Chapter 20
20
Essie
F or once, I let go first.
Maybe because for the first time in my life, someone gave me exactly what I needed. Not what they thought I should have. Not something less than I wanted. For the first time, I wasn’t left wondering why I always asked for too much, why I tried to give too much.
Brax didn’t make me feel like too much. He made me feel like it was enough .
I felt…full.
And that terrified the ever-living bejeezus out of me.
Because I knew what it was like to be empty. I remembered how it felt when Brax shut me out fifteen years ago. He would do it again. He would remember I was too much. It was just a matter of time.
I might as well prove it .
I figured I wouldn’t even have to try very hard. Just be myself, but turn it up a notch.
I was all the more determined because he was being so goddamned sweet to me after the postcard incident with my dad. And that was unacceptable. One thing I could not ever tolerate was pity, and coming from Brax, it was even more galling. Sometimes girls had shitty fathers. So what? It wasn’t like I was seeking male attention at strip clubs to validate my self-worth. I was fine .
I had years of experience getting under Brax’s skin. Years of learning which buttons to push to yield maximum aggravation. It should have been a piece of cake.
When he came home one evening to find me on the couch watching one of my favorite movies and plopped down beside me, I took the opportunity to provide a running commentary of every single thought I had ever possessed about this movie and anything remotely relevant to it. That kind of thing had driven him crazy in high school. He used to threaten to stuff one of his dirty hiking socks in my mouth if I couldn’t shut up.
But he fucking smiled at me and asked if I wanted popcorn.
Popcorn!
And then somehow, I found my legs on his lap while he worked out the knots in my calves that came from hours in the saddle, while I bit the palm of my hand to hold back my screams because his strong thumbs digging into my tight muscles was a pleasure that mingled with pain, and unfortunately, that was exactly how I liked it.
The next morning, he offered me a ride to Lodestar, since he needed to head out there anyway to take care of some ranch paperwork.
“But then I have to leave when you leave,” I protested. “I was planning on putting in a long day.”
“It’s fine. I’m bringing my laptop, so I can just work from there. I’ll stay as long as you need me to.”
I scowled. Why was he being so dang nice?
“I guess that’s okay,” I said.
He grinned. “Much obliged to you for finding it in your heart to allow me to drive you to work. Mighty kind of you.”
It was our usual back-and-forth. But now it felt different. We had always teased each other, even when we were best friends. Back then, it was all good-natured. After the day he almost died, he stopped it all together, and anytime I tried to poke fun at him, he simply walked away. It wasn’t long after I stopped trying to get a reaction from him that he started needling me again, but there was a rougher edge to the teasing.
Now that edge was gone again.
I didn’t know what to make of it. If he kept this shit up, I might start to wonder if he actually liked me. I didn’t want to wonder. Wonder led to hope, and hope led to heartbreak .
Around noon Brax poked his head into Pirate’s stall, where I was giving him a rubdown after our morning session. “You hungry? Dad’s making sandwiches at the main house for lunch.”
I wasn’t in the mood to play one big happy family with Brax’s dad and brothers. I was in a shitty mood, and the nicer Brax was to me, the more on edge I felt. “I’m good here.”
My stomach growled because I was starving. Ted made awesome sandwiches and it annoyed me that I had to turn it down. Closing Pirate’s stall behind me, I headed for the breakroom. There might be a leftover donut or something. James and the ranch hands tended to bring in a lot of treats to share.
Brax followed me. “I could go get the sandwiches and we could eat them outside. It’s a nice day.”
“I’m having a donut.” To prove my point, I flipped open the box, selected a glazed, and took a big bite.
The muscle in his jaw tweaked. “You can’t just eat a donut for lunch, Essie. You’re going to be working, what, another five or six hours? You’ll bonk.”
He was right. I knew he was right. But I couldn’t back down now.
I took another bite.
The muscle in his cheek popped even harder. With an aggravated grunt, he grabbed an apple from the bin, rinsed it off, and handed it to me. “At least eat an apple with it. ”
“Thanks, Mom,” I muttered, taking the apple and brushing past him.
He followed me, which was a problem because the only place I was going was away from him. I headed out of the barn and wandered aimlessly toward the pasture. Maple, a pretty chestnut mare, greeted me at the fence. I gave her the apple and she lipped it up.
Behind me, Brax growled.
“Why the hell are you so ornery?” he demanded. “You’ve been in a bad mood for a week.”
“My mood is fine when you’re not around,” I snapped.
Annoyance darkened his blue eyes, and for a moment I thought I had finally broken him. This was the moment he was going to walk away. But then his expression shifted and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “All right. Tell me what I did so I can fix it.”
Goddammit. Now I felt bad.
“Why?” I asked. “What’s the point?”
The look on his face suggested I was in serious danger of being throttled. “Happy wife, happy life, right?” he said with a sardonic edge to his voice.
“You wouldn’t know how to make a woman happy even if she was sitting on your face,” I muttered.
He stilled. “What did you say?”
“I said…” My voice trailed off as I realized that there was no way in hell I could repeat myself. Self-preservation lodged the words deep in my throat. You’ re in danger, girl .
“I know what you said.”
His words were both a promise and a threat and I shivered in the Colorado sunshine.
For a moment we simply stared at each other.
And then?—
“Fuck it,” he growled.
He came right at me. I backed up and kept backing up until my back hit the fence post, and still he kept coming, not stopping until he was so close I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
And promptly wished I hadn’t.
Good lord, this man was going to eat me alive. And I was going to let him do it.
“You’ve put me in an awkward position, hellion.” He dropped to his knees right there in the tall brown grass. “You know how much I love being right. But you love proving me wrong. So if I eat this pussy until you scream my name, will you be happy? Or will you be mad that I’m right? It’s a paradox.”
I could feel the heat of his hands through the thin material of my leggings as he glided his wide palms up my legs, stopping at the crease of my pelvis. His hands were so broad that his thumbs could graze the cleft of my pussy if he put his mind to it. But he wouldn’t. Not here, not out in the open like this. Would he? “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”
His lips quirked. “Oh, we’ll know.”
And then he caught hold of the waistband and dragged my leggings down to my ankles. Goose bumps broke out on my bare legs as I stared down at him, dumbfounded. He had really done it.
His hands swept up my thighs, under my sweater. “You’re not wearing underwear.” He sounded almost angry, and a whole lot desperate.
“I hate panty lines,” I admitted. “I never wear underwear with leggings.”
He muttered something under his breath about never letting me leave the house like that again. His thumb swiped the cleft of my pussy. “Fuck, you’re wet.”
“I’ll wear what I want,” I said, breathless from what his hands were doing to me, but still not too breathless to argue. “Anyway, who cares? No one will know if I have underwear on or not.”
His hands stopped and I wanted to kill him. His blue eyes glittered up at me like shards of ice. “ I’ll know.”
Goodness. My hips bucked, demanding more attention from his clever fingers.
He had the audacity to laugh. “Do you know what I think, hellion?”
I frowned down at him. “No, but I’m sure you’re about to bore me with the details.”
He laughed again, deeper this time. “I think you like this. I think you get off on fighting with me.” He slipped a finger inside me and my pussy clenched around him. “Because you keep running your mouth, but your pussy keeps getting wetter. You’re fucking soaked, hellion. ”
Oh, god. He wasn’t wrong. “Stop talking,” I ground out. “You’re ruining it.”
His smug grin flashed up at me. “The only thing I’m going to ruin is this perfect pussy for other men. Grab the fence, honey.”
And before I could think of anything smart to say—and it would have been a long, long time before anything came to mind—he wrapped his hands around the back of my bare thighs and hoisted me in the air, tossed my legs over his shoulders, and wedged himself between my body and my leggings. Because apparently uptight Brax didn’t care about things like grass stains on the knees of his jeans or muddy heel marks on the back of his clean shirt.
Well, damn. I was already impressed, and he hadn’t even put his mouth on me yet.
But he was going to.
Out here. Where anyone could find us.
A breeze lifted my hair and swirled it around my shoulders. The wood fence rail bit into my shoulder blades. Suddenly it was all too real.
“Brax,” I said uncertainly.
“No,” he bit out. “Don’t…don’t tell me to stop. I’ve waited so long. Tell me yes. Just this once, say yes to me.”
I looked at the man kneeling in front of me, the man who had broken my heart and held me together, and gave him the only answer I could .
“Yes,” I breathed.
His teeth nipped the sensitive skin of my inner thigh and I nearly lost my hold on the fence. I whimpered and shifted my hips, worried that I was going to go tumbling to the ground.
“Hush,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
Then he pressed his face against me, he made a sound of pure contentment, and he breathed .
And I breathed with him.
It was like the world expanded in that moment. The jagged mountain peaks in the distance. The wide open sky above us, brilliant with sharp sunlight. The sting of cold on my cheeks and the encompassing warmth of his body. The hum of the breeze rustling the grass. I was part of all of it. I felt all of it.
Then he licked me, the world contracted, and all I felt was him.
His breath, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth.
My pleasure.
Because, sweet mother of all things holy, his mouth .
His goddamn mouth.
It was like I was being consumed by him. Completely devoured. Like he couldn’t get enough. His hands dug into my butt cheeks, cupping me to his hungry mouth like a chalice.
I ground against him, needing more, and then immediately pulled back, worried that I had asked for too much. But he made an encouraging, eager sound and sucked harder at my clit. Sweet heavens, the pleasure was unrelenting.
My head tipped back on a moan, my hands gripping the fence rail so tightly I could feel it start to give, and I came in wave after wave.
And it was the stupidest thing.
Because as he gently set me back down to earth on shaky legs, I swiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, and it came away wet.
I was crying.