20. Bree
— ? —
Bree
The storm came out of nowhere.
One minute the sky was blue and clear, a perfect autumn afternoon that made you forget bad things existed. The next, dark clouds were boiling up from the west, and the wind had picked up, and I was running for the horse stable with my heart in my throat.
The air had changed. I could taste metal on my tongue, the metallic charge that came before a real storm. The leaves on the oak tree were flipping over, showing their pale undersides. The goats were already huddled in their shelter.
“Rafael!”
He was already there, securing the stall doors, moving with an efficiency that surprised me. He’d learned fast. He’d learned everything fast.
“The greenhouse tarp!” I shouted over the wind. “It’s not secured!”
“Go! I’ll finish here!”
I ran.
The wind was pushing against me now, gusting hard enough to make me stagger. Dust and leaves swirled in the air. The first fat drops of rain hit my face, cold and stinging.
The tarp was flapping wildly, threatening to tear free from its moorings. Three weeks of seedlings underneath. Three weeks of careful nurturing and temperature control and hope. Tomatoes for next season. Peppers. Herbs. Everything I’d planted in careful rows, all of it vulnerable.
I grabbed the nearest rope and pulled.
The wind fought me. The tarp billowed and snapped, nearly ripping the rope from my hands. My feet slid in the dirt.
Rafael appeared beside me seconds later. His hands found the tarp next to mine, and together we fought the wind, pulling, securing, wrestling fabric and rope into submission while the sky turned black above us.
“The corner!” I pointed. “It’s coming loose!”
He lunged for it. His hands covered mine on the rope, both of us gripping the same line, pulling in the same direction. The contact was incidental. Necessary. His chest pressed against my back as we hauled together, and I felt the heat of him even through the wind.
His breath was warm against my ear, and his arms bracketed mine, his strength adding to mine. For one suspended moment, we were a single unit, working together, moving together.
The tarp held.
We stood there for a moment, panting, his hands still over mine. The rain was coming harder now, soaking through my shirt, plastering my hair to my face.
“Stable,” I said. “Now.”
We ran.
The world had gone gray and wild. Rain drove sideways, so thick I could barely see three feet ahead. Thunder cracked overhead, close enough to feel in my chest. Lightning split the sky.
I didn’t see the mud until I was already in it. My foot hit the slick patch and went out from under me, and I went down hard, landing on my hands and knees in what felt like several inches of cold, wet earth.
“Bree!”
Rafael was there before I could get up. He grabbed my arm, pulled me to my feet, and then, without asking permission, scooped me over his shoulder and ran.
“I can walk!”
“You can walk later!”
His shoulder dug into my stomach. My face bounced against his back. It was undignified and ridiculous and I was too startled to fight it. Rain streamed down his back. His boots splashed through puddles, and his arm stayed locked around my thighs, holding me secure.
He carried me into the stable and set me on my feet in the relative shelter of the doorway. We were both soaked, dripping, covered in mud and rain. The power had died somewhere between the greenhouse and here, leaving only the gray storm-light through the windows.
The stable was dim and warm, filled with the smell of hay and horses. The animals were restless, shifting in their stalls, but safe. We’d gotten everything secured in time.
“Are you okay?” He was breathing hard, hands still on my arms. “Did you hit your head? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. I just slipped.”
“You went down hard. I saw it.”
“I’ve fallen in mud before, Rafael. I grew up on a farm.”
He laughed, breathless and relieved and undone, and the sound of it landed low behind my navel and pulled tight.
I was aware of him in a way I’d been fighting since he showed up in my town.
The wet cotton had gone see-through across his chest, and I could count every muscle it was failing to hide.
Rain ran down the column of his throat and disappeared under his collar, and I wanted to chase it with my tongue.
His forearms were still slick and corded from fighting the rope, and I hated my own body for cataloging them.
Don’t. He’s the man who left you laughing on national television.
You don’t get to want this. My thighs pressed together anyway.
My underwear was soaked through, and not from the rain.
His hands were still on my arms, his thumbs dragging slow circles into my skin, and I don’t think he even knew he was doing it.
And there, under the clinging fabric, a dark shape rode over his heart.
“What is that?”
His eyes followed mine downward, and his expression shifted.
“Open and see.”
My hands moved without permission. I reached for his shirt, worked the top button free, then the second. My fingers were clumsy with cold, trembling slightly. The fabric parted, revealing skin, muscle, the hollow at the base of his throat.
And ink.
My name. Written in elegant script, directly over his heart. brIANNA.
The letters were clear, precise, unmistakably intentional. And they didn’t look new. The edges had softened with time. The black had faded slightly to gray.
“When?” My voice came out hoarse.
“The moment I realized letting you go was the biggest mistake of my life.”
I stared at my name on his skin. At the evidence of a thing I hadn’t known existed. Four years of carrying this. Four years of wearing my name over his heart while I hid from him with his daughter.
My fingers traced the letters. His skin was warm despite the rain. I felt his heartbeat under my palm, quick and heavy.
“Rafael-”
“You don’t have to say anything. I didn’t show you to guilt you or pressure you. I just wanted you to know. That you’re not a phase. That you’ve never been a phase. That I’ve been yours, completely and irrevocably, since the day you walked into that conference room at twenty-seven.”
The stable was dark and warm and smelled of hay and horses. The rain hammered on the roof. We were alone, truly alone, for the first time since he’d arrived in Marigold.
The last thread of my restraint snapped.
I shoved him.
He stumbled backward, surprised, and I followed, pushing again, driving him toward the empty stall behind him. His back hit the hay bales stacked against the wall, and he sat down hard, looking up at me with wide eyes.
“Bree-”
“Shut up.”
I climbed onto him.
My knees bracketed his hips and my hands found his shoulders. I looked down at him, at my name inked over his heart, at the man who’d broken me and come back and kept coming back.
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you.”
He agreed instantly, breathless, ready to sign off on anything I put in front of him, and the raw power of that went straight to my head.
“Understood.”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes ma’am,” he breathed.
“Keep your hands in the hay. Don’t move them.”
He gripped the hay on either side of him, knuckles going white. His chest was heaving, his eyes gone dark.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to stop thinking.”
I kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle. I didn’t want gentle. I wanted to consume, to punish, to take my own pleasure for once after years of giving everything away. My teeth found his lower lip, and I bit, not softly, and he groaned against my mouth.
He tasted like rain. His stubble scraped my chin. His whole body strained toward me, every muscle tight with the effort of staying still.
“Bree-”
“I said shut up.”
His hands stayed where I’d put them, locked in the hay. He was shaking. I could feel it under me, the fine tremor running through his body.
I pulled back enough to tear at his shirt, yanking it open the rest of the way, baring his chest completely. My name stared back at me. I traced the letters with my fingertip, and he made a sound, raw and desperate.
“Four years,” I said. “You’ve had this for four years.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to know.”
I kissed my name on his skin. His whole body jerked. The muscles of his stomach clenched. I felt his hips try to move beneath me and pressed down, pinning him.
“Bree, please-”
“Please what?”
“Please touch me. Please let me touch you. Please anything, I’ll do anything, just-”
“Hands stay where they are.”
I sat back on his thighs and pulled my own shirt over my head. His eyes dropped to my chest, to the wet sports bra clinging to my skin, and his jaw tightened.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I know.”
I unhooked my bra. Tossed it aside. Watched his face as he saw me, as the want transformed his expression into one almost pained.
“I’m going to come just looking at you,” he said. “If you don’t move soon.”
“You’ll come when I tell you to.”
“Yes ma’am.”
I reached down and found him through his jeans. He was hard, straining against the fabric. I squeezed, and he gasped.
“Good boy.”
The words came out without thinking. His whole body responded, hips bucking up against my hand, a sound escaping him that was close to a whimper.
I’d forgotten this, how responsive he was, how desperately he wanted to please. Some smug, furious part of me thought that he had broken me, and here he was coming apart because I’d told him to. I should’ve hated how good it felt. I didn’t.
I unbuttoned his jeans and shoved them down far enough to get my hand around his cock. He was already hard, already slick at the tip, and I stroked him slow and watched his face come apart.
“Bree. God, Bree.”
“What do you want?”
“You,” he breathed. “Only you. Always you.”
“Wrong answer.” I tightened my fist around him until the breath hissed out through his teeth. “Try again. Filthier.”
His eyes went dark. “I want you to ride me. I want you to use me until you’re finished. I want to feel you come around my cock.”
“Better.”
I stripped off the rest of my clothes, ungraceful and past caring, and he watched every second of it, hands fisted white-knuckled in the hay because I hadn’t told him he was allowed to touch.
“Can I-”
“No.”
I straddled him and sank down in one slow, greedy drop, taking every thick inch of him, the stretch of it dragging a groan out of me before I could bite it back.
“Fuck.” His head dropped back into the hay. “Oh, fuck, Bree.”
I set the pace. Hard, fast, exactly how I wanted it, chasing my own pleasure and letting him be the thing I took it on. When he tried to thrust up into me I slammed my palm flat to his chest and held him down.
“Stay still.”
“I can’t-”
“You can. Be a good boy and hold still while I take what I want.”
The sound he made was barely human. His fingers tore at the hay.
“You feel so-” he started.
“Did I say you could talk?”
He shut his mouth. I rode him harder, filthy and without mercy, grinding down until the tension in me was wound to the edge of snapping. Watching him shake under me, jaw locked, hanging on only because I’d ordered him to, was worth more than any apology he could’ve made.
I came with a cry I couldn’t swallow, clamping down around him hard enough that he swore, and I wrung every last second of it out of his cock without a shred of mercy.
“Now,” I gasped. “Come. You’ve earned it.”
He surged up and flipped me under him in the hay, and three brutal thrusts later he drove in deep and came with my name torn out of his throat, shaking apart against me.
For a moment neither of us moved, both of us wrecked and dragging in air.
The rain was still pounding on the roof. One of the horses whickered softly. The world outside felt distant. Unreal.
Then I pushed at his chest.
“Off.”
He rolled away immediately. I sat up, found my clothes, started pulling them on with shaking hands.
“We didn’t use a condom.” My voice came out flat. “I’m on the pill, and I’m clean.”
“I’m clean too.” He was watching me, his expression uncertain. “And I haven’t been with anyone.”
I paused, jeans half-buttoned. “Is Camille a ghost?”
“What?”
“Camille. Your COO. The woman you’ve been sleeping with for-”
“I’ve never been with her.”
I turned to look at him. He was still sprawled in the hay, shirtless, my name visible over his heart.
“She’s a colleague,” he said. “And I don’t like her, actually. I never have. She’s good at her job, but she’s cold, and I’ve never trusted her.” He sat up. “Why are you saying that?”
“Because you cheated on me with her.”
He went very still.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Rafael-”
“I didn’t.” He was on his feet now, reaching for his shirt. “That’s what you meant? All those years ago? When you said I cheated on you?”
“Yes.”
“I never touched her. I never wanted to touch her. I never looked at her with anything other than professional courtesy.”
“She showed me pictures.”
He froze. “What pictures?”
“Photos. Of you and her. In hotels, at dinners, in a bedroom. Dated across our whole marriage. She showed them to me in a fitting room and told me you’d been with her since the beginning.”
“That’s insane.” His voice was rising. “I don’t know what pictures she showed you, but they weren’t real. I never - Bree, I swear to you, I never touched her. Not once. Not ever.”
I stared at him. He didn’t look away.
“Then explain the photos.”
“I can’t explain photos I’ve never seen! But they’re fake. They have to be fake. Because I didn’t do what you’re accusing me of.”
Rain kept hammering the roof. The horses were shifting in their stalls. We stood in the dim light of the stable, half-dressed and breathing hard, four years of pain cracking open between us.
“I need to check on the greenhouse tarp,” I said.
“Bree-”
“Tomorrow. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.”
I walked out into the rain.