Chapter 24 – Tag #2
It was then that I found myself in a dilemma. I wasn’t going to be able to carry her all the way back to the cabin. But if I put her on one of the ATVs, would she stay there?
She was going to need incentive.
“Baby,” I said, as I walked around the house to the garage. “If I promise to make it worth your while, will you get behind me on this ATV and let me take you home where we can drink this champagne and I swear I will make you come so hard you’ll think you’ve gone blind?”
“A person can’t go blind from an orgasm,” she said, like I’d stated a fact incorrectly.
“I can give it my best shot,” I told her. “You going to be a good girl?”
“Fine.”
I put her down, and when she looked up at me, I could see she was mad. But not that mad.
“Everyone’s going to know,” she said, like everyone didn’t already know. She’d spent the last three nights in my cabin.
“You just pulled off the impossible,” I told her, taking her chin between my fingers. “And you and I both know what that means. You’re going to leave soon, darlin, and I just…I want as much time with you as I can possibly have. Alone.”
She lifted that imperious eyebrow of hers. “You could have just said that.”
“My way was easier,” I said.
“Can I drive?”
“No.”
“Please?” she whined. “I can do it.”
I was a goner. An absolute goner. I took a step back and made a motion with the champagne bottle for her to get on first. She clapped excitedly, then got on. I straddled the seat behind her and held on for dear life as she drove us back to my cabin.
Yeah. Undoubtedly, a goner.
When we got back to the cabin, it was empty. Quiet. I put the champagne bottle on the table and went to find glasses that might suit. For sure, we did not have flutes or whatever you were supposed to drink it out of.
“So, Pop’s still in Florida?”
“Until next week, he told me. Waiting on contractors.”
“I’m not going to be able to say goodbye then,” she said. There was something wistful and sad in her voice when she said it.
“Maybe you guys can set up a Zoom call and play chess or something?” I told her, feeling my own wistful and sad. Fuck. Did we even have wine glasses? I looked through every cupboard and every glass was made out of plastic or was a thermos cup. Nothing good enough for her goddamn champagne.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said, shutting a cupboard door. “It’s just every fucking glass we have is bullshit.”
“I don’t need fancy glasses,” she said.
“Well, you sure as fuck deserve fancy glasses,” I snapped. She saved the goddamn ranch. The whole town. My livelihood and all I had was hand me down junk.
And didn’t that say it all? This whole time I knew she was too fucking good for me. That she deserved better, and here came this bottle of champagne to remind me that I’d broken my own damn rules and gotten attached when I had nothing to offer her. I was a man meant for leaving.
“Are we going to play?” She asked, and her hand settled on my shoulder, sharpening every sense, tightening every muscle.
That was all I had to give her.
My hands were shaking in anticipation, but I didn’t want this night, possibly our last night, to be about playing. I didn’t want her out of her head. I wanted her here. With me. Present.
Missing me even as she left.
Maybe that wasn’t fair, but, like the junk in all the cupboards in this hand me down house - this house my mother left and never looked back on – it was all I had.
So, I would ruin her tonight. Treat her so well every man she dated for years after this would pale in comparison.
She’d find some guy who had the right glasses and could order the right food at restaurants and knew how amazing she was, and when that guy touched her – it would be me she’d be thinking of.
Yes. That felt right. The animal in me loved it.
I turned, registering how fucking cute she was in her new jeans that were tight through her hips and ass and her simple, short sleeved, white shirt.
With snaps down the front.
Because I told her that’s what I liked.
This woman was a walking, talking contradiction. So smart and tough. Wildly independent since she was sixteen years old, and yet, she would take that shirt off for me in a second because she knew it would be bring me pleasure.
I don’t know that I’d ever met anyone who had so much to give.
Damn, I was going to miss her.
“Do you trust me?”
“Obviously,” she said, like it was a no brainer. “I wouldn’t let you do half the things you do to me unless I trusted you.”
Yeah, that was true. But, we were going to do things a little differently this time. Both of us might be walking the edge.
I led her into my bedroom and shut the door. I could see her bend and straighten her right arm as if she was fighting off the temptation to bite that thumbnail of hers. She’d just had this incredible success and still she was uncertain.
I opened the top drawer of my dresser where I kept a bunch of kerchiefs folded inside. On high wind days you needed something to cover your nose and mouth or else you ate and breathed dirt all day when riding. I took out a black one and came to stand behind her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Blindfolding you,” I said.
“Why?”
Because I don’t want you to see what I can’t hide.
“Doesn’t sound like you trusting me,” I said. She took a deep breath and nodded. Her quiet consent got me every fucking time.
I tied it around her head. “Can you see anything?”
She shook her head.
“It’s not too tight?”
She shook her head again.
“Now, I’m going to get you naked first. Because I really like you naked, and then I’m going to reward you for what a good job you did today.”
Her lips curled up.
“I was a very good girl today,” she said, wryly.
“You were,” I murmured, as I pulled the snaps free on her shirt, one by one. When it was loose, I pushed it off her shoulders and it fell to the floor. Then I got rid of her bra.
Unable to help myself, I bent town and sucked her nipple into my mouth, biting just enough until it hardened in my mouth.
She moaned, her fingers pushing into my hair.
I unbuttoned her jeans and pushed them down over her hips.
I loved her ass. The sweet swell of her tummy over the top elastic of her underwear.
I loved the soft inner skin of her thighs.
Every part of her was perfect, and with her not watching, I looked my fill.
“Tag?” She whispered, her hands lifting to cover her stomach, suddenly unsure with my silence and her blindfold. “Is this the reward?”
“Sit down,” I said, and helped her sit on the bed so I could pull off her new boots.
She’d given me a near heart attack yesterday, when she’d chased down her stupid cowboy hat, but I think I was starting to get it.
What these clothes might represent to her.
At the very least, they would be here waiting for her if she planned on coming back for more visits now that she’d reconnected with her sisters. Her brothers.
Not me.
Once I pulled the jeans off over her feet, I lifted her ankles and moved her so she was laid out on the bed.
“What about my panties?” she asked, reaching for them with her thumbs.
“No,” I told her. “You’re going to leave those on for now. Roll over on your stomach and get comfortable.”
“What are you doing to do?” she asked, even as she did it. Turning her head to the side, resting her hands under the pillow. “Because I don’t know how I feel about butt stuff.”
“Butt stuff?” I muttered, laughing at her and wanting her so much I ached with it.
She was still wearing her blindfold, but I could tell her expression was imperious.
I opened a drawer on my bed stand and took out a bottle of warming oil.
It was something my dad turned me onto to treat sore joints and muscles.
He swore that if you used it regularly, it prolonged your time as a cowboy.
Given he was in his late sixties and could still ride like he was born to it, I decided to believe him .
Now, I was grateful for another reason. I squirted the oil down her back in one long straight line over her spine, stopping just at the small of her back at the edge of her panties.
“What is that?” she asked, on a long slow sigh. Her back arched and her hips rolled, the oil pooling in the small of her back.
“Just some massage oil,” I said, as I slowly started to rub it into her skin. She’d been working so hard, curled over her laptop, learning how to ride. Her body was tight, the muscles of her shoulders and spine tense under my fingers.
“You have massage oil in your bed stand?”
There was some tone there. A hint of jealousy, maybe. It made my dick even harder. This woman wanted to claim me.
“Calm down, girly. I use it on my joints after long days of riding. Keeps me smooth in the saddle.”
“I already think you’re smooth in the saddle,” she quipped, then got quiet as I moved onto the bed to straddle her so I could work the lotion into her shoulders and back with both hands.
“Ohhhhh fuck, that feels good,” she groaned.
“Better than your fancy spa treatments in New York?” I had to ask, and immediately regretted it. Of course it wasn’t better than the spa in New York. This was cheap ass oil and my rough hands. There were no clarifying teas or IVs full of who the fuck knows.
“Much better,” she said, but we both knew it was a lie.
She was a work of art. Soft, almost delicate skin. Beautiful, sleek muscles.
I shifted so I could spread her thighs with my hands and had to hold back my own groan. Her panties pulled aside, revealing the pink of her. Wet already.
After pouring more oil down the back of her legs, I worked my fingers deep into the inside muscles of her thighs.
“Tag,” she breathed. “Please.”
“Please, what?”
“Please come inside me. I need you inside me.”
I ducked my head, rested my forehead against the curve of her ass. She was going to kill me.
“This is your reward, darlin,” I said.
“You’re my reward. You’re always my reward. You’re all I want.”