To think, he was here this whole time.

I’d have never thought it. Heck, I never knew there were any houses up here. I suppose I assumed there were, but it’s not like I could ever see them. Last year, I was too green to really even know what the hell I was doing, let alone take in all of the scenery.

And this year, it was far too gray out to see much farther than a few yards past your own nose.

I exhale, whistling slightly, and pat my belly.

“Cole, this was amazing.”

He reaches across the table to grab the bottle of red wine and tops off my glass, grinning at me.

“I’ll ask you again, just to check. How old are you?”

“Oh, come on Cole. I already told you. I had my twenty-first birthday last month. And I might not be as sophisticated as you, but I know good wine. You mentioned this was from my favorite sommelier, Trader Joe’s, right?”

“I don’t recall ever mentioning where it was from.”

He gives me a cocky smile.

“Where’s it from, then?”

“This one? This one’s from Paris. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

I take a sip, the subtle sweetness and bitterness intermingling, playing on my tongue.

I feel sharp and alive, but just a bit...not drunk, exactly. Something else. I feel like my head is in the clouds, but it’s not because I’m drunk. I’m barely even tipsy.

“Oh!” I say, taking another sip of my wine and placing the glass down delicately on the dining room table where we’re sitting. “I brought dessert. Do you know where my coat went?”

“I hung it in the hall closet by the entryway,” Cole replies, touching my hand lighting and pushing away from the table. “But let me get it.”

“No no,” I say, “it’s a surprise. I will be right back.”

I slip out of my chair and pad over to the front entryway, glancing behind my shoulder at Cole as I walk away. When I meet his eyes, my heart swells up and it feels like it is positively soaring.

The chocolate. The silly discount chocolate I’d packed up in a baggie for the trip. It’d be the perfect thing to give him right now.

Okay, so it’s not from France. I’ve never even been outside the country. I’ve only been to the East Coast once, for my cousin’s destination wedding at Christmas time in the Hudson Valley where her now-husband grew up on a small farm. It was beautiful, but I never got to visit the City while I was there. The bittersweet part was when he told me it was only a couple of hours away by train.

And that’s the extent of my world travels.

I slip past the front door where - oh god - where I let Cole touch me for the first time, and I can’t help but imagine my hands pinned behind my back, so raw, so alive, so electric, right here just inside his front door. It was like we couldn’t wait. He couldn’t wait to see me, to touch me. And the way he carried me into his room, and pushed me up against the wall.

I feel myself growing wet at the thought.

Peeking down a narrow hallway, I spot what I believe to be the closet. But then I see another door, down the hall slightly farther. At the end of the hallway is a large window, but it’s fogged over. I take my best guess and turn to the first door, and inside I find both of our coats.

“Bingo.”

I slip a hand into my coat pocket and grab the bag of chocolates.

This was not their intended use.

I never thought I’d end up here.

I didn’t even know there was a “here.”

I close the door softly and hear Cole coming toward me. He isn’t exactly subtle in that regard - he isn’t loud or lumbering or anything, it’s just that he is a presence - he is seems so confident and sure. He is focused and sure of himself. I don’t think I’ll ever see fear in his eyes again - not now that I’m with him.

I am surprised at my own thought, and I feel my lungs fill with refreshing, warm air.

I’m with him?

He said I could stay here. He said he’d give me anything I wanted.

But could I really be with this man?

I glance out one of the large windows near the front door. The snow has escalated into what looks like a full-blown blizzard.

Certainly, I am with him for the foreseeable future.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

Cole glowers at me, all sexy and powerful man, and puts his arms around my waist from behind. That’s the only thing I want him to do with his hands. I just want him to pull me close to him and keep me there, keep me steady and even, his breath setting the tempo for mine.

Well, that’s not the only thing I want him to do with his hands.

“Absolutely,” I say, “everything is good.”

“I saw you looking out the window. It’s bad out there. Do you need to make any calls? Tell anyone where you are? Because baby,” he growls into my ear, pulling me back into him farther, pinning me to his body, “now that you’re here, I am not letting you go. You understand that? I am going to make you my woman.”

My body heats at his touch, his words.

My heart pounds.

And he can feel it.

“Do you like that, baby?”

“Yes.”

“You like when I tell you who you belong to?”

“Yes.”

I want to be his.

Oh, how I want to.

He’s been alone for so long. But that’s not why I want to be his. I want to be his because I’ve been alone so long, too. It’s not a coincidence that I was alone on the most romantic day of the year. It’s not a coincidence that I had no home to go to for my birthday, no family to visit on Christmas.

My mom raised me. I never knew my dad. My mom passed away during my first year at college.

And there’s no reason to hash out the details in my mind, at least that’s what I tell myself.

Because I’ve done it already, and it changes nothing.

Maybe part of me thinks making it real in my head, over and over, will make it less real.

It’ll make it into some big, stupid prank the universe pulled on me.

Because that’s what it is, isn’t it?

A cruel, stupid prank.

Why else would my mom be taken away from me just when I was starting my life? Just when I needed her the most? Just when I’d chosen to go away to school and chose to walk away from her?

I always thought there’d be more time. More time later, more time in the future.

The future. That’s the really cruel part, now.

And screw what I needed. What about what she needed? She always said the only thing she wanted was seeing her only daughter grow up into a woman.

But when she was diagnosed with cancer, it was fast. Everything was too fast.

It was all over before it even began.

So Cole and I, we both know what it’s like to be on our own.

But that’s not why I want him. That’s not what draws me to him, and him to me.

It’s something else. It was the look in his eyes the first moment I saw him. It’s the look in his eyes right now. It’s the way he looks at me.

Like he needs me.

“Val, baby girl, who do you belong to?”

His words are like a storm inside my mind, the crashing of thunder and the crack of lightning flashing behind my eyes, inside the synapses of my brain, making new connections, making my heart ache like it could fucking bleed.

“You,” I say. I spin around, freeing myself from his grasp, because I want to see his eyes. But I hate that I pulled away from him. I want him to keep me, hold me, and I want to be still and calm and safe in his arms. “You. I belong to you. I know it’s crazy and fast but I know it.”

“It’s not crazy,” Cole growls. He puts his thumb under my chin. That swift, soft motion that I’ve come to know. I want it to be ours forever. “It’s the only fucking thing that makes sense, princess.”

He picks me up, and I wrap myself around his body, my arms and legs nearly quivering at the touch of his lips against mine. I feel his body against me - his big body, all man and all ripped, corded muscle stretched over the pure power of a man who could burst at the seams of his own being. A man who can do no wrong. Who feels no fear. Who has no doubts.

And he carries me into the bedroom. My eyes are shut tight as he kisses me, but I feel the air around us shift and move against our bodies and I feel the gentle click of the door closing, metal against metal inside my ears.

“My beautiful girl,” Cole growls, laying me down on the bed. “My queen.”

“I thought you called me your princess,” I mewl, spreading my arms out around my head, letting my skin play against the feathery softness of his bed.

“You’re gonna be my queen soon.”

He cages his arms around me, hovering above my body. He captures my lip with his teeth, nipping against me, pulling, making me yelp and gasp.

“That’s so freaking hot,” I exclaim. “Oh my god!”

“Yes baby, you keep moaning for me. Remember how I told you I was going to cum inside your pretty little pussy the next time I came?”

“Oh, god yes Cole.”

“That’s what I mean when I say you’re not my princess anymore. I’m gonna cum deep inside you, and you’re gonna know exactly how it feels to be my woman.”

“Cole, yes, I want that so bad.”

“But my sweetness, I want you to be okay with everything we do. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

He presses his forehead against mine, and he spreads open my legs, pushing one up, bending it at the knee, and drags his cock along my slit.

“Yes, I think so,” I breathe, “I’m on the pill. I take it to regulate my period. I take my pack with me everywhere. I’d lose track of it if I didn’t always have it on me.”

“Good,” he says, “because I want to give us time to talk about everything that comes with you being my woman. And I want you to feel safe and secure when I sput my seed deep inside you. I don’t want to put a baby in you until you are ready. And as much as I want to, I can’t do that to you now. I want you to be sure that the time is right for you. For us.”

Hearing him talk about us having a baby together...how is this so sexy and beautiful? How?

“Oh god Cole,” I cry out, my breath breaking deep inside my chest, “I do want that.”

“We will talk about it when you’re in the right frame of mind,” he breathes into my ear.

Because he’s right. I’m not in the right frame of mind to discuss anything right now. I am crazy with want for him, and it is making me feel unable to think.

“Cole, please fuck me,” I cry out, begging him to go further.

He carefully sits up, his thick, muscled legs tucked up under him, and pulls off his pajama pants. His cock was already poking out, but I need to see all of him.

I need all of him.

He takes his cock in his hand, stroking it from the base to the tip, and even his huge hand barely fits around it. And then he leans forward, pressing the tip of his cock to my clit, and pushes himself against my soaked seam, dragging his full length against my clit.

“Oh god Cole, no,” I moan. “Please fuck me.”

I writhe beneath him, sliding my hips up to meet his motions, and I am desperate to have him inside me like he promised.

“Not yet princess,” he says, his lips parting, his eyes fierce with want. “You think it’s easy to have my cock so close to that sweet little hole and not bury myself inside? This is for you, princess. Enjoy it. Let me shower your clit with attention.”

“But Cole,” I say, my voice coming out pleading, ragged, “you said you’d fuck me.”

“And I will,” he growls, pulling his cock away from my aching clit. Oh god, it feels so sensitive and hot and swollen. I feel my body tense up, preparing to be taken by him, but when I think he is going to slide into me, he scoots back on the bed and spreads my knees far apart with his big hands, and kisses the insides of my thighs, sticky with desire. “Just not yet.”

He makes a trail of kisses down inner thigh, sweeping around to the back of my leg as he pushes it up. He’s reaching parts of my body and my mind that have never been touched, and I feel his tongue snake out, making a wet trail from the back of my thigh right down to my clit.

“Oh, Cole,” I moan, my knees trembling as he wraps my clit up slowly with his tongue.

He hums a low moan, the vibrations shocking their way through me, making me spill onto his sheets.

He broadens his tongue and sweeps it against my clit, and I am lost inside his touch, his tongue sliding across my clit oh-so-slowly, making me fucking insane.

“Please,” I cry out as his lips form a circle around my clit, hitting every spot on my slick flesh. He sucks my clit into his mouth and dashes his tongue against it furiously, making the heat inside my belly rise.

“Stay right there, baby,” he says, taking his beautiful mouth away from me.

“No, no,” I cry, my head falling against the bed in sweet agony. “I don’t want you to stop.”

“I’m not stopping,” he says, “I’m just starting.”

My head pops up and I see him crawling onto my body, his huge cock bobbing between his legs, fierce and hard as metal, and he caresses my body, his hands hugging my curves until he gets up to my breasts, where he presses both of his thumbs against my nipples, broadly teasing the pebbled flesh until I can’t see straight.

“Please just do it,” I moan, begging for him.

“Tell me what you want me to do, and do it right now, princess.”

“Put your cock inside me and make me cum, and spill yourself deep inside.”

“Say please.”

“Please! Oh please, Cole.”

He takes my lips with his and crushes against me, and I feel his cock at my opening, and then slicing through, filling me, making me so full with him. I squeeze my eyes closed so tight, and as he rocks into me, I feel myself coating his cock with my sweet desire, and I open my eyes as he pushes my hair away from my forehead, and I get lost in him.

“Valoria,” he growls, his gaze steady on mine, “I love you.”

My heart has been shot with an arrow. I feel my body tense up and then relax, and I wrap my arms and legs around him, burying my face into his shoulder.

“I love you too,” I moan. “I love you, Cole.”

He holds me and rocks his cock in and out of me, the fire between us growing and growing until it is out of control.

“Cum for me, princess.”

His words burn into my mind and I feel myself lose all control, wrapped up in the newness and the familiarity of these feelings.

I love him.

And I’m his.

I feel his cock grow, at the brink of an orgasm, and the thought of him pumping his cum deep into sends me over the edge, making my body break under the force of a mind-destroying orgasm.

“Cole, I’m cumming.”

“Fuck, princess,” he groans, pulling away slightly and taking both of my hands in his, “fuck. See what you do to me? See what you fucking do?”

His eyes trail down from my eyes to my breasts, and further down as my clit erupts against the weight of his cock forcing its way in and out of my tight hole. I feel him expanding more inside me, and then he growls like a freaking beast.

“Val.”

He puts his hands on my face, caressing my cheeks with his thumbs sweetly, pressing his forehead gently against mine as we cum together. I feel the pressure of his cock so deep inside me, and as he erupts in me, shooting his hot cum deep inside, I melt against him.

“You are my queen, Val. My queen.”

It is still snowing, but the white light outside the window doesn’t come inside his bedroom. Inside, we are covered with the warm, dim glow of soft light, and Cole lays down next to me, molding his body to mine, holding me in his arms as I rest my head gently on his chest. And it is quiet, and my mind is calm. I have no questions to ask him. I only have things to say. I only have thanks and gratitude - and it’s not gratitude that he saved me. No, not anymore. Now it’s something else. Now it’s just gratitude that we are together.

Crazily together.

And he puts his hand on top of mine, and strokes my fingers gently as I close my eyes and am lulled gently into a deep, warm, peaceful sleep.