35. Clay
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Clay
Josie's fingers tangle in the front of my shirt as I kiss her harder beneath the porch light.
The ranch fades away. The crickets stop registering. Even my leg quits demanding attention.
All I can focus on is her.
She leans into me, her hand sliding up the back of my neck, kissing me with a kind of desperation that feels long overdue.
I understand that feeling.
The last few weeks have felt endless.
Every day seemed to pile another problem on top of the last.
The injury, the money, the loneliness, and the feeling that everybody else had figured life out while I kept making the same mistakes.
Then today happened.
Now she's here.
The twins are real.
And somehow, I'm kissing the woman I've been thinking about every night.
“Come inside,” I murmur against her mouth. “I want you.”
She follows me in, still kissing. I shut the door with my heel and pin her against it, my hands landing on either side of her head. We're both breathing hard, and she's laughing, kissing me.
My hands slip under her shirt, greedy, flattening against her ribcage. She's right here beneath my hands, and I still want more. I want closer than skin ought to allow, live in the hollow of her chest where her heart beats out that stubborn, impossible pace.
She fists the front of my shirt, dragging me back into another kiss, making a low, hungry sound that goes straight through me. I laugh despite myself, feeling shyer than I should.
“I need you, Clay,” she says, matter-of-fact. “Give me what I asked for.”
There's more to it than stubbornness; it's this thing in her that needs, that takes. Maybe because the world always did its best to tell Josie no.
Maybe she’s never learned that she could be loved in any other way except by forcibly taking, wanting, devouring. Even now, it doesn't scare me. It makes me want her even more.
I hook an arm around her waist and guide us into my old childhood bedroom. Once inside, I back her toward the bed until her knees catch the mattress. She falls onto it with one arm flung above her head, hair wild, knees already drawing up.
“I missed you,” I say, and it comes out a gravelly rasp.
“Show me,” she says.
I crawl up after her, dragging her shirt up over her stomach, over the soft lantern curve of her breasts. The moonlight from the window silvers her skin. Out here, in my own house, in the bed where I learned to jerk off as a kid, Josie doesn't look entirely real.
I've spent days thinking about her, and somehow that still didn't prepare me for seeing her here.
I tug my shirt off, then push hers the rest of the way up, peeling it over her head, her arms raised in surrender, and pin her wrists to the pillow. She arches beneath me. The cool air sweeps goosebumps over her skin.
Her nipples are so hard I feel them tattooed against my tongue before my mouth even gets there. She shudders when I lick, a soundless gasp, and I could stay right here all night, at her chest, and never want for another thing.
But she’s wild for more. She yanks her wrists free, fumbles at my belt, not stopping for anything, not even to look at me.
She tears the button off my waistband. I let her. The pop of it hitting the floor is cartoonish, dumb, and somehow hilarious.
I’m grinning, and then she’s got hold of my cock through my briefs, nails raking, and I can’t choke back the little hitch that comes out of me.
I want to drag this out, but that’s never been possible with Josie. She's always thrown herself into things completely. I let her push me backwards so that I’m upright, and she follows by arching up and yanking her own jeans down.
Her hips lift, and I get a flash of her, the pale secret skin above her pussy, and then the jeans and panties are gone. She’s wearing nothing else. I watch her for a second, every inch, every inch of her, and I want to touch all of it. I must tell her so.
I run my palm up from her kneecap to her hipbone, catch all that unfamiliar wildness and say, “You’re beautiful.”
She snorts, gives me this look like she’s about to tell me to knock it off, but she doesn’t. She just swallows hard, chin trembling, and then she’s pulling at my waistband, shoving my underwear down, hand wrapping around me so tight I see stars. Every nerve in me burns for her.
It's always been like this. Me trying to hold on. Her making that impossible.
I press my mouth to her thigh, taste the salt of sweat and something else, the animal tang.
I want to eat her alive. She crooks a finger in my hair, guiding me down, and I let her.
I bury my face between her legs, and she opens for me, slick and hot beneath my mouth.
I drag my tongue slow, then faster, until she's all I can think about.
She’s writhing, hands fisted in my hair, and when she talks it’s all in broken gasps, a threat and a confession at once. “Don’t you dare stop.”
I nod against her thighs; I couldn’t if I tried. The ache in my bad leg is miles away, lost in the new ache everywhere else.
She tries to stay in control.
For a few seconds, she even manages it.
Then she loses the fight.
Her composure unravels all at once.
She comes so hard I think she might break me. One minute she’s jerking my head hard against her, grinding herself rough and wild, the next she’s grabbing my face, clinging, almost sobbing.
Her whole body bows up, rigid, and for a second, I think she’s going to punch me or shove me away, but she just lets the aftershocks ride through her, her whole body thrumming out its own storm warning.
When she finally lets go, she covers her face with both hands, laughing breathlessly and gasping, not sure if it’s a joke, a sob, or the sound of her finally letting herself want.
I watch the shiver and flush of her, the wildness settling into her bones, and it’s the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
She lies there, breathing, the two of us catching up to the moment. There’s sweat at her brow, a little bloom of color in her cheeks. She blinks at me from beneath the wild thicket of her lashes and somehow gathers herself enough to drag me up so our faces meet.
We kiss, slow for a second, and then she rakes my back with her nails, says, “Now you,” as if I could possibly hold out.
She wants me inside her. The part of me still capable of words tries to say something gentle, but all that comes out is a ragged, “Fuck, Josie.”
She grins at me from the pillow, face red and shining, and holds me steady by the base while she lines me up.
I ease inside her. She’s so wet and warm I have to stop and grit my teeth. My pulse kicks hard against my ribs. She fucks me with her eyes more than her body, the way she watches every flicker of pain or pleasure in my face.
Briefly I want to say ‘I love you’, but I bite it back, bite into her shoulder instead.
The old bedsprings creak with every movement, and the slippery wet noise every time I thrust into her. Her hair tangles in my facial hair, static crackles between us, and I angle my hips so she thrusts up for me, the tight heat of her making my vision blur.
When I reach underneath her, thumb circling the place where she’s swollen and sensitive, she nearly claws my shoulder off, and the helpless noise she makes vaults me right to the edge.
A tremor runs through her. Then another.
Her grip tightens. Her heartbeat is racing beneath my palm. Every breath comes faster than the last, and suddenly she's clutching at me with both hands, hanging on so hard it almost hurts.
She comes again, a rippling quake, head slammed back and teeth bared, fingers locked behind my neck like she’s holding on through a hurricane.
The release rolls through her in waves, each one stronger than the last. Her head falls back, her entire body arching as she clings to me, fingers locked behind my neck as though she's holding on through a storm.
Watching her come apart pushes me over the edge.
I’m gone.
I let myself go, come inside her with a coarse shout muffled against her hair, the heat and violence of it unspooling through the root of me until there’s nothing left, not even words, just the white out, the smallness, the hush.
We lie there, smashed together, panting. My limbs feel hollowed, my leg singing somewhere in the background.
Josie is limp, boneless, her face crumpled in exhaustion. I want to tell her I love her, that I always have, but instead I stroke the ridge of her spine, nuzzle her jaw as she drifts off.
Sleep ought to come easy for me after a day like this. But I lie on my back staring at the ceiling fan while my leg throbs in time with my heartbeat.
Beside me, Josie shifts closer in her sleep. Her hand ends up curled near her stomach, and my chest tightens.
Twins.
The word still feels too big.
I turn my head and look at her.
The moonlight catches the curve of her cheek, the dark sweep of her lashes, the crease between her brows that shows up whenever she's worried, even asleep.
She carried this by herself.
Doctor appointments, ultrasounds, and weeks of wondering what came next.
All while I was busy feeling sorry for myself in motel rooms and rodeo grounds.
I drag a hand over my face.
There's no version of tomorrow where I wake up and magically become the man she needs.
The last few months still happened.
She spent them learning how to prepare for life without me.
Hell, part of her still expects me to leave.
I can't blame her for that.
Trust isn't coming back because I said the right things on a porch swing.
It's going to take time, showing up, keeping my word when it's easier not to, being here next week and next month and six months from now.
The work of it feels intimidating as hell.
But when I look at Josie curled up beside me, I don't feel trapped or restless. I don't feel the urge to throw a bag in the truck and chase the next rodeo.
For years, every road out of town felt easier than staying. I'd blamed Buckhorn for that plenty of times. Blamed the ranch. The expectations. The feeling that everybody else had figured out where they fit while I kept coming up short.
Boone stayed.
Dallas stayed.
Nash stayed.
While they were building lives, I kept chasing the next ride, the next town, the next excuse to leave before anybody could expect more from me.
Maybe that's why they always seemed so sure of where they belonged.
They put down roots while I kept one foot aimed at the door.
But Mama's here, my brothers are here, Josie's here, and soon my kids will be here.
All this time I've been searching for a place that felt like home, and the whole damn thing's been sitting in front of me the entire time.