Chapter Six
W endy couldn’t keep her eyes off his bare chest. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. He always had been. Even with her doing her best not to examine the fine architecture of his body, she had noticed.
How could she not?
He was so glorious. So utterly perfect. And shirtless, he was... He was a phenomenon. He was the kind of stunning that could only be compared to a mountain range, looming in the distance, glorious and transcending all other natural wonders. Broad and brilliant, the musculature of his shoulders, his chest, his stomach...
She had always known the desire between her and Boone went somewhere beyond mere physical attraction, but for the moment, she just marinated in the absolute masculine perfection present before her. For he was something else altogether than she’d seen in person. That was for sure.
She was almost startled by the visceral reaction she had to him. By the wave of need that washed over her. She wasn’t a stranger to sexual desire, or arousal. She enjoyed sex.
But it had never been like this. It had never been all-consuming. It had never been a driving need that washed out everything else, washed out her fear. Because she was the kind of woman who had been raised from a place of fear, because her mother had known she would need it in order to make her way in the world. Because her mother knew that a woman had to suspect everything and everyone. That a woman could never fully place her trust in another human being, because the moment she did that person could take advantage of her.
Yes, she had always been afraid. And so nothing had ever been able to carry her away, not completely. She had left herself fairly unprotected in her marriage, but even now, she’d known exactly how she would get away. And she had already made sure she and her girls didn’t end up on the streets. And perhaps she was giving herself a bit too much credit when Boone deserved more of it, but still, she felt confident saying she had never let herself get lost entirely in any sort of passion, anytime, anywhere.
Except now.
There was no logical thought. Nothing rational or reasonable about this. It was just need. Raw and aching and torn from the depths of her soul.
She was empty, and she needed, more than anything, to be filled by him.
She leaned back on the bed, looking up at him.
His grin... That edgy, wicked grin she had always longed to have turned on her.
And nothing was holding her back now. Nothing whatsoever.
It was freedom, the kind of freedom that made tears prick at the backs of her eyes, the kind of freedom that made her feel like she might be on the edge of a cliff.
And normally that would scare her. She was afraid of heights.
But not here. Not now.
Everything about this man said he would catch her.
She could jump. With all the wild abandon she never let herself feel, she could jump.
Because he was more than strong enough to catch her.
Because he was more than strong enough to make good on every promise the arousal he built inside of her created.
Yes. He was the man who had engineered this desire, and he was the man who would answer it.
Because Boone Carson was a man who kept his word.
Even when they were words he didn’t speak with his mouth.
He moved his hands to his belt buckle, and everything in her stilled. He began to undo the leather slowly, and her body rejoiced.
He pulled the belt through the loops on his jeans, and methodically set it on the edge of the bed, right next to her. He kicked his boots off, the movements there slow as well, removing his socks and placing them next to the boots. He was doing this on purpose.
Because he didn’t hurry to get up here, and now he was taking his time. She couldn’t even be angry, because it was the single most erotic thing she’d ever experienced. An echo of the denial they’d been experiencing since they had first met, and yet now with the promise of that desire being satisfied.
His hands went to the button on his jeans, then slowly lowered his zipper. His pants and underwear came off as one, and the extreme pulse of desire that rocked through her core when she saw the full, masculine extent of him made her mouth dry. He was glorious. The most beautiful naked man she’d ever seen, even though she’d only ever seen one other in person.
He was perfection. He was everything.
She couldn’t help herself. Or maybe she didn’t want to. She licked her lips.
And he laughed. Enticing. Husky. He made her feel like maybe she was wicked too.
And for the first time in a very long time, she didn’t feel like somebody’s wife or housekeeper or household manager. She didn’t feel like somebody’s mother. She just felt like her. Her, if she hadn’t been raised to fear everything, to hoard good things and be afraid of what might come tomorrow.
Just who she might’ve been. Who she wanted to be.
A woman. A woman with the capacity to desire perfection. A woman with the capacity to let herself hope.
All because of Boone Carson’s gloriously naked body.
And if that wasn’t a testament to the wonder of a perfect penis, she didn’t know what was.
And she hadn’t even touched him yet.
She put her hands on the hem of her T-shirt, fully expecting to undress herself, until his eyes met hers. “No.” The command, the denial, was rough and hard.
“That’s for me,” he said.
“Okay,” she said, her voice trembling slightly.
But she loved the command in his voice, and she didn’t want it to go away.
He took her hand and encouraged her into a standing position, and then he grabbed hold of the edge of her shirt and pulled it up over her head.
His nostrils flared, his eyes going hot. “You’re so beautiful. And I’m gonna tell you right now, I’m not going to have any pretty words for you. Just dirty ones. Rough. I’m not gonna write you poetry, because I just want you so damned bad. And that is the most flowery, beautiful speech I have. Everything else is going to get a lot harder. You okay with that?”
“Yes.”
Because it was poetry to her since it was said in his voice. Because the heat in his eyes might as well be a sonnet, and the music he called up within her a symphony.
He could say whatever he wanted. He could do whatever he wanted. It wouldn’t be wrong. It couldn’t be.
And he made good on his word. As the layers of her clothes came off, he affirmed her with rough, coarse speech that made goose bumps break out on her skin. Her husband was a cowboy. He’d used all manner of rough language. He wasn’t delicate when it came to words surrounding sex, but it was different from Boone. Because it was about her.
Because his language spoke to a level of desperation that healed something inside of her she hadn’t even realized had hurt.
This idea that she hadn’t been enough. That giving a man her body hadn’t been enough. That loving that man hadn’t been enough. That keeping his house, raising his children, managing his money hadn’t been enough. That if doing all that wasn’t enough to satisfy him, it meant there was a deep shortcoming within her she was never going to fix.
Boone made that laughable. He made it clear, so very clear, even to her, that the issue was Daniel.
Because if Boone could be reduced to trembling over the sight of her bare breasts, then maybe she was beautiful after all.
Then perhaps she wasn’t wrong. Then perhaps her husband was just a bad husband.
And she had been a good wife. It just hadn’t mattered to him. And never would, no matter what she did.
And so this weight that had been resting in the pit of her stomach from the moment she had found out about Daniel’s infidelities evaporated. And then Boone took her pants off. Her underwear. And she was naked in front of him. This man she had wanted for so long, for whom her desiring had become as natural as breathing, so much so that she had managed to carry it around all these years, some days barely noticing it.
And now she could feel it. The way that it made her want to be wanted.
The cascade of all those years was suddenly pouring down over her, amplifying her desire. Her need.
She wasn’t embarrassed to be naked in front of him, because she knew she had been thousands of times in his mind, and she could see from the heat in his eyes he wasn’t disappointed. Far from it. And then he began to tell her. Just how satisfied he was.
And he was wrong. It was poetry. A field of dark desire dotted with bright, explicit daisies. And it was more than beautiful to her.
Because it was real. Because it was nothing held back. Because it was as honest a moment as she’d ever had in her life, and honesty was perhaps the biggest aphrodisiac of all right now.
Truth.
Unfiltered, unabashed.
And then he wrapped his arm around her waist and brought her bare body against his. And they were touching, everywhere. Naked, against each other. He was so hard and hot, and her desire for him was like a living thing. Demanding. Exulting. And she indulged.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, gloried in the feel of her sensitized breasts moving against his hair-roughened chest. Loving the way his large, calloused hands moved over her curves, the way one cupped her ass and squeezed her hard.
Then delved between her thighs to tease her slick entrance.
She cried out as he pushed a finger inside of her, and then another.
Boone. She would never not be conscious it was him.
It wasn’t about generic desire. It wasn’t about that basic sort of human need that everyone experienced. This was singular. It was for him. About him.
And when he lifted her up and laid her down on the bed, he looked at her like a starving man. And he pushed her knees apart, kissing her ankle, that sensitive spot right on the inside of her knee, and up her thigh, slowly. His mouth was hot, and his eyes were full of intent, and even as she felt a vague amount of discomfort and embarrassment wash over her when he drew closer to the most intimate part of her, she couldn’t look away.
Because she had to see it. She had to see Boone’s mouth on her. And then it was. She gasped, arching up off the bed, her hand going over her own breast as she squeezed herself, greedy now with all the heat inside of her. And he began to lick her, deep and with intent, pushing a finger inside rhythmically as his tongue moved over the most sensitive part of her.
She was lost in it. In this new music inside of her.
He was an artist, and if he would make her his muse, she would consider herself fortunate.
She closed her eyes, finally surrendering to the overwhelming onslaught of pleasure, finally unable to keep them open. But still, she saw him. His face. His body.
Boone. She was overwhelmed by him.
His touch, his scent. And that realization, his name, him—that was what sent her over the edge, more than a touch, more than his skilled mouth. Just him.
And when she shattered, he clung to her tightly, forcing her to take on more and more pleasure. As he pushed her harder, further, through wave after wave, through a second climax that hit before the first had even abated.
And she was spent after. His name the only thing in her mind, the only thing on her lips. Perhaps, the only thing she knew.
“Boone,” she whispered, as he moved up her body and claimed her mouth, letting her taste her own desire there, the evidence of what they had done.
His smile was more than wicked now. It was something else. Dark and satisfied, and everything.
He moved his hands up to cup her breasts, skimmed his thumbs over the sensitized buds there, then moved both hands down her waist, her hips, beneath her rear as he lifted her hips up off the bed.
“I want...”
“Later,” he said, his voice jagged. “I need to be inside of you.”
And then he was, in one hard, smooth stroke, filling her, almost past the point of pleasure into the gray space where pain met need, and it was wonderful.
He began to move, rough, hard strokes that pushed her further and further toward that shining, glorious peak again. Impossibly. Brilliantly.
There was no way she could come again. She had never in her life come twice during sex, and a third time would just be pushing it, except each and every stroke demanded it.
It was Boone. Inside of her. Tormenting her. Satisfying her. Creating within her an aching need that only he could satisfy.
And she could’ve wept with the glory of it. With the intensity of the new, building need in her that felt entirely separate from the need she’d had before.
Because this was about them. Being one. His body in hers. Intimate. Too much. Not enough.
She met his every stroke, and then he took hold of her chin and pressed his forehead to hers. “That’s right,” he whispered. “Come for me. For me, Wendy.”
It was the desperation there, the fact that he wasn’t talking dirty to her for the sake of a game, but issuing a command that came straight from the very center of who he was, out of the deepest, darkest desire. That was what sent her over. That was what shattered her. And it was nothing like her other two climaxes. This was like something sharp piercing a pane of glass, cracking and shattering it into glorious, glittering pieces. Making it into something almost more beautiful than what it had been before.
And then he followed her. On a rough sound, he found his own release, spilling himself inside of her, his body pulsing deep within. And she watched him. Watched as he was undone.
By her. By them. By this.
And all she could do was hang on to him in the aftermath. Clinging to his sweat-slicked shoulders as she pressed her head to that curve right there at his neck, as she tried to keep herself from weeping.
“Boone,” she said.
“It’s about damned time,” he said.
And she laughed. Impossibly, because nothing felt light or funny.
Except it was just the truth.
It had been so long in coming, that it was nearly a farce.
Had it always been inevitable? She supposed there was no good answer to that question. The decision as to whether or not they would do something to violate her vows had been taken away from them. And they had certainly kept themselves away from any sort of temptation they couldn’t handle for long enough that they deserved a medal.
But it had been taken away from them, the need to resist. And so they didn’t.
Lying there with him felt inevitable.
But maybe it was Daniel’s betrayal that had always been inevitable, considering he had never once seen a need to be faithful to her.
Maybe that was the thing that had always been set in stone: the failure of her marriage. Maybe it had been fate that day that had brought Boone into her path and said, Here is the better choice.
For all the good it had done. Because she had been so bound and determined to do the right thing, she hadn’t taken the destined thing.
Except now, in the aftermath of what had been fairly spectacular sex, she was left with the reality that sex was hardly destiny.
It had been amazing. Surpassing anything she had even thought could exist.
But she still had all the things in her life to take care of. And kids to pick up from school in... She looked over at the bedside clock. Thirty minutes.
For a moment she had felt free of all her responsibilities, but she wasn’t. Not really.
She still carried them all. She still had to be Wendy Stevens. Mother, a woman in the midst of a divorce.
She still had to figure out where she went from here, and what she did next. Not even three soul-shattering orgasms could take that away.
Because bodies meeting wasn’t a promise. Not forever, not really anything.
And in the place she was in life, she could hardly ask Boone for promises.
He looked at her, and she wanted to.
But she didn’t.
They had known exactly what to do.
It was funny that neither of them seemed to know what to say.
“I have to go get the girls. Soon.”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t... You know I can’t be over here at night.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“I just can’t have them knowing.”
“I get that.” He cupped her chin. “It’s not gonna just be the once, though. You know that.”
She could resist. She could tell him it had to be once. She could tell him that, for their own protection, they needed to keep it that way. That they had to be smart. But she would only end up back in his bed the next time they were alone in the house, and it would just make her a liar.
She wasn’t going to do that. She wasn’t going to insult them.
Because the truth was, she wanted him again even now, and if she wasn’t on a time limit, she would probably be climbing on him.
Because she hadn’t been able to touch him the way she wanted to, hadn’t been able to explore him. Hadn’t been able to taste him.
And she was just not in the space to build up a host of regrets. Or even a single new regret.
“I am going to leave,” she said.
“You said.”
“I’m not even divorced yet.”
“You are in every way that counts.”
“Except the legal ways. And I have to get through that.”
“I get that.”
“Thank you. For being here for me. I really appreciate it. I really... This is going to happen again.”
“Yes,” he said.
And then it was her turn to be bold. Because why get missish now?
“I need to taste you,” she said. “I haven’t had you in my mouth.”
He growled, and she found herself pushed flat on her back, a whole lot of muscled, aroused cowboy over the top of her.
“Careful.”
“I don’t have time,” she said. “Because as wonderful as that was, I can’t stop having my life just so I can please you sexually.”
“Tease.”
“It feels good to tease.”
It felt good to be with him.
It was strange how natural it felt, sliding out from beneath the covers and taunting him with her naked body as she went to collect her clothes.
She just wasn’t embarrassed.
And she wasn’t going to pretend to be. Why take on shame she simply didn’t feel? There was no point to that.
Now she just had to get through the rest of the day with her head on straight. She had to pick up her girls like she hadn’t just been ravished. She had to get dinner made.
“I’m probably gonna go out tonight,” he said. “Don’t worry about saving me dinner.”
And that felt... It hurt. It felt like he was avoiding her, and maybe he was.
“Oh,” she said.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, though.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t have you again tonight,” he said. “And I get that might sound outrageously selfish to you. But honestly, I’m not sure I have it together enough to be around you in front of the girls, or to... I just need some space.”
She was shocked by that. By the honesty. By the blatant truth that had just come out of his mouth, a truth that exposed deeper feelings in him that she had thought he would be comfortable betraying.
“Oh.”
She had wanted to be close to him because she felt needy right now. But he had a point. They needed to figure out how they were going to be around each other if the girls were in the middle of them.
And right now, they were on anything but normal footing.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want you to be hurt.”
She shook her head. “I’m not.”
“Don’t lie to me, Wendy. There have been enough lies all around us, there don’t need to be any between us. Not anymore.”
“Okay. I was a little bit hurt. I thought you didn’t want to be around me if you couldn’t have me.”
“Yes...but it isn’t like that. It’s not because I don’t have another use for you. It’s just because I don’t quite know what to do with myself right now.”
“Okay. That’s fair.”
And maybe a little bit more honest than she’d been with herself.
“I will see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”