35. Bonnie
BONNIE
Gage has put his shirts on the shelf I cleared for him and his hats everywhere else.
One is on the chair. One is on the hook by the door. A third has appeared on top of the laundry basket, which I discover when I come into the bedroom to change.
“This one needs a home,” I call.
He comes to the doorway. “It’s got a home.”
“It’s living on my dirty clothes.”
“Temporarily.”
I hold it out. He takes it, puts it on the cleared corner of the dresser, and looks pleased with the solution. I would object if he were not already coming toward me with an expression I know well.
“I was changing,” I say.
“I noticed.”
He kisses me. I kiss him back and reach past him to close the door.
Cricket is with Cleo for a few hours. Her son has been promised an afternoon making pizza, and he insisted the baby should come because she likes watching him. Cleo was happy to have her. The arrangement was made over breakfast, before either of us knew what we would do with the quiet.
Now I know.
He kisses the side of my neck, and I stop thinking about the hat.
“Dinner can wait,” he says.
“You haven’t asked what I planned.”
“What did you plan?”
“I hadn’t decided.”
He draws me closer. “Then I’m not ruining anything.”
I put my hands against his chest. I have loved this man when he made it easy and when loving him was the thing that hurt most. Under his look, my thighs press together on their own, and my pulse is going in my throat where he can see it.
“You put your hat on my laundry,” I tell him, “and I still want you. Nobody warned me about that part.”
He has been looking at me like this all afternoon. While I watered the plants, while we carried the last box of his books inside, while I stood at the sink washing soil off my fingers. I noticed every time. Once I pretended not to because I liked making him wait.
Now that we are alone, I am less composed than I expected to be.
“You can stop smiling,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“Because I know what you’re thinking.”
“I doubt that.”
I wait for him to prove it. He looks down at the hand I have put against his chest.
“I’m thinking you’ve got dirt under one fingernail.”
I look. He kisses me while I am distracted, and I laugh into his mouth because I deserved it.
“You’re very pleased with yourself.”
“A little.”
I move closer. His amusement changes when he feels how readily I come to him. I enjoy that too. I have been discovering how much I like being the person who can interrupt his thoughts.
The room is familiar enough now that neither of us has to make an occasion of being in it together.
His book is beside mine. The laundry waiting behind us belongs to both of us.
I can still remember the first night he slept here, how I woke before dawn and lay listening to him breathe because I could hardly believe I had asked for this.
I have been breathing through my mouth since the door shut, and I let him hear it, this time.
“Come closer,” I say, although he is already near enough to kiss.
He understands. His arms close around me, and I rest against him for a moment before looking down. His shirt is buttoned crookedly. I tug at the uneven hem.
“You rushed.”
“You were calling me.”
“I was asking where you put the towels.”
“I thought it might be something better.”
I undo the bottom button. “Optimistic.”
“Usually.”
His optimism makes me want to encourage him. I pull him nearer, enjoying how quickly he gives up the argument about his shirt.
When I move back, he waits, watching me. I hook a finger into his crooked shirt and bring him with me.
“I’ve been thinking about you since breakfast,” I tell him. It comes out lower than I meant it to, and heat goes up both sides of my neck to my ears. He looks so delighted that I wish I had said it earlier.
“All morning?”
“Some of it. I had other things to do.”
“I noticed. You were very busy with the plants.”
“You could’ve helped.”
“I was afraid you’d find room for another one.”
I let him kiss me until the joke is finished. Then I say his name, softly, because I want his attention even closer than it already is.
I back toward the bed, still holding his shirt. He follows until the backs of my knees meet the mattress. I sit, and he sits beside me. The curtain lifts in the breeze and brushes my bare arm. I leave the window open.
When I interrupt a kiss to tell him the third porch plant is still staying, he laughs against my mouth.
“You’re negotiating at an unfair moment.”
“You chose the moment.”
“Keep the plant.”
I kiss him again, delighted by the small victory. He knows I was going to keep it anyway. He bought the pot yesterday after telling me we had no room, and I saw the receipt in his hand when he came home.
I work upward from the button I have already undone. He waits until I reach the last one, then slips the shirt off and reaches for me. I flatten a hand on his chest to hold him there while I take off my own.
The rest goes faster. He gets his boots off standing on one leg and nearly goes over, and I laugh at him while I push down my jeans.
The afternoon light reaches the pillow. I pull him down beside me, and he moves into the space I have made for him.
There is no reason to whisper. His hand is between my legs, two fingers sliding in me and his thumb on my clit.
I tell him out loud to keep doing exactly that. He does, and bends his head to kiss me.
He reaches into the bedside drawer for a condom, and I draw him back for one more kiss before he can do anything with it. I forget what we stopped for. He doesn’t.
He tears the packet while I’m still kissing him.
“Help or watch?”
“Watch.”
I do. He rolls it on with the light full on him and no hurry at all, and I stop breathing for a second, watching his hands do it.
His thumb smooths it down. He takes his time because I told him I wanted to watch, and he knows it.
Two weeks of him in this bed and I still want to look. I want him to know I’m looking.
“Come here,” I say, and pull him over me, then change my mind halfway and push at his shoulder instead. “No. Lie down.”
He lies down. He has the sense not to say anything.
I climb over him. My knees find the mattress on either side of his hips. I take him in my hand and put him where I want him and sink down. The sound he makes is the best thing that has happened to me all week.
“Bonnie.” Just my name. His hands come up to my waist and stop there, not steering. Letting me.
I’m the one steering. I rock, and it’s good. I rock harder and it’s better. I can feel where I need it, and I put my hand there without asking anybody. His eyes go to my hand and then to my face. He doesn’t look away, and I don’t want him to.
“You’re looking.”
“You told me to.”
“I know.” My voice has gone breathless and stupid. “Keep doing it.”
“You’re beautiful like this.” He says it to my breasts, then to my face, then to where we are joined. “Every part.”
I have fed a baby with this body for most of a year. I am still learning to see it the way he looks at me. Coming from him, in this light, with his cock in me, I decide to believe it for the length of the afternoon.
I take his hands off my waist and put them where I want them. One goes to my breast and the other flat on my belly, thumb low, and I ride his thumb on my clit and his cock in me together and lose my rhythm and find it.
I lean down to kiss him and the angle changes.
“That. Stay.”
“Here?”
“Stay.”
He stays. I take him like that, short and deep, my hair falling around both our faces, his breath in my mouth. I am wet enough that it makes a sound, and neither of us pretends it didn’t.
“I want to watch you come.”
“Then don’t look away.”
“You feel so good. You feel...” He loses it. His head goes back into the pillow. “Bonnie, you’re going to...”
“Not yet.”
I make him wait. I want it to last and I want it now and I can’t have both. I take a few more long slow ones and feel his hands dig in to keep from taking over. Then I tell him.
“You can now.”
He rolls us. The mattress bounces and my hair goes in my mouth and I’m laughing, and then I’m not, because his cock is back inside me hard and fast, his mouth on my neck, my hand at the back of his head holding him there.
The bed knocks the wall. I don’t care who hears.
I say his name and I say more and I say yes, yes, yes, and I come with the sun on my face, loud, my nails in his neck, my heel hooked behind his thigh so he can’t go anywhere.
He goes over right after me. He says my name into my shoulder like it hurts and stays there, shaking. I hold him through it with the window open and the curtain lifting and every bit of me lit up.
Afterward, the air from the window feels cool again. I reach down for the sheet, but Gage has a foot caught in it. We spend a few ungraceful seconds getting it free. Then I pull it over us and lay my foot over his ankle.
From here I can see the hat on the dresser. We still need somewhere to put it. I shut my eyes and leave that for later.
“I like this afternoon,” I tell him.
“So do I.”
He rests his hand on the back of my neck, under my hair. I shift closer without opening my eyes.
We lie there until I am pleasantly drowsy. I have lessons tomorrow morning. He has an early call with the ranch manager. Dinner will require somebody to open the refrigerator. None of those things needs us yet.
For a little while I watch him. He knows, but he lets me do it. I like the warmth in his face, the untidy hair I have helped make worse, how he reaches for me without asking whether I am about to get up.
I am used to seeing him after effort. After a run, after working with a horse that needed patience he nearly ran out of, after carrying something he should have asked another person to help him move. I have always liked those unguarded minutes when he stops trying to look capable.
This is different enough to make me shy. I have made him happy, and I can see it. I let myself look until he notices.
“What?” he asks.
“I like you.”
“I’m glad.” He sounds surprised.
“I know it’s a peculiar thing to announce now.”
“No. I like hearing it.”
I cup his cheek. “I missed liking you this much.”
He turns and kisses my palm before answering. “I missed giving you much reason to.”
I shake my head a little. I do not want to spend the afternoon going back through it. He sees that and waits while I find what I mean.
“I want to tell you things again. Stupid things. What somebody said while I was waiting for coffee. Something I thought of while I was working. I used to pick up the phone and then put it down.”
“You’ve been calling.”
“Yes.”
He smiles. “I like the stupid things.”
“They aren’t all stupid.”
“No. The story about the man who tried to load a saddle into the front seat of his car was important.”
He remembers the part I wanted him to enjoy. I prop myself on an elbow to tell him the rest. “He had a perfectly good back seat.”
“You never explained why he wouldn’t use it.”
“He had groceries there.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“It was a very small car.”
I show him with both hands how the saddle would have fit beside the groceries, horn toward the door. He watches my hands the whole time, then catches the nearer one and kisses it. I lose the rest of my argument and do not go looking for it.
Afterward, I rest my cheek against him and listen to the quiet outside.
I have no idea of the time, and the phone on the nightstand can go on lying facedown.
I know where Cricket is. I know when we will collect her.
For now I can enjoy the weight of his arm and the pleasure of having nothing I need to say.
When I do speak, it is about the hat. “The dresser is mine,” I tell him. “Top shelf of the closet is yours. All three of them can live up there.”
He lifts his head to look at the dresser, then at me. “You’ve been planning that.”
“Since the laundry basket.”
He laughs and puts his head back down. “Fine. But the one on the hook stays.”
He draws me back when I start to move, far enough to kiss me once more. I settle beside him willingly.
Later, on the porch, he shows me a horse the ranch manager wants to buy. We watch the video twice and disagree about the work it would take.
“Come look at him when we’re in Texas,” he says.
“If there’s time around my clinic.”
“I’ll ask about another hour.”
We have already argued over which day to travel. Both jobs are on the calendar now. I hand him the phone and tell him about the summer lessons I want to offer here, for riders who keep being told to buy more expensive horses when they need better help.
He asks how many I would take. I start counting before I remember I haven’t decided to run it yet.
“Six,” I say. “For the first one.”