Chapter 7 Wyatt
SEVEN
Wyatt
I was up before five.
Old habit. The ranch didn't care what you'd been doing the night before and neither did my body, which had been waking at four forty-five since Iraq and showed no signs of stopping.
I lay there for a minute in the dark listening to Haven breathe and thought about a lot of things I wasn't going to think about, and then I got up.
I made coffee. Scrambled eggs, thick-cut bacon from the pack in the fridge, toast from the bread my mother had left on the counter two days ago. Simple. Something to do with my hands.
February fourteenth was usually the worst day of the year and the day after wasn't much better.
Eighteen years of it. I knew the shape of it by now—the weight that sat on my chest from the moment I woke up, the way Ethan's face showed up in the edges of things, the particular flavor of guilt that never quite went away no matter how many cigarettes I smoked for him or how many times I told myself I'd done everything I could.
This year had been different.
This year I'd spent most of it with my hands on Haven Sinclair—which was its own kind of problem—but it was a problem that had kept me so thoroughly out of my own head that I hadn't come up for air until right now, standing at my stove in the gray February morning.
I didn't know what to do with that.
She stirred about fifteen minutes after I started cooking, and I caught it from the corner of my eye—the shift of blankets, her arm coming up over her face. I kept my back to her and kept moving the eggs around the pan and waited.
Heard her shift…heard her move the blankets.
“Mornin’,” I said, not looking at her.
I couldn’t.
She looked too good naked, and I wouldn’t be able to keep cooking. The eggs would catch fire.
“Morning,” she said.
I heard her move again and I cleared my throat. “You stay right there.”
She stopped moving. “What?”
“In bed. Stay.”
“I’m not a dog, Wyatt.”
I glanced at her. “I’m bringing you breakfast in bed.”
Silence.
“But I need to pee.”
I pointed at the bathroom door without turning around. "Make it quick. Gotta get you fed and back to your truck quick enough that you can reasonably call in sick today."
Heard her get up, then she snickered under her breath. “Are you trying to say you fucked me so hard I have to call in a sick day?”
I snorted. “You’ve got an awfully dirty mouth for a girl who just lost her virginity last night.”
She didn’t respond; instead, she padded past me and I made the mistake of looking.
Long dirty blonde hair down her shoulders, sleep-warm skin, the curve of her waist into her hips and then the specific shape of her ass. I turned back to the stove and stared very hard at the eggs.
Jesus.
I was so done for.
The bathroom door clicked shut. I stood there with a spatula in my hand and thought about Ethan again—not the guilt this time, just the general memory of him—his laugh, the way he'd have absolutely eviscerated me for this situation, the things he would have said that I'd never be able to unhear.
You've got it bad, Holt.
I did not have it bad. This was an arrangement.
A stupid, ill-advised arrangement that I had agreed to for reasons that made less sense every hour, and it was going to stay an arrangement, and in approximately forty minutes Haven was going to drive her truck out from behind my house and go home and I was going to go to work.
The toilet flushed.
The bathroom door opened.
She padded back past me toward the bed, hair over one shoulder now, completely unbothered. I watched her climb back under the covers and pull them up to her chest and pick up her phone like she owned the place.
I plated the eggs.
Bad, Holt. Real bad.
I carried both plates over and sat on the edge of the bed and handed her hers.
She did this thing—grabbed the edge of the blanket with her chin to keep it up while she took the plate with both hands—and nearly lost the whole thing. Caught it at the last second. Settled the plate in her lap and the blanket across her chest and looked up at me like she dared me to comment.
I didn't comment.
"Thank you," she said.
"Mm."
She took a bite of the eggs and her eyes closed for a second. "Okay. These are really good."
“They’re just eggs,” I said.
“Well, they’re good eggs.”
I watched her eat and drank my coffee and tried to remember the last time I'd had someone in my bed for breakfast. It had been a while. Long enough that I'd stopped thinking about it as something that happened to me.
She shifted and the blanket slipped. My eyes darted down to her chest—couldn’t help it—and she bit her lip. “This is what happens when you tell me to stay naked in your bed.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not the only thing that happens.”
She went still.
Plate in her lap. Blanket forgotten.
"We have time?" she asked.
"Eat first," I said.
"Wyatt—"
"Eat." I handed it back. "You need the calories."
She stared at me for a second.
Then she looked down at her eggs and started eating very quickly.
When she was done she set the plate on the nightstand and looked at me.
I took both plates and put them on the floor.
“On your hands and knees, baby.”
Once again, she stared.
I just…watched her. “You wanna do this or not?”
She did—so she did as she was told.
Got on her hands and knees, the blankets sliding away.
I took in the sight of her…the hickey on her inner thigh, her swollen, already-wet pussy. I felt bad for a second, until she rocked her hips back toward me.
“Well?” she asked.
Sassy.
I ran my hand down her spine, slow, shoulders to tailbone, and felt her shiver.
"You've got a smart mouth," I said.
"I know."
"Said some things last night that were a little—" I palmed her ass, squeezed once. "Mouthy."
She sucked in a breath. "Are you seriously—"
I brought my hand down.
Not hard. Just enough. The sound of it was sharp in the quiet morning and she gasped and her elbows nearly buckled.
"Wyatt—"
"That's for the dirty mouth." I smoothed my hand over the spot. "You good?"
"Yes." Breathless. "Do it again."
"I said it was a correction, not a reward."
"Wyatt—"
I brought my hand down again anyway, other side, and she dropped her head and made a sound low in her throat that went straight through me.
"Okay," I said, more to myself than her. “Okay…okay, we’re good.”
“You sure?”
I smacked her again for good measure.
She jolted and moaned.
“Am I…” she paused, voice quiet as I soothed her, rubbing my hand in circles around her lower back. “Am I a freak for wanting this?”
“You’re perfect,” I said immediately. “You better not change a damn thing.”
“But I—”
I smacked her again, this time leaning in to drag my tongue over one red cheek. If anything, I was the freak—for wanting this, for taking it, for doing it again.
“What did I say, baby? You're perfect.”
Her pussy clenched.
I couldn't fucking take it.
I reached around her to grab another condom out of the bedside table drawer, yanking my boxers down with my free hand. The condom was on in a heartbeat, then I was back—pushing my cock against her, dragging it through her arousal, my eyes rolling back in my head…
She rocked back and I sank in an inch. My breath stuttered and I grabbed her by the hips.
“Please fuck me,” she begged. “Please, Wyatt.”
I buried myself inside her in a single thrust.
She keened, dropping her elbows to wail into the pillows. I almost stopped, afraid I'd hurt her, but she was clenching so good, rocking back…beginning to fuck herself on my cock.
She gasped and grabbed the headboard and I found a rhythm, slow at first, working her open.
She dropped her head between her shoulders and just took it.
No hesitation. No flinching. Just Haven, completely present, completely in her body, making sounds that were going to live in my head for a very long time.
"Wyatt—"
"Stay right there."
I reached around and found her clit and she clenched around me so hard I had to stop moving for a second and breathe through it.
"Keep going," she said, frantic. "Please—"
"Working on it." I pressed harder and started moving again and she wailed into the pillow. "Keep it down."
"I'm trying—"
"Try harder." I smacked her once more, light, just enough, and she bit down on the pillow and muffled herself and I felt it everywhere.
Twenty minutes, I'd told her.
I was already losing track of time.
I steadied my pace, thrusting deep and hard, yanking her back against me every time.
I fell into that sensation easy…Haven’s soft moans filling the room, watching her wide hips take me, watching my cock vanish inside her.
When she got too loud, I smacked her ass again, and every time she clenched so fuckin’ tight—
“Gonna come inside you, baby,” I growled. I reached up her back and took hold of her hair—twisted it around my hand and pulled her flush against my chest. It pushed me in deeper and she moaned, so I stuck two fingers in her mouth.
She started sucking.
Moaning.
Mine.
“Yeah, you love my cock so fuckin’ deep, huh?” I snarled in her ear.
She moaned around my fingers and clenched and I nearly lost it right there.
"Answer me," I said against her ear.
She bit down on my fingers instead. Light. Deliberate.
I pulled them free and smacked her hip and she keened and pushed back harder and I tightened my fist in her hair and held on.
"Haven."
"Yes," she gasped. "Yes, god, yes—"
"Yes what."
"Love it." Barely words. "Love your cock, love how deep—please, please don't stop—"
I wasn't stopping. Couldn't have stopped if the barn caught fire.
I drove into her and she took every bit of it, her whole body shaking, her hands white-knuckled on the headboard, and I kept my fist in her hair and my other hand on her hip and watched her come apart and thought: this is the problem.
This is the whole problem right here.
She came with my name in her mouth, muffled against the pillow I'd pushed her face into, and I followed her over with my teeth against the back of her neck and my hips stuttering through it.
We collapsed.
Her flat on her stomach, me half on top of her, both of us breathing like we'd been running.
The morning light was stronger now through the window.
I was going to be late to check the heifers.
But I stayed inside her; rocked my hips once more and felt a wave of satisfaction when she clenched and moaned. I dragged a line of lazy kisses along the column of her throat, then palmed her breast, soothing the sensitive skin.
“I'm a bastard for this,” I said, “but I want you back here tonight. I gotta have you again, baby.”
She turned her head on the pillow and looked at me sideways.
"Yeah?" she said.
"Yeah."
She was quiet for a second. I felt her breathe.
"Okay," she said. Simple. Like I'd asked her to pick up feed on her way in.
I pulled out carefully and dealt with the condom and she rolled onto her back and stretched, arms over her head, completely unselfconscious.
For a moment, I stood there and watched her and thought about all the reasons this was a terrible idea…
but I couldn't make myself care about a single one of them.
"Go shower," I said. "Use my stuff. I'll start on the heifers."
"Very romantic."
"Haven."
"I'm going." She sat up and pushed her hair back and looked at me with those hazel eyes, steady and clear. "Same time tonight?"
"Come after dark. Park where you parked."
She nodded. Got up. Walked to the bathroom without looking back.
I pulled my jeans on and grabbed my jacket off the hook and stood at the door for a second listening to the shower run.
You've got it bad, Holt.
Shut up, Ethan.
I went to check the heifers.