Man of the Mountain (The Mountain Men of Fox Hollow Book 4) Read online

  “Don’t you have faith in the foster parents you work with?”

  Katie nods, turning to face me, the soft glow of the lamplight illuminating her face in the most beautiful way. “I do. It’s just… Hope is different. I’m not supposed to become invested too deeply with my clients… but a few hours with her and I feel like she’s…”

  “Like she’s what?” I ask, tucking a strand of hair behind Katie’s ear.

  “Like she’s mine.” Her voice cracks and she rests a hand on my chest.

  My heart tightens. “I feel the same way. Like I’d do anything to protect her. Like it’s my duty.”

  “I wish we knew how this will all unfold,” she says.

  “We don’t have all those answers, but we do know how this night will unfold,” I tell her, drawing her into my arms. She exhales a breath I didn’t realize she’d been holding.

  “Take me, Kutter,” she whimpers. “Make me yours.”

  Katie

  Kutter pulls me into his arms, kissing me deeply, picking up where we left off in the bathroom. He is so masculine, so in charge, and for the first time in forever, I feel like I can let down my guard, let him in. He is a man I just met, yet I feel like I can trust him with my heart. My soul. My everything.

  We undress quickly, eager for more, and I take him in again — in all his naked glory. My pussy warms as I check him out. His cock is big, so thick, his torso a ripped ladder of abs, his arms corded with muscles. Everything about him turns me on.

  And as I slip off my panties, as he sees all of me, his eyes darken with a hunger I’ve never seen in my life. Like he wants to consume me, head to toe. A heat rises from my core because that is all I want too.

  I’m not nervous as he joins me in the bed, as his finger presses against my lips, telling me we need to be quiet so as to not wake Hope. I nod, understanding, wanting to be as respectful as possible.

  He leans over me, his cock against my belly, his eyes locked on mine. I run a finger over the bandage on his forehead. “You risked your life for Hope. You’re a hero. My hero.”

  “And I’m also your first time.” He smiles down at me, running his hand over my curves. His cabin is warm and cozy, and even though the storm rages outside, in here we are in a little cocoon. I want to stay here, in this moment, forever.

  He eases my knees apart and lowers his head. “Relax, okay, sweetheart?” His tongue runs over my slit, and I squeeze my eyes shut as the intense pleasure courses through me. His thick beard tickles my most private place, and yet I am not the least embarrassed. I feel beautiful and seen, I feel like his. And maybe that is crazy — we just met — but it doesn’t feel crazy. It feels meant to be.

  Destiny.

  I run my hands through his thick hair as he flicks his tongue over my clit, lighting a fire in my belly that he knows how to handle. He licks me with such intensity that I’m forced to clench my teeth, my knees buckle. “Easy there, Katie. Just breathe.”

  “Okay,” I sigh, wanting this to last all night. Kutter adds a finger, then a second, to my center, teasing me open.

  “You’re so nice and tight, so fucking tight.” He growls in pleasure, his hand lifting my ass, fingering me as my pussy begins to drip for him. He lowers his mouth, licking it up, all my juice, and he flicks his tongue over me so quickly that I’m forced to clench the sheets with my fists, as if holding on for dear life. The sensation intensifies as he moves his fingers harder against me.

  “There you go, sweetie. You’re so nice and wet. Now relax, let that cunt of yours have some more fun. Let me make you squirt.”

  “You like that, how wet I am?” I pant as he drapes one of my legs over his shoulder, fingering me deeper until I’m covering my mouth with my arm, holding back my moans of delight.

  “I love your juicy cunt.” He fingers me until the orgasm runs up and down my spine, until the sheets are soaked with my releases, until his mouth is so deeply buried against my pussy that there’s no space between us at all. The only thing between us is desire.

  “Oh god,” I whisper, forcing my cries to subside, my voice frantic and soft. I want more — now. To be consumed by his cock the way he’s just consumed me with his mouth.

  He massages my breasts with his hands as I come down from the orgasm, my body his for the taking, and god, he knows how to take me in the most satisfying way. The pleasure runs up from my toes to my belly and I’m panting, needing more.

  “Harder,” I whisper. “I want… I want…”

  I don’t know how I want it — I just want him. I want that big, thick cock of his to fill me up and make me a woman. His woman. Now.

  “God, you taste so sweet. Your virgin hole is so fucking tight,” he growls. “I need you. You understand that, Katie?”

  I nod. “I need you too.”

  “Yeah? You need my cock? Because sweetie, it’s gonna ruin you for all other men.”

  “I don’t want other men,” I moan. “I want you. You.”

  “Good.” He takes my hand and places it on his shaft. “Because I want you too. Feel how hard I am? That’s for you, Katie. You alone.”

  “You’re so big… I don’t think you’ll…”

  “Oh, I’ll fit, alright. I opened your pretty pussy up nice and good. You’re ready.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” I tease. “Show me what kind of mountain man you really are.”

  “I’m your mountain man, Katie. Yours.” He begins to fill me up with his velvety length, so hard and rigid. Just like my pussy’s been primed for him, his cock is raging and ready for me.

  His cock enters me and I wrap my arms around his neck, holding on for dear life. I’m bound to him, I won’t let go. He seems to understand the emotion rising within me, the need. My need for him. I want him to be my anchor, my shelter from the storm.

  His cock fills me up, and tears slide down my cheeks. He sees them, but doesn’t wipe them away. He isn’t scared of my emotion, my release… he leans in, kissing my lips, my salty tears, my nose, my neck, my ears. He doesn’t want a portion, he wants all of me.

  “God, I love you,” he says as his cock moves inside me, my pussy open for him in ways I didn’t think possible. It hurts, but not in a scary way. In a safe way. He wraps me up in his arms, and I fit right against him. My curves aren’t too big, my baggage too much, my fears too insurmountable.

  “I love you, Katie,” he says again.

  And somehow… I believe him. I believe Kutter loves me.

  “No one has ever said that to me before,” I say, my breath shaky, scared. “Never once.”

  “Oh love, then let me say it a thousand times over. Again and again and again. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  I don’t know how love can grow in the space of one night, but it has. This, what is happening with Kutter and Hope and I… it’s love. Plain and simple.

  “I love you too.”

  Kutter fills me up with his strength in the way only he can do, and his cock makes me feel whole. We come hard, together, as one. We come with fingers laced and hearts bound and I swear I won’t let anything get in our way. I will fight for this, this love story I found in the middle of a storm.

  We clean up as Hope stirs. In Kutter’s tee shirt, I lift her from the dresser drawer, Kutter makes a bottle, and the three of us climb into bed. We fall asleep, the rain beating down on the roof, sounding just like the beating of my now whole heart.

  Kutter

  In the morning, I wake to a sight I never once thought I’d see in my whole damn life. The girl I love holding the baby I adore, in my bed.

  When the fuck did I become a family man?

  All it took was one night.

  But really, it wasn’t about the night.

  It was about the girls. These two. They are mine now.

  A phone rings in the other room, and I roll from bed, not wanting to leave this scene, but not wanting the call to wake them. By the time I find it in Katie’s bag, it’s gone to voicemail. Wanting them to sleep as long as
possible, I start a pot of coffee and make a bottle. Looking out the window, I see the storm has passed.

  Thank god. I slip on a pair of boots and take my cup of joe to the yard, surveying the damage of the fallen cedar. It’s gonna take my big ass saw to deal with this. I’ll call up James, Reed and Jasper to see if they can come help me clear this out.

  When I get back inside, Katie is in the bathroom. I take the bottle to Hope, who is in the dresser drawer, and I’m wondering what I’m gonna need to do to get her in my care. I’m sure Katie knows all the paperwork we’ll need to fill out. Hope kicks her cute little feet up at me, and I realize she needs a diaper change.

  I set to that in the living room, and I must admit that even a job like this doesn’t seem too bad when it is Hope I am looking after. Katie finds us in the living room, and god, she takes my breath away.

  “You look so fucking good in the morning,” I tell her, lifting Hope onto my shoulder and reaching for the bottle on the coffee table. “I made coffee.”

  “Smells good,” she says.

  “Your phone was ringing too,” I tell her. “I set it on the table.”

  “Okay, thanks,” she says. I hear her move into the kitchen and I consider how this will be our life now. A woman’s soft footsteps, a baby taking a bottle in my arm, a life complete.

  “Oh crap,” Katie says. “Oh shit, Kutter.” She walks into the living room looking as if she’s just seen a ghost. “Listen to this.”

  She presses play on the voicemail. “Katie, I’m guessing you got stuck in the storm — no one has heard from you all night. Call me as soon as you can. There’s an emergency. That baby you were meant to transport? Well, her mother is here. And she’s asking for her daughter. Call me as soon as you can.”

  “Fuck.” I walk to Katie, who has tears in her eyes. “It’s okay. We can work this out. We can—”

  She shakes her head, cutting me off. “No, we can’t, Kutter. There is a whole system… a whole bunch of rules. I was stupid to think otherwise. I got caught up in… in… you.” She waves her hand around the room. “In this make-believe fantasy. No one gets a happy ending, Kutter.”

  “That isn’t true. We have to fight for what—”

  “No.” She starts dialing her boss’s number. “We don’t get to decide what happens to Hope. We aren’t her family.”

  She paces the living room as the call connects. “Lorraine? Yes, I got stuck here in Fox Hollow. A tree fell, the power went out, I couldn’t leave.” She explains the cougar fight, how I’ve been a lifesaver. Then she pauses, listening. Then looks to me. “How quickly can you clear the tree?”

  “A few hours, if I get my buddies to help.”

  “Good. Can you call and ask them? I need to get her to the office as soon as possible.” She turns back to the call. “Okay, I will text with an update when I’m on the road. Good news is the baby is healthy and happy — slept all night and is taking bottles. I’ll start working on the report while the tree is removed. I’ll send it over ASAP.”

  She ends the call and looks at me with eyes of steel. Hard. Distant. As if refusing to let anything block her view.

  “I’ll just stay inside with her while you deal with the tree, okay?” She reaches for Hope, not meeting my gaze.

  “Don’t you want to talk about this? About us?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she says tightly. “I’m gonna get that cup of coffee and work at the table, okay? Could you bring her little bed in here?”

  I run a hand over my beard. “Just like that? You’re giving up?”

  She levels her eyes with mine. “I can’t give something up when I didn’t have it in the first place.”

  I clench my jaw. “That is not true, Katie. You have me.”

  “Don’t.” She shakes her head, blinking back the tears that threaten to fall. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

  “I know you’ve been fighting your own battle all your life, sweetheart, but you aren’t alone anymore. I’m here.”

  “For how long, though?” she asks, disbelief in her voice. “Because Kutter, the odds of her going back to her birth mom… they’re high. And maybe that’s where she belongs. I don’t want to get between them.”

  “You’re right, maybe they will end up reunited, but in the meantime, she will still need advocates, won’t she? Why can’t we be those people for her? I want to protect her. I made a promise. I don’t break them. And I made a promise to you too, Katie. To take care of you. Let me.”

  “Just because we had one reckless night doesn’t mean I’m your responsibility.”

  My heart tightens, I can’t lose everything I just found. “No. I’m not letting you off the hook that easy. I know it’s scary — but this isn’t reckless. This is love. And I promise you I won’t let you down. Ever. Let me love you the way you deserve.”

  Tears fall down her face. “And if Hope… if we lose her…”

  “Then we will get through that together. But dammit, Katie. Don’t go running from the first good thing you’ve ever had.”

  “And you’re my good thing?” she asks, her chin trembling, lips quivering. God, I hate to see my girl so damn scared.

  “I’m more than your good thing, girl. I’m your man. And even more than that, I’ll make you my wife.”

  “Oh, Kutter,” she says, crying into my chest, tears on my bare skin, Hope between us. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Our lips meet and my heart fucking melts. These two girls, they are my whole damn world. “Now let’s get in my truck at the end of the driveway and go figure out what shit we need to do to make sure Hope is safe.”

  “You have a truck we can take?”

  “Hell yeah. Even has a back row. All set up for my family. We can’t wait til the tree is cut. We need to take care of business. Now.”

  “Look at you, all protective.” She smiles up at me.

  “Of course I am. You are my family now, Katie. My everything.”

  Katie

  As we drive out of Fox Hollow, fear threatens to swallow me whole. Up at Kutter’s cabin, his friends Reed, Jasper and James are busy working on moving the tree. My car is still there — Kutter says that’s fitting considering that is my home now.

  Is it though? How is this actually going to work? There are a thousand questions racing through my mind, but the most pressing one is what is going to happen to Hope.

  I got the intake forms filled out on my tablet while Kutter was rounding up his buddies, and the truth is, we would have to be registered as a foster family to even take care of Hope. And how would that work with my job, with Kutter’s? There are so many logistics to sort.

  But Kutter squeezes my hand as we drive down the mountain, toward the city. He seems to believe that the impossible is possible. That together, we can make this work.

  Destiny.

  Hope fusses in her car seat, and I wish I could just pick her up and soothe her. Kutter turns the radio to an oldies station and Johnny Cash seems to soothe her. I smile, actually leaning back in my seat and relaxing, letting the beautiful, rain-washed forest ease the tension in my heart.

  “Did you really say you’re going to make me your wife?” I ask Kutter as we weave through Fox Hollow.

  He glances my way, a grin on his face. “Not the proposal you were hoping for?”

  I laugh softly. “I’m not the kind of girl who needs a dramatic set up. I just want a real one. A forever kind of one.”

  “Well, I meant it. I want to marry you. You can quit your job and instead of working for Lorraine, you can be your own boss.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “You’ll be busy raising Hope.”

  “Look at you, planning it all out.”

  He runs a hand over his beard, eyes on the road. “It’s what you want though, isn’t it?”

  I nod tightly. “Yes. It’s all I want, Kutter.”

  He squeezes my hand again. “Okay then, have faith in us.”

  When we pull in
to the social services office where I work, I tell myself to be brave, to speak up. To share how I feel. All the things I’ve always struggled with.

  But Hope is worth fighting for.

  I won’t let her down.

  Kutter has on a clean flannel shirt, dark denim jeans, brown leather boots. He looks so handsome, so capable, and when he lifts Hope’s baby carrier from the back of the car, he looks like the sexiest mountain daddy in the whole wide world.

  “What?” he asks, the diaper bag over his shoulder.

  I press my lips together, my whole body so damn hot for him. “Nothing. I was just thinking… you look like a natural.”

  “Who would have thought, huh?” He gives me a pat on the butt and I laugh, opening the door for him.

  Inside, Lorraine meets us and lets us know Holly Grant is here, claiming to be the birth mother. She has a birth certificate, photos of her and the baby — she is who she says she is. Apparently, Lorraine told her that Kutter fought off a pair of wild cougars to save her baby. Her baby named Angel.

  Kutter and I look at one another. Angel, not Hope. Well, Angel is fitting too.

  “I need to speak with her,” Kutter says. “Now.”

  Loraine frowns. “Well that isn’t exactly appropriate. She wants to see her daughter.”

  But before Lorraine can say any more, a woman pushes her way into the room. “Are you the one who found her?” she asks, walking to Kutter.

  He nods. “I did. Why did you leave her? Why did you come back?” he asks, pushing straight past any and all protocol a social worker would be forced to adhere too.

  Lorraine tries to interject. “This is highly unorthodox—”

  But Holly Grant shakes her off. “I came back because I realized I didn’t leave any of the paperwork that would make sure she had what she needed. I’m a mess. A wreck and I don’t want to be a mom. I can’t be her mom. I’m leaving for Europe tonight. I got a job as a roadie for a band.” She kneels down to the floor, looking at her daughter. “Look, I just want to be sure she is taken care of. I brought in the stuff from the hospital where she was born. And some photos. After I dropped her off at the ranger station, I freaked out, realizing that I fucked up. But I was in the woods, at this party, you know, and it got really crazy and I didn’t think she should be there…”