she controlled people around her. It made her feel safe.
She never wanted to actually be out of control.
She was close to it now, but it felt so good that even though her brain was screaming caution at her, she couldn’t really resist it. Didn’t even really want to, not totally. Because she was weak, and those hands holding her to his body were strong.
With shocking ease he pulled the door open to her camper, bringing them both inside, and slamming it behind them again.
As it always did, the rain pounded loudly on the roof, making it feel like the storm encompassed the tiny shelter. It was one of the things she loved about living out here. That she always felt enveloped by the rain, more than shielded from it.
It was comforting even now, though comfort wasn’t the dominant emotion that she felt. Not even close. For so many years rain had been her lullaby, but tonight it was the insistent, pounding beat of her desire. Pulsing through her like a drum. It was crazy, she knew it. It was stupid, and she knew that, too, but Ryder was never crazy or stupid, and he was here. Touching her. Kissing her. So maybe it wasn’t quite as stupid as she thought. It couldn’t be.
Because he was doing it.
Him.
He set her down on the edge of her mattress, his hands tangling in her wet hair, and then he sank down in front of her, on his knees. He cupped her cheek, kissed her neck, dragged hot, openmouthed kisses to her collarbone, and around the neckline of her tank top. Then he jerked her shirt down, exposing her breasts. They were wet from the rain, and the air felt cold, her nipples going unbearably tight. Stinging.
Then he covered one with his mouth, and white heat exploded behind her eyelids.
She was stone-cold sober, hadn’t gotten around to having any kind of drink in the bar, but she felt dizzy. Felt like she must be either drunk or hallucinating because her best friend’s dark head was bent over her bare breast, and that simply couldn’t be. It was an impossibility more than it was an improbability, and yet it was happening.
Because while she might be able to hallucinate the sight of it, she wouldn’t be able to manufacture the feel of it. Because this was like nothing she had ever experienced before. And she wouldn’t have been able to make it up. Not ever. He moved his mouth to her other breast, teasing the first one with his hands as he did.
His hands were so rough.
She’d never been touched like this, by hands like this. She hadn’t known that she would like it. That she would want it. That she could crave it. That the scrape of a workingman’s callus against her bare skin could be the most erotic thing that she could imagine.
Or maybe it wasn’t a workingman’s hand. Maybe it was that it was Ryder’s, and he was her friend, her protector, and there was something dirty and wrong about doing these intimate, secret things with him in the darkened camper with the rain pounding outside.
Things they hadn’t even done when they’d been teenagers and full of hormones and rebellion, which would have been the perfect time. Not when they were in their thirties and full of nothing but opposing ideals and a deep, ingrained desire to not lose anything that mattered to them.
It occurred to her then that it was a bigger risk now than it would have ever been when they were young.
But that thought was only a fleeting one, because after that he started pushing her skirt up her thighs, the damp fabric resisting, but before long she was exposed, and he was hooking his finger in the waistband of her panties and pulling them down her legs, wedging her thighs apart with his broad shoulders.
Then he dipped his head, and it was no longer her breasts that were receiving attention from that wicked mouth—a mouth she would’ve never characterized as wicked before this—it was somewhere much more intimate.
“I don’t like that,” she said, her voice a rushed whisper.
It always felt like too much pressure, too much attention, and she didn’t allow more than a feeble gesture toward the act because she didn’t like being set up for failure.
She was much more comfortable with things where the objective was her partner’s orgasm and not her own, since clearly that wasn’t the point or purpose of her getting naked with someone.