Chapter 28 #2
I smiled to myself. “And? How’s it feel?” With the exception of Colt, Stetson had been my most reserved mate. Having him to myself was honestly a little nerve-wracking. I’d had him tangled in my sheets, but being alone together on a date like this was a different kind of intimacy altogether.
He was quiet for a few steps. Then his arm slid from my back to my waist, pulling me closer against his side. “Like I should’ve done this weeks ago.”
My stomach flipped. Stetson wasn’t a man who gave affection freely.
Every touch from him was purposeful, which meant every single one landed like a lightning strike.
Ransom, whose love language was undeniably physical touch, could kiss me six times before breakfast and I’d float through the morning on a sugar high, but one slow pull from Stetson’s arm around my waist and my knees forgot how to work.
I turned my face into his shoulder without thinking, chasing the warm cedar and sage and coffee that clung to his shirt. My nose trailed along the fabric, and I caught myself half a second before I buried my face in the crook of his arm like some scent-drunk animal who’d lost all social awareness.
A low sound rumbled through his chest, half growl, half purr, pleased, possessive, and entirely male. His arm tightened around my waist.
“Did you just try to smell my armpit?” he asked, his voice laced with gravel and barely contained amusement.
It was common knowledge that there were certain scent points that carried a concentrated amount of an Alpha’s signature, like the crux of the neck, the armpits, and their groins.
The Omega part of me wanted nothing more than to bury my face in his armpit and breathe him in like it was a totally normal thing to do, but the rest of me was more embarrassed than I’d ever been.
“Absolutely not.” My face was on fire. “I was adjusting my head. It’s a completely normal human movement.”
“Mhm.” His thumb stroked a lazy circle against my hip. “You’re a terrible liar, Trouble.”
Before I could defend myself with the dignity I absolutely did not possess, Stetson stepped off the main path, guiding me behind a row of closed vendor tents where the foot traffic thinned to nothing.
The string lights didn’t quite reach back here, leaving us in a warm pocket of shadow with the soft sound of the band and the distant melody of the carnival games.
He turned me to face him, his hands settling on my hips. The playful edge in his expression had shifted into something darker. Hungrier.
“You don’t have to steal it, Jules.” His voice dropped low enough that I felt it vibrate in my chest. “You want my scent, you take it.”
He leaned down and guided my face to his throat with one hand on the back of my head, pressing my nose into the spot just below his jaw where his pulse throbbed warm and steady. The full force of his signature flooded my senses—purely, devastatingly Stetson.
My knees buckled. Actually buckled, like the tendons just clocked out for the evening.
I grabbed fistfuls of his shirt to stay upright as I breathed him in, and a sound came out of me that I would deny making until my dying day.
Something between a whimper and a moan that had his fingers tightening in my hair.
“That’s it,” he murmured against my temple, his lips brushing my skin. “Take what you need.”
I was drowning in him. Every inhale pulled more of his scent deeper into my lungs, and my Omega was purring so loud I was sure he could feel it through my ribs.
His free hand slid from my hip to the small of my back, pressing me flush against him, and the hard length of him pushed against my lower belly.
I gasped into his throat, my thighs trembling, heat pooling so fast between my legs that coherent thought became a distant memory.
His mouth found my ear. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
I had some idea. It was currently hard and hot against my body.
I pulled back just enough to look up at him.
His green eyes were nearly black, his jaw tight, his breathing rough.
He looked like a man two seconds away from doing something illegal in public, and the fact that Stetson—composed, controlled, iron-willed Stetson—was the one unraveling made my head spin.
“We need to stop,” I whispered, even though every cell in my body was screaming the opposite. “Or I’m going to beg you to take me right here, and I don’t think the Coldwater Creek PD would appreciate the paperwork.”
His forehead dropped against mine. A rough exhale escaped him, his chest heaving as he wrestled himself back under control. His hands stayed on me, touching me, holding me against him, like prying them off would require divine intervention.
“Ferris wheel?” I breathed.
He pulled back, his jaw working as he straightened up and adjusted his hat with hands that weren’t fully steady. “Ferris wheel,” he agreed, his voice hoarse.
I smoothed his shirt where I’d fisted it, brushing out the wrinkles I’d left in the fabric.
My legs were still shaking. His arm went around my shoulders as we stepped back onto the main path, and I pressed tight against his side because if I didn’t hold on to something solid, I was going to melt into a puddle on the fairground dirt.
The line for the Ferris wheel was short this late in the evening, just a couple of teenagers ahead of us who were too wrapped up in each other to notice the disheveled Alpha and his flushed Omega standing behind them.
The ride operator, a weathered old guy in a trucker cap who looked like he’d been running this wheel since before I was born, gave Stetson’s disheveled shirt and my pink cheeks a knowing glance but said nothing. Smart man.
I smoothed a hand down my shirt, grateful my scent-blocking lotion was working flawlessly.
Stetson handed over the tickets and guided me into the swaying car with his hand on my lower back.
The metal bench was cold through my jeans, but he slid in beside me and pulled me against his side, sharing his body heat before I had a chance to catch a chill.
The safety bar clicked into place, and then we were rising.
The first rotation was slow, the car rocking gently as the wheel loaded the remaining passengers below. The fair shrank beneath us, and with every foot of elevation, the noise below fell away until there was nothing left but the two of us.
At the top, the wheel paused to load someone at the bottom, and the whole valley opened up beneath us.
The mountains were black silhouettes against a sky thick with stars.
The distant lights of Coldwater Creek flickered along the highway.
And somewhere out there in the dark, the Double T sat waiting for us to come home.
“I wonder if I can see the ranch from here,” I whispered, leaning forward to peer over the bar.
Stetson’s arm tightened around me, tugging me back against him. “Easy, Trouble. You may have threatened to push me off the top, but I’m not losing you over the edge.”
I settled against his chest, my head fitting neatly under his chin. His thumb traced a slow path up and down my arm.
Even now, suspended above the world he was protecting me.
Soothing me. His body was angled to block the wind, and he kept me against his side to keep me safe this high above the ground.
The man was incapable of turning off his pack leader role, the caretaking, the vigilance, the constant way he put everyone else’s comfort before his own.
It hit me that I’d never once seen someone do the same for him.
“Stetson?”
“Hmm.”
“Who takes care of you?”
His thumb paused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I asked.” I tilted my head back to look up at him.
The colored lights of the wheel played across his face, making him look younger and older at the same time.
“You take care of everyone. The pack, the ranch, the kids, the business. Gideon manages the logistics, but you carry the weight. Who makes sure you’re okay? ”
He was quiet for a long time. The wheel started moving again, carrying us in a slow descent before rising back up. The car swayed, and I pressed closer, my hand resting flat on his chest where his heart beat steady beneath my palm.
“Nobody,” he finally said. “That’s not how it works. The pack leader handles it.”
“That’s not an answer. That’s a job description.”
His chest moved with a quiet huff. “You sound like Gideon.”
“Gideon’s a smart man. He brought me here, after all,” I teased.
“And thank fuck he did.” Another pause. His fingers found a strand of my hair and wound it absently around his knuckle.
“My dad ran this ranch the same way. Carried everything himself until his back gave out at fifty-two and his heart gave out at sixty. My mom used to say he was the strongest man she’d ever met and the worst at asking for help.
” His voice had gone low and rough in a way that had nothing to do with the scenting earlier.
“I swore I’d do it differently. Be smarter about it.
Delegate. And then the kids showed up and life hit hard.
We were all dealing with losses of different kinds and the pack cracked down the middle, and I just...
picked up every piece I could reach and held on. ”
My fingers curled into his shirt.
“I don’t know how to set them down, Jules. I’ve been holding everything so tight for so long that my hands don’t remember how to open.”
The wheel reached the top again. The car rocked gently, suspended above the whole glowing world, and I sat up enough to frame his face with both hands. His jaw was tight. His green eyes were bright in the colored lights, glassy with something he’d never let fall.
“You don’t have to set them down,” I told him. “You just have to let someone else help you carry them.”
He stared at me for three full heartbeats. Then his hand came up to cover mine on his cheek, pressing my palm harder against his skin like he was trying to memorize how it felt.
“You’re something else, you know that?”