CHAPTER 26 #3
He gave her more, but he gave it slowly.
His mouth traced her neck, her collarbone, the upper curve of her breast. His hands learned her by permission, by the small lift of her body toward him, by her quiet yes when he paused.
When he drew one strap down and took her nipple into his mouth, she gripped his shoulders hard enough to anchor them both.
"Colt."
His name sounded different in the dark shed. Less burdened. More hers.
He eased her down onto the blanket and followed only when she pulled him.
The old windmill turned above them, visible through a gap in the boards as a slow sweep of shadow.
Mesquite smoke drifted through the cracks, threading the air with the taste of supper and summer and everything waiting beyond the door.
Wren worked at his shirt buttons with impatient fingers.
"Now who's rushing?" he murmured.
She gave him a look that was almost a smile. "I said don't rush me. I didn't promise manners."
The laugh broke out of him before he could stop it, rough and quiet.
It eased something in her face. He helped with the buttons then, shrugged out of the shirt, and let her put her hands on him.
She touched the scar near his ribs from a snapped wire end, the darker line at his forearm, the old callus marks in his palms. Her touch carried recognition instead of worship.
"You have spent years making your body responsible for everything," she said.
"Could say the same about you and your lists."
"I know."
He kissed the inside of her wrist. "No lists now unless you want one."
"I want you to stop talking for a minute."
"Yes, ma'am."
She laughed under her breath, and then he lowered his mouth to her.
He took his time because he had promised.
Because her pleasure was not a gate to push through on the way to his.
Because every breath she gave him, every lift of her hips, every hand tightening in his hair taught him how different wanting could be when neither of them had to pretend they were less hungry than they were.
He used his mouth and then his fingers, asked once with his eyes when her body tensed, and she answered by saying his name and keeping him there.
When she came apart, she did it with her face turned into his shoulder, teeth catching lightly at his skin to hold back the sound. He held her through it, one hand spread over her lower back, his own need pounding so hard he had to breathe through it like pain.
Wren lifted her head. Her eyes were dark and wet. "I want you with me."
"I have protection."
"Good."
He got his wallet from his jeans with less grace than he would have liked. Wren watched him, hair loose now, dress open beneath her, mouth swollen from his kisses. Need struck him hard enough to make him still.
She reached for him. "Colt."
"I'm here."
"Then come here."
He did. He rolled the condom on, settled between her thighs, and stopped with his forehead against hers.
"Still yes?"
Her hand came to his face. "Yes. I want this. I want you."
He entered her slowly, every muscle in his body locked against the urge to take what she had offered too quickly. Wren's breath broke. Her nails pressed into his back.
"Wait?" he rasped.
"No. Stay. Just stay."
So he stayed, buried in the heat of her, shaking with the effort of holding still while the old windmill creaked overhead.
She moved first. A small tilt of her hips.
An invitation. He answered carefully, then less carefully when she asked for that too.
The boards beneath them held. The blanket bunched under his knees.
Outside, the dinner noise blurred into wind and smoke and the slow turn of metal above a dry pasture.
There was nothing easy in it. Easy would have been too small a word.
It was tender and hungry, awkward when his boot caught the blanket and Wren laughed into his mouth, sharp when she told him harder and he gave her what she asked for, slow again when her eyes filled and he kissed the tears at her temples without asking them to mean forgiveness.
Pride would have liked him to last longer.
Pride had lost its seat at the table tonight.
When Wren wrapped her legs around him and whispered yes against his jaw, the last of his control gave.
He came with his face in her hair and her name held behind his teeth because the night outside still belonged to other people.
For a while afterward, neither of them moved.
Colt kept enough of his weight off her to be careful, but Wren's arms stayed around him. The windmill blades turned their slow circles. From the pasture came a burst of laughter, then the clatter of pans being stacked.
The world had not ended.
Repair had required hands, words, and time.
He kissed her shoulder and eased away to handle the condom. When he came back, she had pulled her dress up over her breasts and was staring through the slat gap at the slice of darkening sky.
He sat beside her, back against the wall, and handed her his shirt before she could ask. She took it, not to cover from shame, he thought, but because the night air had cooled.
"Thank you," she said.
"For the shirt?"
"For stopping before I had to remind you what this wasn't."
His chest tightened. "I meant what I said."
"I know. " She drew the shirt around her shoulders. "I needed to see if you could mean it while wanting me."
That was fair too. Hard, but fair.
"Could I?" he asked.
She looked at him then. "Yes."
The answer moved through him deeper than pleasure had. It found the places he had kept braced for loss and did not heal them, exactly. It showed him where healing would have to start.
"I am sorry," he said. "For hiding the inheritance. For letting the town make you smaller. For using Beau's stability as a wall when sometimes it was a real duty and sometimes it was fear wearing the same coat."
Wren leaned her head back against the boards. "That one matters."
"I know."
"Beau does need stability."