Chapter 31: Gwen - Hunter or Hunted

The grandfather clock kept singing as I found the button on his jeans. His hands were careful as they found mine and slower still as they crept beneath the fabric.

I made no effort to maintain that cautious rhythm. When he found that glorious spot between my thighs, I wrapped my leg around the back of his for stability. Kissing his lips, down his neck, I leaned into his grasp on my lower back. He edged slowly beneath my layers of fabric, but I tore ahead.

I started with the buttons on his shirt, then the zipper of his jeans. The grandfather clock stopped singing just as I made it to his boxers.

Only then did his pace quicken. In seconds, our clothes piled onto the dusty hardwoods.

To hell with the spiders that’d wander onto them before we finished. To hell with the dust and debris.

Drywall powder fell like rain as he backed me into the wall, hoisting me up by the backs of my thighs. A giggle of excitement escaped before it morphed into a sigh of pleasure.

More rained with each pump of his hips, and we laughed, and we kissed, and we held on to one another so close, I could think of nothing else.

The taste of his tongue, the feel of his strong, calloused hands on my hips, then my chest. The ecstasy quaking where our bodies met, and that look in his warm, hazel eyes.

It wasn’t that kind of softness I’d seen in them the last time we’d shared one another’s bodies like this. It was heavier, deeper.

Longing. Desire. Excitement, and hope, all bound together.

Those other times, it’d felt only like connection. Two bodies coming together, merging as one. But this had the comfort of those touches before paired with the anticipation of more.

More life. More time. More future.

More, more, more.

He wanted more, and so did I.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to beg for more. He offered. He gave. He brought me here to ask, to propose a future, a life together.

The mess around us only added to my pleasure with each brush of our lips, each roll of his hips. It was us.

Messes. We were messes.

But together, we found calm in the chaos. Calm was all either of us had ever wanted. We sought it out in every area of our lives, all of every day.

Through our secrets, we got the dose of mayhem we’d only ever known, the havoc that parts deep within ourselves counted on, but in our fantasies, in each other’s touch, we relished in our deepest yearning—stability and structure and control.

Not of one another, but of the world around us. A steady foundation. That’s what we were after, and that’s what we were building. That’s what made this moment, this place, this joining of bodies, so intimate.

He came in closer, chest pressed to mine, letting me prop my chin on his shoulder. The bliss built and built as I looked at the cobweb-ridden staircase behind him. I could see it finished.

All the chipped wood restored. The peeling gold wallpaper replaced with something like us. Florals, or maybe something more abstract. Maybe something Sebastian painted.

I could see him there, stretching on a ladder, trimming out the edge of a star, or a tree. I could see the masterpiece afterward. I could see the two of us, tipsy after a night out with our friends, giggling, peeling off layers, taking two steps at a time to get to that canopied bed upstairs.

I could see us. Our future.

And with that visual, that hope, that excitement, came waves of pleasure that had me gasping and screaming sounds I didn’t know I could make. Sebastian made a few of his own, panting as his rhythm slowed.

Still holding me upright, fingers trailing the backs of my bare thighs, he dropped his head to my shoulder and pressed a kiss to my neck.

A little laugh escaping me, I wrapped my arms tighter around his shoulders. “Happy New Year.”

* * *

“This fir will be gorgeous refinished,” I said, grabbing my coat off the floor. Unlike most old flooring with yellow undertones, the grains passed from deep caramel to warm red. “I’m really glad it’s not pine. I hate pine.”

Buttoning his shirt, Sebastian arched a brow at me.

I propped my hands on my hips. “What?”

“I just didn’t realize you knew so much about wood grains.”

“There’s lots you’ve yet to learn about me.” I shot him a smirk, stepping backward for a better view of that chipped plaster above the cased opening to the formal living room. Little blots of green stood along the edges. “I also know that’s gonna be a bitch to fix.”

“What, that water damage?” He leaned against the banister beside me. “It’s not too bad.”

“I can smell the mold from here,” I said, glancing around. “Actually, I smelled it as soon as we walked in. And since we’re gonna have to rip the plaster off here anyway, it’d probably be a good idea to do that all over. Save the good wood, obviously, but we may as well install ductwork while we’re at it. And switch to PEX. Less chance of it rotting out like the copper did.”

He was smiling, but his forehead scrunched up with confusion. “How do you know all this?”

“Fixing stuff yourself is a hell of a lot cheaper than hiring a contractor.” I shrugged. “Before the ranch, I lived in an old house. My ex was a lazy shit. If I didn’t fix the leaky sink or the broken toilet, I didn’t have a sink or toilet. I have Google. I figured it out.”

“Huh.” Sebastian crossed his arms, looking up at that cracked ceiling. “At least you got that out of the shit show.”

“Many lessons learned.”

“Down to the studs makes sense, though,” he said. “We’d have to do that in a lot of places anyway. May as well modernize it all.”

“May as well.” I crossed my arms too, squinting down the hall. “So are you gonna give me the grand tour? Or do we need to go get Liz?”

Sebastian glanced at his watch. “We’ve got half an hour or so. Come here, we’ll check out down here first.”

He showed me the kitchen, which I agreed wouldn’t work. Together, we could barely fit inside it. In houses this old, there weren’t really kitchens—not in the modern sense. Just a wet room. Enough room for a sink and a fireplace. Only the hearth remained of the fireplace.

Bakers needed more than a sink and hearth.

The living room, though, had a complete brick fireplace. Since it was on the other side of the wet room, there was plenty of space to combine it. Boxes and old furniture—some of which could see a second life—took up most of the room, which was the size of my cabin. We could easily knock down a couple walls and give the place an open concept.

I hated the modern trend of gutting historic homes, but a home this historic could only become livable with drastic structural changes.

Sebastian showed me the upstairs next. Rather than a dark hallway filled with doors, the railed landing overlooked the stairwell and foyer below. On one side of the house, a big bay window provided a perfect view of the front yard, and a French door opened to a rickety balcony on the back. He said it wasn’t stable enough to walk on, but from that spot, the backyard framed by trees seemed to stretch on forever.

That was the only glimpse I got of the barn that’d become our “second location.” It was the only glimpse I wanted.

I wanted to kill Evan because the world would be a better place once he was gone. Not because I actually wanted to kill him.

I wanted one less woman to suffer.

That was all.

If I could trust the justice system to make sure Evan wouldn’t do it again, I’d smack the dust off my hands and call it a day. But that wasn’t the world we lived in. So I would do what those in power refused to.

Right now, I didn’t want to think about what I intended to use it for. I wanted to think about wallpapers and paint colors and floor plans.

Upstairs, the floor plan would stay the same. There were four bedrooms. The primary suite comfortably housed a king-size bed, a few dressers, and a decent closet. Attached to it was a small bathroom. It’d need more work than the bedroom, mostly because the sinking floor confirmed that water damage we’d suspected.

One bedroom, roughly the size of mine in the cabin, stood independently. The other two connected via a Jack and Jill bathroom.

As soon as I stepped into the one closest to the primary suite, I could see a cradle and a changing table. Never mind the barely hanging-on chandelier or the broken floorboards that let in light from the dining room below. With the tall oak blowing in the breeze out the window and the cozy built-in wardrobe in the corner, it was all I could see. A sweet little nursery, decorated with farm animals, or storybook characters, or dragons and faeries.

Maybe I was the one getting ahead of myself.

Or maybe Rhiannon would call that growth.

My past considered, maybe I should have feared the implication of all this. A year ago, I thought I’d never marry again. I’d told myself that it was an arbitrary ritual I never would’ve agreed to had my prefrontal cortex fully developed beforehand.

Now?

Now I still stood by that sentiment. Marrying my ex-husband, committing to spend the rest of my days with him, was an arbitrary ritual I never would’ve agreed to had my prefrontal cortex fully developed beforehand.

But Sebastian was not Troy.

Troy never smiled so big when we talked about our future. He never offered to knock down a wall to build me a bigger kitchen. He never saw a hole in the wall and debated whether we were better off ripping it down to the studs or just patching it.

He’d punched through them, and I’d gone to the hardware store, bought the supplies, and cleaned up his mess.

Sebastian and I were standing in a mess neither of us had made, devising how we’d go about cleaning it up together. As a team. Partners in life, partners in crime, partners in whatever came next.

Maybe I finally had what I’d always wanted.

A partner.