The Alpha's Fine Print novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Hot Spring

The hot spring sat above the creek, in a bowl of black rock ringed with frost.

Steam rose off it in the gray before dawn, and snow lay on the larches.

I had not slept.

At five I had put on his flannel shirt and boots and walked out of the house.

He followed a few paces behind me and said nothing, because I had asked him to.

At the water's edge I turned around.

"I'm keeping the clause," I said. "I'm renewing the lease. I'm staying the Steward."

"Thank you."

"I'm still angry at you."

"I know."

"One rule. You don't hide anything from me again. Not a name, not a footnote, not a funeral."

"I won't."

"Say yes."

"Yes. Tilda, yes."

I dropped the flannel on a rock.

The air bit my bare skin, and I stepped down into the steaming pool, and the heat closed over my knees, my thighs, my hips.

"Come in," I said.

He stripped and followed.

The water rose around his long frame, and steam clung to his hair and lashes, and he waded to me across the pale stone bottom.

I put my hands on his chest.

"I'm going to do something," I said. "And I'm not going to be angry while I do it."

"Okay."

"I want to be kissed."

He cupped my face in both hands, and kissed me so slowly I could feel every breath in it.

His mouth moved on mine, soft and then deep, and my fingers curled into his shoulders.

It wasn't a lesson.

It wasn't a game or a test.

It was only a man who had waited his whole life to be asked, and a woman who had finally said yes.

"I want to sit in your lap," I said against his lips. "Facing away. Please."

"God, yes."

There was a stone shelf along one edge, waist-deep, worn smooth.

He sat on it, with the water lapping at his chest, and I turned my back to him and lowered myself between his thighs.

His cock was a hard, hot line against the cleft of my ass.

"Hold me," I said.

His arms circled my waist.

One hand flattened on my stomach, and the other slid up to cup my breast, and he rested his chin on my shoulder.

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