Chapter 15
Fifteen
Beau
I find my father in the tack room. He’s oiling a bridle. Hands steady. Quiet. The room smells of leather, oil and hay dust. Same smell it’s had since I was six years old, sitting on an overturned bucket watching him work. Some things don’t change. Some things you don’t want to.
“Got a minute?” I ask.
He doesn’t look up. “Always got a minute for you.”
I lean against the doorframe, cross my arms, trying to figure out how to say what I came here to say. I’m good with animals. Good with data. Good with silence. Not great with words. Never have been.
Dad keeps oiling. Patient. He’s never rushed a conversation in his life. Probably where I get it from.
“I’m gonna ask Ina to marry me.”
His hands stop. He looks up. Her sharp eyes, warm under, find mine.
“Well,” he says. “Took you long enough to say it.”
I almost smile. “You knew?”
“Son, I knew the second I saw you at that fair.” He sets the bridle down. Wipes his hands on a rag. Leans back in his chair. “I’ve watched you your whole life. You don’t react to much. Never have. Even as a kid …cool, quiet, somewhere else in your head. Your mama used to worry about it.”
“I know.”
“Then Ina Samba walks up to our booth and you damn near forgot your own name.” He shakes his head. Smiling now. The deep lines around his eyes creasing. “I looked at your brother and said, ‘That’s it. That’s the one.’.”
I grin wide. Can’t fucking help it.
Dad stands and walks to me. He’s still tall…not as tall as me now, but close. His shoulders, still broad. His hands, rough and strong. He puts one on my shoulder and squeezes.
“I like her. Her family’s good people. Solid.” He pauses, his hand tightening. “And I’ve never seen you this happy. Not any of the years you were walking around like a man with a hole in his chest.”
My jaw works. Something tightens behind my ribs.
“She filled it,” he adds. “Didn’t she?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods. Pulls me in for a hug. Brief and hard. The kind of hug men like my dad and me exchange…all shoulder and grip and things that don’t need to be said out loud. He smells of leather and the land he’s worked for forty years.
When he pulls back, his eyes are bright. He clears his throat.
“You got a ring?”
“Yeah.”
“Good one?”
“Yellow diamond.”
His eyebrows lift. “Boy, that’s not cheap.”
I chuckle. “No, sir.”
He grins teasingly, still clapping my shoulder. “Your mama’s gonna lose her damn mind.”
I let out a short laugh. “That’s why I’m telling you first.”
He chuckles. “Smart man.” He points at me. “You call her daddy before you do it. He’ll want to know first.”
“Already did.” I went to see Mr. Samba as soon as they returned from their trip.
My father stops and looks at me, something shifting in his face—pride. The kind that makes his chin lift and his chest expand.
“That’s my boy,” he says quietly.
I drive to Ina’s that night with the ring in my glove box and a conversation I need to have before I get on one knee.
She’s on the porch when I pull up. My favorite version of her.
Bare feet. Shorts that show off her thick, gorgeous thighs.
One of my T-shirts…she keeps stealing them and I keep letting her because seeing her in my clothes does something to my brain that borders on feral.
The shirt hangs loose on her shoulders but stretches across her tits, her dark nipples pressing through the thin cotton.
Her braids are piled up messily on her head.
She’s holding her lemonade. Smiling at me before I’m even out of the truck.
My chest aches. Every time. Every fucking time I see this woman, something inside me cracks open wider.
I climb the steps. She tilts her face up for a kiss, and I give her one …
slow, deep, my hand cupping the back of her head, her braids soft under my fingers.
She tastes of lemon and sugar. Her free hand grabs my belt loop and tugs me closer.
I feel her breasts press against my stomach through the shirt.
My cock stirs. It always stirs. One kiss from this woman and my body’s ready to go.
“Hi,” she says against my mouth.
“Hi, baby.”
“You look serious tonight.”
“I’m always serious.”
“More serious than usual.” She pulls back and studies me. Her dark brown eyes…warm, sharp, seeing everything. Her full lips curved in a half-smile. “What’s going on in that big head of yours?”
I sit on the porch swing. Pull her down next to me.
She curls into my side…natural, easy, like we’ve been doing this for years instead of weeks.
Her bare thigh presses warm against my jeans.
Her head drops to my shoulder. I wrap my arm around her and breathe in the scent of her shampoo and her skin and my shirt on her body.
“I want to talk about something,” I say.
“Uh-oh.”
“Not, uh-oh.”
“When a man says ‘I want to talk about something’ in that voice, it’s always uh oh.”
I press my lips to the top of her head. “Just listen.”
She goes quiet. Her hand rests on my thigh. Her fingers curl against the denim. Waiting.
“Every time I say I want to put a baby in you, I mean it. Every time I come inside you and press deep and hold…”
She lifts her head off my shoulder. Looks at me. Her dark eyes are wide. Her lips are parted. I can see her pulse fluttering at the base of her throat.
“Beau…”
“I want kids with you. Not someday, not maybe.” I turn to face her.
Take her hand. Her small fingers in my big, rough palm.
“I want to watch your belly grow. Want to feel our baby kick. Want to be the man standing next to you in every room for the rest of your life.” I bring her hand to my mouth.
Kiss her knuckles. Her skin is soft and warm against my lips. “I want everything with you.”
Her eyes are filling. Her jaw working. She blinks, and a tear slips down her cheek. I catch it with my thumb.
“I’m thirty-eight,” she whispers. “What if I can’t…”
“Then we figure it out.”
“What if it takes a long time?”
“Good. More practice.”
She chokes out a laugh. Wet and shaky. “Be serious.”
“I am serious. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, I have you. And that’s all I need.” I hold her eyes. “But I’m telling you right now, baby. I want to try.”
Her breath catches, her pupils blow wide. Her thighs press together. That last line landed somewhere below her navel and detonated.
I lean closer, bringing my mouth to her ear, and feel her shiver. Her nipples hardening through my shirt. “I want to breed you. Put a baby in you and watch you carry it. Watch your tits swell. Your belly grow. Your whole body change because of what I did to it.”
She makes a sound. Low. Desperate. Her hand tightens on my thigh …her nails digging through the denim.
“You want that?” I murmur against her ear. My hand slides to her stomach. Presses flat. Feeling the soft warmth of her belly through the cotton. “You want me to make you a mama again?”
“Yes,” she breathes. “God, Beau. Yes.”
Something cracks open in my chest. And my cock is granite against my zipper.
I pull her into my lap and she comes easily…
her thick thighs straddling mine on the porch swing, her hands on my shoulders, her ass heavy in my lap, my cock pressing hard against the heat between her legs.
The swing creaks under our weight. Her dark eyes looking down at me, full lips parted. Her braids falling around her face.
She’s so fucking beautiful. Every time I think I’ve gotten used to it, she looks at me a certain way and it hits me all over again.
“Inside,” she moans. “Now, before my parents come back from their dinner in town.”
I carry her with my hands under her thick thighs, her legs around my waist, her mouth on my neck. I kick the screen door open. Walk through the house. Up the stairs. Down the hall. Into her bedroom.
I lay her on the bed. Pull my shirt off her body, smelling like her under my cedar, and look at her. Bare. Brown skin against white sheets. Heavy tits with dark nipples already tight. Her belly, soft and round. Her wide hips, thick thighs parted, the thin fabric of her shorts damp between her legs.
This body. This woman. The future mother of my children.
“Get them off,” I say, nodding at her shorts.
She shimmies them down. Panties too. Lies back. Fully naked. Watching me with her dark eyes. Her chest rising and falling. Her pussy glistening. Swollen. Ready.
I strip. Her eyes track down my body…my chest, my stomach, lower. They lock on my cock. Hard. Thick. Already leaking. She licks her lips. That unconscious little flick of her tongue across her full bottom lip that makes my cock jump.
I climb over her. Cage her in. My arms, on either side of her head. My cock resting heavy against her slick folds. Her heat against my shaft. We both moan.
“Look at me,” I say.
She does. Her brown eyes on my gold ones. No walls. No fear. Just want and trust and something so big it doesn’t have a name yet.
“We’re doing this,” I say.
“We’re doing this,” she whispers.
I push inside her. Slow. Deep. All the way. Watching her face the entire time …her mouth falling open, her eyes going glassy, her hands gripping my arms. I bottom out and hold. Buried. Full. My cock pulsing inside her. Her pussy gripping me like she never wants to let go.
“Feel that?” I rasp. “That’s your man. Inside you. Where he belongs.”
“Beau…” Her voice breaks. Her eyes are wet.
“I’m gonna fill you up, baby.” I pull back slow. Push in deep. She gasps. “Gonna breed this beautiful pussy.” Again. Deeper. “Give you everything.”
I fuck her slow. Slower than I’ve ever fucked her. Every stroke deliberate. Every thrust reaching as deep as I can go. My hand flat on her belly…feeling myself move inside her. My mouth on hers…swallowing her moans, her gasps, her whispered pleas.
This is different. We both know it. This isn’t heat, or hunger, or desperation. This is a man putting a baby in the woman he loves. And treating every second of it like it’s sacred.
“Come for me, Ina,” I murmur against her lips. My thumb finds her clit. Circles slow. “Come on my cock while I breed you.”
She sobs, her whole body arching into mine, pussy clenching in deep, rhythmic waves. Her arms wrapping around my neck. Holding me. Holding on.
I follow. Grinding deep. Pressing as far inside her as I can get. My cock throbbing, pulsing, filling her. I feel every pulse. Every furious rush. My forehead against hers. My eyes open. Hers open. Both of us watching each other come apart.
I stay inside her after. Don’t pull out. Don’t move. Just lie there, buried deep, my weight on my elbows, my hands in her hair, my mouth pressing slow kisses to her forehead. Her cheeks. The tears on her eyelashes. The corner of her smile.
“Beau?” she whispers.
“Yeah, baby?”
“If we just made a baby on my childhood room…”
I laugh. Low. Full. My chest shaking against hers. She grins up at me…wet eyes, swollen lips, looking thoroughly fucked and completely happy.
“At least we made it to the bed,” I remind her.
“Barely.”
“Still counts.”