Chapter 5 Beau
Five
Beau
It’s been hours. I’ve fed the stock. Checked heifers. Run bloodwork on a new stud. And my fingers still carry the ghost of her. Sweet, musky, warm. The feel of my woman embedded in my skin like a brand.
I bring my hand to my face at the kitchen table like a goddamn psychopath and breathe in.
I’ve always known things early. It’s a curse.
Born with a high IQ and low patience for bullshit.
Skipped a grade. Graduated top of my class.
Went on to study behavioral genetics and animal husbandry, then got recruited to a research position at Cornell.
Youngest in the department. Published papers.
Had a future mapped out in a world of labs and lecture halls and people who thought being smart was the same as being whole.
It wasn’t.
I spent four years in New York feeling like I was living someone else’s life.
Dating women who liked the idea of me…the tall Texan with the brain and the body.
None of them saw me. Not really. They saw the resume.
The novelty. One of them, Claire, lasted almost a year.
Smart, ambitious, beautiful. When she told me she loved me, I felt nothing.
Not a goddamn thing. I ended it the following week.
She called me cold. Maybe she was right.
I came home because the land made more sense than people did. Because my dad needed help. Because I was tired of performing a version of myself that didn’t fit. Back on the ranch, I could breathe. Work with my hands. Be quiet without someone asking what was wrong.
I stopped looking. Stopped trying. Figured whatever was missing wasn’t something a woman could fix. My brothers dated. Married. Had kids. I watched and felt happy for them and nothing for myself.
Then Ina Samba walked into that fair with her thick thighs and her wide smile and a scent that hit the back of my throat. And every dead thing inside me woke up screaming.
I’ve had her twice now. Twice I’ve felt her come apart on my hand…shaking, gasping, clenching around my fingers so tight my vision blurred. Twice I’ve tasted her, then walked away.
And it’s fucking killing me.
I sat in my truck at the end of her driveway the first night for ten minutes.
Hands on the wheel. Jaw locked. Cock throbbing so hard against my zipper it hurt.
Every cell in my body, screaming to turn around.
But she needed to sit with it. Needed to replay what I gave her and realize no one else was ever going to make her feel like that.
Today was worse. Watching her try to hold herself together at the ranch. That tense jaw, stiff shoulders. Yeah, I noticed. My girl putting on armor before walking into my territory. And then falling apart the second I got my hands on her.
The taste of her is still on my tongue. Hours later and I can’t get it out of my mouth. Don’t want to. I skipped lunch because nothing’s gonna taste as good as she did and I don’t want to dilute it.
That’s insane. I know that’s insane. I don’t care.
What I can’t stop thinking about is the moment she turned around in that pen.
After she came. After I held her up because her legs were done.
She looked at my face…really looked…and I watched something shift behind her eyes.
She saw what she does to me. Saw that I wasn’t calm.
Wasn’t in control. That touching her breaks me open just as much as it breaks her.
And then she kissed me back. Not just let me kiss her…she kissed me back. Soft. Searching. Like she was tasting something she wasn’t sure she was allowed to have.
That kiss told me everything. She wants this.
She’s just terrified. And I know why. I don’t know the details yet, but I know the shape of the wound.
A woman who flinches when a man gets too close didn’t get that way from nothing.
Someone taught her that. Someone broke her trust so bad she wrapped herself in barbed wire and called it independence.
I’ll wait. As long as it takes. I’ll take her walls apart one by one with my bare hands if I have to. But I’m not rushing her. When she comes to me…all the way, no holding back…it’ll be because she chose it. Not because I pushed.
I’m sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, staring into my cold coffee when my mother gives me the look. She’s been giving it to me for the last hour. Wiping down the same counter. Rearranging the same dish towels. Watching me not eat her biscuits, which is a crime in this house.
“You feeling alright, baby?” she asks.
“Fine, Mama.”
“Mmhm.” She doesn’t believe me. Smart woman. “You’ve been sitting there like somebody died. Or somebody lived and you don’t know what to do about it.”
I almost smile. Almost.
My brother, Levi, walks in, rummaging through the fridge like a raccoon. “You coming out tonight?” he asks, mouth already full. “Tonya said she’s bringing Ina to line dancing. Saw it on her story.”
My head snaps up.
Ina. Out tonight. In a bar. In whatever she’s going to wear. With her hips and her laugh and that scent that’s still on my goddamn head.
My mom’s eyes flick to me. She clocks the reaction. Says nothing. But her mouth twitches.
Mack leans in the doorway, arms crossed. “You gonna sit here like a lovesick creep, or come out and shoot your shot?”
I stare at them both.
I should stay. Give her space. Give her a night without me showing up and putting my hands on her like I own her.
Yeah, fuck that.
I stand. Grab my hat.
Levi grins. “That’s more like it.”
Mack slaps my back as we head out the door.
Mama calls after me, “Bring her by for dinner soon, Beau.”
I don’t answer. But I’m smiling when I climb in my truck. I’m going to see my woman.