Chapter 32 The Old Frontier
The Old Frontier
Sawyer
I’m in the middle of tacking up Dolly when I see the old blue Chevy pulling up the drive. My heart skips a beat like some stupid cliché.
Why does Wes Dawson have this effect on me?
The sex is good. Okay, it's more than good. It's amazing. It’s exactly what I needed, but it doesn’t justify the reaction I have whenever I see him.
The giddy anticipation and the warmth that floods my cold, dead heart the second he walks into the stable and greets Luci—who I now refer to as his horse—is Exhibit A.
He’s wearing a worn black work jacket and with the new beard and that Stetson on his head, he looks like Rip Wheeler from Yellowstone. My heart stutters to a stop in my chest for a brief moment before taking off into a wild gallop against my ribs.
I chalk it up to the newness of this thing between us and refuse to entertain the possibility that I have genuine feelings for him that go beyond the good sex and friendly affection.
He’ll leave just as quickly as he came once his eight-week stint is up. But there’s nothing I can do if he decides he’s ready to hang up his Stetson for good.
Wes’ steady gaze drinks me in and a slow and sultry smile curves his full lips as he pats Luci’s neck. The sight makes my knees weak, and I idly wonder if we can put off whatever he wants to show me so we can deal with the throbbing that has now started in my clit.
He leaves Luci in the stall and greets Cash with a click of his tongue and a scratch behind the ears. “We should get going. I want to get there before the sun sets," he says, stashing a paper bag in his saddlebag.
Well, that answers that question. My throbbing clit will have to wait.
He mounts Cash in one swift motion, and I lift myself into Dolly's saddle and let Wes lead the way through the pasture. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask after a few minutes of riding.
“One of my favorite places on the ranch,” he answers, his body moving effortlessly with Cash as we ride.
“You need a horse to get there?” I question.
“It’s definitely easier with a horse or an ATV. There aren’t any access roads to it.”
I give a noncommittal noise, even more curious now, but not wanting to ruin the quiet ride through the countryside. There’s no need to fill the silence with banal chatter when you’re riding. It’s one of the reasons I love it so much.
The coolness of the November air bites into my cheeks, but it’s fresh and crisp, and the land is beautifully untouched here. Prairie grass, tall and yellowing from fall, sways in the breeze and a crow caws loudly as a hawk swoops down, attempting to snag a mouse or a shrew for his supper.
The sandy buttes rise up in front of us with sides steep enough to look nearly like cliffs. These formations in the panhandle make it feel a little more like the wild west out here, like the old frontier that you always hear about in history books or old western novels.
Wes turns Cash toward a line of trees on a hill to our left. Once we reach it, we dismount and let the horses graze on the prairie grass while he spreads out a quilt and I grab the other things we’d packed.
The sun is beginning to dip low in the sky, painting the rolling hills of pasture and steep buttes in orange and gold.
It’s a picturesque view from here with the sandhills and a pond to the east and a clear view of the sunset to the west. I soak in the sight, breathing in the brisk air with it.
I can see why this was Wes’ favorite spot.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper as I settle next to him on the quilt.
He lounges on his side, propping himself up on his elbow as he takes in the view a moment before his gaze trails over me, lingering on my mouth as he scratches at his beard. “Even more beautiful with you here,” he says.
I scoff at the corny line.
He grabs the paper bags he brought with him, but this time instead of Mrs. Mackey’s food, it’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he made on bread that’s a little stale.
“I figured the view might make up for the subpar meal,” he says.
I pop a grape into my mouth. “More than makes up for it. How many girls have you brought up here, anyway?” I ask, thinking back to Wes when he was in high school.
All the girls would flock to him every summer, always eager for someone new. Bringing them up here? They’d drop their panties for sure.
His eyes drift toward the horses. “You’re the first.”
I levy a disapproving glare. “Don’t lie.”
He shakes his head, a smile visible through the hair of his beard. “I’m not lying. This was always my spot. I didn’t want to share it with anyone. I came out here to think.”
A breeze blows my loose hair from my braid, and I take a moment to tighten it as I consider that. “And what is it that teenage Wes thought so long and hard about that he needed a designated spot to do it in?”
Wes chews thoughtfully on his sandwich as his eyes stay on the sun, slipping lower toward the horizon. “My dad. Pops. The ranch. The future.”
I’m taken aback by his response. I had assumed he was up here thinking about girls or something not quite so serious. My brow furrows. “What about the future?”
He sighs, face turning serious. “I used to want to be out here all year. I wanted to build a house right here and help Pops with the ranch after I graduated high school.”
I gape a moment, surprised by this revelation.
“God, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that,” he confesses, his gaze back on the horizon.
“Why didn’t you do it?”
His shoulders lift and then fall. “It was a pipe dream. Dad always wanted me to work for him at the accounting firm. He’d take me into the office and talk animatedly about how it all could be mine someday.
Numbers came easily for me. Accounting is a steady income, much less risky than ranching. It seemed like a no-brainer.”
I mull over his reply for a moment, studying the shadows beginning to darken the pasture as the sun disappears behind one of the hills. “But it’s not what you wanted?”
“I didn’t not want it. I don’t know if I ever really fully decided what I wanted before I was applying to college at Dad’s behest. College. Becoming an accountant. Living in the city. It’s what my parents expected of me.”
“Do you always do what’s expected of you?” I wonder.
He winces slightly. I guess I hit a nerve with that question.
“I don’t like disappointing people.”
He's told me that once before, but it’s all making a bit more sense to me now.
The accounting job he barely tolerates, proposing to a woman he had no passion for, the way he begrudgingly came back to help Pops, his general asshole demeanor.
Wes was fucking miserable. He’d spent his life doing what was expected of him for fear of disappointing someone.
“Fuck everyone else, Wes. And fuck their expectations. What do you want? What makes you happy?”
He gives me a sad smile. “I’m thirty-five, and honest to God, I don’t know what I want.”
I narrow my gaze. “Time to do some soul-searching, cowboy. This is your life. You’d better figure out what you want to do with it or else it will pass you by and you’ll be left with a whole heap of regrets.”
He grunts from the blanket next to me, his hands folded behind his head.
The stars are winking into view in the twilight sky, and I bite my tongue to prevent myself from saying anymore as I lay down next to him.
I don’t want to push him too far. Staying here and ranching would be a gamble.
And Wes is far from the gambling type. If he doesn’t truly want to be here, then he shouldn’t stay.
My throat closes up at the thought of Wes going back to the city at the end of the month. I’m not sure how he’s wiggled his way into my life so quickly, but being around him has swiftly become the favorite part of my day.
“This is a good spot for soul-searching,” he says, pulling me closer as he spreads the second blanket over our legs.
I hum contentedly, tucking myself close to his side. His body heat is doing a good job of keeping the fall chill from nipping at me, and I think I’d be happy to stay right here with him, staring at the stars twinkling in the sky all night as the rest of the world beyond this moment slips away.
Wes' hand finds the inside of my thigh underneath the blanket, and his fingertips draw lazy circles over my jeans. It stirs the embers still glowing, kicking up sparks and making my breath hitch as his fingers inch closer to my apex.
I let out a shaky laugh and seize his wrist in my hand before he can reach where I'm aching for him. "I don't think this is conducive to soul-searching."
"On the contrary," he says, his voice a rough whisper in my ear. His palm presses between my legs, cupping me over my jeans. "This is the best way to do soul-searching. I frequently ponder life's most important questions while we do this."
His teeth graze against my ear, making goosebumps spring up on my skin and my nipples pull tight under my sweatshirt.
"Oh, yeah? What questions are those?" I'm breathless already, simply from the way he's looking at me right now, like he's never seen anything more beautiful than me laying on a blanket under the stars, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, my hair in a simple braid and not a stitch of makeup on.
He hums in thought, shifting as he rolls on top of me.
"Questions like how you got to be so pretty here.
" His fingers press against the seam of my jeans, dragging a slow path up and down.
"Or whether your eyes are closer to the color of the sky or the ocean.
" He brushes a stray hair behind my ear.
"And what pictures could I make if I connected the dots of your freckles?
Would they spell my name?" The ghost of his touch on my stomach draws a sigh from my lips.
His fervency has my mind spinning and my heart warming in my chest. My walls are crumbling under the weight of his sweet words and light touches.
His thumb pops open the button on my jeans and my breath hitches in my throat as he tugs them down my thighs. "And what is it about you that feels so damn good? "
Cool air whispers over my heated flesh, and I shudder like a leaf in the wind.
His fingers hover over my center as he continues, his voice a low rumble in my ear.
"I wonder which part of you I love most. Your sharp tongue on my cock or the way you look when you take all of me, stretched around me and dripping. "
His fingers are right there. He's torturing me with mere brushes of contact when he knows it's nowhere near enough.
I let out a muted whine, unable to stop myself. "Or," he muses, drawing out the word, "is it those frustrated little sounds you make when I don't give you what your body is begging me for fast enough?"
My disbelieving laugh is cut short by a gasp as his fingers finally slide inside me.
"Or maybe," he continues, voice rasping, "what I love most is how you're always so wet and needy for me. Like you need this just as much as I do."
"I do need it," I admit in a hushed whisper, my fingers tearing at the button of his jeans.
He groans as he shucks them off and rolls on a condom as the confession slips off my tongue again. "I need you."
His movements still.
He pulls back, studying my face with a look that makes my stomach flutter in anticipation.
"How'd I get so lucky?" he murmurs. And then he slams home.
I cry out, nails biting into his skin as my body clenches around him. He holds still, giving me a moment to adjust, but I arch against him, desperate for more. Deeper. Rougher. Harder.
He begins to move, a slow, dragging thrust that's both gentle and unrelenting. He fills me so perfectly that it steals the breath from my lungs. He hits a place deep inside me that sends sparks flaring, and my vision goes hazy, the stars overhead turning blurry.
"Eyes on me, Red," he commands, voice tight with restraint. "I want to see you fall apart for me."
I meet his gaze. It's soft and raw and so much. And it has something inside me snapping.
"Wes," I plead. "It's so much."
I don't know if I mean the way he's buried so deep inside me or the way I'm falling. So fast. So hard. So helpless to stop it.
“I know, honey,” he soothes, pressing a kiss to my jaw. He hooks my leg higher over his hip and thrusts even deeper. “But it’s so damn good.”
"So good," I echo, my breaths coming out in quick gasps as I teeter on the ledge.
I let it all wash over me as the pleasure builds, coiling tighter and tighter before I finally detonate.
I cry out, stars flaring bright as my body clenches around him.
His fingers grip my hips harder as his rhythm turns wilder and in mere moments, he's pulsing inside of me, dragging out the aftershocks of my orgasm with his own.
He collapses next to me, and for a long moment, we just lie there, basking in an afterglow that feels softer and more vulnerable than it ever has before.
His hand finds mine, and we lay underneath the starlit sky, fingers intertwined.
Wes’ lips press against the top of my head, and the tenderness of it slices me open, filleting me like a fish so that I’m sure my guts are spilling out and he can see how my heart is pounding in my chest for him like he’s mine.
It’s not a dirty promise spoken in a full bar as we dance while a band plays, but this feels like a different kind of promise, one that speaks to wanting to keep this moment, wanting to keep me.
I find his mouth in the dark and press my own promise to his lips. One that I hope he can decipher. One that says I’d keep him if I could. I want him to stay.
Not just for Pops and the ranch.
I want him to stay for me.
My chest aches in realization that in a few short weeks he very well could be gone, and I’ll be on my own again.