Chapter 20 #2
Sutton considers this. "He's going to be very happy."
"I know."
"More happy than me."
"Not a chance."
He accepts this and slides off my lap and goes to find his seat, already telling Darla about Bingo's vigil in a voice loud enough for the whole room to hear.
Darla listens. When he gets to the part about the gate, she tells him that Bingo was doing important work and he should go give him a biscuit after dinner.
Sutton nods like this is the correct answer.
We eat, and the room stays loud around us. I don't say much, neither does Cass, and that's fine. Better than fine. I've spent enough time in this dining hall reaching for her attention across a table to know what it means to have her right here.
***
The dining hall winds down slowly. The horsemanship group drifts out first. Nora stops at the door and looks back at Ellie and Bev.
"You two want to come over? I've got a bottle of wine that's not going to drink itself."
Ellie is already nodding. Bev says yes before she finishes the sentence. Luke holds the door for all three of them, and the group filters out into the evening.
The crew follows in ones and twos. Logan gets Sutton by the head and steers him toward the door while Sutton is still mid-sentence about Bingo.
"I’m telling Bingo you're back," Sutton says over his shoulder.
"Tell him I'll see him after dinner," I say.
Rhea heads out with a wave. Kade is last. He pauses at the door and looks back at me.
"Good to have you back," he says.
Then he's gone. Darla and Mandy close up the kitchen, lights going off in stages.
Cass and I are the last ones at the table. Neither of us is in a hurry. The room has gone quiet around us.
"I stopped at a diner in Big Timber on the way back," I say. "There was a sign in the window that said world's best pie."
"Was it?"
"It was the worst pie I've ever had in my life. I sent it back and ordered a burger. The Burger made me miss the pie."
She laughs. "The kittens figured out the porch steps while you were gone."
"All four of them?"
"Tornado figured it out first. The other three followed him up like it was a parade."
"Of course he did."
When we finally walk out, the air’s cool, the stars are thick and bright. We walk down the cabin row, and she doesn't stop at her door. She takes my hand and keeps walking.
I open my door, and she comes inside. I close it behind us.
***
The lamp on the table throws low, warm light across the room. Outside, the ranch has gone quiet except for the crickets in the grass. She turns toward me and reaches up and puts her hand on my chest.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey."
She tips her head up, and I bend to meet her. This kiss is different from the one on the porch. That one had the whole ranch as a backdrop. This one has a closed door all night.
I reach for the hem of her shirt. She lifts her arms, letting me pull it over her head.
I reach behind her and unhook her bra. She shrugs out of it, and her eyes stay on mine the whole time.
I put my hand along her jaw and run my thumb across her cheekbone.
She turns her face into it, and that small thing, her trusting the touch, turning into it, hits harder than most things have.
I kiss her throat, her collarbone, and work my way down until I get to her breasts.
I cup them in my hands and take her nipple into my mouth, sucking slowly, my tongue working over it, then moving to the other.
Her breath comes out in a gasp, and her hands come up into my hair, holding on.
I work my way back up to her mouth, she's already pulling me closer.
When I pick her up, she makes a sound against my jaw, surprised and warm.
She wraps her legs around me as I carry her to the bedroom.
I've wanted this since before I knew how to say it. Not just her body. Her here, in my space, in my light, with nowhere else to be.
I set her down at the edge of the bed, and she reaches for my belt and works it loose, her eyes on mine while she does it.
I reach for her jeans, and we take all the time we need with all of it.
There's no urgency driving us toward something on the other side.
This is the thing. Right here. We've got the whole night.
When there's nothing left between us, she looks at me in the low light, and I look back at her.
She sits on the edge of the bed and looks up at me. Then she wraps her hand around the base of my cock and drags her tongue along the crown, slow and deliberate, watching my face while she does it. I put my hands in her hair, and she takes me into her mouth.
She works me slowly at first, her tongue moving in a way that makes it hard to think straight.
Then she finds a rhythm, and I stop thinking at all.
Her hand moves with her mouth. I feel it building, the heat of her mouth, the way she looks up at me from under her lashes, and I let it go longer than I should before I pull back.
"Cass, wait," I say. "Lie back."
She does, her eyes dark, and I move over her, bracing above her. She reaches between us, wrapping her hand around my cock. She strokes me slowly, watching my face while she does it. It's its own kind of undoing, being watched by her.
"Cass."
"I want you."
I push into her, and she exhales against my mouth as I do, her hips tilting up to take me deeper.
The heat of her. The tightness. She pulls in a slow breath and lets it out.
Then I move. We find the rhythm the way we've found it before, except tonight there's nothing underneath it.
No question either of us is carrying. No door left half open.
She brings her hand up and presses her palm flat against my chest, right over my heart. She doesn't say anything. She just holds it there, looking up at me. I look back at her. We both go still for a moment, just breathing, before she pulls me down and we move again.
This is what it's supposed to feel like. I didn't know that until right now.
I raise up and rub her clit with my thumb and hear her breath rush out, her fingers digging into my back.
She tightens around me, her back arching, the sound she makes when she breaks pulling me right to the edge.
I drive into her harder, chasing it, the pressure building until there's nothing left to hold back.
I come with my face pressed to her throat, her name on my lips, my whole body shuddering through the last of it before I still.
Two more slow strokes and I go heavy over her.
I roll off her and pull her in beside me. We're both breathing hard. She puts her head on my shoulder, and her hand runs slowly through my chest hair. I stay where I am and let her.
Outside the ranch is quiet. Cricket is in the pasture with Copper and the rest of them. The ranch is dark. The stars are out. The horsemanship group is in their cabins. Tomorrow the work starts again, and none of that is going anywhere.
I wrap my arm tighter around her.
She's asleep before long.
I lie there in the quiet with my chin at the top of her head and the whole ranch around us, and nothing left unfinished anywhere.
This place. This woman. The first things that have felt entirely mine since I was seventeen years old and drove away from the only other one.
I'm not going anywhere. Not from this ranch. Not from her. Not ever again.