Chapter 18 #2
The trail is narrow and dark, tree cover blocking most of the sky, but I move fast. I know where I’m going and he doesn’t, and that knowledge sits in my chest like something lit.
I can hear him ahead.
I run him down.
It takes maybe two minutes before I find him at the river’s edge, the water catching the moonlight, a massive granite boulder rising from the bank on the near side.
He’s breathing hard and when he hears me coming, he spins.
There’s that look again—the flicker of fear, the heat underneath it—his chest heaving and his eyes finding me in the dark.
He doesn’t run anymore.
He makes me come to him, which is very Colt, but I go anyway. Crossing the bank, I get a hand in his hair and walk him backward until his back meets the boulder. The granite is still warm from the day’s sun and he makes a sound when he hits it that goes straight through me.
“You ran hard.” I press my hips against him, letting him feel my hard cock against his own dick. “Feel that? That’s what you do to me. That’s what you’ve been doing to me every single morning on the fucking ranch.”
He opens for me immediately when I kiss him and his hands grip my hips like anchors. I think about every moment this summer when I made myself look away from him.
I don’t look away now.
I put my mouth on his jaw, his throat, the place below his ear that makes his head tip back, and I learn him the way I should have let myself weeks ago. The way I would have if I hadn’t been so busy being afraid.
“Rhett.” His hands grip my hips and drag me closer. “Tell me you came prepared because I swear to God…”
I reach into my jacket pocket.
He makes a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a laugh and I feel it against my neck. “You planned this.”
“I told you.” I pull back far enough to look at him, chest heaving. “I’m not scared anymore.” I get my hands on his belt. “I’m going to fuck you against this boulder until neither one of us can stand up straight, just to prove that you’re mine.”
I spin him around again, pushing him chest-first against the rock. He braces his palms flat as I step in close behind him.
“Rhett…”
“I know.” I press in harder. “You’re the one who stopped running near a giant fucking rock. That’s on you, baby.”
He pushes back against me instead of answering, and I get a hand in his hair, tugging his head back so his throat is exposed, and I put my mouth there.
His pulse is fast under my lips and getting faster.
I drag my teeth down the side of his neck, slow enough that he feels every millimeter of it, and I feel him shudder.
“You’ve been waiting for me to do this all summer,” I say against his skin. “You wanted me to lose control—be my true self. Well, Colton Dawson, my true self wants to fuck this tight little asshole of yours and show you who’s really in charge, cowboy.”
He tries to turn around, but I don’t let him.
“Not yet.” I get both hands under the hem of his shirt and push it up, running my palms up his stomach and chest, the muscles jumping under my touch.
He’s built solid everywhere, and I take my time learning that with my hands while my hips stay pressed against him so he keeps feeling what he does to me.
I find his nipples and drag my thumbs across them, and the sound he makes goes straight to my cock.
“Stop fucking teasing.”
“I’ll stop when I’m ready.” I bite down on the back of his shoulder hard enough to leave a mark and feel him arch forward and back into me simultaneously, like his body can’t decide which direction it wants. “Trying to make me fucking jealous with Randy…”
“Miranda…”
“Same fucking thing. You think I don’t know that the only thing you’re going to get hard for is my hard cock throbbing inside of you.”
I shove his jeans down further, just past his ass, and get my own cock free. I press the thick head right against his hole, letting him feel how hard I am, how much I’m leaking. He makes a raw, guttural sound that shoots straight to my balls.
“That’s it,” I mutter against his ear. “Let me hear it. Don’t hide a fucking thing.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” he bites out, voice hoarse and cracking.
I grab the lube I brought, slick my cock, fast and messy, then press two wet fingers against his hole.
I take my time working them in, watching his spine arch, feeling every twitch and clench around my fingers.
His forehead drops fully to the granite, and he’s breathing hard through his nose, his hips trying to push back for more.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
“Yeah.” I reach around and stroke him once, slowly, from base to tip, and feel the bead of moisture at the head against my palm. “You’re already leaking for me.” I do it again. “Did running do that, or is it me stretching this ass open?”
“Both,” he grits out. “Obviously both.”
“Good answer.” I continue pumping my fingers inside of him. “Tell me what you want,” I say.
He doesn’t answer right away, then says, “You know what I want.”
“Say it.”
“I want you to fuck me against this rock. Right now, before I change my mind about letting you be smug about this.”
Something inside of me that has been pulled tight for months finally releases. I get both hands on his ass and spread him open, looking at him.
“Goddamn,” I say, not quite to him.
“Don’t narrate,” he grits out.
“I’ll narrate if I want.” I press my thumb against him and feel him clench. “I’ve been thinking about this since the barn that first week. I get to narrate.”
“That’s—fuck. Yeah. Okay.” His voice breaks when I press in just slightly. “That’s fair. Keep going.”
I push the fat head of my cock inside of him, stretching him open as I push past that tight ring, his hands finding a crack on the rock he can grip. I stop right there, just the head inside, letting him feel the burn and the stretch.
Holy fuck it’s tight.
“That’s it.” I keep my voice low and close to his ear. “Open up for me. Don’t fight it.”
“You don’t get to say you love me and go easy,” he says into the rock. His voice has lost all its edge. “Don’t you dare go easy on me.”
“Easy. This feel easy to you?”
“No.” His hips push back against my hand. “Rhett. Move.”
I push in slowly.
His spine bows, and a sound tears out of him that bounces off the granite and over the water, but I don’t try to muffle it.
I don’t try to quiet either of us, because we are two towns from home, in the dark, and there’s nobody here but us and the river.
I push in all the way, bottoming out, and stop with my hips flush against him, feeling him everywhere.
I put my forehead against the back of his neck and breathe.
“Okay?” I ask.
“Don’t you dare stop. Don’t you dare ask me that and then stop.”
“I’m not stopping. I’m just getting started.” I pull back and drive in harder.
He curses into the rock, his hips pushing back to meet me, and I feel him try to take control of the pace the way he takes control of everything. So I get both hands on his hips and hold him completely still.
“My pace,” I say.
“Rhett—”
“My. Pace.” I pull back slowly and push back in slowly, feeling him shake with the effort of not moving against me. “You ran when I told you to. You’re going to take this how I give it to you. You’re fucking shaking.”
“I know.” His fingers scramble for a crack in the rock and grip hard. “Don’t stop. Don’t you fucking stop.”
I pull back until just the head is inside, then slam in harder.
“Look at you,” I rasp, voice gone low and ugly with lust. “Fuck, look at you taking my cock. Like your ass was made for it.”
“Don’t get smug,” he manages, breathless.
“Too late.” I set a brutal rhythm—deep, punishing strokes that slap skin against skin, my balls smacking his ass with every thrust. “You made me crazy all summer. Every morning in that barn, every time you got close and then pulled away. You knew exactly what you were doing to me.”
He makes a broken sound, his whole body going from fighting to surrendering. The moment he yields, something primal surges through me. I feel it in the way his hole relaxes around my cock, the way his back melts against my chest.
“There you go,” I praise, voice rough. “That’s it. Give it to me.”
I reach around and wrap my slick hand around his cock. He’s rock hard, leaking steadily, the head slick and swollen. He curses viciously as I start stroking him in time with my thrusts.
I wrap my arm across his chest and yank him upright, pulling his back flush against my front. My mouth is at his neck, teeth grazing skin as I keep thrusting deep and steady.
“Mine,” I say, quiet and fierce, the word pressed directly into his skin. “Say it.”
“Yours.” There’s no fight left. Just the truth, raw and simple.
It wrecks me.
I stroke him faster, fucking him harder, until he breaks, body seizing, hole clamping down around my cock like a vise. He comes with a hoarse shout, thick ropes of cum spilling over my fist, splattering the granite and dripping down the rock.
I follow right after, burying my face in the crook of his neck, groaning his name as I empty deep inside him, filling him until it leaks out around my cock.
We stay locked together for a long time afterward, both of us panting, my arm still banded across his chest. Eventually, I pull my softening cock out of his ass as the night air cools the sweat on our skin.
“Still mine,” I murmur against his neck.
He huffs a tired laugh. “You’re going to be insufferable now, aren’t you?”
“Probably.”
He turns in my arms, and in the faint moonlight, his face is completely open—no armor, no mask, just him. He looks at me like he’s deciding whether he can trust this, and I already know I’ll spend however long it takes proving he can.
“I meant what I said,” I tell him. “In the parking lot—all of it.”
“I know,” he says quietly.
Something soft moves across his face, then he pulls me in and kisses me slowly.
“Randy’s going to wonder where I went,” he says against my mouth.
“Tell her something came up.”
He laughs and I feel it vibrate through his chest. I decide right then I’m going to spend the rest of my life chasing that sound.
I don’t know what happens tomorrow. There are hard conversations waiting—things I can’t take back, a town that won’t make this easy, and a future I can’t see clearly yet.
But tonight, he’s here.
I’m here.
I drove two hours and I finally told the truth.
I didn’t run.
That’s enough.
That’s everything.