Chapter Twenty-Five
AGAIN, I HAVE no idea where we’re going, but I don’t care. Because he says the sweetest things in the scariest of ways, and because I’ll go anywhere with him.
So I turn on my side, do what I wanted to do for the longest time while we were riding all last week.
Kiss his pulse. His jaw, the triangle of his throat as I nuzzle my nose in it and fill my lungs with his scent.
And he does what he probably wanted to do all last week: fist my hair to pull my head back and put his mouth on me.
I want to warn him then. Tell him that it’s probably not very safe to ride on a horse while kissing, but again, I don’t much care.
Even if we crash and burn, it’ll be the best death anyone could ever meet.
Besides, the man I’m kissing is made of fire so even if we did burn, he’d save me.
So I kiss him back as we ride, my eyes closed, my heart pounding, and I keep going until he stops the horse.
Only so he can get down and bring me down with him.
Then I’m wrapping myself around him again and fusing our lips together.
I feel him walking and coming to a halt.
I hear him unlocking a door that opens with a groan.
I smell the fresh hay and leather as he floods the space with yellow light, still kissing, still connected.
I realize it’s a barn but different than the one we were just at, farther away from the main house.
I see flashes of bales of hay, chopped wood, metallic tools as we keep going.
Then I hear him climbing. I guess there are steps here and he’s taking them, all the while carrying me in his arms, his boots thudding on the wooden treads.
This is when I want to take my mouth off him and get away.
I want him to put me down because I’m me.
I’m heavy. And I know he’s carried me to places; he carried me back to the camp after the bear attack; he puts me on and takes me off the saddle all the time; and he’s been carrying me all this while that we’ve been kissing.
But steps are different. Steps are harder.
My heart will perish with embarrassment if I hear him heaving and breaking a sweat. Which I realize is a lot of pressure on him when I’m the one with the problem so I try to push away from him, but he growls and grabs the back of my head, keeping my mouth pinned to his.
We reach the landing that way, fighting with our lips, and soon I find myself being lowered to what I realize is a little bed. Only then does he let me go. When I’m on my back and he’s on top of me.
“I’m…” I say with sore lips as I open my eyes, my cheeks blushing. “I’m h-heavy.”
His mouth looks sore, too, as he takes me in with dark eyes. “The only thing you are is perfect.”
My heart squeezes as I shake my head. “I’m not—”
“Let me make somethin’ clear to you because maybe it wasn’t before,” he cuts me off with another growl.
“This is my home. This is my ranch. The bed you’re lying on is the one I made last night but didn’t sleep in because you weren’t with me.
Everything you see here belongs to me. Including you.
Which means I’m the one who gets to make all the rules, yeah?
And you’re the one who gets to follow them.
So if I say you’re perfect, you better believe it.
You better believe you’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen, and instead of arguin’ with me, you say thank you, all polite and sweet-like. Is that clear?”
I want to kiss him. And then I want to smack his face for being a dick about something that he could’ve said nicely. So all I do is nod my head as I whisper, “Thank you.”
His chest pushes into mine with a satisfied breath. “Good girl.”
His praise twists me into knots and I breathe out, “But I’m not c-calling you ‘sir’ or anything like that. So get that out of your head.”
He roves his eyes over my features before rasping, “I can live with that. Sir ain’t somethin’ I prefer anyway.”
“There is something you prefer?” I ask, feeling all kinds of young and naive again, wondering if sex is really that complicated.
His bee-stung, or rather Reverie-stung, mouth pulls up in a smirk and he leans down, his lips skimming over mine as he replies, “Daddy.”
A shocked gasp falls from my lips, and he catches it with his mouth.
I know he said that to scare me again, but I don’t care.
Because for the next several seconds, he makes me dizzy with another one of his kisses.
Soon he breaks it, though, and untangling himself from the web of my limbs, he pushes off me.
Panting, I come up on my elbows and watch him walk back a few steps.
I want to look around, try to take in the space we’re in.
All I can tell from the corner of my eye is that there are bales of hay stacked up to the wall here as well, but this space could also be someone’s bedroom with an armchair in a corner.
Not to mention the bed on the floor that I’m sitting in.
But I’ll explore it later because for now, I don’t want to miss a single thing. So I keep watching him.
My husband.
And he keeps watching me as he unbuttons his shirt.
One by one, those silver buttons on his denim shirt open and I see the sliver of his massive chest peeking through.
I see his dark hair that I can’t wait to feel on my fingers.
Halfway through, though, he stops. I’m about to protest because my favorite part was coming up, his ridged abdomen and the trail of dark hair that thickens around his belly button.
But before I can say anything, he reaches back and snags his shirt, taking it off in one go and giving me the glimpse of everything that I was dying for.
His boulder-like shoulders. The expanse of his chest, that eight-pack ladder, his tight, dark brown nipples. And that hair. All dark and springy. I don’t even know where to look first so I look at all of it, in no particular order. Which is why I think I miss what he does next.
Unbuttons his jeans.
I’m only alerted to the fact that he’s doing it when he lowers the zipper and that sound rends the silence in the barn. Or rather silence fraught with heavy breathing. My heavy breathing.
I see another peek then. Of darker, springier, much thicker hair beneath the open zipper of his jeans.
I know what that is even though I’ve never seen it, not in real life.
So I sit up. I clutch the sheet, press the heel of my palm into the mattress, waiting, and I swear I gasp when it finally happens.
Because when he reveals it, his cock, it slaps against his stomach with a thwack. And it feels like the loudest sound there ever was. Probably because his dick has to be the hardest dick there ever was.
Mind you, I have zero experience to make that judgment, but still I know his cock is so hard it has to hurt.
It’s thick and long, that’s not even in question; I’ve felt it so I was expecting that.
I was expecting his cock to be something that would need its own ruler, like my forearm—I mean that thing reaches up to his belly button—so I’m not really surprised to find out I was right.
The thing that really gets me, that makes me clench my thighs and squirm where I’m sitting, is the fact that it’s dripping.
Constantly.
It’s all wet and glistening, the head, the length, the root even.
And God, it’s so darkened, a mix of red and purple and throbbing.
Even as I watch it, I see a pearl of pre-cum oozing out and sliding down his rod, dripping down to his balls.
Two heavy sacs that look all tight and just as ruddy as his dick.
“You’re…” I breathe out, swallowing. “It looks like you’re in… pain.”
He brings his hand, his large, scarred, beautiful hand, down and squeezes his balls. “Yeah, this is what six months of dreamin’ about you looks like.”
I look up then, at his heaving chest, now all flushed just like his cock. His abdomen that hollows out with every breath he takes. His face, all sharp lines and needy angles. His entire frame, all large and dark and slashed with lust against the backdrop of the yellow light.
“Looks like torture though,” I say.
His chest heaves and I watch him tugging at his balls again before he grips the length of his cock and starts slowly, oh very slowly, going up and down. “The most exquisite torture I’ve ever felt.”
I follow his hand on his cock as he jerks himself off and starts walking toward me as I whisper, “Are you trying to sweet-talk me?”
“I’m a lot of things, darlin’, but sweet ain’t one of them,” he bites out, pinching the head of his cock.
I tear my gaze off his length and look into his heavy-lidded eyes. “You can be sweet though.”
“Yeah?”
“Sometimes.”
His nostrils flare. “Good that you think so because this is all the sweet you’re gonna get.”
With that, he kneels at the end of the bed, all naked and glorious, his muscles flexing and bulging with his actions. And I blurt out, “This is our wedding night.”
At my words, his eyes flash and flicker with possessiveness, making my skin break out in goose bumps. He grabs both my ankles and slides me closer as he growls, “Yeah and tonight, I pay for my crimes.”
“Crimes,” I whisper.
He leans over and places a soft kiss on my mouth. “Yeah, for every little crime I committed against you, your body.” Another kiss as he goes to unzip my hoodie. “For druggin’ you and kidnapping you. For blowin’ myself over your sleepin’ body like the horny, desperate ex-con I am.”
He pushes the hoodie off and goes to remove my T-shirt, and I raise my arms without him telling me to.
He takes it off and places another kiss on my mouth, and my hands clutch his shoulders.
“I pay for every night I tied you up with rope instead of using my arms to bind you to me like I should have.”
I’m shivering now, at his words, at his soft kisses. At him unhooking my bra and taking it off in the next breath. Before whispering against my mouth, “I tore off your wedding dress, didn’t I?”