After we spend a whole twenty four hours exhausting each other, hardly leaving Emma’s bedroom, I’m still starved for her. For her touch, yes. And her body.

But also for her laugh, for her way of excitedly telling stories. Her honesty. Her acceptance of me, flaws and all.

So I do what I’ve never done in my entire adult life… I actually call in sick to work. I call Forest and say that I’m not coming into Cure for the next two days. I don’t say that I’m sick, just that I’m not coming in.

I think he is a little startled by my announcement, but Forest just says okay. When I hang up the phone, I look at Emma and think, we need to go somewhere. Not somewhere far. And not for too long.

I just feel the need to be somewhere else with Emma. Somewhere that’s as wild and beautiful as she is, somewhere way outside the city.

Forsythe State Park pops into my head. It’s an uninterrupted stretch of wild coastline that’s only a couple of hours from here. I haven’t been since I was a kid. I can imagine Emma walking along the cliffs on the shore, see her walking among the tall pine trees. In my mind she wears plaid and little booty shorts.

Yeah, I need to take her away for sure.

“Do you want to go away for a couple of days?” I ask her. “Today, I mean. I’m thinking we could go to Forsythe.”

She looks up at me and gives me a sly smile. “Go on a mini-vacation with you? I guess I could do that.”

I get out my ancient laptop and start looking for a cabin to stay in. Something with a nice fireplace, so I can end a long day of staring at Emma’s amazing ass by stripping her down in front of the fire.

“Start packing,” I tell her, getting up to get my credit card out of my wallet. “I’m booking this place right now.”

She gets up and pulls on a pair of underwear and a t-shirt, then starts packing. I book a place on Air Bnb, then I kiss Emma and tell her I’ll be right back.

It’s only the work of a half an hour to run to my house and grab everything I will need. Within the hour, Emma is in the Jeep with me and we are speeding down the highway towards Forsythe State Park.

We’ve done nothing but talk and fuck for the last day, so it’s nice to let the wind stream in as I drive. It’s not silence exactly, but we are each able to be quiet. To live in our own thoughts.

She cracks open a book and reads most of the way. I’m busy taking in the sights when we get outside the city. The road starts rising little by little, and we drive alongside the rocky bluffs.

I glance over at Emma while we drive. She’s lost in her book, chewing on a nail distractedly as she slowly turns the pages. The wind blows her hair every direction at once, but she still manages to take my damn breath away.

If I’m honest with myself, she always could. Always has.

There is just something about her that goes beyond her obvious beauty… there is something wise in her eyes. Something comforting in her smile. I don’t want to rush things in any way, and we’ve only just gotten back together.

But she makes me feel something, deep inside. She not only stirs my lust, but she damn well plucks the strings of my heart, too.

Damn, how did Emma manage to get herself so far underneath my skin?

Any way you slice it, I have vague plans for us in the future. I’m not exactly sure what they are, because a lot of it depends on Emma herself. But if I have my way, one day in the not-too-distant future she will be wearing my ring and calling herself Mrs. Hart.

There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that she would be mine forever. Knowing that I would never have to search for anything else, because I had Emma.

Of course, then I think about the whole idea of marrying into Emma’s family — and Asher’s family, too. I swallow, my mouth going dry. I’ve met their parents a handful of times, and none of those times they were particularly impressed with me.

Plus, there is the bit about her being in law school. She will barely have time to sleep and eat over the next two years, much less worry about the stress of being a bride.

So yeah, my fantasy of asking Emma to marry me might be a couple of years off. But the idea is still there, clutched tight to my chest.

I marvel at myself, at how much I want her, when a month ago I couldn’t get far away enough. It definitely feels super strange to have all of these plans for the two of us, that’s for sure.

I pull off the highway, exiting into a dense patch of trees. I follow the GPS on my phone which leads me to a little rutted trail. I can hear the beach from here, the rolling waves ceaseless as always. But I can’t see anything yet except the tall pines, coming closer and closer together.

All at once, we break through the tree line. I’m a little shocked at how suddenly the path ends, the dark blue ocean splayed out right there, going on for miles and miles. The cabin is to the right, quaint and rustic with its dark wooden beams.

I pull up to the cabin just as Emma looks up from her book.

“Ohh,” is all she says, looking out over the bluffs to the ocean. “Holy crap.”

We get out of the Jeep, spending a few minutes getting our suitcases inside. The cabin is exactly what I wanted, the front room basically a ton of windows on one side and a bunch of places to lounge on the other. It even has the fireplace; I will definitely be stripping Emma bare in front of it later tonight.

“Let’s go!” Emma says, pulling at my hand. “I want to explore.”

She tows me toward the front door, and I let myself be led. I follow her out across the rocky bluff, to the very edge. She grips my hand as we both peer over.

“There’s a little shore down there,” she says, pointing to the tiny strip of shoreline between the bluffs and the swirling ocean.

I look down, frowning. Right now the swell of the sea was lapping gently twenty yards away, but I bet that wasn’t always the case. “I bet that you wouldn’t want to get caught there when the tide was about to shift. I imagine that you would be pressed right up onto the rocks.”

She glances at me. “When will the tide shift?”

I glance up at the sun, trying to gauge its position in the sky. “I think maybe six hours from now? Give or take.”

She grins triumphantly. “Can we go down there? I mean, I know that we will have to hike a while, but I think it’d be worth it.”

“Yeah, definitely. Let’s just make sure that we grab some water bottles before we go.”

We go back to the house, where I grab the water bottles and she changes into yoga pants. I can’t be mad about that. I have never seen her in workout gear before, but there is something about the way her ass moves in yoga pants that instantly has me hard as a rock. When I insist that she leads the way as we snake our way up a hiking trail that follows the rise of the bluffs, she is too eager to comply.

Soon enough though, she has me figured out.

“Are you even doing anything back there other than checking out my butt?” She looks back over her shoulder, pinning me with her gaze.

I glance up from her ass, unashamed. “Nope.”

Emma sighs and drops back so that she’s walking with me. The path that we’ve traveling narrows a little, and trees start to pop up, the foliage growing thicker pretty quickly.

She’s quiet for a minute, but I can see the gears turns in her head. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Depends. Is it about Asher or Cure?”

She makes a face. “Neither. It’s about your parents.”

“My parents?” I ask, a little thrown off. “What about them?”

“I’ve just never heard you talk about them. What do you remember?”

I take a full minute to consider her question. “Well, they were young when they had me. My mom was probably about fifteen. She wasn’t even twenty years old when Gunnar was born.”

“Yeah?”

I nod. “My dad was a little older than her, but not by much. They were both addicted to heroin before we were born.” I pause. “Gunnar was taken away by the state at birth because he tested positive for opiates when he was born. Don’t tell him that, though.”

“Wait, really?”

“Mmmhm. My grandma stepped in and took him, and then took in all three of us in the next few months.”

“Wow, I had no idea. Do you remember your parents much?”

I screw up my face. “Kinda. I remember them arguing a lot. They got the cops called because they were both pretty violent towards each other. I remember being glad when they got their medicine, because they would be calm for a day then.”

Emma takes my hand, lacing her fingers with mine. “I’m sorry.”

I shrug. “It could’ve been worse. At least they didn’t hit me or my brothers or anything.”

“So you were shipped off to your grandmother’s at… what, five?”

“Yep. Grandma Ruth. She was very strict, but she was around when we needed her. I didn’t ever—” I stop, taking a breath. I wasn’t really ready for this conversation to get all heavy. “I never told her while she was alive how much I appreciated that she took us in. She didn’t have to.”

She squeezes me hand. “I’m sure she knew.”

I give Emma a tight smile. The path shifts and starts heading downward, and the trees thinning out. The path veers right and the trees vanish. Suddenly I’m looking at a view of the ocean.

Beneath my feet the ground starts to slope drastically, leading down to a long set of stairs that have been carved into the rock. We clatter down the stairs together, reaching the pebbled shore at the bottom.

I step out from the stone staircase, looking behind me with awe.

“We just climbed down that.” I point at the towering stone bluff. “That seems impossible.”

She slips her arm around my waist. “It’s pretty cool down here. The water is so dark, and the rocks too. Then you’ve got this strip of sandy beach down the middle that provides a nice contrast.”

I look down at Emma, taking in her wide green eyes, her dark hair, her angelic facial features. I get hard again, right then and there, without exactly knowing why.

“You know what would be nice?” I ask, brushing her hair away from her ear. I lean down and kiss her earlobe.

She seems a little surprised, but she’s not even a little immune to the feel of my tongue tracing the shell of her ear. “No, what?”

I walk her backward so that she’s pressed against the tall stone bluff. “We should fuck right here. Right now.”

I grind my cock against her belly and groan into her ear. Whatever I’m doing works on her, because she pulls my mouth down to hers, sighing as I kiss her.

“Don’t make me wait,” is all she says, wrapping her arm around my neck.

“Never,” I solemnly promise. “You never have to wait again.”

I kiss her and the sound of us fucking fades into the sound of the sea.