Chapter 33
LENNOX
My family is gathered in the kitchen for breakfast—Grace has made pancakes, bacon, all my favorites, but the mood is subdued.
No one wants to acknowledge that I’m leaving, but we all knew it was coming.
My bag by the door. Sebastian’s rental truck already loaded.
The jet fueled and ready at the airport.
It’s the first time we’ve all been in the house in years, and I wish it was like old times, loud, full of laughter and teasing, but maybe the next trip will be that.
With breakfast over, Crew and Lark head back to Weston Gap.
I hug him tightly, fully aware I’ve made him do the one thing he swore he’d never do: come home.
“It was good to see you, sis. Don’t wait so long between visits, your new niece or nephew needs to know you,” he whispers, “and your husband isn’t as bad as everyone makes him seem. ”
I can’t help but laugh. “I’ll be waiting for news, and will be on the first flight to meet the newest Briggs.”
He lets me go, and I hug Lark. They drive away, and I’m left with the rest of the family.
“You’ll call when you land?” Dad asks for the third time as we walk to the truck.
“Yes, Dad. I’ll call.”
“And you’ll come visit. Soon. Not another ten months.”
“I’ll try. Sebastian’s got business, the ranch needs—”
“I don’t care about the ranch or the business.” Dad’s voice is firm. He grips his cane tighter, his tell when emotions are running high. “You come home when you need to. Don’t wait for the right time, just come.”
“Okay.” I hug him tight, careful of his balance, breathing in the smell of leather and coffee and home. “I love you.”
“I love you too, kiddo. More than you know.” He pulls back, looks at Sebastian. “Take care of her. Or answer to me.”
“Yes, sir. And I’ll see to it she has a regular flight home, ready whenever she wants it.” Sebastian looks at me and smiles, and something in my chest loosens.
Cage and Cole hug me next, awkward hugs that involve a lot of back-patting and muttered warnings about what they’ll do to Sebastian if he makes me run home again. Emma and Grace both cry, making me promise to text daily, to send pictures, to remember I always have a home here.
Janie appears at the last minute, her eyes red from crying. “Thank you,” she whispers, hugging me tight. “For everything. I know I can’t ever repay you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.” I squeeze her once. “Just be happy. Be safe, and stay away from the compound. That’s all I need.”
“I’m trying. Your family’s been so kind.” Her voice breaks. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Yes, you do. We all deserve kindness, Janie. Remember that.”
Sebastian loads my bag into the truck, and I climb into the passenger seat. My entire family stands on the porch, watching us leave, waving, their faces a mix of worry, sadness and reluctant acceptance.
I watch them get smaller in the side mirror until we turn onto the main road, and they disappear from view.
“You okay?” Sebastian asks.
“No. But I will be.”
The drive to the airport is silent, but not uncomfortable. Sebastian’s hand finds mine on the center console, and I let him hold it.
At the airport, we board the jet, all luxury and leather and a reminder of the wealth gap between us. But Sebastian doesn’t sit across from me this time. He sits beside me, close enough that our thighs touch.
“Three hours,” he says as the jet taxis. “You want to talk? Sleep? Pretend to work while actually brooding?”
Despite everything, I smile. “That last one sounds like your specialty.”
“I’ve perfected it over years of practice.” He squeezes my hand. “But seriously. What do you need right now?”
What do I need?
I look at him, this complicated, damaged man who bought me at an auction but is trying so hard to be better. Who flew to Montana knowing my father would see through any story we weaved. Who worked the ranch for a full day to prove himself worthy. Who gave me the option to stay and meant it.
“I need…” I stop, trying to articulate it. “I need to not feel like I’m leaving my family behind. Like I’m choosing you over them.”
“You’re not. You can have both.” He shifts to face me more fully. “Lennox, I don’t want you to choose between your family and me. I want you to have everything you need to be happy. Including them.”
“That’s…” My throat tightens. “That’s really different from how this started.”
“I know.” His free hand comes up to cup my face. “Is it working? Even a little?”
“Yes. It’s working.”
He kisses me, softly at first, building in intensity—not demanding, but honest. A connection between two people trying to figure out how to be together.
“Come here,” Sebastian says, his voice husky. “I want you closer.”
I move to straddle his lap.
His hands immediately go to my hips, holding me steady.
“Better,” he murmurs, looking up at me. “Much better. I miss you. Even when we were in the same house I missed you, and then I didn’t realize how much I needed to have you around until you were gone.
” His hands slide up my sides. “Waking up without you. Eating my meals alone. Coming home to an empty house. I hated all of it.”
“You had your family.”
“It’s not the same. They’re not you.” He pulls me closer until our faces are inches apart. “You’ve gotten under my skin, Lennox Drake. And I don’t know what to do about it except try to be worthy of you coming home to me.”
The honesty in his voice makes my chest ache. “You’re making this really hard.”
“Making what hard?”
“Keeping my emotional distance. Protecting myself from getting too attached.” I run my hands through his hair. “You keep being vulnerable and real. It’s confusing as hell.”
“Good. I want you confused, off-balance, thinking about me as much as I think about you.” His hands tighten on my hips. “I want you to forget, just for a while, about contracts and obligations and all the reasons this shouldn’t work.”
“And how do you propose I do that?”
“Like this.” He kisses me again, deeper this time, his tongue sliding against mine, making heat pool low in my belly.
I lose myself in the kiss. In him. In the feeling of being wanted, of genuinely sharing this connection.
His hands slide under my shirt, warm against my skin, and I gasp into his mouth.
“Too much?” he asks, pulling back slightly.
“No. Not enough.” I grab his face and kiss him harder. “I need, God, I don’t know what I need.”
“I do.” He stands, carrying me with him. I wrap my legs around his waist. Sebastian carries me to the private room and kicks the door closed behind us, before laying me on the bed.
“We’re on a plane,” I say as I pull him down with me.
“A private plane,” he says, like that explains everything. “That I own. Where no one’s going to interrupt us for three hours.” He settles between my legs, his weight perfect and grounding. “Unless you want me to stop.”
“Don’t stop.” I pull his shirt over his head, needing to feel his skin against mine. “Don’t you dare stop.”
His mouth is on my neck and I stop thinking about where we are entirely.
His teeth graze my pulse point and I gasp and his hands are already moving—up my sides, taking my shirt with them, pulling it over my head and sending it somewhere neither of us cares about.
He looks at me for a moment, chest bare, jaw tight, and the way he stares at me makes me feel like the only thing in the world worth his time.
I have never wanted to be looked at before. Not like this. Not by anyone.
He unclasps my bra and slides it off my shoulders, and he dips his head and takes my nipple into his mouth, and I arch off the bed, my fingers digging into his hair, holding him there.
He groans against my skin—low and rough, like I’ve done something to him just by reacting—and the sound goes straight through me.
His hand covers my other breast, thumb moving in slow circles.
I am breathless, already gone, and he’s barely started.
He kisses down my stomach and his hands go to my jeans, and he looks up at me while he undoes them, a smirk playing on his lips.
That eye contact. God, that eye contact—dark, steady and completely certain, like he already knows every sound I’m about to make and is looking forward to each one.
I lift my hips, and he drags the jeans off and drops them, and then his mouth is on the inside of my thigh, and I stop being a person with a functional brain.
He takes his time. Of course he does. He works his way up slowly, mouth and hands, pausing in places that make my thighs shake, listening to my breathing change, cataloguing every reaction with the same focused attention he gives to everything he decides that matters.
I matter to him. That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about, even now, even with his mouth finally where I need it and my hand fisted in his hair and my hips rolling up against him.
Somewhere between the contract and the cattle and the arguing and all those nights when I told myself this is just physical, just proximity, just the logical result of two people sharing a bed—somewhere in all of that, I started to matter to him.
“Sebastian—” His name breaks in my mouth.
He doesn’t stop. He reads me the way he reads everything—completely, efficiently, without mercy—and when I come it crashes through me hard enough that my back lifts entirely off the mattress and I have to bite down on my own fist to keep quiet, and he works me through every wave of it with his hands gripping my hips like he’s the only thing keeping me from flying apart.
Maybe he is.
I’m still shaking when he kisses back up my body.
I reach for his belt and get my hands inside his jeans, and I wrap around him and feel him shudder and drop his forehead to my shoulder with a sharp exhale, and that—that undoing of him—hits me that this has nothing to do with want and everything to do with something I’m not ready to say out loud.
I stroke him slowly and he makes a sound that’s rough and low and real, and I want to pull that sound out of him for the rest of my life.
That thought lands and I don’t push it away. Not this time.
“Lennox.” My name in his mouth like that unravels the last of me.
“Hey.” I cup his face and make him look at me. “You’re mine.”
Something moves through his expression. Fast, almost hidden, but I’m close enough to see it—the flash of something unguarded, something that has no business being on Sebastian Drake’s face outside of this room in the middle of the sky where no one can see it except me.
He exhales slowly. Nods once.
Then he shifts and pushes inside me.
It’s slow. So slow. Every inch deliberate, his eyes on mine the entire time, refusing to let me look away, and my breath comes out ragged and my hands grip his shoulders, and my whole body adjusts around him.
He starts to move and it pulls a sound out of me that I feel in my bones.
This isn’t the frantic, half-dressed, can’t-wait version of us.
This is something else entirely. His forehead drops to mine and his hand slides into my hair, and he moves deep, slow, purposeful, and I hold on to him and let myself feel all of it—every stroke, every exhale against my mouth, every moment his composure frays at the edges, and I see the real man underneath.
He is not controlled now. He is just mine.
The thought breaks something open in my chest and my eyes sting, and I pull him closer and wrap my legs around him tighter, and his rhythm falters for just a second, his arms locking around me, crushing me to him in a way that feels less like frantic passion and more like love.
“Lennox,” he whispers against my throat. Wrecked. “Lennox.”
He reaches between us and touches me, and I stop being able to think at all—there’s only him, only the slow build that’s been gathering since the moment he looked at me across that plane cabin, only the heat and the closeness and the impossible tenderness of a man who doesn’t do tender doing it anyway, just for me.
I come with my face pressed to his neck and tears I didn’t plan on burning at the corners of my eyes and his name in my throat that I can’t make past a whisper.
He follows right after, my name on his lips, his whole body shuddering against mine, his arms so tight around me it almost hurts, and I don’t care. I want him closer, I want there to be no space left between us at all.
We lie tangled together in the wreckage of it.
His hand moves up and down my side, slow and absent, like he needs to keep touching me as much as I need to keep being touched.
Below us, the country rolls by and the plane hums and the world keeps existing, but I can’t feel any of it past the weight of him and the steadiness of his heartbeat under my palm.
I meet his eyes, and what I see there makes my breath catch. Mixed in with the lust and possession is something deeper. Something that looks dangerously like something I didn’t think he was capable of.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you…” I can’t finish.
“Like I love you?” He holds me tighter, watching my face. “Why not? It might be true.”
“Sebastian.”
“I’m not saying it. Not yet. Not until we’re better. But, Len.” He kisses me, still breathing hard from making love to me. “What I feel for you… it scares the hell out of me. But I want it to be real. I want this to be real.”
I can’t respond. I can only hold him tighter as we’re both quiet, reflecting on what is changing between us.
Eventually, we get dressed, return to the main cabin and prepare for landing. But something has shifted between us. Something fundamental.
By the time we touch down at the ranch airstrip, it is mid-afternoon. Pete is there to meet us, driving us back to our house while Sebastian makes calls about ranch business he’s missed.
But his free hand finds mine in the truck. And I hold it tightly.
The house looks the same when we arrive. Stone walls, timber beams and the view of the operation below. Everything familiar and foreign at the same time.
“Welcome home,” Sebastian says as we walk inside.
Home. He keeps calling it that. And maybe it is, in a way. This place has started to feel more like home than my apartment in California ever did.
“I’m going to unpack,” I say.
“Stay.” He pulls me against him. “Just for a few more minutes. Let me hold you before reality crashes back in.”
So I do. We stand in the entryway of our house, our home, and I let him hold me. Let myself be held. Let this complicated, messy, beautiful thing between us just exist without questioning it too hard.