Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Caleb
I’m up at the ass crack of dawn with coffee on, and I’m stopping myself from going and waking her up. It’s good to let her sleep.
Last night keeps replaying itself in my mind, over and over again. When she appeared in the shower I couldn’t think. All I could do was claim her.
I broke a lot of my own rules.
Kissing her. Fucking her without a condom.
But I wouldn’t take it back. It was too good.
Of course, it’s also what landed me in this position. Where I let her spend the night for no good reason and made her all kinds of offers, including going on this ride today, which is by far the least concerning of what I was about to put on the table.
But hell, I’ve got more money than I’ll ever be able to spend.
Why not fix her life? Why not offer her everything?
The sun, the moon, the stars. No one’s ever fucking offered her that before, and I know it.
Her ex-boyfriend was just a whole bunch of work for her.
Her dad is all kinds of labor. Her mom left her behind.
I can’t give her anything normal. But I could give her a life that looks exactly how she might want to design it.
I can dress her up in the most beautiful clothes, buy her a place in the city.
Send her to school. I’ve never wanted to take care of a submissive in that way before.
But I want to do it with her. It feels right.
Like a natural extension of wrapping her in a blanket after a scene.
Of making sure she’s hydrated and has enough protein.
I’m obsessed with the idea, if I’m honest. And within that, I want to know more about her. She was funny last night. Not telling me much of anything.
She sticks with her story. With this idea that all she wants is the ranch.
But I wonder if there’s ever been any room in her life to want something else.
She was ashamed of her sexual desires, I know that much. I’m the only person that knows. She hasn’t even told her friends.
Had to sign up for an app, because there was no one she could talk to about her fantasies, and her desires.
I went through my whole adolescence daring people to reject me. Because I had already lost the only person I cared about.
But Avery’s scared of rejection. She’s trying to be whatever people need her to be. Whatever they want her to be.
I frown, that thought weighing heavily on my mind as I hear soft footsteps padding down the stairs. I smile, then get a second mug out of the cabinet, pour a cup of coffee, and by the time she gets in there, it’s waiting for her.
“Good morning,” she mumbles.
“Good morning, Dove,” I say.
A shy smile lights up her face. “Wolf.”
She crosses the space to me and stops in front of me. She’s waiting for me to make the first move. I reach out and cup her chin. And kiss her. Not deep and hard like I did yesterday, perfunctory, almost, but I feel her melt beneath my lips and I feel roaring satisfaction in my chest.
“Sweet girl,” I say, dragging my thumb over her lip.
She’s practically glowing at the compliment. I want more of that. I crave it. In spite of everything.
I take her to the barn and she immediately puts herself to work. I put a stop to that shit right away.
“Absolutely not,” I say. “I’m taking care of everything.”
“I know how to tack up a horse.”
“I know. But you’re not doing anything.”
“You’re such a liar. You said that you don’t like a sub outside of the bedroom.”
“Maybe I’m trying something new.”
Dangerous. Fucking dangerous.
She looks pleased by that, though, and I like for her to be pleased.
We get the horses ready and mount up outside the barn.
Then I urge my horse forward, and she follows behind me.
It’s a nice day. The kind of day that reminds me why I moved back here, for reasons beyond revenge, to show the town that I made something of myself.
It’s funny, because initially, I bought the place with some measure of spite. But that fire inside of me has dimmed.
“You know, I always figured that I would be a rancher,” I say.
“I figured that I would have a place like this, though of course I had no idea how much any of it cost. Had no idea that the odds were this would always be beyond me. It seemed like a simple life. My own plot of land, horses. I never imagined getting into real estate. I had no idea what that was.”
“I always assumed I would take over the ranch,” she says.
“Did you?”
She laughs. “I mean, when I was really young I thought about moving away. Living somewhere else. Trying different things. I had some ideas about working in an office building. But I didn’t know what I would do.
And then after my mom left, and things got harder and harder for my dad, it became really clear to me that he needed my help. ”
“You really don’t know what you wanted to do?”
Her face takes on a strange, bashful quality, and I can’t help but thinking that she does know what she wanted. She’s just embarrassed to say. Like it might change my opinion of her, and she can’t handle that.
“You can tell me,” I say.
“No. It’s stupid. I wanted to join the pro-rodeo circuit.
I wanted to barrel race. I loved doing that for fun in the arena.
I had fantasies of winning prize money and traveling, going away to school.
Maybe studying business so I could get better at running the ranch, or maybe changing the business. I’d rather have horses than cattle.”
Suddenly, I want to make her dreams come true more than I want anything. Hell, I’ll buy the fucking rodeo for her if that’s what she wants.
“I don’t want to do that anymore, to be clear.” She looks away like she’s embarrassed. “I’m too old to start something like that. A lot of these women who are already elite at barrel racing are in their teens.”
“What if you didn’t need prize money to make it worthwhile? What if you could just do it because you loved it?”
“That’s not a thing in my world. It has to have a point and a purpose to it, it has to earn something or I can’t do it.”
But not our games. She doesn’t say that, but I feel the weight of it then. For a few hours she gets to just be. She doesn’t need to be productive. She doesn’t need to make a difference or earn money or justify her existence.
She’s just mine.
I suddenly feel like I want that to be more. To go deeper. Farther.
I think she does the thing that everybody wants her to do because she doesn’t want to let her dad down. Because she’s scared of what will happen if she doesn’t show up and do exactly what’s expected of her.
I want to know everything about her. I want to break her open and get inside her. It’s the oddest fucking impulse. I want more than we have. I want more than I’ve ever had from anybody.
“What would you be if you could be anything?” she asks me.
“A cowboy. That’s kind of what I’m gearing up to do.”
“Really?”
“I’m stepping down. As the CEO of my company. I’m going to remain a majority shareholder, but I’m not going to be part of the day-to-day running anymore. I don’t want to do it. I don’t care about it. It made me a fuckton of money, but it doesn’t make me happy.”
“What will make you happy?”
Well, didn’t she drill down right into the heart of all my issues.
“I don’t know if anything will. But this is close.” I pause. “If you didn’t have to worry about anything, what would you do?”
She looks up toward the sky. “I guess I would travel a little bit. See some of the rest of this planet. I don’t know, I think back when I had dreams the thing that appealed to me about that was experiencing things I hadn’t before.”
“And the rodeo?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I would, why not? If we’re just dreaming, let’s throw that on there too.”
But she can’t. She can’t because she feels like she has to keep everything going. She can’t because she feels like she has to earn everybody’s love and affection. Already lost her mom’s.
“You dumping your boyfriend was the best thing you’ve done, you know?”
She looks at me, scrunching her nose up. “Is it?”
“You did it for yourself. You didn’t worry about preserving his feelings. Or keeping him with you.”
She laughs. “I guess that says a lot about what I think about him. Because usually, I can’t do that. You’re right.”
“You’ve never been shy about letting me know what you think either. You know, I think the night that you came to set my barn on fire was maybe the most real you’ve ever been.”
It’s true. She was just following her own feelings. Her own passion. And I think I want more of that.
I want to get her there. Where she’s not just trying to please everyone else. She needs to be pushed. I know that.
And I’m in the perfect position to do it.
“Stay with me again tonight,” I say.
“Oh I don’t… I shouldn’t do that. Eventually I need to go home.”
“Why?”
“My dad is going to wonder what I’m doing.”
“You are twenty-four years old. Who the fuck cares what you’re doing?”
I can see that doesn’t work for her. That she feels so enmeshed with her father that she can’t do whatever she wants.
“Tell him you’re staying with me.”
“But he’ll think I–”
“Why does it matter?” I shake my head. “He’s a gambling addict. He puts you and your livelihood in danger all the time, and doesn’t give a fuck what you think. And you waste all this time worrying about what he thinks. More people should give a shit about disappointing you, Avery.”
I ride ahead of her on the trail, my heart pounding hard like we were having sex, not a conversation. This girl has me messed up. I’m not sure I want to put it back to the way it was before.