Chapter 36
Future Husband
SADIE
Another, deeper thrill goes through me at the implication that he is the future husband in question.
I set the melting popsicle down on the rock beside me, the cherry ice bleeding red against the hot stone.
I turn back to him. Taking his cock in my hand, I watch his face. Savor the sharp intake of his breath as I touch him.
“And here I thought you were all about my pleasure,” I say.
His hips jerk slightly as I rub my cheek along his shaft.
“You like it when I tell you what you want,” he breathes. His voice is rough at the edges now, the careful control starting to fray.
I press my lips to the tip of his dick and feel his whole body go tight. His abs contract. The hand in my hair tightens involuntarily.
“I hate when you boss me around,” I lie.
“Sure. Except your little pussy gets real wet when I boss you around.”
He's not wrong. Sitting back on my heels like this, thighs pressed together, I feel how slick I am there, every nerve ending awake and shimmering.
“On your knees, baby.”
His thumb strokes along my skin, tender and unhurried, the same way he touches me when he's tucking hair behind my ear or tracing my collarbone in the dark.
“If you want to be a good wife, you better learn to love sucking your husband's cock.”
Heat floods through me from my face to my pussy.
I grip the base of his cock with one hand. Feel him twitch against my palm, hear the hitch in his breath. I look up at him one more time, holding his gaze, wanting him to see that I'm here, that I'm choosing this, that every single thing I'm about to do I'm doing because I want to.
Because I love giving him pleasure. I love the games we play.
Because I love him.
I haven't let myself think it that plainly before. Not once all summer. I think it now, kneeling in front of him in the August sun, gazing up at this wounded, beautiful cowboy of mine.
Then I lick slowly up the length of him.
The sound he makes, the deep, rough grunt of pleasure, I feel in my core.
I've learned that sound. Learned exactly how to earn it. Two months ago I didn't know how to do any of this. Now I know his body well enough to play it, to find the places and rhythms that make him lose the careful control he keeps over everything.
His other hand drops to my throat, not gripping, just resting, his palm against my pulse point. I know he can feel my heartbeat racing. Good. I want him to know.
I take him deeper, until his cock hits the back of my throat. His hand tightens in my hair.
“Baby. Tell me,” he rasps. “Do you love this?”
Slowly I drag my lips up his shaft and release. I kiss the head of his cock, where precum is already leaking. “You know I do.”
I can feel the effort it's taking him to stay still, to let me set the pace. His head drops back as his green eyes go almost black. “Show me, sweetheart. Show me what that pretty tongue can do.”
So I do. I take him in my mouth again. I suck and swirl my tongue around the ridge between his head and shaft, the way I know he likes it. His thighs are tense under my palms, muscles hard and defined, and I feel them flex when I find a rhythm that really drives him crazy.
I keep glancing up, greedy to watch his control dissolve, and I think: I did that. I'm doing that. This man who never loses control of anything, coming apart under my hands.
Even though I'm on my knees, I understand that I have all the power here.
“Fuck,” he groans. “Look at those cherry lips wrapped around my dick. Prettiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
His ridged ab muscles flex as he sucks in a breath. His free hand drops to the rock beside him, fingers pressing flat against the warm stone.
I’m moaning around his cock and he loves that too, loves how much I’m getting out of this. Increasing my tempo, I grip him at the same time I suck him. His balls tighten like he’s going to come, but then his hand tightens in my hair and then he's pulling me up.
I whimper my objection and he kisses it away.
“No. You don’t get to swallow my cum today,” he murmurs, kissing along my jaw. “Not when you’ve been a little fucking brat. On your hands and knees.”
He's already moving, turning me, positioning me, his hands firm on my hips.
The rock is warm under my palms as I get on my hands and knees like he told me. He’s kneeling behind me, erect and dripping precum, a sheen of sweat on his tan skin.
I wait for him to push inside me. I’m desperate for it.
There’s an arrogant smirk on his face that says he knows I am.
“You’re gonna make such a good little wife.” His palm slides along my spine, all the way down to the curve of my ass. He pushes two fingers inside me and pumps them, coating himself in my wetness. “Happiest with my cock inside you. Mouth, pussy, you love it all. Should I have your ass next?”
He slides his fingers out of my pussy and drags them up.
As he caresses my rim, I make a sound that’s half-shock, half-pleasure. He circles slowly, just the tip of his finger, not pressing in. Learning me there the same patient way he learned every other part of me.
I can’t believe he’s touching me there. “Walker…”
He circles again. Slower this time. The shock of it gives way to a warmer sensation, a feeling that pulls low in my belly, and I hear myself exhale shakily.
His finger pushes in. Every part of me clenches around him and I let out a gasp as the foreign, unexpected pleasure of it sparks through every nerve ending.
There’s a low chuckle behind me. “Yeah, darlin’, you’re gonna like when I have your ass.” He moves it slow, in and out, and I can’t believe the sounds coming out of me. Can’t believe what he’s doing to me. It feels so dirty and wrong and hot, and I can’t believe I’m letting him.
“You want me to be the first to fuck all your holes, my sweet princess?” he murmurs.
“Yes,” I breathe, face burning at the admission. Every part of me feels like it’s aflame.
“Good girl. Good answer.”
He withdraws his finger and I clench again, needy, feeling so empty. Needing him to fill me.
“Not today, though,” he says. “But you're gonna think about it. And next time you mouth off at me…” There’s a kiss pressed to the back of my neck as he bends over me. “You're gonna wonder if that's the day I decide you've earned it.”
Straightening back up, he grips my hips. Nudges the head of his cock against my pussy lips. “I’m gonna be all your firsts, baby. All your onlys.”
He pushes into my cunt, just the tip.
I’m so wet. He could slide all the way in with no resistance, but instead he’s going slow, the way he did when it was my first time.
Then, he was trying to be gentle.
Now, he’s trying to torture me.
Surely.
The rock is scratchy under my palms and knees, just shy of painful, and he's behind me, gripping me. There's nothing but hot summer air on my skin and his rough hands gripping my hips.
“Tell me you love it,” he demands. “Tell me you love how I fuck you.”
“I love it.” It’s almost a sob. “I love it so much.”
With a low, guttural groan, he finally pushes all the way in.
“I know, baby,” he breathes. “I love it too.”
And then he’s fucking me hard and fast, hands digging into my flesh. He drives in hard enough that my arms nearly buckle. My fingers scrabble against the rock, find nothing to hold onto.
Walker reaches down. Rubs my clit for me as he pistons in and out of me. My arms are shaking and it has nothing to do with holding my weight.
The pleasure crests and I stop being able to think in words.
I come with the hot rock under my palms and his cock buried inside me and his thumb still working my clit, and what comes out of my throat is embarrassingly loud and I don’t care even a little bit.
My whole body is trembling.
He slams his hips against my ass. With his cock deep inside me, he comes with a low, rough sound. I can feel his cum flood my pussy, pulse after scorching pulse.
Then he’s pulling me up, chest to back, and nuzzling my neck for a moment, breathing me in. With his hand he tilts my jaw back so he can kiss me, deep and lingering.
It takes us both a long minute to catch our breath after that.
“Are your knees okay?” he murmurs, hands coming up to squeeze my tits.
That was not what I was expecting to hear just now.
I huff out a laugh. “They’re fine.”
“Good. Because mine hurt like hell. Worth it, though.”
As he maneuvers us to curl up on the towel together, I say, grinning, “I’m being very generous and not making any ‘old man’ jokes right now.”
He pulls me tighter to him and kisses behind my ear. “That’s because I fucked the brat right out of you.”
I burst into laughter.
We lie on the part of the rock that’s still warm but shaded by the cottonwood tree overhead. My head is on his chest, his hand moving slow through my drying hair. The lake laps at the rock shelf below us.
I trace a lazy pattern on his chest with one finger. “I can’t believe I let you talk to me the way you do. Anyone ever told you what a filthy mouth you have?”
Now it’s his turn to laugh, low and warm. “I talk that way because you like it.” He kisses the top of my head. “You know I respect you. Just makes it more fun when I fuck you like I don’t. You’re always safe with me, baby. No shame. You know I’d do anything for you.”
I sigh, utterly content. “Maybe.”
“No maybe about it.” He catches my hand and holds it flat against his sternum.
“And then after I fuck you hard and talk dirty to you, I get to wrap you in my arms and kiss you and tell you how perfect you are. How I’ll never get enough of this.
How I’ll do anything to make you happy.” I feel him smile against my skin.
“Including doing what needs to be done to get your pussy dripping.”
I laugh again. “Put that in your next song.”
“Maybe I will. They’re all about you anyway. Besides, I can’t control what comes out of my mouth when I’m inside you.”
My heart is going faster now than it was two minutes ago.
There are things he says when he's inside me that he's never said any other time.
I need to know if they count. If they’re real.
If the fact that I’m starting to change my mind about going to New York is a good thing, or a catastrophically terrible one.
I push up onto my elbow so I can see his face when I ask. His eyes are closed, lashes dark against his cheek. The tension has gone out of every muscle. He looks wrung out and satisfied and completely at peace.
“Does that mean…” I swallow. “Do you actually mean what you say?”
Just like that, the tension comes right back into his body.
His eyes open. He looks at the sky for one long moment before he looks at me.
He takes a deep breath.
And then my phone buzzes.
I lean over to pluck it from my purse and stop short at the caller ID.
“Momma?” I answer. “Are you okay?”
Walker's arms tighten around me.
“Can't get this machine working,” she says. Her voice is flat and tired.
“I'll be right there. Sit tight.”
I press end. Feel the two halves of my life snap back together.
“What's wrong?” Walker is already sitting up.
“Her dialysis machine. I need to go over there and see if I can sort it out.”
“I'll drive,” he says, reaching for his shirt.
I turn my gaze to the blue-green of the lake, the cottonwood, the flat warm rock.
Paradise.
His paradise.
Walker and I might have grown up in the same hometown, but his world is totally different than mine.
Summer in his world has been all too easy to get used to.
The ranch and Rosemont and the family gatherings, all of it easy and full in a way I didn’t know life could be.
A world filled with loving, well-adjusted humans, a world filled with warmth and beauty.
And now we're about to get in his truck and drive to a rundown trailer on Route 9 where my mother is sitting with a broken dialysis machine and a pack of cigarettes and windows that rattle whenever the train goes by.
My world.
I’m not sure I’m ready for those two worlds to collide. I’m not sure he is.
“Baby,” he says. “We gotta go.”
“She's not easy,” I blurt. “Momma. And she's not going to be… well, nice. She's going to be herself, which is a lot, and I need you to know that going in.”
“I can handle a lot.”
“Not like this kind of a lot.”
He pulls his shirt over his head and looks at me steadily. “You've met my family. Let me meet yours.”
I look at him for a moment. Walker Rhodes, who sold out Madison Square Garden three nights running, who has a star on the Nashville Walk of Fame, reaching for his keys to drive me to a trailer park on the wrong side of town.
The things a man says when he's inside you and the things he thinks when he sees your every day life are two different things.
Heat of the moment is one thing. This is another.
I guess we’ll see what happens.
“Okay,” I say. “Let's go.”