Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
He had been in a jealous haze the entire day. It was a completely new sensation. One he had never experienced before. And now, hearing her say those words, hearing her say that she was his? He was undone.
He was feral at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. He was something beyond that. He was wild.
He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into his arms, kissing her, fierce and hard.
She looked so beautiful, standing here in the bakery. When he’d come in this morning and seen her talking to Jackson, he’d nearly lost his shit.
He had come to bring her a flower. A flower of all things.
Instead, he had simply left it on the counter and taken the roll.
Because he knew he had no right.
He had no right to tell her who she could speak to. He had no right to tell her who she could go on a date with.
He had no right to do anything at all.
Because he wouldn’t even let her tell Marlowe that they were sleeping together, because he knew that this was going to end, because he knew that he couldn’t keep her.
If there was one thing he knew for certain about his life, it was that nothing stayed.
That was a poem. One that he had read as a kid, before his family had died, and it had stayed with him. Haunted him now, all the years since, echoing through his soul.
Nothing gold could stay.
He’d had people in his life that were gold, but like the leaves on the trees, they withered and passed away. Blown out of his life on a cruel breeze, never to be returned.
That was reality.
That was life, the way that he knew it. The way that he understood it.
She would be no different, and because of that, he knew he didn’t have the right to interfere, didn’t have the right to be angry, but he was angry, and he had interfered.
Because he couldn’t stop himself. Just like he couldn’t stop himself now from consuming her.
From kissing her like his last breath depended on it.
From kissing her because he could do nothing else. Because he wanted nothing else.
And God, did he want her.
Her lips were soft, she was soft all over.
The kind of soft that he hadn’t touched for years until he had touched her.
Now all he wanted to do was touch her.
He wanted to quit working at the ranch. He wanted to quit being a cowboy. He wanted to dedicate himself to her pleasure. Forever. He could happily die inside of her, the taste of her on his tongue.
And that was the scariest damn thought he’d ever had.
But that didn’t stop him now. Didn’t stop him from kissing her, didn’t stop him from lifting her up and setting her on the counter there in the back of the kitchen, pushing her dress up her thighs and settling himself between her legs.
“Oh, this is a health code violation,” she murmured against his mouth.
“Fuck the health code.”
“Oh, I can’t do that because I—”
He bent his head and bit her neck.
She whimpered, gripping hold of his shirt as he pressed his hips forward, letting her feel how hard he was for her.
Letting her feel how desperate he was for her.
“You can’t do what now?” he asked.
“I…nothing I can think of.”
“Good. You ready for me?”
She swallowed hard, looked into his eyes. Remembered the first time she’d come to his house for survival lessons. She’d learned a whole lot more since then.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
He growled like a beast and reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet.
He had to congratulate himself for putting a condom in there.
He wasn’t the sort of man who usually carried one with him unless he was going out for the express purpose of hooking up, which he did rarely enough that when she’d been over at his place, he’d had to open a new box of condoms.
One that he’d bought a while ago.
But because he had been thinking about her, he had put one in his wallet earlier, and now he was grateful.
Though the two things might be related.
He might’ve put it in there, hoping this would happen. Knowing he was going to make it happen.
He put the packet on the counter, then put his hand between her thighs, feeling how wet and ready she was for him.
He groaned.
He could stroke her like this for a long time. Yes, he was desperate to get inside of her, but just feeling how much she wanted him…
It was fuel for his dried-up soul.
He moved his thumb over her clit, stroked her, reveling in how slick she was.
“You want me,” he said, low and hard against her mouth.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He unzipped his belt, his jeans as quickly as possible, and protected them both with shaking hands. Then he thrust inside of her, hard and fast, holding her hips as he claimed her. Over and over again.
She whimpered, her head falling back, and he leaned in and bit her on the neck. He felt compelled to leave a mark. Felt compelled to make her his, because she was. For now, she was.
And when his teeth scraped her skin, she cried out, her orgasm violent, as she squeezed him tight, her muscles working him deeper inside of her.
He lowered his head, and he gave himself up to his own release, completely.
Only then did he even have enough awareness to realize he shouldn’t be leaving a mark on her, because he was the one who didn’t want anyone to know.
He let out a ragged sigh.
“Oh no,” she said, her hand on his chest.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, looking up at him, a strange smile on her face.
She slid off the counter and righted her underwear. He slipped away to use the bathroom, and when he returned, she was spraying and wiping the counter.
It was almost funny.
But he didn’t really know how to hold onto that feeling. Not while his chest felt like it was going to break in half.
This sensation of intensity, mixed with… Something that was almost like happiness, with something he really didn’t know how to manage.
“You should come back to my place,” she said, turning toward him, with an almost painfully cheerful expression on her face.
“Your place?”
“Yes. Tonight. You should come spend the night with me. We can sit in my yard, and we can look at the stars. You know, for the purposes of my wilderness skills.”
“Sure,” he said.
He didn’t know if he should say yes to that. He should probably say no. He should probably go back home. They had sex, and that was supposed to be the point of this connection.
He didn’t spend the night with lovers. Ever.
A habit that had formed pretty early on.
When he lived with his grandparents, he was recovering from the loss of his family.
He hadn’t actually had sex for the first time until he was in the military.
When they would have R&R, go to the local bars around basic, there were plenty of women who wanted a military man, and it was why they were there.
So he did indulge himself. They wanted hookups, and he was happy to oblige. It was an easy thing to do, and it had formed the pattern for the way that he did things.
That culture had been even stronger in the rodeo.
There were women who just wanted to hook up with the cowboys.
There was no expectation they would spend the night. Wham Bam thank you, ma’am was the entire point.
And for him, it had given him the chance to taste something fleeting, a little bit of connection, without having to get deep.
Without having to make it intense.
So the idea of spending the night…
Well, he wanted it. The bottom line was, he wanted it because he wanted hours with her in a bed.
And he was already making bad decisions where she was concerned. Already making bad decisions about all of this, so why not?
Why not?
“I’ll cook you dinner,” she said.
“All right.”
He felt a little bit like that stray dog he often imagined himself as when he was at the ranch dinners, where the Grayson family would have him over, he would’ve said it was the feeling that he preferred.
Like they built a plate for the stray, and he got to be in the corner, being as standoffish as he wanted to be, while also being on the perimeter of things.
This felt a little like that, but also different.
She was bringing the stray into her house. And he felt like an animal that had no idea what to do with that.
Had no idea what to do with the idea of receiving something soft and sweet.
It wasn’t in him.
Sure as hell wasn’t his experience otherwise.
“You should probably drive your own truck,” she said.
“Probably.”
“Or don’t.”
He ground his teeth together. Would anybody notice if his truck were here all night? Better actually to leave her car here. Because there might be questions about what she had been doing, but it wouldn’t be connected back to him.
“How about I drive?”
“All right.”
“The odds of anybody noticing that your car is parked in the back overnight are probably low. But I think it would look weirder for my truck to be here.”
“Right. And you don’t want anyone to know.”
“Do you?” She looked away.
“I guess not.”
He hadn’t thought so.
“Come on,” he said.
She dropped the rag she was holding into a hamper, and put her cleaner away, then grabbed her purse off a hook, and he wrapped his arm around her waist as he let her out the door.
She burrowed against him, and when they were outside behind the bakery, she tilted her head up, her body language demanding a kiss, and who was he to deny her that demand?
So, he did kiss her.
And he was getting lost in it again.
Which he couldn’t do, not out here.
“All right, let’s go,” he said.
He opened up the passenger door of the truck, and she climbed inside.
There was something about seeing her inside the truck that made him smile.
He took a deep breath and got in, starting the engine.
Then the two of them drove back toward town. It was still bright out, this late in the summer, the sun wouldn’t set for hours, and the open fields on either side of the road reflected the golden light off dry grass.
He didn’t question his actions very often. Mainly because he did the same things all the time.
He got up in the morning, went about his ranching business, and went back home.