My Groom Fled the Wedding, So His Father and His Guides Kept Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Cedar Bench

In the wood-fired sauna Beck counts her pulse, takes her mouth, then takes her from behind on the cedar bench, and the first snow of the year falls through the open door.

The sauna was already so hot that the cedar walls ticked.

Beck sat on the upper bench with a towel across his lap and his reading glasses folded on his knee.

His red lodge flannel hung on the hook by the door.

It had the same buffalo check and the same stitched fish patch as the shirt on every man at the lodge.

"Door," he said.

I shut it behind me, and the steam pressed on my skin.

I wore a towel and nothing else.

"Towel on the hook," Beck said. "Then come here."

I hung it beside his shirt.

He looked at me in the orange light from the stove, up and down.

It was the same flat attention he gave a map or a river.

"Sit on the lower bench," he said. "Face me. Breathe in through your nose."

I sat on the hot wood with my knees a foot from his.

I breathed in, and the air was wet and sweet with cedar.

He leaned down and laid two fingers against the side of my throat.

His fingertips were calloused and dry, and he stared at the wall behind my head while he counted.

"One twenty-four," he said.

"Is that bad?"

"It's the same as the day you burned your wrist."

I looked at the scar on my left wrist, a shiny white stripe the width of a pencil.

"You remember that?"

"I held it under the tap for ten minutes," Beck said. "You never made a sound. Your pulse was one twenty-four the whole time."

His fingers stayed where they were.

"I've counted it every day for four summers," he said. "I can't stop."

My heart was going so hard that I felt it against his fingertips.

"One thirty-one," he said, quietly. "Good."

He took his hand away.

From a bucket of hot water by the stove he lifted a bundle of birch twigs tied with twine, leaves and all.

"A whisk," he said. "My grandmother's trick. Stand. Hands on the wall."

I stood and laid my palms flat on the cedar.

He swept the wet leaves down my spine, slowly, from my neck to my tailbone.

The sting was light and sweet and hot, and it left my skin tingling.

I gasped.

He did it again, across my shoulders, and down the backs of my thighs, and the smell of birch filled the steam.

"Good circulation," he said, dry. "Medically speaking."

"Is that what this is?"

"No."

He struck my ass once with the leaves, a stinging, wet slap, and I jumped and moaned.

"Beck."

"Pulse," he said, with two fingers on my wrist. "One thirty-six. Very good."

He hung the whisk on its hook.

"Hands behind you on the bench," he said. "Don't move them. Kneel."

I slid to my knees on the folded towel, between his legs, with my hands pressed flat to the slats behind me.

He pulled off his towel.

He was long and lean and tanned to the collar line, with dark hair on his chest.

His cock stood hard and thick against his stomach.

It was paler than the rest of him and flushed at the tip.

"Mouth only," he said. "Slowly. I want to feel all of it."

I licked a line up the underside, from the base to the head.

He drew a sharp breath through his teeth.

"Again."

I did it again and tasted salt and clean sweat.

Then I closed my lips around the head and took him in.

He was warm and heavy on my tongue.

I sucked, and he put his head back against the cedar and exhaled.

"Deeper," he said.

I took more of him, until he touched the back of my throat, and I breathed through my nose and held.

My eyes watered.

He put his hand on the top of my head, light and firm.

"Hold there," he said. "Good. Now back."

I drew back slowly, with my tongue flat against him, and he swore under his breath.

"Your mouth is perfect," he said. "I'll say that clinically."

I laughed around him, and he groaned.

"Don't make me laugh."

I took him again.

I found a rhythm, slow and wet, with my lips tight and my tongue working under the head.

I listened to his breath get rough.

His fingers tightened in my braid.

"Stop," he said.

I stopped.

He pulled me off by the braid, gently.

I looked up at him with my mouth wet and my knees aching on the hot floor.

He was breathing hard.

"Up," he said. "Turn around. Hands on the top bench."

I stood and turned and put both hands on the cedar slats of the upper bench, bent at the waist, with my back to him.

Sweat ran between my shoulder blades.

He stood behind me, and I felt his hands settle on my hips.

"Spread your feet."

I spread them.

His fingers slid between my legs from behind, and he found me soaked.

"This is not from the steam," he said.

"No."

"Your pulse?"

"Check it," I said.

He laid two fingers against the inside of my thigh instead, where the vein runs close, and I heard him chuckle, low and dry.

"One forty," he said. "I'm going to fuck you now. Brace."

He pushed into me from behind in one long, slow stroke.

I cried out.

He filled me completely.

His thighs pressed against the backs of mine, and his hands held my hips.

He stayed there, buried, and he did not move.

"Breathe," he said.

I breathed.

"Clench."

I tightened around him, and he gasped.

"That's what I wanted," he said, hoarse.

He pulled almost out and slid back in.

He fucked me with long, exact strokes, each one the same depth, and the sound of skin on wet skin filled the little room.

Steam rolled over us.

My breasts swung against the upper bench, and the slats bit into my palms.

"Faster," I said.

"No."

"Beck."

"Ask me properly," he said.

"Please," I said. "Please, fuck me faster."

He gave me what I asked for.

He drove into me hard, and his grip on my hips tightened, and I felt the whole bench shake with it.

I heard myself moaning on every stroke.

"There," he said. "Louder."

"Oh God. Beck."

"Your pulse must be a hundred and sixty."

"I don't care," I said.

"I do," he said. "I care about every beat."

He reached around me and slid his hand between my legs, and his fingers found my clit.

He circled it with the same precision he used for everything.

My knees went weak, and he held me up with one arm around my waist.

"Not yet," he said.

"Please."

"Ten more."

"Ten what?" I asked.

"Ten strokes," Beck said. "I'm counting."

He counted them out loud.

"One."

He drove in.

"Two."

I whimpered.

By six I was begging, and by eight I was crying his name against the cedar.

"Nine," he said, rough.

His voice was not steady anymore.

"Ten. Come for me, Kit."

It was the first time he had used my name.

I came, shouting, with my forehead against the slats.

I clenched around his cock, and he swore, and his rhythm broke.

He did not come.

He pulled out of me, and I made a sound of loss that I could not help.

"Up on the bench," he said, breathing hard. "Back against the wall. I want to see your face for this."

He lifted me by the waist and sat me on the upper bench.

The cedar was nearly too hot to bear, and I gasped, and he laughed under his breath and put his towel under me.

Then he reached for his glasses and put them on.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Looking."

He stood between my knees with the steam fogging his lenses.

He took them off, wiped them on the towel, and put them on again.

I laughed so hard that I shook.

"Don't," he said, but he was smiling.

He took my ankles, one in each hand, and set my heels on his shoulders.

I was spread open in front of him, wet and swollen and shaking, and his eyes went over every inch of me.

"Every beat," he said. "I care about every one."

He guided his cock to me and slid in.

I cried out, because the angle was deeper, and he reached the place that made my vision white.

He leaned over me, folding me nearly in half, with my knees by my ears and his glasses sliding down his nose.

"There," he said. "That's the one."

He fucked me in short, deep, grinding strokes that hit the same spot every time, until I was gasping and clawing at his arms.

"Beck. Beck, I'm going to."

"I know. I can feel it. Don't look away."

I didn't.

I came a second time with his eyes fixed on mine and my whole body clenching.

I called his name so loudly that it rang off the cedar.

He watched every second of it.

"Now me," he said, in a voice I had never heard from him.

He thrust twice more, deep, and buried himself to the root and came.

I felt him spill, hot and heavy, inside me, and his glasses fell off his face onto my stomach.

He stayed folded over me with his chest against mine and his breath at my ear.

His heart was going as fast as mine.

"I'm forty," he said into my hair. "I count things."

His voice was quiet.

"I thought I'd be the last one on the board, if I made it onto the board at all."

I put my hand against his jaw.

"You're second," I said.

"Is that right?"

"Hank wrote the board. I'd have written it differently."

He pulled out of me slowly, and we both shivered.

He kissed me.

It was a careful, dry kiss, and then it was not careful, and I held his head with both hands.

He pulled back first.

"Cold plunge is for later," he said. "Come outside. You need air."

He pushed the door open with his shoulder.

The cold hit our wet skin all at once.

Beyond the sauna steps the yard lay black and silent.

The air was full of small white flakes, drifting down through the light from the door.

It was the first snow of the year.

I stood naked on the wooden step with steam coming off my skin.

I watched the snow fall on the grass, and on the dock, and on the black water.

Beck put his flannel around my shoulders.

Then I saw a big figure leaning against the corner of the sauna with a towel over his shoulder and snow in his red-blond hair.

It was Rolf, grinning from ear to ear.

"Evening, Captain," he said. "I've got Monday, and I've got a plane."

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