Chapter 12 #2
"I've been thinking about this," he said against my stomach.
His fingers hooked into my waistband. "About taking my time with you.
" He pulled my leggings down. Slow. His mouth followed — hip bone, the inside of my thigh, and I was shaking before he even got where he was going.
"About making you forget your own name."
"That's — ambitious —"
He put his mouth on me and I stopped talking.
I stopped thinking. I stopped being anything except the place where his mouth was.
He was relentless. He found the rhythm that made my hips lift off the bed and he stayed there — patient, focused, his hands pinning my thighs open when I tried to close them because it was too much, too good, too everything.
I fisted the sheets. I said his name. I said it again, louder, and he groaned against me, and the vibration of it sent me over the edge so hard my vision whited out.
He didn't stop.
He worked me through it and then — before my body had even finished shuddering — he shifted. Changed the angle. Added his fingers and curled them and found something inside me that made my back bow and a sound come out of me that I didn't recognize as my own voice.
"Again," he said. Not a question.
"I can't — I —"
"You can." His mouth and his hands working together, mercilessly coordinated, and he was right — I could. The second one built on the aftershocks of the first, sharper, deeper, and when it hit, I grabbed his hair hard enough to hurt, and he groaned — low, guttural, hungry — and pressed deeper.
I was still shaking when I pulled him up. Grabbed his face in both hands. Kissed him — tasting myself, not caring, wanting him closer, wanting everything.
"Inside me," I said against his mouth. "Now. Clay. Now. "
He reached for his jeans on the floor. Wallet, foil packet. His hands were shaking. This man, who rode two-thousand-pound bulls for a living — his hands were shaking trying to open a condom wrapper because of me.
"Having trouble there, cowboy?"
"Shut up." But he was grinning. And his hands were still shaking.
When he pushed inside me, I wrapped both legs around him and pulled him deeper and we both swore at the same time and it would have been funny if it hadn't felt like the entire world narrowing to the place where our bodies met.
"God," he breathed. Forehead against mine. Eyes open. "Callie."
"Move."
He moved. And something in him let go — the patience, the restraint, all of it — gone. His hips drove into mine and I gasped and dug my nails into his back and he groaned and thrust harder and I met him beat for beat.
I bit his shoulder. He hissed and looked at me with those dark eyes.
"Do that again."
I did. His whole body jolted, and his face dropped to my neck.
" Fuck, " he said. "Callie — fuck —"
He picked up the pace until the headboard was hitting the wall and I was crying out with every thrust and neither of us cared who heard.
He got his hand between us. Found the spot he'd already mapped with his tongue. Pressed. Circled. His hips still driving and his fingers working and his lips on my throat and I was drowning in sensation, overloaded, every nerve screaming —
"Stay with me," he whispered. Not a request about the night. A request about everything.
"I'm here," I said. "I'm right here."
The third time was different. It started in my spine and spread outward and I clenched around him and said his name — not quiet, not careful, loud — and watched his face come apart.
He held my gaze and I held his and I saw the moment he lost himself — jaw clenched, tendons standing out in his neck, his whole body going rigid above me — and then he was there, my name, just my name, shuddering, and I held him through it with both arms locked around his back and tears running sideways into my hair.
Not sadness. Joy.
We lay tangled in my sheets. His arm was under my head. My leg was thrown over his. The lamp was still on, and neither of us moved to turn it off.
"So," he said. "That happened."
I laughed into his chest. "That happened."
"Just checking. Because my brain is doing a thing where it's not sure this is real, and I need verbal confirmation."
"It's real."
"Good. Because if this is a dream, I need to have a very serious conversation with my subconscious about managing expectations."
I propped myself up on one elbow. Looked at him — sprawled in my bed, hair ruined, a bite mark on his shoulder that I was not remotely sorry about.
I found the scar on his ribs. The raised line I'd traced in the dark. "Tell me about this one. In the light this time."
He turned his head on the pillow. "Tulsa. 2019. Bull named Copperhead. Got me on the dismount — hoofed me on the way down. Cracked two ribs."
I traced upward. Found the starburst on his shoulder. "This one."
"Las Vegas. Championship finals. That was Sidewinder." His voice had gone quiet. Not sad — reflective. "Separated my shoulder. Finished the ride anyway. Stupidest thing I've ever done. Also, the ride that won me the championship, so."
"So you have mixed feelings."
"I have mixed feelings."
He watched me trace the starburst. "You're cataloguing."
"I'm learning you." I pressed my lips to his shoulder. "I want to know every part of you. Even the parts that hurt."
His eyes went bright. He cupped my face with the hand I'd just kissed and pressed his mouth to my hair and said nothing for a long time.
When he spoke, his voice was rough. "Nobody's ever asked about the scars."
"Nobody's ever asked?"
"They see the buckle. The highlights. The interviews where I laugh about it. Nobody asks about the parts that broke."
"Your turn," he said.
"I don't have bull-riding scars."
"You have scars." He said it simply. Not pushing. Just knowing.
I was quiet for a long time. His fingers traced patterns on my back — patient, aimless.
"I opened the UT admissions page tonight," I said.
Clay's hand stilled on my back. He knew what that meant — I'd told him about the folder on the hilltop.
"I didn't close it," I said. "I read the whole thing. The online program. The financial aid. The application timeline." I looked up at him. "I'm going to apply, Clay."
His arm tightened around me.
"You're going to be amazing," he said. Low. Certain.
"Stay tonight," I said.
"Wild horses, Callie."
"That's very cowboy of you."
"I'm a very cowboy kind of guy."
I settled back against his chest. Found the spot — my spot, the one that fit, the one I'd been looking for without knowing I was looking.
His heart beat under my ear. Steady. Sure.
I fell asleep tracing the rope burn on his ring finger and thinking that scars weren't damage. Scars were proof you survived.
And for the first time, I wasn't just surviving.
I was building something worth the risk.