1. Ellie #3
His hands slide down to my hips, gripping hard, possessive in a way that makes my breath catch. “You’re mine. You understand? I can’t.” He stops, shakes his head. “I can’t do this without you. Any of it. This ranch, this life. None of it means anything if you’re not here.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t promise that.”
“I can promise that I’m not leaving you.” I rise up on my toes and press my forehead to his. “I’m right here. I’m staying. You’re stuck with me, Jacob Walker, whether you like it or not.”
He makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a sob, and then his mouth is on mine and he’s kissing me hard enough to bruise, and I understand he’s checking I’m here.
His hands are everywhere, my hair, my back, my ass, and I’m kissing him back just as desperately, tasting blood and sweat and fear.
“I need you,” he says against my mouth, his voice wrecked. “Right now. I need.”
“Then take me home.”
He pulls back and looks at me, his eyes dark and wild. “The calf.”
“Your men can handle it. They’re already up.” I nod toward the door. “Take me home, Jacob.”
He lifts me into his arms and carries me out to the truck. He drives too fast down the dark ranch roads, one hand on the wheel and one hand gripping my thigh hard. We don’t make it to the house.
He pulls over on the side of the road with nothing but dark pasture on both sides.
The second the truck stops he’s hauling me across the bench seat into his lap.
We’re both still covered in blood and sweat.
I don’t care. I kiss him with everything I’ve got, hands in his hair, and he kisses me back just as desperate.
I reach between us and get his belt open. He shoves my ruined skirt up around my waist and tears my underwear off with one rough pull. The fabric rips. Before I can even get his cock out he pushes two fingers into my pussy.
“Fuck, you’re already wet,” he mutters against my mouth.
I get his cock free and stroke him once, twice, then line him up.
He pushes in hard and deep in one thrust. I cry out and grab his shoulders.
He doesn’t give me time to adjust. He fucks up into me in steady, deep strokes, one hand on my ass pulling me down onto him and the other sliding under my blouse to squeeze my tit.
His thumb rubs over my nipple while he keeps thrusting.
“I could have lost you,” he says, voice ragged. His mouth is on my neck, then my mouth again, kissing me between every few thrusts. “I could have.”
“You didn’t.” I fist my hands in his hair and make him look at me. “You didn’t lose me. I’m right here.”
He keeps fucking me. While he thrusts he rubs my clit with his thumb in tight circles and sucks on my bottom lip. I ride him as best I can in the tight space, meeting every thrust. His cock drags against that spot inside me over and over. He pinches my nipple and I clench around him.
“Harder,” I tell him.
He gives it to me. He fucks up into me harder, one hand still on my tit, the other gripping my hip so he can pull me down onto his cock. He kisses me through it, messy and open-mouthed, and I can feel how close he is by the way his thrusts start to stutter.
I come first, pussy tightening around him in hard pulses. He follows right after, groaning into my mouth as he comes deep inside me, his thrusts going short and sharp while he empties himself.
After, we sit tangled together in the cab, both of us breathing hard, both of us filthy, both of us alive. His cock is still inside me. He doesn’t pull out right away. He just keeps kissing me, slower now, one hand stroking up and down my back under my blouse while we catch our breath.
“I love you,” I tell him, because I need to say it, because I almost didn’t get to, because four Fridays of cold dinners don’t matter when he’s looking at me and there’s nothing else in the world.
“I know,” he says.
He doesn’t say it back. He never does. But he presses his forehead to mine and breathes my name against my mouth, and his hands are gentle on my face now, reverent, and I can feel how much he loves me in every touch.
“You’re the only thing I want to come home to,” he says, his voice rough. “You know that.”
That’s the closest he gets. That’s his version of the words, and I’ve learned to accept it, even when I wish for more.
“I do,” I tell him, and I mean it. “I’ve always known.”
***
Saturday morning I wake up in our bed with his arms around me and his breath warm on the back of my neck.
I lie there for a long time, feeling his heartbeat against my back, listening to him breathe.
He didn’t say it. He never says it. But he held me in that shed so hard my ribs ached, and he carried me out without a word, and he made love to me in his truck with his hands shaking, and none of that was nothing.
Maybe that’s what it sounds like when Jacob Walker loves you back. Maybe that’s the only language he knows.
When I finally get up, I pull on his T-shirt and pad downstairs to make coffee. I’m standing at the kitchen window watching the sun come up over the pasture, feeling sore and satisfied and loved all the way down, when a white car comes up the drive too fast.
It skids to a stop in front of the house, spraying gravel, and a woman gets out. Red hair, green eyes, a body that belongs on a magazine cover, and a face I haven’t seen in seven years.
She walks straight to my front door and pounds on it with her fist.
“Jacob!” she screams through my front door, and she screams it the way you scream for what’s yours. “Jacob, I know you’re in there!”
The warm feeling in my chest turns to ice.