30. Ellie
— ? —
Ellie
We barely make it through the door.
His mouth is on mine before the door even shuts all the way. I push his shirt up and get my hands on his skin while he walks me backward until my back hits the wall of the house I grew up in. We kiss hard enough to hurt. I bite his lip. He groans and licks the sting away.
“Bedroom,” I manage. “The mattress is in the bedroom.”
He lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist and he carries me down the hall without breaking the kiss except to breathe. We go down onto the air mattress together. It squeaks loud under us and we both laugh into each other’s mouths, the sound surprised and a little helpless.
“Ellie.” He pulls back just enough to see my face. “Are you sure?”
“I got sure somewhere between the gate and here.” I hold his face in both hands. “I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of believing it. Of being wrong about you twice.”
“You’re not wrong.” His voice is rough. “I swear to you. Not this time.”
We undress each other slow. He takes the pins out of my hair one by one and sets them on the windowsill. I unbutton his shirt and push it off his shoulders, then kiss the bruise on his ribs, soft and careful. He sucks in a breath.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore.”
I kiss the bruise again, then the skin right beside it.
He gets my dress down and off. My bra follows.
He kisses my collarbones, the tops of my tits, the space between them, while I work his jeans open.
We keep kissing the whole time. Every new inch of skin gets a mouth on it before we move to the next piece.
When we’re both naked he sits back against the wall and pulls me into his lap so we’re face to face. My knees are on either side of his hips. His cock is hard between us, pressed against my stomach. I wrap my hand around it and stroke him slow while we kiss.
He reaches between us and slides two fingers through my pussy, spreading how wet I am. He rubs my clit in slow circles and I rock against his hand.
“I love you,” he says against my mouth. “I need you to hear it now. Not because it fixes anything. Because it’s true.”
“I love you too.” I kiss him again, deeper. “I never stopped. Even when I hated you.”
He lines his cock up and I sink down on him in one slow push. We both make a sound. I’m so full I have to breathe through it. He stays still, letting me adjust, one hand on my lower back and the other cupping my tit, thumb brushing over my nipple.
I start to move. Slow rolls of my hips at first. He meets me, thrusting up in these steady, deep strokes that make me feel every inch.
While he fucks me he keeps doing things with his hands.
He squeezes my tit, rolls the nipple between his fingers.
He slides his other hand down and rubs my clit with two fingers in time with his thrusts.
He kisses my mouth, then my jaw, then down to suck on the side of my neck.
“Fuck, your pussy feels so good,” he says low against my throat. “So tight around my cock. I think about this every night. About being inside you like this.”
I moan and ride him a little faster. He doesn’t let me speed up too much. He keeps the rhythm slow and deep, thrusting up while his fingers keep working my clit and his mouth moves to my tits. He sucks one nipple into his mouth, tongue flicking, and I clench around him so hard he groans.
“I love you,” he says again, voice wrecked. “I love you. God, Ellie, I love you.”
“I love you.” I hold his face and kiss him while we move. “Don’t stop. Right there.”
He keeps thrusting, keeps rubbing my clit, keeps sucking on my tits and kissing my mouth, and he can’t pick one place to be. The pressure builds and builds until I’m shaking. He feels it. He presses his forehead to mine and looks at me the whole time.
“Look at me,” he says. “Stay with me. Right here.”
I do. I keep my eyes on his while he fucks me through it, while his fingers push me over.
I come hard around his cock, pulsing, and he keeps moving, keeps rubbing me through every wave.
Only when I’m gasping and clenching does he let go.
He thrusts up deep one last time and comes with a low groan, cock pulsing inside me, his hand still between us and his mouth on mine.
We stay like that for a long minute, breathing against each other’s mouths, his cock still inside me, his fingers gentle on my clit now, just stroking soft while we come down.
He kisses me slow and deep, then softer, just little presses of his mouth while his hands keep touching me, my back, my hips, the side of my breast.
“The porch rules still stand,” I say later, when we’re lying side by side and the air mattress has stopped squeaking and my heart has stopped racing. “These are the terms.”
“Name them.”
I turn onto my side so I can see his face. He turns too, mirroring me, one hand reaching out to rest on my hip.
“Fridays are mine. Every Friday. No calving, no fences, no emergencies unless someone is actively dying.”
“Done.”
The word comes out immediately. No hesitation, no negotiation, no “let me think about it.” Just done. I’ve heard him haggle a cattle buyer down for an hour over a hundred dollars a head. He’s not haggling.
“You say it every day. Not just in bed. In the kitchen. In the truck. In front of Sue and the whole town.”
“Done.”
“Nobody sleeps under either roof without my yes first. Not a ranch hand, not Jackson, not anybody. Our houses are ours.”
His hand tightens on my hip. I can see him thinking about this one, about Jackson, about the debt he’s felt his whole life, about what it means to put me first.
“Done,” he says, and his voice is steady.
“And you never take anybody’s word over mine again. Not a maid’s, not a friend’s, not the man who raised you. If I tell you it’s wrong, you believe me first and ask questions after.”
This is the hard one. This is the one that matters most, because this is what broke us, him believing Daphne, believing Jenna, believing anyone but me. I watch his face while he takes it in.
“Done,” he says. “I swear to you, Ellie. If you tell me the sky is green, I’ll believe you until I go outside and look for myself. And even then I’ll wonder if maybe I’m colorblind.”
I almost smile at that. Almost. It’s the first joke he’s made since the storm, and he made it lying naked on an air mattress with my terms in his mouth, and I put that away to keep.
“Those aren’t promises,” I say. “They’re terms. If you break one, I don’t leave. I stay, and I make you watch me stop loving you, and you’ll know the day it happens.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He holds my eyes and there’s no fear in them. No hesitation, no hedging, no escape hatch he’s keeping open just in case. “I understand and I’ll take it. Living without you isn’t living.”
I kiss him then, soft and slow. And then:
“One more thing.”
“What.”
“I want to try. For a baby.”
He goes still against me. His hand on my hip freezes. His eyes go wide. This is the question I asked him on the vanity in April, and he said we’ll talk about it, and I said same as everything else, and I’ve carried that answer around for two months.
“You mean that?”
“I’ve wanted it for a long time. I was scared to ask.” I touch his face, trace the line of his jaw. “Do you?”
“Yes.” The word comes out and it’s been waiting for years. “God, yes. I want kids. I want a family. I want all of it with you.”
“Then let’s build one.”
He pulls me in close and buries his face in my hair and says it again, quiet, muffled against my neck: “I love you.” And this time I don’t say anything back. I just let him have it.
***
I wake in the middle of the night and his side of the mattress is empty.
For one terrible second I’m back in our bedroom at the ranch, reaching for him in the dark and finding cold sheets, finding absence, finding all the ways he kept leaving me even when he was right there.
But then I hear him moving, and I turn, and he’s standing at the window looking out at the dark street.
“What’s wrong?”
He turns, and his face in the streetlight is soft in a way I’ve rarely seen. Unguarded. Young, almost, the boy he must have been before everything went wrong.
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m trying to remember every bit of it. So when I’m old I know exactly which night my life started making sense.”
He comes back to the mattress and pulls me in, and I fall asleep in his arms knowing that whatever comes next, whatever hard things are still ahead of us, we’ll face them together.