A knock at my bedroom door wakes me up.

I open my eyes, the room a purple grey. It’s early.

Riley is sleeping in my bed next to me, her back to me, her chest rising and falling. I take a moment to watch her, still in disbelief that this gorgeous creature is in my bed, looking so small and vulnerable. Something in my heart aches for this scene, makes me want to lock it in my head forever. What if this is all I get of her? What if this is it?

The knock repeats itself and I carefully get out of bed, trying not to wake her, and open the door a crack.

Fox is on the other side, frowning at me.

“Are you alone? Why aren’t you opening the door?” He’s trying to see into the room.

“I’m naked, dude,” I whisper. “You want to see the family jewels and compare them to your own?”

“Why are you whispering?” he asks. Not whispering.

I look over my shoulder at Riley. She’s still sleeping. I eye Fox through the door. “I may have someone in here. She’s sleeping.”

“Riley?” He looks impressed.

“Yes,” I hiss. “Now what do you want? It’s cold and that doesn’t do my dick any favors.”

“Again with your dick.”

“Fox.”

“Just wondering why your truck is still here. Aren’t you working today?”

I groan. “Shit. Yes. Fuck it, I’m calling in sick.”

“Really? You’re already doing this? What happened to not breaking the rules?”

“Yeah, well obviously I’ve broken them in a million different positions already.”

Fox rolls his eyes. “I guess you’re the boss.”

“Yeah, I am. Thanks for getting that. Have fun on the slopes.”

He studies me for a moment, not smiling. “Just watch yourself, that’s all.”

“Why? For what?”

“If you don’t know, I can’t help you.”

“But I don’t know.”

“Then I can’t help you.” He turns and heads down the hall. “Just play it safe, okay brother? And don’t forget about your damn dog while you’re having all the sex. If I come home and she’s pissed everywhere, I’m going to be very upset.”

“Heaven forbid you get upset,” I mutter to myself, gently closing the door.

But when I turn around, Riley has rolled over and is looking at me through sleepy eyes under the mess of her blonde hair.

“Sorry,” I tell her, quickly getting back into bed with her. “The drawback of living with your brother. It’ll be better in the summer. He’s away fighting those fires for weeks at a time, living in camps. It’s only in the winter that we really have to share.”

She looks at me with big eyes and I wonder if what I’ve said has surprised her, if she thinks that we won’t be a thing come the summer months.

I find myself rambling. “Honestly, when we decided to buy the house it just made sense. The market was at a low and it’s slowly picking up. We wanted to invest. It’s so expensive in this province that eventually the small towns are going to get popular too. We’ve made an agreement where…well, anyway, doesn’t fucking matter. We won’t be roommates forever, it’s just what makes sense for now.”

She stifles a yawn. “You talk a lot in the morning, you know that?”

“Maybe you make me nervous.”

A sly smile spreads across her lips. She likes the thought of that. “What time is it, anyway? Don’t you have to go in today?”

I shake my head. “I’m giving myself the day off.”

“Then I should probably go in,” she says, suddenly determined, making a move to get out of bed.

I quickly grab her arm and pull her back down. “Please, don’t go.”

“But –”

“No buts,” I tell her. “The weather has been great so far, it hasn’t changed yet. We’ll go in if there’s an emergency but…I just want to be with you. Here. All day. Please, stay with me. Spend the day with me.”

She’s thinking about it, her eyes looking elsewhere in the room, then the window, trying to judge the weather, or maybe something else.

“Riley,” I say, hoping she can hear the pleading in my voice. “Please. Just…stay with me.”

She exhales and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, peering at me. “Okay.”

I can’t describe the way my heart feels, like I’m being flooded with relief. Something so fucking simple, just her agreeing to stay here for the day, and I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.

“You’re such a good girl,” I say to her, grabbing her face in my hands and kissing her, soft and hard all at once. “I’m making you Maverick’s Famous Pancakes.”

“Oh my God,” she laughs against my mouth, a sound that shoots straight to my chest. “Please don’t tell me there’s hot sauce on these ones too.”

“You’ll see.”

We get out of bed but we take it slow. I make coffee and she drinks it in the kitchen just wearing one of my flannel robes that’s oversized on her, plus a pair of too-big shearling slippers. She cups the mug with both her hands, wild pieces of blonde hair in her face, and watches me intently as I start making breakfast.

She is ridiculously adorable.

I’m trying hard to impress her. Maverick’s famous pancakes are actually normal pancakes but I add bananas, walnuts, slices of bacon, and top it with brown sugar instead of maple syrup. I know, how anti-Canadian of me to forgo the syrup that’s supposed to run through our veins.

We eat the pancakes at the kitchen table, Chewie hanging around at our feet, hoping for the occasional piece of bacon.

This feels right. I’ve never had a woman over who stayed for breakfast and I certainly never made anything for them. The few relationships I’d been in, I rarely had them over. What was the point when I was on call? Everything was always kept at a distance. And it wasn’t always me breaking it off with them, sometimes they broke it off with me because they didn’t want that distance and they didn’t understand my job.

But with Riley, she understands my job – in a way, she is my job. And I want to close the gaps. I want there to be no distance between us.

There was a softness to her last night. When she woke up from the nightmare, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was calling for Levi. I know that dreams can be personal and what happened with him is something she keeps dear to her heart. To bring it up would be to intrude, especially when she’s so vulnerable.

I just want her to keep being vulnerable.

I want tender.

And that shocks me, because I’ve never been a tender kind of guy. Riley is slowly but surely rewriting me.

“That was amazing,” she says to me after she’s scarfed down the pancake. Must I mention that I love the fact that she eats. She makes no apologies for it, just like she makes no apologies for the way she is. That is so rare.

“You’re amazing,” I can’t help but blurt out.

She gives me a coy smile. “Right back at ya.”

“I mean it. You don’t even know why.”

“Okay, why?”

“Because you’re so unapologetically you. You don’t give a fuck.”

She considers that. “My give-a-fuck meter is broken and it never even worked to begin with.” She pauses, looks up at me through long lashes. “But I do give a fuck about you.”

I laugh. “That might be the most romantic thing I ever heard.”

She shrugs, pushes back her chair and gets up. Drops her robe so it falls to the ground. She’s completely naked underneath.

“I’m cold,” she says. “Put on a fire.”

Fuck me. She’s trouble.

“I’m hard,” I tell her, getting up, pressing my palm against the erection in my pajama pants. “And I can set you on fire”

She giggles at that, shaking her head, and walks naked around the table and over to the fireplace. “I’m serious,” she says, getting down on all fours on the bearskin rug. “Put on the fire and then warm me up.”

Jesus. She doesn’t stop.

I follow her, trying to ignite the logs while she stares up at me from the rug with sex-kitten eyes, wiggling her ass in the air.

“You fucking tease,” I whisper hoarsely. “You’re going to get it.”

She cocks a brow.

The fire lights.

I strip quickly, feeling electricity running through my veins, a sense of urgency unlike any before, and then I’m coming around her from behind on the rug, prowling like she’s the prey and I’m the hunter, or maybe it’s the other way around because I’m in her pull, her power, and there isn’t anything I can do about it.

She’s on her hands and knees beneath me, her hair spilling around her like a blonde cloud, looking so flawless and pure and soft against the fur rug. My cock juts out between us, bobbing as I move above her body, and the need to drive myself so deep inside her is more dominant than ever.

It’s the need to claim.

To make her mine.

That primal, animalistic instinct to take and hold and possess. As caveman as it sounds, it’s real and raw and it’s an ache in my chest, clawing its way out of me.

With her ass facing me, I place my tongue on her firm cheek, making long, wide licks up and then down, back and forth, while I’m squeezing her skin. Her ass is so tight and round and perky, a peach I could bite into all day.

She rises her hips into me, pressing her ass into my mouth.

She wants more.

Of course she does.

Even with my cock almost painfully rigid, everything swimming with this heady infatuation, I slide my finger down her ass, parting it.

“Do you like that?” I whisper. Everything is wild and tense. “Do you want this?”

She makes a sound, tight and breathless, that sounds like “yes.”

I draw the finger back up, and she rotates her hips for purchase.

Greedy.

I lower my head and gently blow on her.

She stiffens again, then presses herself back.

More.

I slide my tongue in slowly, my heart intent on climbing out of my chest.

Riley sucks in her breath sharply; the exhale is a low groan I feel rumble all the through me, hotter than the flames dancing around us.

I slide my hand around, finding her clit and lightly petting it until she’s moaning again, her hips circling for more.

Her legs spread wider on the rug, giving me greater access in all ways and I’m experiencing her in a whole new way. She’s opening up to me, putting her pleasure in my hands, and offering herself. She’s vulnerable, something so rare for her, and I want to drown in this tenderness.

And yet I want to be oh so rough.

I can feel her close to coming. She’s panting, her body growing warmer, on the verge. Her nails are digging into the rug.

“Oh my God, Mav,” she says hoarsely, and I nearly lose my fucking mind. “Keep going. Keep going.”

I do. My tongue plunges in her ass, fucking her so tight, and my fingers stroke and circle. She’s panting, breathless, needy.

She’s incredible like this, about to throw herself over the edge.

And then she goes. It happens quickly, and I feel her unravel under my tongue, my lips, my fingers. She tenses for a split second and the world seems to still, tipping on its axis, and then she’s shattering, arching her back, crying out my name.

“Come inside me,” she says, voice a broken whisper as she rides out the wave. “Right there.”

Fuck yes.

I grab her hips and pull her back into me, my hands so large around her waist, my cock positioned. Good lord, I can’t believe she’s letting me do this but I’m fucking doing it.

I hold my breath and carefully, slowly, push inside.

Oh.

Fuck.

It’s.

So.

Good.

She gasps but pushes back into me to let me know I should keep going. I take it as easy as I can, my movements slow and deliberate.

“Is this okay, am I hurting you?” I murmur, hoping she’s at least getting some kind of thrill out of it and grateful that she got off moments before. Before she has a chance to answer, I let go of her hip and my hand slides between her legs. Her cunt is still pulsing from her earlier orgasm, so I know to take it even gentler.

She immediately relaxes into my fingers. The muscles along the length of her back smooth out, and her head hangs down limply as she gives herself to me. The fire makes her hair glow like a halo.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper to her gruffly. “You feel so good. You’re so good.”

She’s silent and breathing heavily but her body responds to my touch like a finely tuned instrument. I push in and out, and her ass is so goddamn tight that I don’t have much time. I can’t seem to get air, my skin is running hotter and hotter, tighter and tighter, like I have a sunrise coming from within.

My fingers work faster as I pump harder, with as much control as I can muster. The rug slips back and forth and I know at some point we might slide right into the fireplace.

There is so much going on.

And yet my only real thought is her.

I groan, the relentless energy building inside me as I push in to the hilt, the pressure reverberating through me.

She’s so tight.

So good.

So good.

My body gets warmer, tighter, and a heated coil builds inside, layer by layer, until I know I don’t have long.

And now I’m teetering over that thin line, that edge, that drop.

I’m not alone in it.

She comes hard, shaking so violently that it makes me shake. My lower back tightens, and everything inside me cracks while an animal-like growl is ripped from my throat, echoing around the living room as I pour into her. It feels so good, I can’t even feel my knees. I don’t know my name.

Her noises are soft compared to mine this time around, and we’re rocking together, joined, until everything inside me is gone.

I nearly collapse on her back which is now covered in my sweat and it takes all my strength to keep holding onto her waist, to keep myself up.

“Fuck me,” I manage to say, unable to catch my breath, my heart pounding so hard in my head that it’s making the room shake. “Fuck, Riley…that was…you are...”

“No, you are,” she says, looking at me over her shoulder. Her face is bright red, either from facing the fire or from her orgasm or from both, her hair sticking to her damp forehead. Her eyes are hooded.

She looks like I just fucked the life out of her.

She certainly fucked the life out of me.

I pull out, not caring for now that some of me drips on the rug, and lie down on my back beside her. I stare up at the high ceiling, the knots in the wood.

“Best day ever,” I eventually say, my chest still rising and falling.

She peers down at me. “It’s getting there.”

I raise my brows. “What? What could be better? You just came twice.”

“Do you have Netflix? And beer? And popcorn?”

“It’s, like, ten a.m.”

“So?”

“Well, yes then.”

“Can we drink beer and eat popcorn and watch Wayne’s World? And then Happy Gilmore? And maybe Ace Ventura after?”

I grin stupidly at her. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so happy. “Okay. Now it’s the best day ever.”

She leans over and kisses me on the lips. “And we’ve only just begun.”