Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
HOLDEN
“ H ey, boss.” Levi sticks his head in the doorway. “There’s something on the trail cam you should see.”
I frown and immediately flip on a screen. “Which one?”
“Number six. North road. I don’t recognize the vehicle. Could be someone who’s lost, but they came pretty far in for that.”
I page through until camera six comes on screen and feel a jolt of surprise work through me.
“That’s Millie.”
“Oh.” Levi straightens. “Sorry, I don’t think we know what your wife’s car looks like.”
“I don’t plan on her being here much.” I stand and push my chair in. “I’ll go see what she’s up to. If I don’t come back to the barn tonight, keep me posted on Sunshine.”
“Will do. I don’t think she’s going to foal tonight, but I’ll keep you posted.”
I nod as I grab my keys and drive out to the spot I brought Millie to, relieved to see that she’s still parked out here when I pull in beside her.
She turns, her arms wrapped around her middle, hugging herself. Her thick, chestnut-brown hair is down and blowing in the light spring breeze. She’s not crying, much to my relief.
I’ve seen my girl cry way too much over the past few days. I want to see the fire back in her eyes, even if it means she tells me to fuck off.
She turns back to stare at the mountain as I approach her, my hands shoved into my pockets.
“I know you don’t want me on your ranch.” She swallows hard and shakes her head. “But?—”
“You are always welcome to come here,” I inform her easily. “Always.”
“How did you know where I was?”
“We have cameras set up. Levi saw your car come in and told me someone was here.” I want to reach out and touch her, but I can’t exactly read her mood, so I wait. “How did your visit with Joy go?”
“Great.” Her lips tip up into a small smile. “She knows everything now. I had to talk about it. The only thing I didn’t tell her was why we got married.”
She turns to me with a frown.
“We haven’t really discussed if we’re going to keep that just to ourselves.”
“I’d like to, but if you’re not comfortable?—”
“It’s fine,” she says with a shrug. “I don’t mind. My mom always puts things into perspective for me and makes me feel better.”
“I’m glad. Millie, I can’t read you right now. I need you to tell me how you feel and if I can touch you, because I need to touch you.”
She blows out a breath and turns to face me now, letting her arms fall to her sides.
“Relieved.” Her eyes—more green than gold right now—aren’t impassive anymore, and I can see the relief in them. “I just had to let a lot of shit go, you know? I needed to shake off the anger and resentment so I could just…live . Live my life and be happy, and I feel a lot lighter.”
“That was some conversation with your mom.”
She grins, takes a long, deep breath with her face pointed up at the sky, lets it out, and then looks at me again.
“About the second part of your question.”
I lift an eyebrow.
“Please, for the love of Betty White, touch me . ”
That’s all the invitation I need. In two strides, I’m in front of her, her face in my hands and my mouth on her lips, and heat rushes down every nerve ending in my body.
Millie groans against my lips and pushes her fingers into my hair, fisting them there.
“Not here,” I whisper against her cheek as I kiss my way down to her neck, every instinct telling me to lean in, not back away, but there are cameras, and I won’t do this out here. “I’m not doing this outside again because you deserve a bed, and once I get you naked, you’ll stay that way for a while. And I won’t make love to you here .”
“At the ranch or at this specific place?”
“I’m working on exorcising the ghosts, but it’s going to take a while yet.” She wraps her arms around me, so sweetly that it makes my heart ache, and I do the same, pulling her in for a long, tight hug. “We need to go home . ”
“I wish we didn’t have two cars.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “I’d kind of like to give you a blow job while you drive. Not that I’ve given any blowjobs in my life, but I think it would be a good time.”
Taking her by the shoulders, I yank her back and stare down into her smirking face. Fuck me.
“Thought that might get a rise out of you.”
“In more ways than one.” Jesus, I’m so hard . I have to reach down and readjust myself in these jeans. “Let’s go. Now. Get in your fucking car.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m following you.”
Millie rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“Less talking, more driving, sexy woman.”
She giggles at that, and she’s right. I do see the change in her compared to how she was just a couple of hours ago. Her shoulders are lighter, as if the weight of the world has been lifted from her, and that makes me happy for her.
It’s twenty long minutes before we pull into the driveway. I’m at her car door before she can even open it and offer her a hand. When we get to the front door of the little house that we share, I punch in the code, and then we’re inside. Her keys and bag hit the floor, and she launches herself into my arms, wrapping her legs around me and kissing me like she’s a woman on a mission.
Everything she is wraps itself around me. She smells like honeysuckle and sunshine, and when I push my hand under her shirt, her skin is warm and soft over her ribcage.
“You’re so fucking incredible.” I carry her to the sofa and sit with her straddling me, and this amazing woman crosses her arms at her waist, grips her T-shirt, and pulls it over her head, dropping it to the floor, and my mouth goes dry. “Fucking hell, Mill.”
“You, too.” She’s moved back on my legs so she has access to my shirt, clawing at it to get it off me, and I oblige her, pulling it over my head and casting it aside with hers. “ Holden. ”
With fire in her gorgeous eyes, her fingertips gently trace the tattoos on my right shoulder and down my arm, circling around the pink wild rose there. She licks her lips as my hands roam up her sides and then over to her fucking gorgeous breasts, where I tease her already tight nipples.
“I want to ask you so many questions about these,” she whispers and then gasps and tips her head back when I pinch a little harder.
“You can ask me anything. Later.” I sit up and take her mouth, knowing that I’ll never get enough of her. She’s grinding on me, pushing her breasts against my chest, and I unfasten the elastic on her back, and she lets the bra fall down her arms. Without missing a beat, my mouth fastens onto one hard nub, making her arch her back as she holds on to my shoulders. “Baby.”
“God, your mouth,” she groans. “How did I live without your mouth on me?”
“We have to move.”
“Not if it means you stop doing that.”
I grin against her skin, fucking loving everything about her, and rake my teeth over her sensitive flesh, satisfied when she breaks out into goose bumps.
“I need to lay you out and see every glorious inch of you, baby girl. Goddamn it, I’m going to fucking worship you.”
“Well, when you put it like that.”
I stand with her still in my arms and walk down the short hallway to our bedroom, lay her on the bed, and unfasten her jeans. She lifts her hips, making it easier for me to slide them down her long, lean legs, and then she’s lying here in nothing but some little blue panties.
There’s a wet spot covering her pussy, and it makes me growl.
“Your turn,” she murmurs, but I ignore her as I crawl onto the bed and take her thighs in my hands, spread her wide, and kiss her over that blue fabric, inhaling her. Millie’s hands fist in the bedding as her whole body engages. “Oh, dear God.”
“Jesus, look how wet you are. You’re fucking perfect.” I grin up at her as I kiss my way north. Yes, I want to devour her pussy, but it’s going to have to wait while I explore her.
Her stomach ripples under my lips, and I dip my nose into her navel.
So much about her is the same as eight years ago, but so much is different. She’s grown up, become even more of a woman, and I can’t fucking get enough of her.
“Why are you so good at that?” she murmurs. “Don’t answer that.”
I laugh and roll her nipple under my fingers as I kiss the other one. “We have to set some ground rules, Rosie.”
“No more rules.” She rolls her head back and forth, her eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “I’m so over the rules. We’re already breaking the biggest one anyway.”
“These are important.” I kiss up her sternum and over her collarbone, and I absolutely fucking love the way her hips are moving under me, as if she’s searching for my cock.
And she’ll get it.
“Number one.” I nibble at the side of her lips. “If at any time you want me to stop, or you aren’t comfortable, you say so.”
“Not shy, remember?”
I grin against her jawline. “Good. Number two.” My hand grazes up her side, and my girl purrs.
Fucking purrs.
“There is nothing you can say or do while we’re together that could ever turn me off or change the way I feel. You don’t hold back, Millie. Do you understand me?”
“Hmm.”
I take her jaw in my hands and make her look me in the eye.
“Tell me you understand.”
“You got way bossier.” I simply raise an eyebrow, and she grins. “No holding back. Got it. When are you going to take off your pants?”
“In a minute.” She’ll have questions, and this will stall, and I’m not ready for that. I’m going to make her come at least once before she sees the metal in my cock. “Number three.”
“Holden?”
“Just one more, baby girl. One more.” My hand drifts up her belly, between her breasts, and holds on to her throat, just under the jaw, the way I’ve always done. “As soon as we do this, you’re mine. There’s no going back from this. I’m going to erase the memory of anyone who has been here since me, and there will be no one after.”
That has her golden eyes, so full of green now, widening.
“Holden.” It’s a whisper.
“Tell me you understand what I just said. I need the words.”
She holds on to my wrist but doesn’t pull me away. She licks her lips, lets her gaze fall to my mouth, and then flicks it back to my eyes. She suddenly looks nervous.
“Holden.”
“Yes, baby?”
“There’s been no one since you.”
The world stops fucking spinning. I can’t look away from her as my vision blurs. My heart is going to pound out of my chest.
“What did you just say?” My voice is ragged, raw with emotion as I cup her face.
“No one,” she whispers, vulnerability heavy in those eyes as she confesses to me that the one and only time I was inside of her is the only experience she has with sex.
How is that fucking possible?
She mistakes my silence for something bad because the shutters start to come down over her eyes, and I lean in to kiss her tenderly.
“Don’t you dare.” I brush my lips over hers twice more as my hands drift down her arms. “You stay here with me. Don’t you shut me out. I’m just so…fuck, Millie.”
“Yes, fuck Millie.”
I chuckle against her lips, still trying to process this new bit of information.
In the eight years since she was with me, there’s been no one.
Not one single motherfucker has had his hands on her. His cock inside of her.
“I hate it when you’re quiet,” she says, pulling her fingers down my cheek again. “I should have told you I fucked dozens of men, then you wouldn’t have slowed down.”
I narrow my eyes and kiss her softly and slowly.
I don’t deserve this. There is no universe in which I deserve everything good and wonderful about this woman.
“ Millie. ”
She smiles so softly, so sweetly, that it makes me ache. Her gaze lifts, and she watches her own fingers brush my hair off my forehead.
“Holden, I’m going to need you to break this really long dry spell I’ve had. Okay? We can get emotional and talk about our feelings later. Right now, you need to keep doing what you were doing because you’re really good at it, and I need you inside of me.”
She leans up to kiss me, and that’s all it takes for my head to get back in the game. She’s right, we can hash this out later. Much later.
Right now, I’m going to fuck my girl senseless.
“You’re so goddamn sweet,” I murmur as I kiss my way to her ear and my hands resume their exploration of her body. “Do you have condoms in here?”
She looks up at me like, really? And it makes me smirk.
“Been on birth control for a long time,” she says and then scowls at me. “If some skank gave you a disease?—”
I laugh again, continuing to kiss her, pressing her down into the mattress.
I can’t stop kissing this woman. I will never stop kissing her until the day I die. She’s my life force. My reason for everything.
“No diseases, baby girl.” Now, I make my way down her torso, back to that little wet spot inside of her panties. I want to devour her, lick every inch of her, and make her scream my name.
“Take your pants off.”
I shake my head and nibble on her navel. “After you come on my mouth, and not a minute before.”
“Holden—”
“Number four,” I interrupt, pinning her in my hot gaze, satisfied when her eyes widen. “You’re not in charge here, Rosie. That’s me. Now shut up and let me fucking worship you.”
She plants her teeth in her bottom lip, her eyes go glassy, and I take that to mean that she likes it when I take control.
Good. I’ll be doing it often.
Once I’ve nudged my shoulders between her legs, I hook my finger in the side of her soaking-wet panties and tug them out of the way so I can stare down at her glistening slit.
“Baby, you’re so goddamn wet for me.”
She moans, watching me with hot eyes as I lean in and lick her, from her opening to her clit, and she falls back to the bed, gripping the bedding in her fists.
“Holy fucking shit.”
Now, it’s time to get to work. I flick my tongue over her clit and then down to her lips and pull them into my mouth, pulsing around them.
Millie’s hands dive into my hair and hold on tight .
“So goddamn beautiful,” I whisper before I lick up again and insert a finger into her, then groan when she squeezes around me like a vise.
Jesus Christ, she’s going to kill me.
Her hips are moving in circles, encouraging me to move, to continue giving her the best time of her life.
And nothing could make me stop now.
I add another finger and crook them up, rubbing that rough patch that makes her thrash her head from side to side, incoherent thoughts coming out of her beautiful mouth as she continues to squeeze around me.
“That’s right.” I replace my tongue with my thumb for just a second, wanting to talk to her. “Give into it, baby girl. Don’t you hold back on me. Lose control, Millie. Give it to me. God, you’re fucking gorgeous.”
“ Holden. ”
“Give it to me. Come on my mouth.”
I cover her again, licking and sucking, pushing my fingers in and out of her. She starts to contract, her legs start to shake, and she screams out as the orgasm moves through her, and I can’t lap her up fast enough.
She’s breathing hard and moaning softly as I place wet kisses on her thighs, at that junction of her leg and core, and finally, I pull her panties off and toss them over my shoulder, then lick my own fingers clean, wanting every last drop of her in my mouth.
“Get. Naked.” Her voice is firm, demanding, and I grin up at her, not bothering to wipe my face off before I lunge up and cover her mouth with mine.
She lets out a startled moan, and then she holds on to my face, kissing me fervently, as I unfasten my jeans and work them down my hips.
Her hands move down my sides, and she cups my balls, making me see fucking stars. Jesus, I’ll do anything she wants. Anything.
Then that talented little hand moves up my hard, pulsing cock, and when she gets to the tip, her eyes fly open.
“What the fuck is that ?”