Epilogue
Winston came in out of the rain at midnight and didn't ask why my coat was still on the chair.
The lamp was burning low on the nightstand, and the casita was warm enough that I'd kicked the quilt off twenty minutes ago. Winston was face down under me, both arms pinned above his head where I'd put them, my hand wrapped around both wrists on the pillow.
I had two fingers in him. I'd been working him slowly for forty minutes, and Winston had been talking the whole time.
"You go to T or C two Tuesdays back?"
"Winston."
"Did you, though?"
I curled my fingers. Winston's spine bent under me, and the rest of the sentence broke into a moan.
His hips pushed back into my hand without him meaning them to.
I didn't move and let him work himself down onto my fingers, watching the long muscle along his back move in the lamplight.
The base of his neck was slick. My breath had gone heavier than I wanted it to, and my cock was hard enough that holding off was an act of will I was running out of.
"Talkative tonight, Ranger."
"Always am." His voice came out wrecked. "You know that about me."
"I know it."
"So you did go." He turned his face into the pillow and pulled in enough air to keep going. "Rafe's truck was gone two Tuesdays back. You took it because yours was gettin' the brakes done. Sierra made you a sandwich for the drive. I came in for coffee and he gave me the look."
"What look?"
"The look that says don't ask."
"And you didn't."
"Asked Sierra. He told me to mind my own business and pour my own coffee." He pushed back against my hand and earned nothing for it because I held still. "Felt like a man bein' managed, Ransom. What were you doin' in T or C, darlin'?"
I pulled my fingers out of him. He hissed through his teeth, the sound caught in his throat.
I reached for the bottle on the nightstand, poured more lube onto my palm, and went back to him without saying anything.
He was loose and wet, his wrists still pinned where I'd put them.
He wasn't fighting me on any of it. He was just running his mouth.
I pushed my knees between his and spread him wider. His thighs went where I put them. I lined myself up against him and held there, the head of my cock just pressed to the heat of him. I did not move.
"Ransom."
"Mm."
"You gonna make me wait, or are you gonna fuck me?"
"I'm thinking about it."
"Thinkin'."
"About whether you've earned it."
He laughed into the pillow. His fist twisted under mine on the pillow. "Darlin'," he said, "I have absolutely earned it."
I pressed in.
I'd meant to draw it out, but I sank into him deep enough and held there, my chest against his back, my mouth at the place where his neck met his shoulder, my heartbeat loud against the soft skin under his ear.
His wrists twitched in my grip.
I let them go. He brought his hands down to the pillow under his face, turned his head sideways so I could see his profile, his cheek pressed flat, his mouth open, his eyes half closed.
He was watching me sideways with that specific Winston expression, half smartass, half devotion.
The lamplight caught the chapped place on his lower lip. I leaned down and bit it.
He gasped, and I sat back enough to see his face. I pulled out of him an inch, eased back in even more deliberately than the first time, and his eyes rolled.
"There you are," he said.
"Quiet."
"Make me."
I cupped my hand under his jaw and turned his face back into the pillow, palm along the line of his throat, fingers loose. He whimpered once, low, and went pliant under me. I held him there and started moving for real.
I didn't go fast. I went deep, steady, made him take it like I'd taught him, until he had nowhere to hide from any of it. The casita had gone quiet around us except for the slap of skin, his breathing, the rain on the roof that had started up an hour ago.
"You think you're slick," he said into the pillow.
"I'm not trying to be slick."
"You think I haven't been paying attention."
"I know you have." I pushed deeper, and his breath punched out of him. "Who do you think told Sierra to keep you busy?"
"That's mean, darlin'."
"I'm a mean man," I said and shoved my fingers between his lips. He started sucking, and I started fucking in earnest until I was close and then backed off, taking it slow again.
"Ransom?"
"What?"
"Just tell me."
I stopped moving.
I held inside him, fully seated, my chest slick and sweaty against his back, my hand still loose at the line of his throat. The lamp threw long shadows across his shoulder blades. The rain hadn't let up.
I leaned down and licked a long stripe up the back of his neck, making him shudder. He tasted like sweat and dust and rain. Like mine. "Tell you what, Ranger. You ask me again tomorrow, and I'll do you one better. I'll show you."
He let out a breath that was half a laugh, half something else. It shook through his ribs.
"Tomorrow." He breathed it once, testing it. "That a promise?"
"Yeah, Ranger. On my word."
"Ransom Lanza."
"Mm."
"You are a son of a bitch."
"Don't I know it."
I pulled almost all the way out of him and pushed back in. He stopped talking.
I worked him for a while like that, my hand at his jaw, my mouth at his neck, until he was past words entirely.
He was making the small, bitten-off sounds he made when he'd lost the thread of being clever.
His fingers fisted in the pillow, knuckles going white.
The tendons in his wrists worked where they gripped the cotton.
His hair was curling at the base of his skull, where he always sweated first.
"Up on your knees," I said.
He pushed up by inches, and I went with him. I sat back on my heels and pulled him with me until he was upright in my lap, his back against my chest, his weight settled on my cock. My hand slid off his throat, down across his collarbone, flat over his heart. His heart was hammering. So was mine.
He let his head fall back onto my shoulder, and I turned my face into his hair.
"Ride me, Ranger."
"Yes sir."
He worked himself onto me at his own pace, both hands braced on my thighs.
The second time he sat down all the way, he shuddered around it.
I wrapped my other hand around him and started stroking him in time with him riding me, working my thumb under the head how I'd learned he liked it.
He moaned my name at the ceiling, the back end of it slurring into something that wasn't a word at all.
"You with me?"
"Fuck, yeah, I'm with you."
I tightened my fist around him and he came, jerking in my lap, spilling over my knuckles in long hot pulses while I kept stroking him through it.
The clench of him around me went past what I could hold off any longer.
I followed him with my face pressed into his neck and my arm locked across his chest, holding him to me, coming inside him so hard I lost half a minute to it.
When I came back, he was draped against me with all his weight on my chest. The lamp was still burning. The rain was still going. The cat was still ignoring us from the chair.
I kissed the side of his neck. "You okay?"
"I think you broke me, darlin'," he mumbled, but he was smiling.
I tipped him forward off my lap as gently as I could and eased out of him. He hissed once through his teeth, and I kissed the back of his neck for it.
"Stay there."
"Couldn't move if I wanted to."
I climbed off the bed onto the cold floor, crossed to the dresser, pulled the cloth I kept in the second drawer, ran it under warm water at the sink, and came back.
The cat watched me the whole way with the flat affront of a cat who suspects she's been kept up too late on her own bed.
I gave her a look back. She did not look impressed.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and rolled Winston onto his back.
His eyes were half closed, his hair stuck to his forehead, a smear of his own cum drying on his stomach.
He looked wrung out and happy about it. I cleaned him up roughly, stomach first, then the rest of him, while his cock softened.
He shivered once when I carefully cleaned the head of his cock and let out a small, contented sigh.
When I was done, I dropped the cloth on the floor and stretched out next to him on my side. He turned his face toward me. I tipped his chin up and kissed him.
He kissed me back, lazy with it, the corner of his mouth catching on mine. He laughed a little against my mouth.
"You all right?" I asked.
"I'm so all right I might never speak again."
"That'd be a shame."
Winston cracked one eye open at me. "For who, exactly?"
"For me." I kissed him again. "I like the talking."
"Liar."
"Some of the talking."
"More truthful." He flattened his palm on my chest, over the heart. "Ransom."
"Yeah?"
His eyes were soft in the lamplight, the smartass gone out of him entirely. He looked at me the way he'd looked at me in this room when he'd told me he wasn't going back to Texas, his face unguarded, his eyes wet at the bottoms but not falling.
"I love you, darlin'," I said.
He stopped under my hand.
"Say it again."
"Love you."
"That's not — say it again."
"Winston Valverde, I love you."
His fingers curled against my skin. He shut his eyes for a second. When he opened them, they were wet, and he didn't try to hide it.
"Took you long enough to say it again."
"It's been six hours."
"Six hours is a long time, Ransom."
"I'll do better."
"You will."
He rolled toward me and tucked his face into the place under my jaw like he'd decided the spot was his. He hooked one arm over my chest and slid the other under the small of my back, holding me to him from both sides. His breath was warm against my throat, evening out.
"Sleep," I said.
"Yeah."
"I'll be here."
"You better be."
He was asleep inside three minutes.
I wasn't.