Chapter 10
TEN
Millie
Gage had said back by noon and he'd meant it.
He came through the screen door at twelve on the dot—I'd checked, because I was the kind of person who noticed things like that—dusty from the field and squinting slightly from the glare outside, and the first thing he did after he sat down was find me across the table like he was taking stock of something he'd been thinking about all morning.
I'd felt it in my sternum.
After lunch, after Adam had told Neto three more things about limestone and Peggy had sent Sawyer home with the leftover chips because she knew he'd just come back for them anyway, after Haven had said a very bright goodbye to the table generally and a noticeably less bright goodbye to the back of Wyatt's head—after all of that, Gage caught my eye and tilted his chin toward the door.
Come on.
I came on.
Outside the air had thickened into that deep afternoon heat, the kind that pressed down on your shoulders and smelled like cedar and dry grass and something mineral underneath it all.
Gage had traded his work gloves for his hat and he settled it on his head as we came off the porch, and I watched him do it and thought about how completely at home he was in his own skin out here.
Like the land and the man were the same thing expressed two different ways.
"Tour?" I said.
"Tour," he confirmed.
We started with the cattle—or rather, we started with the fence line he'd been working on all morning, which happened to be near where the herd had settled in the east pasture. A hundred and eighty head of Longhorns in the afternoon heat, barely moving, their horns catching the sun.
"They're enormous," I said.
"They're manageable," he said. "That's why we run them out here. Low maintenance. Good in the heat."
"They're still enormous."
His mouth curved. "Yeah. They are."
He showed me the creek next—Holt Creek itself, running low this time of year, cutting through limestone like it had been doing it since before anyone had a name for it.
The water was clear where it ran and still in the pools between the rocks, and the shade along the banks was the first real relief from the heat I'd felt all afternoon.
I crouched down at the edge and put my fingers in and it was cold enough to make me catch my breath.
"Fed by springs," Gage said, from behind me. "Even in August when the surface water dries up, the springs keep it running."
"Adam was right," I said. "You can feel how old it is."
I looked up and found him watching me with that steady unhurried attention he turned on things he cared about.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing." He held out a hand to help me back up. "Come on. I want to show you the stable."
The stable was Sawyer's work originally—he'd rebuilt it from the ground up before he left for film work, and Forrest had been quietly restoring the details since he came home.
It was cool inside, the way old stone buildings stayed cool even in June, and it smelled like horses and cedar shavings and leather.
Two quarter horses turned their heads when we came in, regarding us without alarm.
"Sawyer's," Gage said, nodding at them. "Left them when he went. They're working stock now."
I reached out slowly and let the nearer one—a bay mare—sniff my hand. She did, decided I was acceptable, and pressed her nose against my palm.
"She likes you," Gage said.
"Everyone keeps saying that about the animals," I said. "The goat, now the horse."
"Dolly doesn't like anyone."
"Dolly walked me to the main house this morning."
He looked at me for a second. "Huh."
"Is that significant?"
"Moderately," he said, which I was coming to understand was Gage for yes, very.
We kept walking. He showed me the bunkhouse—Sawyer’s place, clean and functional—and the hunting lease acreage at the back of the property, the land going wilder and more cedar-choked as we got further from the main buildings.
He pointed out the ridge line where the deer came through in October, the turkey roost in the big live oak, the property line markers nearly invisible in the brush.
He knew every inch of it.
Not the way you know something you've memorized—the way you know something that's part of you.
He'd point at a thing before I'd even seen it, name it without thinking, tell me its history in two sentences and move on.
The leaning fence post he'd fixed that morning.
The creek crossing where his grandfather had laid the flat stones.
The cedar his uncle Austin had carved his initials into sometime in the sixties, now half grown over.
I walked beside him and listened and felt something settle in me that I didn't have a name for yet.
We ended up at the barn.
It was older than the stable, bigger, the limestone walls thick enough that the heat outside became a memory the moment we stepped through the door.
It smelled like hay and dust and something sweet underneath—feed, maybe, or just the accumulated warmth of a building that had been in use for generations.
The light came through in long slanted bars from the high windows, catching the dust in the air.
Gage pulled the door mostly shut behind us.
I turned around.
He was looking at me with that expression I was starting to recognize—the one that was very calm on the surface and very much not calm underneath.
"So," I said.
"So," he said.
"Is this part of the tour?"
"Could be." He took a step toward me. "Depends on how thorough you want it."
I laughed, and then he was close enough that laughing seemed beside the point. I tipped my face up and he kissed me slow and certain, one hand coming up to cup my jaw, the other finding my waist and drawing me in.
I glanced around. “Really? Here?”
"You have a problem with here?"
I looked around at the barn—the hay, the dust motes turning in the light, the thick limestone walls—and then back at him.
“Just…couldn’t somebody walk in?”
His lips curved. “And what are they gonna do? Stop me from knockin’ up my woman?”
"No," I said. "I—no, you're right."
"Uh huh." He kissed me again and walked me backward, unhurried, deeper into the barn. "You gonna keep arguing or are you gonna let me take care of you?"
"I'm not arguing—"
"You're a little bit arguing."
"I'm just—" He tugged the neckline of my dress down and put his mouth on my collarbone and I lost the thread entirely. "Okay. Not arguing."
"Good girl."
His hands found the hem of my dress and pushed it up, both palms skating up the outside of my thighs, and he turned me—smooth, decisive—so I was facing the hay bale, his chest against my back, his mouth at my ear.
"Lean forward," he said.
"Gage—"
"Millie." His hands tightened on my hips. "Lean forward."
I leaned forward.
My hands hit the hay and his came around me instantly—one spreading flat against my stomach, pulling me back against him, the other pushing the dress up further until it was bunched around my waist. He got his fingers into my underwear and pulled it down in one motion, efficient and unhesitating, and I heard myself make a sound that had nothing dignified in it at all.
"That's it," he said, low. "Stay just like that."
His hand came back up, sliding under the front of the dress, pushing up the fabric until he could get his palm against my breast—no bra, same as last night, which he seemed to be filing away as a personal preference—and he squeezed, slow and thorough, his thumb finding my nipple and rolling it until I arched back against him.
"Oh—"
"Yeah," he said. "I know."
He did it again, harder, and I pressed back into him and felt exactly how much he wanted this, which was considerable.
"Been thinking about these all day too," he said against my neck, his fingers tugging, pulling, drawing it out until I was squirming against him. "That dress doesn't leave a man a lot of room to concentrate."
"That's—" I gasped as he pinched lightly. "That's not my fault."
"Didn't say it was." He switched to the other side, giving it the same slow thorough attention, and I gripped the hay bale and tried to remember how breathing worked. "Just stating facts."
His other hand moved down between my thighs from the front and I stopped being able to state anything at all.
"Soaked," he said, and he sounded almost reverent about it.
"Every time." His fingers moved slow and deliberate, learning the shape of things, and I pushed back against him and he let me—let me work against his hand, his chest solid and immovable behind me, his arm banded across my ribs holding me flush against him.
"That's mine," he said. "All of this is mine. You understand that?"
"Yes—"
"Say it."
"Yours," I breathed. "It's yours, Gage, please—"
"Please what."
"You know what—"
His fingers stilled.
I made a truly undignified noise.
"Say it, darlin'."
"Inside me," I said. "Please. I need you inside me."
He made a low sound against my neck that I felt everywhere, and then his hand moved away and I heard his belt, his zipper, and then he was there—pushing in from behind, one hand splayed across my stomach holding me exactly where he wanted me, the other gripping my hip hard enough to leave a mark, and he seated himself fully and held still.
Both of us breathing.
The barn quiet around us.
"Feel that?" he said.
"Yes." Barely audible.
"Full?"
"So full—"
"Good." He pulled back and drove forward and I cried out into the hay.
"That's exactly right. Take it." His hand on my stomach slid up, found my breast again, squeezed as he rolled his hips, and I lost whatever composure I had left entirely.
"Every drop. Deep as I can get." He kept one arm locked around me, kept me pulled tight against his chest, no space between us, his mouth at my ear.
"You're going to be round with my baby, Millie.
Right here on this land. And every time I walk into this barn I'm going to think about you exactly like this. "
"Gage—" His name came out wrecked.
"I know." He drove into me again, harder, and his hand tightened on my breast, tugging the nipple, and I felt the tension building fast and sharp.
"I know exactly what you need. Come on." His other hand slid from my hip to between my thighs, finding the spot that made my vision go white. "Give it to me."
I gave it to him.
It crashed through me all at once—loud and shaking and relentless, my whole body seized up and clenching around him, and he held me through it, both arms locked around me, immovable, murmuring low things against my neck that I couldn't fully parse but felt like mine and good and perfect.
He slowed…but he hadn’t come yet. He pulled me up flush to his chest, and I had to hitch my knee up onto the hay bale to keep him deep inside me. He actually snarled, then he pulled the neck of my dress—snapping a button, baring my breasts.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
What had I signed up for?
He spread his hand across my chest—both breasts, just holding them, feeling the weight of them in his palm like he was taking stock of something he planned to keep.
"God," he said. Low and rough. Not performative. Just true.
"Gage—"
"Hold on." He wasn't moving yet. Just looking, over my shoulder, at his hands on me. "Let me—"
He cupped my tits properly, one in each hand, and squeezed slow, and I felt him twitch inside me at his own doing.
"Perfect," he said. "You know that? These are—" He shook his head against my neck, like he didn't have the vocabulary for it, which was its own kind of flattering. "Perfect."
"They're just—"
"Don't." He pinched lightly in warning and I gasped. "Don't tell me they're just anything." His thumbs traced slow circles. "I've been thinking about them since the lobby of that clinic. Since you crossed your arms and tried to hide them from me in that lingerie."
I flushed. "You noticed that."
"I notice everything about you." He rolled my nipples between his fingers, unhurried, thorough, and I arched helplessly back into him. "Been noticing since the first time I saw you."
He started to move again—slow rolls of his hips, deep, barely pulling out, just rocking—and kept his hands exactly where they were. Working me. Learning me. His thumbs circling and pressing and occasionally pinching until I was making sounds I'd never made before in my life.
"Gonna be so full," he said, against my neck. "Right here." One hand left my breast to spread flat across my stomach, pressing in slightly, and I understood what he meant—not just right now but later, the fullness that would come later, the visible proof of all of this. "Gonna look incredible."
"Gage—"
"I mean it." His hand pressed a little more firmly against my lower belly, possessive and certain.
"Already thinking about it. Already want to see it.
" His mouth found my ear. "These—" his hands returned to my breasts, both of them, squeezing "—are going to be even fuller then.
You know that? Heavy." His hips rolled deeper and I choked on a breath. "Sensitive."
"Oh god—"
"Yeah." He sounded wrecked himself, barely holding it together.
"Thinking about that. Already. All day out there on that fence line, thinking about you in my house, in my mother's kitchen, and then thinking about—" He broke off, squeezed hard, and I cried out.
"Mine to take care of. All of it. Every part of you.
" His mouth dragged across my shoulder. "Mine to feed. Mine to take care of. Mine."
I was shaking.
"Please," I managed. "Please, I need—"
"I know what you need."
He drove forward hard and his hand slid back down between my thighs and I came for the second time with his hands full of me, his name on my mouth, his voice low in my ear telling me I was perfect, I was good, I was exactly right, I was his.
He followed me over this time—deep and still and shuddering, his arms crushing me back against his chest, his palms spread wide like he was trying to cover as much of me as possible all at once.
We stayed like that until the shaking stopped.
Until the dust settled back in the light.
Until I remembered my own name.
"Gage," I said finally.
"Mm."
"You snapped a button off my dress."
A pause.
"I'll buy you another dress," he said.
"You'll buy me another—" I laughed, helpless and a little hysterical. "It was my favorite dress."
"I'll buy you ten." He pressed his mouth to my shoulder, unhurried. "Every color."
I looked down at his hands still spread across my stomach and my chest, warm and heavy and entirely unashamed, and thought about what he'd said.
Mine to take care of.
The terrifying thing was that I didn't mind.
I didn't mind at all.