CHAPTER 29 #3
"Hopeful woman," she corrected.
He went still for one beat. Then he kissed her until her knees weakened.
On the bed, the quilt was cool beneath her back.
Colt came over her slowly, braced on one forearm, giving her his weight by degrees.
Wren opened to him with a sigh that seemed to travel from the girl who had left to the woman who had come back and chosen.
His mouth moved from her lips to her jaw, her throat, the curve of her breast.
He learned her with care and heat, with the roughened pads of his fingers and the soft drag of his mouth, stopping whenever her breath caught to read whether it was pleasure or too much.
She answered with her hands in his hair, with her hips lifting, with his name breaking out of her.
"Colt."
"I've got you," he said, then caught himself. His eyes met hers. "No. I am with you."
The repair in that sentence pierced her. She drew him down and kissed him hard.
"With me," she said. "Yes."
He touched her until she shook, until the room narrowed to lamplight, skin, and cotton warmed by their bodies. When he settled between her thighs, he paused again.
"Still yes?"
She framed his face with both hands. "Yes. I love you. Come here."
He entered her slowly, with a care that made the pleasure deeper instead of smaller. Wren held his gaze as long as she could. Then sensation rolled through her, full and bright, and her eyes closed. He stopped, trembling.
"All right?"
"More than all right. " She wrapped her legs around him. "Please move."
He moved.
There was nothing polished about the sound she made.
Colt answered it with a groan against her shoulder and a rhythm that built from tenderness into need without losing the tenderness underneath.
Wren met him stroke for stroke, hands roaming the strong line of his back, the flex of his hips, the damp hair at his nape.
Outside, the fence line stood in the dark.
Somewhere beyond it waited cattle, repairs, bills, a child with a flower crown on a chair at Junie's house, a town that would talk and then need feed invoices paid.
Life waited.
For once, Wren did not mistake waiting for threat.
Pleasure gathered like light finding the edge of a hill. Colt slid a hand beneath her hip, changing the angle, watching her face with such open devotion that the last guarded place in her gave way.
"I love you," she said again, because one lifetime might not be enough times.
His control broke on her name.
The release took her in a wave that left no room for shame.
She clung to him, crying out against his mouth while he held himself deep and shook with the effort of staying with her through it.
Then he followed, breath ragged, face buried in the curve of her neck, his body giving itself over with a trust that felt as intimate as any touch.
Afterward, he eased his weight enough for her to breathe and stayed close, kissing her temple, her cheek, the sticky place on her wrist where sugar had dissolved against their skin.
Wren laughed softly.
"What?" he murmured.
"Wedding cake."
He lifted his head, saw the shine on her wrist, and smiled. "Evidence."
"Of what?"
He kissed the inside of her wrist. "That we survived the wedding."
She touched his mouth. "That we stayed through the hard part."
"We'll have more hard parts."
"I know."
He watched her, waiting for fear to take its old chair. It did not.
"I am not asking for easy," she said. "I am asking for honest. Beau's schedule on the calendar. Harlow's name spoken kindly. Bills on the table. You telling me when fear is talking before it starts making decisions."
"And for you?"
"For me to ask instead of vanish. To tell you when pride is dressing up as dignity. To keep my own work, my own keys, my own spine."
His thumb moved over her hip. "I can love a woman with a spine."
"Good, because mine has survived Odette Pryce, Austin rent, and three days of wedding chairs."
His laugh warmed her throat.
They cleaned up quietly, then returned to bed with the lamp turned low.
Colt pulled the sheet over them and tucked it around her shoulder, as if comfort was a task worth doing well.
Wren listened to his breathing settle beside hers.
Through the window, the porch light marked the rail, the gate, the path he would take before dawn.
Morning would come with feed and coffee, with Junie's call and Beau's sleepy report, with Della married and Dusthallow changed only as much as people ever changed overnight.
The mineral money would require signatures, lawyers, wise hands, and limits.
The ranch would still ask for labor. Wren's invoices would not pay themselves. Love had erased none of it.
That was why she trusted it.
Colt's hand found hers beneath the sheet. Their fingers laced, palm to palm, sugar gone, bluebonnet green faded to a shadow.
They made love again before sleep, slower this time, with the fence line dark beyond the window and morning chores waiting on the other side of dawn, a promise made for ordinary mornings.