Chapter 14
Jenna
I know because I’ve been lying in our bed watching the minutes stack up, listening for footsteps that don’t come.
He said he’d be up soon. That was ninety minutes ago.
I know this man. He’s not coming up. Not until he’s run the dashboard one more time.
Not until he’s cross-referenced Marlon Ennis’s name against a dataset he’s already cross-referenced twice.
Not until he’s satisfied that the edges of our world are sealed and nobody can slip through to me in the night.
He’s been holding the weight of an entire day on his shoulders. He held Daniel when Daniel didn’t know he needed holding. He held Gabriel’s reputation when the forged signature came up. He held the case together with both hands while I did what I do best and built the architecture.
And he hasn’t let anyone hold him in return.
I pull on one of his flannels. The cuffs hit my knuckles, but I don’t roll them up.
I go downstairs.
His office door is open. The blue-white light from the dashboard catches the lenses of his glasses and makes him look, for a second, like a statue of the man I married—hands on the keyboard, shoulders set, face unreadable.
He hears me before I’m through the door. “I’ll be up in twenty.” He doesn’t turn.
“You said that at eleven.”
“I’m finishing. I’m just—”
“Ethan.”
He finally turns, his glasses low on his nose, stubble that wasn’t there at breakfast. Exhaustion in every line of his face, the kind he doesn’t let anyone see except, apparently, me.
I cross the room. He watches me come. My fingers find the edge of the laptop lid, and I close it. Slow enough that he could stop me. He doesn’t.
“Jen—”
“My turn.”
He frowns. “Your turn?”
“My turn to do the holding. My turn to close the file. My turn to be the one who decides when we’re done for the night.” My hands find his shoulders. The muscles are wound so tight that they feel like rope. “You’ve been carrying people all day. Carry nothing for the next hour. That’s an order.”
He quirks an eyebrow. “You’re giving me orders now.”
“Tonight I am.”
I reach for his glasses. He goes still the way he always does when I touch them because nobody else has ever been allowed to.
“Off,” I say.
“Yours too,” he murmurs, already lifting his hand to my face.
I let him take mine off. He sets both pairs on the desk beside the closed laptop. The world blurs at the edges, and I don’t care. For once, I don’t need to see everything to know where I am.
I know where I am. I’m with my husband.
I climb onto his lap. His hands find my thighs automatically, and he starts to lift me, always in motion, always taking over.
I press my palm to his chest. “No.”
“No?”
“You’re not carrying me to bed. You’re not doing a single thing tonight except what I tell you. Is that clear?”
His throat moves. “Yes, ma’am.”
That nearly undoes me. The biggest man on this ranch, the ordnance specialist, the one who runs toward every problem, is looking up at me from a swivel chair with his glasses off and his jaw tight and saying yes, ma’am like it’s a vow.
I kiss him.
Hungry. Celebratory. A little reckless. My hands on his face, in his hair, my tongue in his mouth finding the shape of everything I haven’t let myself take yet. He makes a noise in his throat, half groan, half surrender.
Julian Vance texted my phone today, trying to put his hand back on my life, but this woman is Ethan Sutton’s. This mouth, these thighs, the patches on my arms, the breath in my lungs—the woman still wearing her husband’s flannel—all Sutton territory.
I pull back to look at him. He’s already wrecked, and I’ve barely started.
“Bed,” I say. “Now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He stands. His hands find my waist to steady me as I slide down. I step back and take him in. His flannel is open at the collar, belt crooked from sitting, the long solid body of a man who’s been up for twenty-two hours and doesn’t know how to stop.
I take his hand and lead him toward the stairs.
On the third step, I turn and kiss him. His shirt comes off on the fourth step.
His belt gets unbuckled somewhere around the sixth.
By the landing, I’m walking backward in the flannel and my underwear, and he’s in just his jeans, open at the waist, his eyes pinned to me with something bigger than hunger—something like awe, still, after everything.
“You’re staring,” I whisper.
“I’m memorizing.”
I smile. “Faster.”
“No.”
It’s the exact call and answer from last night.
The bedroom door closes behind us, and I push him toward the bed. He sits on the edge, and I stand between his knees.
“Tonight,” I say, trying to sound stern, but it comes out tender because I can’t help it with him, “you’re going to let someone take care of you. And it’s going to be me. You’re not going to protest, apologize, or try to flip it. You’re just going to let it happen. Yes?”
His hands are on my hips, big and warm and steady. “Yes.”
“Good.”
I stoop and plant a kiss on his forehead, his temple, the corner of his eye where the line deepens when he’s tired, the stubble on his jaw.
I work my way down his throat the way he worked down mine last night, pressing my mouth to the pulse, to the hollow at his collarbone, to the place where his shoulder meets his neck that I want to nip with my teeth. So I do.
He exhales like I’ve hit him in the chest.
His jeans come off. His boxers. He’s beautiful, with long muscles built by labor, a body that’s done real work and never traded on its looks.
I push against his chest, and he sinks onto the mattress. I climb between his knees.
“Jen,” he says roughly. “There’s no need—”
“I said no protesting.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were about to.”
His laugh is breathy; the kind he only ever gives me. “Yeah. I was.”
“Then don’t.” I trail my fingers up the inside of his thigh, and the muscle there jumps. “I want this. Let me have it.”
His head drops back against the pillow. “Yes, ma’am.”
I lower my mouth to his cock. The first taste of him is salt and heat and something entirely Ethan.
I take him slowly, watching his face, cataloging the way his jaw clenches, the way his abdomen pulls tight, the way his hand comes up automatically to brush my hair back and then stops, hovering, like he’s remembered he doesn’t get to move tonight.
“You can touch me,” I murmur against his hip.
His fingers slide into my hair. Gentle. Trembling. The hand that has steadied everyone on this ranch is shaking against the side of my head.
Good.
I take him deeper, learning him. I discover what makes his breath catch—a slow drag of my tongue over the tip.
What makes him swear under his breath—pressure at the base.
What makes his hips lift off the mattress before he clamps them down again—my hand wrapped around him, working in rhythm with my mouth.
I’m not practiced. I’m new at this. But I’ve spent six months learning the rhythm of this man’s breathing, and now I intend to wreck him with pleasure.
“Jen.” It comes out broken. “Jen… I’m going to—”
I look up at him, my mouth still wrapped around his cock.
He sees me see him, and his whole body jolts.
“I don’t care,” I whisper against his length. “I want it. I want you to let go. I want you to give it to me.”
His head hits the pillow. “Fuck.”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t last long after that, his hands buried in my hair as he jerks and spills down my throat with a tortured groan that’s almost a sob.
I stay with him through it, slow and attentive, the way he stayed with me last night in this bed when he worked me through the aftershocks with kisses against the softest skin of my inner thigh.
When he’s spent, he’s breathing like he’s run a mile. His arm is over his eyes, and his chest is heaving. He looks completely undone.
Crawling up his body slowly, I let my mouth brush the line of dark hair below his navel, the skin over his ribs, his sternum, his chest. I want him to feel every inch of me as I move against him. I want him to know that I’m returning.
As our faces align, I kiss him. He tastes himself on my lips and lets out a sound that sends a thrill straight between my legs.
“More?” I ask.
His eyes open, dark and unfocused. “Jen, I… give me a minute.”
I grind my hips against his and kiss him again, taking my time.
My hands are on his chest, his shoulders, the places I’ve been wanting to mark as mine.
By the time he’s hard again—which happens far more quickly than should be biologically possible—I’m already sliding down to position myself over him.
I sink onto him slowly.
Oh.
The angle feels different. The rhythm shifts, and from this vantage point, I'm in command of every inch. He fills me in a way that makes me stop and breathe for a moment. His hands come to my hips, not to move me, just to hold. He's blurred and raw, and entirely mine.
“Jen,” he breathes.
“I know.”
I move.
Slowly at first, finding the rhythm my body craves. His hands slide from my hips up my sides, over the patches on my ribs. He doesn't pause on them, doesn’t trace them, doesn’t treat them as the focal point. They’re just my skin. I’m just me. He sees me all at once, whole.
His thumb finds my nipple. “Like that?”
My breath fractures. “Exactly like that.”
I roll my hips. The pleasure climbs faster than I expected. I have permission tonight. I gave myself permission, and my body is taking it. His hand slides between us, his thumb finding the spot that makes me gasp, and I feel the pressure of him everywhere.
“No,” I manage.
He stops.
“I mean… not yet. Let me—I want to finish like this. Just this.”
“Okay.”
His hand moves to my hip. He holds still, letting me ride him until my thighs shake and my breath breaks and my orgasm hits me like a wave I wasn’t ready for.
I come with my hands on his chest and my eyes open and his name falling out of my mouth.
He watches. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t chase his own release. He watches me like it’s a privilege.
When I can breathe again, I lean down and kiss him hard. “Your turn.”
“Jen, you don't need to—”
I start moving again, and his control breaks within a minute. I feel it shatter. His hips lift, his breath stutters. He grips my hips tighter than he ever has, and his eyes stay fixed on mine.
“Go,” I whisper. “I love you. I’ve got you.”
He comes with his forehead pressed to my shoulder and his arms locked around me and a sound in his throat that’s barely a sound at all—the smallest, most honest noise I’ve ever heard from a man who speaks in tactical precision.
I hold him through it. Just hold him.
His body is sated beneath me, and I love it. I stay sprawled over him until his breathing slows, and then he rolls us onto our sides without letting me go, and we’re face to face in the low light.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi.” His voice is a rasp. His eyes are wet. I don’t think he knows.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“Jen—”
I press my fingers to his lips. “Hush.”
I climb out of bed on wobbly legs. The flannel is somewhere on the floor, but I leave it. Ethan has never hidden from me, and I’m not hiding tonight. I walk naked to the bathroom, wet a washcloth with warm water, and bring it back to him.
He lifts his head and frowns as he sees the cloth in my hand. Then understanding dawns.
I take care of him the way he took care of me last night, my hand resting on his hip to steady him, the cloth warm and gentle.
He watches me with the same expression he had when I put his glasses back on last night and said, there you are.
The look of a man being cared for who has never allowed anyone to care for him.
When I’m done, I rinse the cloth and climb into bed. I pull the covers up over us and press the full length of my body against his, skin to skin, my face finding the hollow at his throat.
“You don’t have to do everything,” I say against his skin. “You don’t have to be the one holding everyone all the time. Some nights, I’m holding you.”
His breathing slows, and his body loosens. His hand cradles the nape of my neck, heavy and warm. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me breathe. Giving me peace.”
I kiss the underside of his jaw. “Sleep, Sutton.”
He sleeps.
I stay awake a little longer, feeling his heartbeat slow against my chest. Somewhere not far from here, a man in expensive boots is regrouping in a hotel under a name he thinks nobody knows. Outside, a goat is sleeping off his moment as a federal witness.
And here, in this bed, the man who holds the world is finally letting someone hold him.