6. Chapter 6 #2
I drive. The cabin is two minutes away. The longest two minutes of my life. Her breathing hasn’t slowed and my hands on the steering wheel are white-knuckled.
The cabin. I park. We get out. The rain is still falling.
She walks to the door and unlocks it and I follow her inside and the door closes behind us and the sound of the rain changes from outside to on-the-roof and we’re standing in her kitchen dripping mud and water onto the floor she swept this morning.
She turns around. She pulls her T-shirt off. Soaked, muddy, gone. She’s in a bra, wet, her skin glistening, and she’s looking at me.
“Your turn,” she says.
I pull my shirt off. She steps toward me. Her hands on my chest. Cold fingers on warm skin. She traces the scar on my left side (barbed wire, nineteen) and the one on my shoulder and she doesn’t ask about them. She knows what they are. She has her own.
I reach behind her. Unclasp her bra. It falls. She’s bare from the waist up, streaked with mud and rain, and her breasts are full and her skin is flushed and I put my hands on her waist and pull her against me, skin to skin, and the contact sends a shock through both of us.
“Shower,” she says. “We’re covered in mud.”
“Shower.”
The shower is small. We barely fit. But the water is hot and it runs brown with mud and we’re pressed together under the stream and my hands are on her body, washing her shoulders, her back, her stomach.
She tips her head back under the water and her throat is long and exposed and I put my mouth on it and she grips my arms and the sound she makes echoes off the tile.
I wash her. All of her. My hands learning her body through soap and water. The curve of her hips. The softness of her stomach. The weight of her breasts in my palms. She’s watching me touch her with an expression that is open and hungry and trusting.
Her hand slides down my stomach. She wraps her fingers around me and I hiss through my teeth and brace one arm against the shower wall.
“Bedroom,” I say. “Now.”
We don’t dry off. We walk to her bedroom dripping water on the floor, kissing, my hands on her waist as I guide her backward. I toss her onto the bed and the sheets get wet and neither of us cares.
I settle over her. My weight on my forearms. Her body under mine.
I look at her. Her hair spread on the pillow, wet and dark.
Her eyes looking up at me. No guard. No wall.
Just Elise. The woman who saved a calf in a storm and kissed me in a truck and is now lying in her bed looking at me like I’m the first man who’s ever been worth the view.
“You are so beautiful,” I say. Because she is.
Because I’ve been holding this word for weeks and I’m done holding it.
“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and I have been wanting you since the second you sat on my horse and crossed my creek and looked at me like I was the one who needed to prove myself.”
“You did need to prove yourself.”
“Did I pass?”
“You’re in my bed. What do you think?”
I kiss her. Deep. My mouth on hers, my hands in her hair, my body pressing hers into the mattress. She wraps her legs around me and I can feel the heat of her against me and I’m hard and she can feel that too and she rolls her hips and the friction makes both of us groan.
I kiss down her body. Her neck. Her collarbone.
Her breasts. I take one nipple in my mouth and she arches off the bed and her hand grips the back of my head.
I stay there. I take my time. I learn what makes her gasp and what makes her moan and what makes her say my name in that voice, the low one, the one that sounds like she’s discovering the word for the first time.
I move lower. Her stomach. Her hip. The inside of her thigh.
She opens for me and I settle between her legs.
The first sound she makes when my mouth touches her nearly wrecks me.
I take my time, paying attention to every change in her breathing and every roll of her hips.
When her breath catches I stay right there, sliding one finger inside her wet heat.
When she says my name in the breaking voice I press harder with my tongue against her clit.
Her thighs tighten around my head. Her hand fists in my hair. She says “Raiford, I’m…” and I curl my finger and press deeper and she comes with a cry that shakes her whole body. I feel it against my mouth, the pulse of her, and I stay with her until she’s trembling and pulling me up.
I rise over her. She pulls my face to hers and kisses me and reaches between us and guides me and I push into her slowly.
The sound she makes goes straight through me. She’s tight and warm and wet and I’m inside her and my arms are shaking and I hold still. I hold still for a second because I want to remember this. Her face. Her hands on my back. The way she says my name when I’m finally inside her.
I move slowly at first. She wraps her legs tighter around me, pulling me deeper, and the control I’ve been holding onto all night starts to slip.
“You’re incredible,” I say. Against her mouth. Moving inside her. “You walked onto my ranch and I haven’t had one normal thought since.”
“Raiford.” She cups my face. Her thumbs on my cheekbones. “I’m right here.”
I move faster. She meets me. Our hips finding a rhythm that feels like it was always there, waiting to be discovered.
Her breath comes in short gasps. My arms burn.
The bed shifts. The rain hammers the roof she and I reshingled together and the room is dark except for the storm light through the window.
I reach between us. My thumb on her clit. She gasps and her body tightens.
“Come for me,” I say. Low. Into her ear. “I want to feel you.”
She comes. Around me. Her whole body pulling tight, her nails in my back, my name in her mouth like a sound she’s never made before. I feel her clench and pulse and it pulls me over. I press deep and come inside her with my face against her neck, her hands in my hair, and her name torn out of me.
We lie in her bed. The rain on the roof. Her head on my chest and my hand in her wet hair. The sheets are damp and wrecked and neither of us moves to change them.
“I didn’t plan this,” she says.
“I didn’t plan any of this. You showed up and my plans stopped working.”
“Is that a complaint?”
“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to my plans.”
She lifts her head. She looks at me. Blue eyes. Wet hair. I’m looking at the rest of my life and it has freckles and a smile I want to see every day.
“Stay,” I say.
“I’m in my own bed. I’m already staying.”
“Not tonight. Stay. On the ranch. In the valley. With me.”
She puts her head back on my chest. Her hand over my heart. The rain on the roof. The storm passing. The valley dark and quiet outside.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says.
I close my eyes and pull her closer.
For the first time in five years, I believe I might not have to do everything alone.
We ride to the ridge on a Sunday.
Sundays used to be quiet. Sunday was dinner at my mother’s house, the drive home, the porch, the bourbon, the silence. Sunday was the day the ranch rested and I rested with it because I didn’t have a reason not to.
The reason is on Birdie beside me, her braid over one shoulder and the sun on her face, pretending she isn't affected by the view.
She thinks she’s composed. She’s not. Her shoulders drop when the view opens up. Her breathing slows. Her hands go soft on the reins.
We reach the overlook. The same spot from the first ride. The ridge where I looked at her and my guard dropped for one second and she caught it. She catches everything.
We dismount. The horses graze. The view goes on forever, valley and mountains and sky, the same view that’s been here for five generations of Wyldes and which has never looked as good as it does with Elise Carter standing in it.
“This is where you first looked at me,” she says.
“I looked at you before this.”
“You looked at me before this. You SAW me here. For about one second, the whole mask came down and I saw you too.”
“I remember.”
“What did you see?”
I look at her. She’s in jeans and a tank top and her work boots and the afternoon light is turning gold. Her skin is warm from the ride and her blue eyes are steady and unguarded and she’s asking me what I saw on this ridge the first time and the answer is simple and enormous.
“Home,” I say. “I saw home.”
I cross the distance between us. Two steps. Her hands on my chest, up on her toes, my mouth on hers. The kiss is soft at first. The version that has time and patience and nowhere to be.