Chapter 11
I woke with Winston's arm across my chest, and the math wouldn't work.
Chance's room was nine hundred a day. Rafe needed the work done.
The land had teeth that needed feeding. The bills at UNM didn't care who'd slept in my bed, and the operation didn't care either.
Every variable held. The man breathing against my shoulder shouldn't have been enough to break anything, and he had, and I couldn't find where.
I turned my head on the pillow.
Winston slept on his stomach with his face pushed into the pillow, and his hair sticking up in the back.
The marks I'd put on his throat last night were already purple.
Below the jaw, where a collar wouldn't cover it, the skin was clean.
I lay there and thought about that clean skin longer than I should have.
I slid my arm out from under his and sat up slow. He made a sound of complaint and rolled into the warm spot I'd left, still asleep. I stood up in the cold and grabbed a clean pair of jeans off the chair.
Winston woke while I was at the stove, waiting for the coffee to brew.
"What time is it?" His voice was rough with sleep.
"Five."
"Jesus. You always get up this early?"
"Yeah."
"That's a character flaw."
The bed creaked. The sheet shifted. He swore under his breath, and I turned around. He sat on the edge of the bed with the sheet pooled across his lap and his hand on his shoulder where the bruise was, working his jaw.
"Bad?"
"Been worse."
"You bruise easily."
"Skin like a peach, my mama says. Bruise if you look at me wrong." He worked his shoulder, slow. "She says it like it's a problem. I think it's an inheritance."
"From who?"
"Daddy. Same skin. Bruised everywhere by the end."
I poured a cup of coffee and held it out. He took it and drank.
"That what put you on the road to a Ranger badge?"
"Something like that." He turned the cup in his hands. "Boys with skin like ours either learn to fight or learn to leave. I did both." He drank again and looked up. The morning light was on his face. The cut on his lip from last night had scabbed. "You been awake long?"
"A while."
"Doing what?" He set the cup down on the nightstand.
"Thinking."
"About me?"
I considered telling him the truth and decided against it. "Shower," I said. "Before the rest of the ranch wakes up."
"Is that an invitation or an order?"
"It's whatever you want it to be, Ranger."
He stood up slowly and walked past me toward the bathroom door where he paused at the frame.
"You coming?"
I followed.
The bathroom was small. One shower, one sink, one toilet, one window up near the ceiling that let in a square of pale light. I ran the water hot and stripped while it came up to temperature, and Winston leaned against the sink and watched.
"What?"
"Nothing." He tilted his head. "Just looking."
"You've seen it."
"A man can appreciate something he's seen before, can't he?"
I stepped into the spray. He followed and pulled the curtain. The stall was built for one, but we made it work, his back against the tile and me crowding him, water hitting my shoulders and running down between us.
I put my hand on his neck. Just my palm, flat, over the worst of the marks. He stopped breathing.
"Does it hurt?"
"A little."
"Good."
He huffed out a laugh.
I tightened my hand and his pulse jumped under my thumb. He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, the green had darkened.
I reached past him for the soap and worked it between my hands until I had a lather, then put my hands on him and started washing him down. When I reached the bruise, I pressed on it harder than I needed to, and he hissed through his teeth but didn't pull away.
"You like that?"
"I like your hands."
"That's not what I asked."
"I like it when you hurt me a little," he admitted. "Pain tells you you're alive."
"I know." I moved past his cock on purpose, down the line of hair, close but not on it. His hips chased my hand. I moved past again. "Turn around."
He turned. I worked the soap over his back, down to his ass, and between his cheeks. He tried to push back against me.
"Hands on the wall."
He sighed, but obeyed.
I washed him there, slowly, one slick finger pressing against his hole and not pushing in. He made a sound and pushed back against my hand, and I pulled away.
"Stay still."
"Ransom."
"Stay still or I stop."
He stilled. His shoulders shook with the holding.
He turned his head, cheek against the tile. "I want you inside me."
"You had me inside you four hours ago."
"Want it again."
"Greedy."
"Yeah."
I leaned in close to his ear. "You'll be walking around all morning with it leaking out of you. You good with that?"
He pushed back against my finger, and my finger gave a quarter inch, and his mouth opened against the tile.
"Answer me."
"Yeah."
"You like that?"
"Yes."
"Say why."
His face was turned. What I could see had gone red.
"Means I'm yours."
I held still with my finger inside him and the water running over both of us.
"Was that the wrong answer?"
"No."
I pulled my finger out. He made a sound of protest, and I grabbed his hip and turned him back around. I pushed him against the tile, grabbed his hair, and pulled hard enough to bring his face up to mine.
"Look at me."
He looked.
"You came onto my land lying. You came up here to kill a man and let me put my hands on you instead. You're a fucking Texas Ranger and you're standing in my shower asking me to fill you up again." I tightened my fist. "Tell me what that makes you."
"You tell me."
"You're a criminal. You're a killer."
His breath caught. "Yeah."
"What do criminals get?"
"Punished."
"That what you want?"
"Yes."
"Say please."
His eyes never left mine. "Please."
I bit his lip until it split, licked the blood off, and his mouth opened for me. He whimpered. I had my hand wrapped around his throat, not squeezing, just there, and he was rocking his hips against mine like he couldn't stop.
"I'm going to fuck you," I said against his mouth. "And you're going to keep what I give you. Bad boys don't get to come empty. You hear me?"
"Yeah."
I put my hands under his thighs and hauled him up off the floor. He wrapped his legs around my waist. I pinned him against the tile with my cock pressed against him.
"You gonna fuck me, cowboy, or stand there all day?"
I pushed in.
He was still loose from last night, and the slide of it almost ended me. He made a sound I hadn't heard from him before, low and broken, and his head tipped back against the tile.
"Look at me."
He opened his eyes.
"All the way in. Feel that?"
"Yes."
I pulled almost all the way out and fucked back into him hard enough that he slid up the tile. His mouth fell open. I did it again, deeper. Driving him against the wall with my hand spread across his ass.
"Whose?"
"Yours."
"Whose mouth?"
"Yours."
"Whose cum stays in you?"
"Yours."
I leaned in toward the side of his neck below his jaw, where a collar wouldn't cover it, and I felt him angle his head to give it to me before I'd even closed my teeth.
"Mark me," he said against my ear. "Do it where they can see it."
I bit down hard enough to taste copper. He jerked against me and groaned, but he didn't pull away — he pressed up into it.
"Yes," he breathed. "Yes. There."
I kept my teeth in him, counted his pulse against my tongue, and didn't let up until I knew it would scar.
When I pulled back, the bruise was already coming up around the teeth marks, and the skin was broken in two places.
Mine.
"Look at that," I said against his throat. "Gonna wear that all day. Sierra's going to look at you. Coyote. Rafe. They're going to know."
"Yeah."
"Know what?"
"That I'm yours."
"That you let a bad man put his teeth in you and asked for it." I drove in harder, and his head snapped back against the tile. "Pretty fucking quiet now, Ranger."
"Ransom, please."
"Please what?"
"Harder—"
"You don't get to come yet."
He made a sound like I'd hit him.
"Hold it."
"I can't—"
"You will."
"Please—"
"You want it bad enough?"
"Yes."
I fucked him through the begging and the shaking until he was babbling a quiet litany of please.
"Look at me."
His eyes fluttered open.
I stopped moving and let him tremble, his cock pulsing untouched against my stomach, and didn't come.
"Good," I said, soft. "There you go."
He made a sound that was almost a sob.
"Now. Don't touch yourself."
I moved again, and he broke after three thrusts. His cock pulsed between us untouched, striping white across both our stomachs.
I lasted four more thrusts before I came inside him with my forehead pressed to his and my hand fisted in his hair, and I thought, clear as a bell: That's done. Not the sex. The decision.
I stayed inside him with my forehead against his and listened to both of us breathe.
"Don't pull out yet," he said.
"I wasn't going to."
"Want to feel it settle."
"Yeah." I tightened my grip on his hip. "Stay there. Take it."
We stayed like that long enough for the water to start running cold at the edges. When I finally pulled out, he hissed and caught himself with a hand on my shoulder, and I watched my cum start to run down his thigh and I put my hand over it and pushed it back up against him.
"Keep it."
He laughed, breathless. "How do you expect me to do that?"
"Squeeze. Whole drive into town. Whole breakfast. Anywhere you sit today, I'm in you."
"Christ."
"You got a problem with that?"
"No."
"Say it."
"No problem."
I left my hand against him a moment longer.
Then I turned him around and washed him again.
Slower. There was no heat in it now, just my hands on him, getting the soap where it needed to go, careful with the mark on his neck.
He stood with his hands braced on the tile and let me.
The bite was ugly, deep red bruising around the teeth marks.
I cleaned it with my thumb, and he didn't flinch.
"It'll scar."
"Yeah."
"That alright with you?"
He turned around and looked at me.
"Ransom," he said, patient. "I wouldn't have asked for it if it wasn't alright with me."
"You didn't ask for it."
"I asked for everything else. You were paying attention to the rest." He reached up and pushed wet hair off my forehead. "Figured you could fill in the blank."
He kissed me first, both of us still wet, and it was nothing like the fucking. It was slow, and his mouth was soft, and his thumb stroked the side of my face like he had all the time in the world.
I kissed him back, and I meant it. The mark on his neck was for the ranch. The kiss was for me.
"Winston?"
"Yeah."
I didn't have anything to follow it with.
"It's alright," he said. "You can say it later."
I turned the water off, left him in the bathroom drying off, and stepped into the bedroom to get dressed. The cat was on the bed in Winston's spot. I pulled on jeans and a clean shirt, and did up the buttons. My hands were steady. That surprised me.
I sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on my boots.
The bathroom door opened and Winston came out, pulling up his jeans, no shirt. I pulled one of mine down and handed it to him. He left the top button open on purpose so the bite would show.
"It looks good on you," I said.
"The shirt or the bite?"
"Both."
He grinned, put his hat on, walked to the door, and held it for me.
I put my own hat on slower. Rafe was going to take one look at that bite at the breakfast table and probably form an opinion about which side I was on, and he might not be completely wrong.