Chapter Nineteen
Cameron
The couch wasn't that bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad. It wasn't lumpy, at least there was that. It was almost long enough to take my height, and I was close to the fire. Close to the fire, yeah, which meant far away from her. It was morning. I didn’t know how early, but I had just woken up. The sound of Natalie coming down from the loft was what had gotten me up. She was in the shower. Two nights down. I was getting the hang of this.
Nothing had happened between us. We had spent the last couple days together and the last couple nights very far apart. The snow was still making the roads up here impassable, so I had a few more days and nights like that to look forward to. We cooked, talked, hung out—wholesome activities only. No inappropriate touching, or looking, none of that, but plenty of dirty thoughts.
For fuck’s sake, she was right there, all the time. She was gorgeous; I wished I was better than the things I thought about doing to her, but I wasn’t. It was insane, how much I wanted to peel all her layers off and fuck her. Did she feel the same? If she did, then I could stop feeling guilty about what went through my head when I remembered she was naked in the bathroom right then. Does she feel anything at all? I wondered, folding my blankets and clearing the couch so we'd be able to sit when we had breakfast.
If she did, I wasn't saying anything would happen; I was just curious. If she did, then you'd have no problem, I thought. No worries that she didn't feel the same, and it would make things awkward. That was one way to look at it, but what were we looking at here realistically if something did happen? A couple days fucking on every surface and against every wall in the cabin, maybe, but that was it. She’d leave eventually. Whatever happened, if anything, wouldn’t lead to a relationship. With me up here and her down in Provo? People made long distance relationships across continents work, but I didn't want that.
Long distance was only worth it if you knew you were going to be together again. I wouldn't want that unless there was a good reason we had to be apart. What counted as a good reason? Nothing was going to happen. We weren't actually going to do anything, so it didn't matter that I was thinking about it. A good reason... shit, besides work I couldn't think of any. Unless deployment was on the table, but neither of us served. So then what? Would I move because I wanted to be with her? Would she move so she could be with me, hypothetically?
The bathroom door unlocked and opened up a crack.
"Cameron?"
"What?" I asked, looking over at the bathroom door. Her head poked out of it, and steam from the heat of her shower wafted out.
"I forgot to bring a towel down; could you hand me one please?" she asked. So much for trying not to imagine her naked. I went up to the loft where the closet was and pulled one out, bringing it back down with me. "Thanks," she said, reaching for it. She was behind the door but had to pull it open more to take the towel. The mirror in the bathroom behind her was foggy, but not foggy enough that I couldn't make out her back, ass, and legs in it.
"You're welcome,” I said quickly, walking away. Boundaries. Limits. I was past trying to stop thinking about her, but crossing the line into being a creep was out of the question. We had to trust each other for this to work. She had to trust me not to do shit like that, but fuck, I didn't even trust myself not to try to get another glimpse of her naked after that.
All that hypothetical shit was dangerous. I knew what I wanted, and it couldn't happen. It wouldn't be fair to her. Okay, but what about what she wanted? You haven't even asked her, so how do you know? Maybe she isn't looking for anything more than a couple nights of fun, and you're overreacting instead of giving them to her.
The bathroom door opened again, and Natalie walked out, drying her wet hair. Seeing her, I realized I hadn't even started making breakfast yet. No, I had been thinking about the pros and cons of fucking her.
"Hungry?" I asked her, clearing my throat. If she knew even half of what I thought about her, she’d have grounds to call the fucking cops.
"Not really. I could use some coffee though," she said. I filled the percolator to give me something to do that wasn't staring at her. She started talking, telling me about the weather, talking about the temperature. I barely heard her trying my damnedest not to embarrass myself in that kitchen. There could never in history have been a worse time to get hard. She headed up to the loft briefly, and the coffee was ready by the time she came back down. She walked over to the deck and opened the door instead of sitting after I handed her her mug.
"How much land do you have up here?" she asked, looking outside. The cabin was warm compared to the air that blew in from the open door.
"An acre or so," I said. I wasn't sure of how much exactly. I knew now that I should have paid more attention to my realtor telling me this stuff, but I hadn't. It was good luck and intervention that had gotten me this far because none of it had been common sense.
"Have you gotten a look at the rest of the property? You could probably do something with it." I walked over to the open door and looked out of it with her. Snow, snow, and more snow. At least it wasn't falling though, and the wind didn't seem to be too bad.
"Do something like what?"
"Whatever you want," she said with a shrug. "Put more buildings up. Add to the cabin. Raise chickens."
"Chickens?"
"Yeah. Raise animals and plant your own vegetable patch so you never have to go into town again."
"I don’t know about all that," I said, looking around. Some people had to live like that, I knew, but as much as I had been here for a little while already, I couldn't tell whether I still would be a year from now. Not even a month from now. There was all the bullshit with the company, but even if that wasn't on the table, I didn't know whether this was it for me. I liked the solitude and relying on myself, but I already knew what I would potentially be missing out on if I stayed here.
"Growing up, my mother baked all the bread that we ate," she said. "We ate eggs from her chickens, and when she got her goats, we stopped buying milk from a neighboring farm." She had told me that her parents had done the homestead thing. The thought was cute, but it was just me up here. If you had a family, I could see the appeal, but how many damn eggs did I need? It probably saved money and the hassle of driving into town, but I didn’t want that, I soon realized. There was a fine line between what I wanted and being a hermit. I didn’t mind going into town; I just wanted the option to get away from it when I needed to be.
"Did you ever want to do that?"
"No," she said hastily. "My parents wanted a big family that they raised knowing how to live off the land. It was rewarding to them to live that way. For me..." she trailed off.
"You like your milk pasteurized and your eggs from a store?" I asked. She smiled slightly.
"Yeah, but I wanted to see whether there was more. They loved their small town, their ranch, their neighbors and animals, all of it, but it was theirs. I wanted to see what I wanted." I could understand that. She had left her home to find her way, and she had. I had my life planned out for me. I didn't have that option. Well, I never thought that I had it. If I sold out of the company, then I could do whatever I wanted. I could stay here, leave, go back to school, anything. I had never had that kind of freedom, I realized. It had never been an option for me. ‘Til now.
"I was thinking about shoveling today," I said to her.
"Yeah? Do you want help?"
"I only have one shovel," I said, closing the door to the deck.
"Then we can take turns," she said. We ended up agreeing that she'd take the snow that had blown onto the deck and the porch, and I would do the driveway getting enough snow out from around our cars to reduce the amount of ice that would end up forming. The cover was more than a foot deep. I concentrated on freeing our cars and moving as much of the loose snow as possible. The more we let pile on, the worse it would end up being in the end.
A little more than an hour later, Natalie was coming down the stairs with a cup of hot coffee for me. We took a break and started talking as I had my coffee. Five minutes turned into ten, then into twenty, then we were walking around the back of the house to see more of the property. I couldn't wait to see what it looked like without all the snow. Maybe I would be here when it warmed up next year. The place was mine; I could come up here whenever I wanted.
And she could too, I thought. You know, if she wanted to. She could visit if she wanted to come by, take a few days off from time in the city. I didn't know what I wanted. I had come up here to figure it out, but I did know that whatever happened, I didn’t want to stop talking to Natalie. These were special circumstances. I knew that she wouldn't always be around all day whenever I wanted to see her so we could talk, but she was here now, and while we had the time, I was making the most of it.
"Ugh, it was a nightmare," Natalie said, responding to my question about what it had been like growing up with four older brothers.
"Do they know you feel like that?" I asked, laughing.
"They probably felt the same way having a whiny little sister who wanted to play with them but couldn't keep up."
"So what did you do?"
"Told on them," she said, smiling a little. "Oliver is just a year and a half older than I am, so he always got stuck playing with me when Aaron, Marc, and Derrick didn't want to. I used to get so sore when they made fun of me for being a girl; I didn't wear dresses or makeup ‘til after I went to college."
"Stop it."
"I swear," she said, "if you saw a picture of me in high school, you wouldn't recognize me. I had the Arya Stark haircut ‘til I was eighteen."
"You're just full of surprises, aren't you?" I said. I couldn’t picture it. She hadn’t been wearing makeup while she was here, but even bare-faced, wrapped in scarves and coats, I didn’t see that girl she used to be. Allegedly used to be; I’d believe her when I saw pictures.
"I could say the same about you. All I knew about you was you were Mr. Porter’s son. I thought you had to be entitled, spoiled, and arrogant."
"Shit, don't hold back," I said, laughing.
"It was before we talked. I judged you unfairly. I know that now, and I'm sorry about that."
"I think I was wrong about you," I said.
"How?" she asked.
"I thought you were…" I paused. Did I really want to bring it up? She hadn’t all this time, and if I did, she would want to talk about it. I appreciated that she had had all this time to bring up work and she hadn’t. I felt like she understood, or at least respected that I had come up here because I had needed time and space from all that shit. For a while, I had thought of her as just a pawn for Brett, to help him wear me down enough to come back, but I had been wrong. I could have told her, but I decided to keep that one to myself.
"I thought you were a high maintenance princess. That you'd break a nail up here, cry, and demand I take you back down to the town in the snow." She laughed.
"Aren’t you glad you were wrong?" she asked, smiling at me. I was. I had been anxious about staying with her for a number of reasons; at the top of the list was how strongly I was attracted to her but close behind was how I'd deal with a diva if she turned out to be one. Sharing my space in general with someone who I didn't want there and who didn't want to be there either. It had worked out, I guessed. As well as it could have. She probably wished she was at her place where she had access to heat and a hairdryer, but she was here with me and, from what I could tell, didn't hate it.
I was glad it was her. I was happy that I’d had a chance to be proven wrong about who she was. I hadn’t had many expectations going into this but couldn't be mad at how it had turned out. I was getting several days out here with a beautiful woman I otherwise never would have spoken to. The back of the house was completely covered in white. The snow was at least two feet deep in places. We headed back inside when it started coming down again.
"Is it still coming down?"
"Not much but yeah," she said from the window, looking outside. I was setting my bed up for the night on the couch. It had been a couple hours since dinner, and we were both ready to turn in. "It's a lot worse than I thought it would be." I went over and looked. The snowfall was light, but it was still falling. In the morning, there would be a fresh carpet of snow on everything.
"It think it's colder than last night too," she said. Was it? Maybe I was just getting used to the cold.
"I'll add a couple logs to the fire," I said. "Are you going to be okay?" She said that she would. She headed up the stairs to the loft while I adjusted the fire. We were good on wood if we kept using it at the current rate, but if the temperature dropped and we needed more, we would have a problem on our hands. Natalie had told me a story about how her dad had had to go out for firewood in the winter. It wasn't impossible, but it was the worst time to harvest wood, not to mention the most dangerous.
"Cameron?" I turned, looking over my shoulder at her. She was at the foot of the steps, standing with her arms crossed. "Do you want to come up?"
"To the loft?"
"Yeah. I mean," she shrugged, "I feel kind of bad for taking your bed from you. It's big enough for the both of us, and it's cold tonight so," she shrugged again.
"Are you sure?" I asked. She nodded, turned, and went up to the loft. I followed her, swallowing. My mind went to one place, and I hated myself for it. Her body that morning in the mirror. I didn't know whether this was a good idea, but my legs look me up the stairs to the loft. She was already in the bed, facing the wall. I turned the light out and got in the other side. The bed was big, she was right, but she didn't have to be close to me to feel her there.
It didn't matter where she was, I felt her.
"Goodnight," I said quietly.
"Goodnight," she replied. I didn't move. I didn't think. I hardly breathed. If I had been tired before, I wasn’t anymore. I had imagined being able to be this close to Natalie the past couple nights, what I would do to her… how her lips would feel wrapped around my…fuck. I felt myself getting hard. She sighed from beside me. I felt her move. She was still awake. Down boy, I thought, trying to keep it together. We were adults, not wild animals. If the situation had been different, maybe I wouldn’t have had to keep it reeled in, but I could be a gentleman tonight Could be? I had to be. If she wakes up with your hard-on poking her in the back, she’ll run down that mountain to get away from you.
Some time passed, could have been a minute, maybe an hour, but she moved again, and then I felt her. I was on my back. She was so close I could feel the heat coming off of her. I turned to look at her, making out the shape of her body in the dark. This was a disaster; why did I ever think I'd be able to do this? I reached out and touched her, ran my hand down her arm, turning so I was facing her body. She pushed her back into my chest. I slid my hand under the covers and wrapped my arm around her, pulling her into me.
She turned, twisting her head around so she looked at me. In the dark, our eyes found each other. I took my arm from around her and cupped her face. She didn't flinch or try get away from my touch. That was enough for me. I kissed her. Our lips met, and she moved suddenly, maneuvering herself on top of me. I sat up as she straddled my lap, kissing her again, cupping her face as my mouth and tongue tasted her for the first time.
It was like that release you got after holding tight to something and finally being able to let go. Finally. I kissed her desperately. Her fingers wound through my hair. My hands cupped her ass, pulling her in closer to me. I slid them up under her layers, to her smooth skin underneath. I was already hard, rising between us. It would be so easy, so fucking easy, but I had to reel it in. I pulled away, looking at her.
"Natalie?" it was dark. I couldn't really see her. There wasn’t enough light for me to read her face. I needed her to know that if she wasn't sure, she needed to stop me because I didn't know how well I'd be able to stop myself.
"No," she said, pulling the sweater she was wearing over her long-sleeved t-shirt off over her head. "I want you. Please." I kissed her, sliding my hands under the shirt and helping her out of it. I threw it on the far side of the bed and buried my face in her chest. Her skin burned hot under my hands and mouth. She sighed, feeling my mouth on one of her nipples. I cupped her other full, round breast in my hand, tweaking her other one.
Even more perfect than I had imagined. I wrapped an arm around her and lowered her to the bed, getting on top of her. The little light there was reflected off her ivory skin. If her coming up here after me had led to this, I owed her a lot more than just a thank you.