I was avoiding men, wasn’t I?

  I ignored that thought. I was drawn to Sam, and not just on a physical level. I’d been keeping that fact at bay, because to acknowledge that there was anything more than a physical attraction would complicate matters. For the moment, I wanted to act on instinct. And my instinct was telling me that last night wasn’t a one-time thing with a casual invitation thrown out at the last minute. He wanted to see me. Maybe even needed to see me.

  Pulling up to my cabin, I quickly got out and dumped my bag in my house, briefly checking my reflection and running my fingers through my hair. Then I skipped over to Sam’s place. Knocking on the front door, I waited nervously. The last time I’d been in this position, it hadn’t ended particularly well.

  Fortunately, the door swung open this time without me waiting too long. But just like last time, I’d caught him working out, although there were no ear buds in place to block me out this time. He was wearing loose sweatpants and nothing else, his torso glistening with sweat.

  “Hi. Come in. I didn’t realize the time or else I would have jumped in the shower earlier.”

  Willing my jaw to close before any drool dropped out, I slid past him, trailing a finger across his wet chest and gently scraping my nail against a nipple. He shut the door behind me and I stepped into his space. I turned our bodies, forcing him against the door, glad he was willing to play along. There was no way I could move the giant lumberjack anywhere he didn’t want to go.

  He smelled like cedar wood, soap, sweat, and something else I wanted to rub my face in. I wanted all of him—the sweat coating his skin after a hard workout, the feel of his muscles, firm and toned, not just from hours at the gym, but real work, the work he’d told me about last night.

  Sam stayed still, his back pressed against the door, his eyes hooded and dark as he watched me watching him. I ran my hands along the ridges of his stomach, pausing to admire the developed muscles, and hooked my fingers into his waistband.

  “No, Katy, you don’t have to…” He caught my wrist, but I pulled it out of his grasp and continued on my mission. Determinedly, I pulled down his sweats, just enough to release his erection. It jutted out from a dark thatch of hair. Without hesitation, in case he tried to stop me again, I dropped to my knees, leaned forward, and engulfed him in my mouth until he bumped against the back of my throat.

  “Holy shit,” he moaned. His hands speared through my loose hair.

  Pulling back, I licked my way down his shaft, taking in the texture of the soft skin, the scent of him. Looking up, I watched as his head dropped back to lean against the door, his eyes squeezed shut. But it wasn’t enough.

  Gently cupping his sack, I moved back to the tip. Then I took him back in, sucking him in as much as I could as I moved up and down. It had the desired effect. His hands tightened in my hair and he groaned, as if in pain. After a few moments, he pulled my head off him and lifted me up by my shoulders.

  Ignoring my protests, he claimed my mouth and pushed me backward until I fell onto the worn loveseat. He caged me in his arms.

  “I don’t want to come in your mouth. Not yet. Jesus, Katy. I didn’t ask you to come here expecting this. I thought we could talk, spend time together.” As he spoke, his nose traced the line of my jaw to my ear, his hands wrapping themselves in my hair.

  “I can’t talk, Sam, not now. Now after I’ve had you in my mouth. I’m burning up. Please, please…” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I needed. I didn’t even know what I needed. His hand trailed over my chest, ignoring my over-sensitive nipples, and slipped under my waistband, pushing past my panties until he brushed against my swollen folds.

  “Baby, you’re soaked,” he whispered, seemingly shocked. I should have been embarrassed by how wet I was, but I wasn’t. Every reaction I had with him felt right. Not contrived or over the top. Just right.

  “Yes, please…” Help me, I almost said. I started to wriggle, pushing down his sweatpants even farther with my feet until he got the hint and kicked them off. We worked together to get rid of my shoes and clothes until I was stripped bare. My naked thighs fell open as he moved between them and paused momentarily as he reached over to a rickety old side table and pulled something out of his wallet. A condom. Thank God one of us was thinking clearly. He ripped open the wrapper and slid it on before resuming his course of action.

  “I feel like every time I see you, I end up acting like a pervert. Our first night, last night … now. I can’t control myself around you.” His strong hand wrapped around my thigh and pulled it higher until he could hook his elbow beneath my knee. The action spread me open wide. I was exposed, vulnerable. There was no question he intended to take me. In this position it would be deep and hard.

  Bracing for him, I cried out in surprise when he shifted me higher until his shoulders rested between my thighs.

  “I want to have a taste before I go any further. I didn’t get a chance last night and I’ve been thinking about it all day. You have no idea how hard you make me, Katy. I’ve been hard all fucking day. Didn’t get a damn thing done. That’s why you found me working out. I needed to burn off the energy until I could get some of this honey.”

  “Are you the big bad bear after the honey pot?”

  He looked up from between my legs. Keeping eye contact, he leaned forward, stuck out his tongue, and licked my clit slowly. My smirk wavered and finally slipped as I threw back my head and moaned.

  “Exactly, Katy. And you can’t outrun a bear. You can try all you want to pretend you don’t like the dirty talk…” He paused again to lick, this time starting farther down, pushing his face even farther between my legs. I felt him chuckle as my legs began to quiver. “We both know you’re just lying. You were wet before I even touched you. That was all from the talk. And my cock in your mouth.”

  God, he was right. I liked the dirty talk. I like the sweat, even his damn dented truck outside. I loved the grit, his rough fingers, the long beard that was now driving me to distraction as it tickled my thighs and sensitive folds, an added bonus to his magic mouth. I was on the edge, so close. My hands slipped into his hair. I wanted to keep him between my thighs forever. My breath was ragged and I almost swore when he suddenly sat up, hooked his arm back under one knee, and drove in slow but firm.

  “Feel me, Katy. This was what I needed today. All
I thought about. How you felt last night, your tight cunt grabbing me. The way you called out my name when you came.”

  I lifted my free leg and wrapped it around him as he moved in and out. He set a fast pace, not nearly as frenzied as the night before, but still far from gentle. I’m not sure Sam could even do gentle.

  “Did you feel me today, Katy? Did you think of me every time you sat down, every time your thighs rubbed together?”

  “Yes, Sam, I did. And I wanted more.” If he wanted to know how much I wanted, I was happy to tell him. There was no coyness here, no room for subtle hints or flirtatious gestures.

  He sped up his pace, somehow pushing into me deeper than I thought he ever could. His balls slapped against my ass. A hot, wet mouth latched onto one of my nipples, and I arched my back in appreciation as he sucked hard, almost painfully hard, on my pebbled bud. I called out his name as the orgasm hit me. Hard. Fast.

  Through my haze, I watched him let go of my nipple and still, staring at me as I came. It didn’t matter. It just made it better. Stronger.

  He pulled back once more before falling forward, thrusting his face against my neck as he stiffened. The pulse of his body inside mine made me shiver, and I hooked my ankles together at the base of his spine, wanting to keep him flush against me as our orgasms slowly ebbed away.

  Soft kisses peppered my cheek and I hummed in appreciation. I could barely move as he pulled out and rolled off me, squeezing in behind me on the loveseat until we spooned together, precariously close to falling.

  “I should clean us up,” he murmured into my hair. I shook my head slowly as my eyes drifted shut.

  “No, I like it. Our mess.” I wriggled closer, losing the will to move as the smell and feel of Sam surrounded me.

  He chuckled into my hair. “Jesus, Katy, you can’t say things like that.”

  “Okay, Sam, whatever you want,” I hazily responded, smiling to myself as his arm tightened around my waist.

  “I wore you out, baby, didn’t I?”

  The last thing I felt was him sifting his fingers through my hair as he whispered sweet praise against my neck, words I could barely make out as sleep overtook me.

  “Beautiful … can’t control myself … feel like this…”

  Chapter Eight

  Sam

  Sam, fuck me.

  My eyes flew open at the sound of Katy’s voice. It took me a moment to figure out where I was. My neck had a cramp in it and I was cold except where Katy’s small body was pressed against mine. She’d turned in her sleep and wrapped herself around me. An arm around my neck. A thigh stretched out high on mine.

  The muted sound of my phone ringing reached me, and I realized it was what must have woken me up. Checking my watch, I quickly leaned over Katy and fumbled around until I found my phone on the floor. It was close to midnight. The only person who would call me was Robby. If there was an emergency.

  “I’m here.” My words sounded garbled as I spoke into the phone, my heart lurching into my throat. Before he even started speaking, I knew what he was going to say.

  “It’s Mom. She had an attack and passed out. Hit her head. We’re at the hospital and they want to run some scans. She hit it pretty hard, Sam. Fuck, I need you to get up here as soon as possible.”

  I felt Katy move behind me, her hands resting on my back. I tried to focus on the feeling of her hands, on something, anything to ground me from the rising panic.

  I’d known this would happen. My mother’s extreme asthma was manageable, but she tended to pass out when it got out of hand. A nurse came around once a day, but she hated it, being checked up on. The amounts of time the nursing company called us to tell us our mother had fired someone was staggering. And she was right to feel like she was too strong to be checked on like an invalid. Despite the asthma, she was in good condition. But at least once every few months, she’d pass out, knock herself out, twist an ankle, or scrape her hands. And now she’d really gotten hurt. Her head. What did that mean?

  Sitting up, I tried to take a deep breath in and couldn’t. I swallowed, a sharp pain wrapping instead around my chest. The phone was removed from my hand and Katy pushed my head down between my legs as she murmured into the phone.

  “…panic attack … I’ll get him there. Can you tell me what kind of condition she’s in so I can relay to him later? … he’ll be there.”

  Be where? How could I go anywhere? I could barely breathe. Now I was expected to get up and go somewhere? I needed to talk to Robby. My mom. I needed to talk to my mom. Just for a moment, if I could hear her voice and hear that she was all right, I could breathe again.

  “Keep breathing, baby, okay? I’m going to get dressed and start getting things sorted. Just breathe.”

  A blanket draped over me and I closed my eyes, trying to focus on what Katy had said. Breathe. I needed to breathe. How had I forgotten how to do that?

  The next few hours flew by, but the panic didn’t stop. Katy packed a bag and got me in the truck. The two-hour drive to the airport was silent, bar when Robby called, but Katy dealt with it.

  She guided me through check-in and security. The look on my face must have shown my surprise when she sat us down at the boarding gate.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d make it on the plane without having another … anyway, Robby booked two tickets for us. He wanted me to make sure you actually got there in one piece.”

  “One piece?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Sam. Let’s just get you there.” She reached out and intertwined her fingers through mine. It was no easy task since both of my hands were fisted and resting on my thighs. Even so, she persevered, and the sensation of her thumb rubbing across the back of my hand actually felt right.

  We sat in silence as we waited to board the plane. She watched people and I watched her. I watched her text my brother with my phone. I watched her tuck her long beautiful hair up into one of those messy buns I liked so much. I watched her be totally oblivious to the teenage boy who sat opposite us and couldn’t take his eyes off her. I kept watching her until the flight was in the air and the seatbelt sign had been turned off.

  I took a breath, what felt like the first one in hours. It felt amazing.

  She shifted in her seat to face me as I unbuckled my seatbelt.

  “Can you run through what my brother told you?” I didn’t want to tell her I was back in control, that whatever had taken over me had lifted. I just wanted to move on and forget it had ever happened.

  Katy wasn’t an idiot. In fact, she was probably one of the most intuitive people I’d ever met. I wasn’t surprised when she started giving me the information she’d been collecting since I froze up a few hours ago. After a few minutes, filled with reassuring words that painted a grim but hopeful picture of my mother’s condition, she stopped talking.

  “What about your job?”

  “I called my manager and explained.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Yeah, he’s a cool guy. He’s happy to step in and take my shifts for me until I get back. It’s not a big deal. He’s a good guy.”

  I nodded. It was all I could do. I barely knew the woman, and here she was taking time off work at short notice to fly my sorry ass to my mother’s bedside.

  “Tell me about your mom.”

  “When I was little, my mom had this cat that used to come to the door of our trailer. He was nice. He wasn’t a wild tabby or something like that. I mean, he was clearly an expensive pet that had run away. She would feed him, almost every day. But she didn’t go nuts about it. When she had shift work, she would leave him out food, or water. And she never let him in the house. I’d watch her sometimes, sitting on the step, smoking a cigarette and stroking that cat. It felt like hours sometimes. I once asked her why he couldn’t come in and just be our cat, you know? I could see she loved the damn thing. Anyway, she said, ‘Sam, you and Robby are it. I don’t need anything else in my life that I need to teach how to toughen up.’

  �
�I didn’t get it at the time. The cat disappeared a few months later, and she never said anything. But that was my mom. Through and through. Wouldn’t even let herself have a cat, something, anything, to give her a little comfort. It’s not fair that now that she can relax for once, not have to work, not have to come home bone-tired…” I couldn’t finish it.

  “She sounds like a tough cookie. Hard on the outside, soft in the middle. In case you didn’t get what the tough cookie metaphor meant.” I glanced over at Katy and she smiled at me, running her hand down my cheek. “You can get her a cat once you get her home. Although with the asthma, it might need to be a miniature poodle. Which is really not the same as a cat. At all. And cat people tend not to like dogs. And miniature poodles are pretty weird. To cat people, I mean.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. How this woman was able to make me laugh at a time like this, I had no idea, but it felt good. The worry and stress were there, but so was Katy making me laugh.

  Robby was waiting at arrivals. He looked haggard and worried.

  “Thanks so much for this, Katy.” He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. Despite having never met her, his gesture seemed appropriate considering what she’d just helped me with. She shifted her bag to her opposite shoulder and shrugged.

  “It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry it’s due to unfortunate circumstances.”

  “How’s she doing?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. We were waiting on an MRI scan and until then, nothing could be assumed.

  “I don’t know, man. Let’s just get to the hospital and we can try to find out more. They keep telling me to just wait.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Katy step to the side. My hand reached out and grabbed hers, pulling her to me, roughly. Probably too roughly, but right now I had nothing left in me for subtly.

  “Stay.” She looked down at our joined hands and then met my gaze. “Stay, for me.”