The Clinic Swore the Baby Was His, So He Stayed When It Wasn't novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Hot Terms

In his lakeside sauna the terms are settled in the steam, she starts the kiss, and they run into Lake Superior in November.

His sauna stood at the edge of the black rock, forty feet from the house, with Lake Superior throwing itself against the shore below it.

It was a small cedar building with a woodstove, two benches and one window that faced the water.

By five o'clock in November the sun was already gone.

Mats had lit the stove at three, and the air inside was so hot it hurt to breathe in.

I sat on the upper bench in a towel with a pen in my hand.

"You said you'd bring one," he said, from the lower bench below me.

"I said I'd bring a pen," I said. "I didn't say I'd use it."

"Then why bring it?"

"I wanted you to know I could."

He ladled water over the stones, and the löyly rolled up the wall and settled on my shoulders.

I closed my eyes, and for a moment I was twelve years old in Mummo's sauna, being told to sit still.

"Terms," I said.

"Terms," Mats said, and leaned back against the cedar with his towel low on his hips.

"One. If it takes, no one hears it until twelve weeks. Not your sister, not your crew, not a reporter."

"Why twelve?"

"Because I've been to six weeks twice," I said, "and I buried them both without telling a soul."

The stove ticked.

He did not say he was sorry, and I was grateful.

"Twelve," Mats said.

"Two. The bridge is mine. You don't come up unless I ask."

"You asked me up yesterday," he said.

"I did not."

"You said, 'Come up when you've tied off.'"

"That's an invitation, not a policy," I said.

He smiled at the stones.

"Three," I said. "No lawyers. Nothing between us goes on paper."

"I thought you brought a pen."

"I brought it to throw at you."

"Then yes," he said. "To all three. And my seat at every appointment."

"You have your seat."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," I said. "Come up here."

He looked up at me through the steam, and his face changed.

"Is that an invitation," he said, "or a policy?"

"An invitation, Captain."

He climbed to the upper bench and sat beside me, his shoulder against mine, wet and hot.

I turned and kissed him.

I meant it to be short.

His mouth was hot and salty from the steam, and he held very still for the first moment and let me take it.

Then his hand came up to the back of my neck, under the braid, and he kissed me back.

I made a sound I had not made in two years.

"Is this one of the terms?" he asked against my lip.

"This is not a term."

"Good."

He kissed my jaw and the soft place under my ear.

I pulled his towel loose and let it fall, and then I undid my own.

He was big and flushed and already hard, and I looked at him in the red light from the stove without pretending I wasn't.

Low on his left hip, in the crease where the thigh meets the belly, there was a long pale scar.

His hand went still on my arm.

"They took one," he said. "In case you're counting."

I put my fingers on the scar and followed it.

"I'm not counting," I said. "I'm looking at what's left."

"And?"

"It's plenty."

He laughed once, rough, and put his forehead against mine.

When he leaned back, he looked at me for a long moment.

He looked at my breasts, and the soft round of my stomach, and the width of my thighs.

I waited for him to say something careful.

"Look at you," he said instead, in a low voice.

"Don't look," I said. "Touch."

He took one breast in his big hand and put his mouth on the nipple.

I heard myself gasp.

He sucked slowly, then harder, with his tongue circling, and I put my hand in his hair and held him there.

"Beautiful," he said, against my skin.

"You are the most beautiful thing I have seen in my life, and I have spent twenty years looking at the lake."

I climbed into his lap.

I straddled his thigh, with my knees on the hot cedar either side of him.

The wet heat of me pressed against the hard muscle.

I rocked once, slowly, and watched his eyes darken.

"Do that again," he said.

I did it again.

I held on to his shoulders and ground down against his thigh.

The pressure was exactly where I needed it, a slow slick drag that made my breath catch.

His hands went to my hips and guided me, but only a little.

"That's it, Bridge," he said. "Use me."

"I am."

"Good. Take what you want."

I moved faster, with my forehead against his and my mouth open, and the sweat ran down between my breasts.

He bent his head and caught a nipple in his teeth, lightly, and the shock of it went straight through me.

"Oh, fuck," I said. "Don't stop."

"I won't."

His hand slid between us.

Two fingers found me, and pushed inside, slowly, to the knuckle, and his thumb settled on my clit and circled it.

I clenched around him and nearly came apart right there.

"Not yet," Mats said, in my ear. "I want to feel you go."

"Then make me."

He curled his fingers and pressed, and found the place that made my vision go white.

I came with my head thrown back against the cedar wall, shaking, with his name locked in my throat.

He kept his hand where it was until I was done and then held me against his chest, damp and trembling.

When I could breathe I looked down.

He was breathing hard, and his cock stood heavy between us, flushed dark.

I reached for it.

"Show me," I said.

He put his hand over mine and showed me, a tight grip and a long slow pull.

Then he let go, and I took over.

He leaned his head back against the wall with his mouth open.

"Bridge," he said.

"Yes?"

"Faster."

I stroked him faster, with my thumb over the head, and watched his stomach tighten and his hips lift off the bench.

"Look at me," I said.

He lifted his head and looked at me, and his gray-blue eyes were wild.

"That's my good Captain," I said.

He came with a low groan, hot across my wrist and my stomach, shuddering.

I held him through all of it.

For a while we sat there, slick and spent, with the stove ticking.

"The lake," I said. "Now."

"It's forty degrees."

"Run."

I took his hand and pulled him down off the bench and through the door, naked, onto the black rock.

The cold took my breath.

We ran down the slick stone, shouting, and dove into Lake Superior in November.

It was the coldest thing I had ever felt.

I came up gasping and laughing, and Mats came up beside me and caught me around the waist.

"You're insane," he said.

"It's tradition!" I said.

We stood in the black water to our chests, steaming, with the stars out above us.

He kissed me, cold lips and hot mouth, and I held on to his shoulders.

Then we scrambled out, and he wrapped me in a towel on the rocks and held me while I shivered.

"Stay," Mats said, into my wet hair.

"I have soup and a bed and nothing I'd ask of you that you don't want to give."

I looked up at the lit windows of his house.

"Yes," I said.

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