Chapter Thirty
I SEE HIM from afar.
His skin shines under the afternoon sun, all bronzed and slick with sweat as he wields the hammer and knocks the boards off along the fence.
Apparently cattle ran into it while grazing yesterday and damaged the already-damaged wood.
So they’re replacing the whole railing, and it’s going to be a long day.
As I get closer to where he’s working with a bunch of ranch hands, I notice other details.
Such as how his back twitches and flutters when he raises and lowers his arm, and how his shoulders are all tensed with muscles standing in stark relief.
How his brand that I traced with my fingers and my mouth last night looks so pale against the backdrop of his honeyed skin.
How every inch of him drips strength and power.
But how every night when I touch him, his skin shivers and his chest shakes.
His breathing falters and his moans echo deep in my belly.
I love his moans. All thick and low, rough like the caress of his scraped hands, and I’ve become quite an expert at eliciting them from him.
For a girl who was a virgin until last week, I’ve taken to sex quite well and quite fast. Well, I always was a straight-A student, so maybe it makes sense that I’ll learn all the tricks about how to make my husband weak in the knees fast.
I also know how to make him angry. Because I know he’s going to be as soon as he sees me.
And I’m right because the moment he hears the rumble of the ATV coming up the path, he turns around.
Even though his hat is perched low on his head, I know when his eyes lock on me because he straightens up and I see his stubbled jaw clench.
It’s not as wildly stubbled or bordering on a beard like it was when we first arrived at the ranch a week ago, but it’s still thick enough that it scrapes my thighs when he eats my pussy and gives me burns around the column of my neck when he kisses me there.
In fact, the marks he left on me just this morning—more like, at the crack of dawn—before he went off to work on the fence tingle at the thought.
I should stop thinking about these things or I’ll start blushing.
Maybe I already am, and there’s company all around.
Besides, he’s not really happy about my arrival, so I should probably think about that.
The ATV stops and I hop off. I paste a cheery smile on my face and wave Hi.
Not only to him but to all the other men too.
After only a week, I think I know most of them by their faces, if not by their names.
I’m not going to lie, I do think they were criminals who were in the Rawhide Redemption program or whatever that thing is that I still don’t understand.
But I try not to judge them for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they’ve not once been disrespectful to me.
Even now, as I’m coming up the path, they tip their hats or jerk up their chins before getting back to work, all polite-like.
My husband, though, walks toward me with a frown. Or rather he prowls with long, confident steps. Masculine and dominating. Everything about him is that way, isn’t it.
Even the simple act of him taking his work gloves off and tucking them into the back of his washed-out jeans, where his black T-shirt is tucked as well, seems full of authority.
Not to mention those hard slabs of his chest and the ridges of his eight-packs.
That dusting of dark hair that I still haven’t gotten over even after a week.
How it thickens around his belly button and keeps getting thicker as it moves lower.
Everything about him is just so sexy and erotic and…
“Eyes up here,” he commands as he comes to a stop a few feet away from me.
I snap my gaze up and, as always, lie when I get caught: “I wasn’t staring.”
He takes my blushing cheeks in and rumbles, “Somethin’ down there calls you a liar.”
I blush harder and accuse without much steam, “You were staring too.”
“I was,” he admits unabashedly, his eyes flashing and dropping to my chest.
My nipples bead under the dress. “I—”
“Just don’t like how other men are too.”
I glance at the other men before saying, “No one is.”
And they truly aren’t; they’re all back to working.
I feel him move closer and I look back at him.
He does it in a way that hides me away from them.
He’s always doing things like that, tucking me against his body, standing so close to me that I disappear in the breadth of his chest, the width of his shoulders.
Two days ago, there was another bonfire—something I’m coming to realize these people have frequently; a way for all the weary cowboys to relax and mingle at the end of a long day—and I was standing in a group with Haven, Axton, and Peyton, and he was standing on his own in a lonely corner, away from the crowd because he hates them.
I was about to go to him because I didn’t want him to be alone when he suddenly appeared beside me just because he didn’t like the way Axton was staring at me.
Something he told me later when we were in the barn, up in his makeshift bedroom, about to go to sleep.
In the same bed. Like the rule he made.
For the record, Axton was not staring at me. I mean he does stare, but it’s gotten way better now.
“That’s because they know I’ll beat the shit outta them if they do,” he replies back before jerking his chin at something over my shoulder. “It’s the other asshole I’m talkin’ about.”
I sigh. “He isn’t staring.”
He glances at said asshole and his jaw hardens. “He is but he won’t be for long after I’m done with him.”
I move closer to him then and crane my neck up. “He’s your brother.”
And given that we’re talking about Axton, I can totally picture him smirking at his older brother right now while Arsen glares at him. “And that’s how I know he needs a big ass whoopin’.”
“He does not,” I say, putting my hand on his side. “He’s just a kid.”
He finally looks at me. Well, first he looks at my hand on his body, all pale-looking and small.
So feminine that a current rushes through my body and I have to bite my lip.
Then he stares at my mouth for a few seconds until I let my lip go before, at last, making his way up to my eyes.
At which point, he growls, “He’s your age. ”
“He’s a year younger,” I remind him. Axton is eighteen—although he does not look it at all—and I’m nineteen.
“Same thing.”
“Well, age is just a number and good for you, because I’m more interested in his grumpy and old older brother,” I say, going up on my tiptoes. “In fact, I’m married to him.”
His eyes flash under his hat and he inches even closer, giving me a whiff of his musky scent. “What the fuck are you doin’ here?”
“You know, you should be a little nicer to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. In fact, I think we should make it a rule. Be nice to your wife.”
He hums. “I would, except I think she likes me mean.”
“She does not.”
“Well, depends on who you ask.”
“And who are you asking?”
“My wife’s pussy.”
I gasp, looking around, digging my nails into his sides. “That was… I can’t believe you said that. In broad daylight, no less.”
It’s his turn to smirk, tipping his hat up with his stupid long and sexy index finger, and I can see where Ax gets all his cockiness. They’re both cut from the same cloth.
“Done worse things than talkin’ about my wife’s pussy in broad daylight,” he drawls.
He doesn’t want me to breathe, does he? Because he keeps taking my breath away with the things he says.
Not to mention the things he does, and he is right.
Talking dirty when we aren’t in bed or in the privacy of his barn isn’t the worst thing he’s ever done in the light of day.
Like, for example, a few days back, he woke me up with his mouth between my thighs just as the dawn was breaking in the sky.
He made me come that way before climbing up my body and fucking me into another orgasm, all the while making me look into his eyes, even though I wanted to close them out of shyness.
And when I later berated him for it, he growled, “New rule: You keep your eyes on me when I’m fuckin’ you. ”
Not to mention all the other mornings I wake up to him fucking me or sucking on my tits, jerking off to them, spilling his cum all over my body that he then feeds into my mouth with his.
I especially like the times when he wakes me up by nudging my lips with his dick, making me blow him first thing in the morning like he did today.
I clear my throat. “I brought lunch.”
“Lunch.”
“You called saying you wouldn’t be able to make it and so I thought I’d bring it to you.”
He did call. Because he has a phone now.
He bought it the very next day after I asked him to.
And like I suggested, no one knows his number so no one can call him on it.
And he keeps it switched off the whole time and turns it on only when he needs to.
Although I know his family hates that they can’t contact him—I overheard Haven grumbling about it on the phone the other day—but I’m just happy he’s taking a step in the right direction.
And so proud.
Anyway, according to our rules, we don’t have to have lunch together, only dinner, and that’s not always possible, either, because he’s usually busy working and eats at the bunkhouse with the men.
But I didn’t like that he’d have to skip doing even that today, so I thought I’d bring him and the other ranch hands their lunch. And Axton was around to drive me.
Because technically, he’s still keeping an eye on me along with Haven. Although I think after spending all this time with them, we’d probably be hanging out together anyway. Not so much with Axton because Arsen wouldn’t like it, but still.