32. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
I find him at four o’clock, just like I promised.
He’s at the creek, the one that runs through the bottom pasture, sitting on the bank with his boots off and his jeans rolled up, his feet in the water. The sun is going down, painting everything gold and amber, and when he hears me coming through the grass, he turns.
The smile that breaks across his face makes my chest ache.
“You came.”
“I said I would.”
I sit down next to him and pull off my own boots. The water is cold, shocking against my skin, and I gasp.
“It gets better,” he says. “Give it a minute.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve been sitting here marinating.”
“Marinating.” He laughs. “That’s a new one.”
We sit in silence for a while, our feet in the water, our shoulders almost touching. The creek murmurs past us, catching the fading light. I can hear the ranch settling into the evening. Trucks pulling out, horses being put up, the ordinary sounds of the life we’re trying to rebuild.
“Why didn’t you ever bring me here?” I ask.
“You never asked.”
“I’m asking now.” I turn to look at him. “About everything. I want to know everything.”
He holds my gaze. In this light, his eyes are more gold than brown, open in a way I haven’t seen in years.
“I was scared,” he says. “I don’t know. Maybe you might not like it and will try to change it.
It’s stupid of course. I kept things from you because keeping things was easier than sharing them.
Now I want you to have all of it.” He reaches over and takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine.
“Every secret. Every hidden place. Every part of me I kept locked away.”
I look at our joined hands. His are rough, calloused from a week of tearing down a barn and building something new. Mine are rough too from years of working with horses, years of building something that was supposed to be ours.
“I love you,” I say.
The words come out simple. No qualifications or conditions. Just the truth I’ve been carrying for months, finally set free.
His breath catches. “Scarlett-”
“I’m not done.” I squeeze his hand. “I love you, and I’m tired of being careful. I’m tired of waiting for you to prove something or earn something. I just want you. The way you are. Right now.”
“I haven’t finished the barn.”
“I don’t care about the barn.”
“I haven’t earned-”
“Beck.” I let go of his hand and reach for his face instead, cupping his jaw, making him look at me. “Shut up and kiss me.”
He kisses me.
He kisses me like he’s been drowning and I’m air, like he’s been starving and I’m the only thing that could fill him up. His hands come up to my hair, pulling me closer, and I lose my balance, tipping toward him, and then we’re lying in the grass with his weight pressing me into the earth.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he says against my mouth. “Every day. Lying on your couch thinking about you in the next room, wanting to come to you so badly I couldn’t sleep-”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because you needed to heal. Because I was trying to be patient.” He pulls back just enough to look at me, and his eyes are dark, hungry. “I’m done being patient.”
“Good.”
He kisses me again, deeper this time, his tongue sliding against mine. His hand finds the hem of my shirt and slips underneath, and the feel of his palm against my bare skin makes me gasp.
“Tell me to stop,” he says against my throat. “Tell me to stop and I will.”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
He growls and then he’s pulling my shirt over my head, unhooking my bra, and his mouth is on my breast before I can catch my breath.
“Beck- oh God-”
“I’ve been thinking about this.” His tongue circles my nipple, and I arch off the ground. “Every time you walked past me in that kitchen. Every time you bent over to pick up Josie. Every time you looked at me with those eyes-”
“What about my eyes?”
“They tell me everything.” He switches to my other breast, and I moan. “They told me you wanted this. Even when you were pretending you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t pretending.”
“You were.” He kisses down my stomach, his hands working at the button of my jeans. “You were being so careful. So controlled. And I kept thinking about what it would be like when you stopped.”
He pulls my jeans down, taking my underwear with them, and then I’m naked in the grass with the last of the sunlight on my skin and Beck Cooper kneeling between my thighs.
“Look at you,” he breathes. “Jesus, Scarlett. Look at you.”
“Beck-”
“I’m going to taste you now.” He spreads my thighs wider, settling between them. “And then I’m going to fuck you right here in the grass. And you’re going to scream my name so loud they hear it at the barn.”
“We’re outside, someone could-”
“No one comes down here.” He lowers his mouth to me, and the first touch of his tongue makes me cry out. “No one but us.”
He eats me like he’s been starving for it. Long, slow licks that make my toes curl, then fast, focused attention on my clit that has me grabbing fistfuls of grass. He slides two fingers inside me, curving them just right, and I’m already close, embarrassingly close, after only minutes.
“I’m going to-”
“Do it.” His voice is muffled against my flesh. “Come on my tongue. I want to taste it.”
I shatter. The orgasm tears through me, my back arching, my thighs clamping around his head. He works me through it, gentling his touch as the aftershocks roll through me, until I’m boneless and gasping.
He kisses his way back up my body, and when he reaches my mouth, I can taste myself on his lips.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” I manage.
“You want to fix that?”
I reach for his shirt, yanking it over his head. His chest is broader than I remembered, harder, all that work on the barn has changed him. I run my hands over the muscles, feeling them flex under my touch.
“You’ve been working out.”
“I’ve been tearing down a barn with my bare hands.” He grins. “Same thing.”
I reach for his belt, and he sucks in a breath when my fingers brush against him through his jeans. He’s so hard, and when I finally free him, he groans like I’ve hurt him.
“Scarlett-”
“I want you inside me.” I wrap my hand around him, stroking slowly. “Now.”
“Yes ma’am.”
He positions himself at my entrance, and I wrap my legs around his waist, and then he’s pushing inside me in one long, slow stroke that steals my breath.
“There she is,” he says, and his voice is wrecked, broken open. “There’s my girl.”
He starts to move. Slow at first, savoring it, watching my face like he’s memorizing every reaction. But I don’t want slow. I dig my heels into his ass and pull him deeper, and he gets the message.
“Harder,” I say. “I need-”
“I know what you need.”
He gives it to me. Hard and fast, his hips snapping against mine, one hand braced in the grass beside my head and the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise.
The sounds we’re making are obscene and I don’t care, I don’t care about anything except the feeling of him inside me, filling me up, making me whole.
“I love you,” he says between thrusts. “I love you. I never stopped. I’m never going to stop-”
“Beck-”
He slows down, just enough to make me whine.
“I love you.” I pull his face down to mine, kiss him hard. “I love you, I love you-”
He moves again, and this time there’s nothing controlled about it. He’s chasing his own pleasure now, and I’m right there with him, climbing toward something that feels like falling.
“Come with me,” he says. “I want to feel you come around me.”
I do. The orgasm hits me like a wave, dragging me under, and I hear myself crying out his name so loud, exactly like he promised. He follows me over with a groan that rumbles through his chest, and I feel him pulsing inside me, filling me up.
We lie there in the grass, tangled together, breathing hard. The sky is purple now, the first stars beginning to show. The creek murmurs beside us.
“I’m not afraid of disappearing anymore,” I say.
“Why not?”
“Because you see me.” I trace his cheekbone, his jaw, the corner of his mouth. “You finally see me.”
“I see you,” he says. “I’m going to keep seeing you. Every day. For as long as I live.”
I pull him down and kiss him.
“That’s all I ever wanted,” I say. “To be seen.”
“I know.” He rolls onto his back and pulls me against his chest. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”
“You’re here now.”
“I’m here now.”
We stay until the stars come out, two people who finally found their way home.