CHAPTER 21 #2
He came closer, but stopped with room still between them.
"I want you. Not because I am lonely. Not because I am trying to outrun grief.
I want you because when water was up to my knees and everything went wrong, you stayed steady.
Because you looked at my worst numbers and did not make me smaller for them.
Because you made me call my daughter before this room became anything else. "
Heat moved through her, deep and immediate, threaded with something more dangerous than desire.
"I want you too," she said.
"If you say stop, I stop."
"If you need to stop, you stop too."
His mouth softened. "Yes."
Wren reached for him.
The first kiss was not careful for long.
Colt's hand came to her face, warm and callused, thumb resting along her cheek as if he still needed to ask permission after she had already given it.
She turned into his palm and kissed him harder.
The day had been water and mud and adrenaline, her body carrying every near-disaster it had not had time to feel.
Now feeling arrived all at once: the scrape of his damp hair beneath her fingers, the steady pressure of his chest against hers, the low sound he made when her hands slid under the hem of his shirt.
He broke the kiss long enough to search her face. "Here?"
"Here," she said. "But not on the desk."
His gaze flicked to the ledger, the receipts, the cabinet where Harlow's binder rested. Understanding warmed his expression into something almost tender enough to hurt.
"No," he said. "Not on the desk."
In the corner of the office, half-hidden behind a stack of feed invoices, an old cot had been made up with a clean blanket.
Colt used it during calving watches and storm nights when going back to the house cost more time than sleep could afford.
He crossed to it now, shook out the folded horse blanket, and laid it over the narrow mattress with a care that made Wren's pulse stumble.
Then he looked back at her.
The choice was still hers. She felt it in the pause he gave her, in the way he did not turn the room into momentum she had to either ride or resist.
Wren walked to him.
He kissed her as she reached him, and this time he let hunger show.
His hands slid to her waist, then up her back, pulling her close enough that she felt the hard proof of his wanting and the restraint holding it in check.
She arched into him, tired of being sensible in a body that had spent years remembering him against its will.
"Colt," she whispered.
"Tell me."
"Do not be too careful with me."
His laugh was rough against her mouth. "That may be the hardest thing you ask tonight."
"Try."
He did.
He took her shirt off slowly, but the hands beneath it were sure.
His mouth followed the line of her shoulder, the hollow beneath her collarbone, the slope of one breast when he eased her bra strap down and asked with his eyes before tasting her.
Pleasure went through her in bright, unsteady waves, sharper because no part of this had been stolen from responsibility.
Beau was safe. Harlow had been honored. The door was locked.
Their yes had been spoken plainly, even if night held the room.
Wren tugged at Colt's shirt until he helped her, dragging it over his head and dropping it somewhere near the stiff denim on the chair.
His skin was warm under her palms, marked here and there by the day's work: a scratch at his ribs, a bruise darkening near one hip, old sun along his shoulders.
He was beautiful in a way that made her angry at every year she had spent pretending memory had exaggerated him.
He laid her down on the cot as if the narrowness of it was a problem he intended to solve with his own body.
The blanket scratched softly under her back.
The office light was still on, plain and unromantic, catching dust in the air and the ink on the ledger across the room.
Wren did not ask him to turn it off. She wanted to see him choose her. She wanted him to see that she stayed.
Colt unbuttoned her jeans. "Still yes?"
She lifted her hips to help him. "Still yes."
The wet hem caught on her ankle and made them both laugh under their breath, breathless and human.
Then the jeans were gone, and laughter left when his hand slid along her thigh.
He touched her like a man learning what the truth allowed.
Gentle first. Then firmer when she reached for his wrist and showed him.
Her body opened to the rhythm of his fingers, pleasure building low and hot until she had to grip his shoulder to keep from losing the thread of herself entirely.
"There," she said, because precision was the only language she had left. "Colt, there."
His mouth found hers as she broke, swallowing the sound that came out of her without trying to silence it. He held her through it, forehead pressed near her temple, his own breath uneven against her skin.
When she could think again, he was still above her, shaking with the effort not to rush.
Wren touched his face. "Come here."
"Protection," he said, voice rough.
He reached for his wallet in the pocket of the dry jeans he wore, and the practical sound of foil tearing should have made the moment ordinary. It did the opposite. It made it adult, chosen, cared for in the unglamorous way that mattered.