6. Chapter 6 #3
Then it’s not soft.
Her hands go into my hair. She pulls me down to her, deeper, her tongue against mine, and the sound she makes into my mouth goes through me like a current.
My hands go to her waist, her hips, pulling her flush against me, and she can feel what she does to me because there’s no hiding it when her body is pressed against mine.
“Here?” she says. Against my mouth.
“Here.”
“Someone could see.”
“Nobody’s coming up here. It’s Sunday. The crew is off.”
“The horses can see.”
“The horses don’t care.”
She laughs. The laugh turns into a gasp because my mouth is on her neck and my hands are under her tank top, sliding up her ribs, my thumbs finding the underside of her breasts.
I pull her tank top off. Her bra. She stands on the ridge bare from the waist up with the mountains behind her and the valley below her and the sun on her skin and I’ve stood on this ridge a thousand times. It has never looked like this.
I lower her down. My jacket on the grass, spread flat, the ground underneath hard but the jacket is thick canvas and she settles onto it and looks up at me and I’m standing over her with the sky behind me and she reaches for my belt.
“Come down here, cowboy.”
I go. I pull my shirt off. I kneel over her on the jacket and the sun is warm on my back and the grass is around us and we’re on the ridge where I first saw her.
I kiss down her body. Her neck, where the freckles are. Her collarbone, where the skin is soft. Her breasts, full and warm in my hands. I take my time with her nipples, my mouth and my tongue, until her back arches off the jacket and her hand fists in the grass beside her.
I unbutton her jeans. Pull them down, her panties with them. She’s bare on my jacket on the ridge and the breeze moves across her skin and she shivers.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her. I want her to hear it enough times that she stops looking surprised when I say it.
I settle between her legs. I put my mouth on her and she cries out and the sound carries across the valley and there’s nobody to hear it except the horses and the hawks and the mountains.
Her hips roll against my mouth. Her hand is in my hair. She says my name and it echoes off the ridge and hearing my name like that does something to me that I will never be able to explain.
“Inside me,” she says. “I need you inside me.”
I strip. She watches me with heavy eyes, her body spread out on the canvas, her hair loose in the grass. I settle over her and she wraps her legs around me and she gasps as I push in.
I move. Deep and slow. The ridge under us and the sky above us and her body around me. Her hands on my back, her nails dragging down my spine. Her eyes on mine. No walls. No guard. Just blue eyes and freckles and the woman who sees me.
“Harder,” she says. She grips my shoulders. “I want to feel you tomorrow.”
I give her harder. My hands under her hips, tilting her, changing the angle. She gasps and her head tips back and her throat is long and exposed and I put my mouth on it and thrust deep and she wraps around me so tight I see white.
“You’re going to feel me every day,” I say against her throat. “You’re going to feel me and you’re going to remember that you’re mine.”
“Yours,” she says. The word is breathless and broken. I drive into her harder, and a little moan breaks from her with every thrust.
“Touch me,” she says. Her voice is tight. She’s close.
I reach between us. My thumb on her clit, pressing in circles that match her rhythm. Her hips lift to meet mine. Her breathing fractures. Her nails dig into my shoulders and her head drops forward and her forehead is against mine and we’re looking at each other.
She comes hard, her nails digging into my shoulders, my name breaking out of her. I feel her tighten around me and that’s it. I’m done. I come inside her with my face against her neck and the sun on my back.
Eventually, our breathing slows. I sit back and pull her up onto my lap. The sun is lower now. The gold is turning to amber. The horses are grazing nearby, unconcerned.
“This is my favorite spot on the ranch,” she says. Into my shoulder as I stroke her hair.
“It’s always been mine too.”
“Your dad brought you here?”
“He did. He sat me on that rock when I was eight and said every man needs a place that’s his.”
She lifts her head. She looks at me. Her face is flushed and her hair is wild and there’s grass in it and she’s the most beautiful thing this ridge has ever held.
“Ours,” she says. “Now it’s a place that’s ours.”
I kiss her. Slow. The Sunday version again. We have time.
We get dressed. We ride back down as the sun sets. Side by side, the horses walking easy, the ranch spreading out below us in the evening light. She reaches across the gap between the horses and takes my hand and we ride like that, hand in hand, down the ridge toward home.
My father sat me on that ridge when I was eight and told me it would be mine someday.
For most of my life, I thought he meant the land.
I look at Elise riding beside me, her hand still in mine.
Ours.