Chapter 1 #3
“You moved my bishop,” he said, looking at the board as if my cheating offended him more than the unfinished game.
“Your bishop was in my way.” I put one finger on the offending piece, refusing to admit I’d forgotten what threat it created.
“That’s how the game works, baby.” Ryder settled beside me and turned his right ear my way, smug enough to make cheating feel justified.
“Your game is badly designed, then.” I put the board on the dresser before he could prove I had ruined whatever trap he had been building, then pulled his hand into my lap and wiped the split knuckle with the corner of a damp cloth.
The skin had bled and stopped and started again, and it had begun to swell. “Whose is this?”
“Kid named Wes. Drinks at the Rooster in Hadley Creek, less than twenty minutes off our gate.” Ryder let me press harder than the cut required and didn’t flinch, which meant he wanted me to. “He asked the bartender what time the fundraiser starts and who’d be standing on the gate.”
“And now he isn’t asking.”
“Now he’s got a different mouth.”
I turned his hand over and worked the road dust out of the crease of his thumb. “Are we safe here?”
“Yes.” Ryder cupped my face with the uninjured hand and made me look at him. “You’re safe with me.”
I believed him so completely that embarrassment warmed my face for having asked. “Come to bed, then. You haven’t slept more than a few hours all week, and I refuse to spend Sunday listening to you terrify donors.”
“I don’t terrify donors.” He pulled the board farther from the edge of the dresser and set the pieces I had displaced beside it.
“You stand near the door and count people.” I reached for the lamp, but Ryder caught my wrist and drew me across the bed until I was beneath him.
The worry I had been carrying lost ground to the weight of him, the familiar scrape of his beard against my neck, and the hand moving under my sleep shirt.
He knew where my rescue inhaler rested on the nightstand; I knew the old wound near his left shoulder bothered him when rain came.
None of that knowledge felt watchful. It was the ordinary care of people who had spent years learning how to keep each other.
“You spent all day making things for everybody else,” he said against my throat, lifting the shirt over my head. His mouth followed the curve of my breast, and the breath I lost had nothing to do with asthma. “This is mine.”
“Possessive asshole.” I threaded my fingers through his hair and opened my legs when his hips settled between them. Ryder raised his head at the insult, waiting for the part he knew I meant. “I love you.”
“I fucking love you.” He kissed me until I stopped thinking about the armed men, then moved down my body with the confidence of a husband who knew exactly how I liked his mouth.
I bit my knuckles to keep from waking the nearest house and failed when he hooked my thigh over his shoulder.
He had always loved every sound he could pull from me, even the ones his bad ear missed, and when I tried to turn my face into the pillow, he stopped until I looked at him.
“Don’t hide from me,” he said, and there was enough hunger in his eyes to make the command feel like praise.
He went back to his work before I could answer, held me through the first shudder, and brought me to another until I had to drag him up by his shoulders.
I wanted his weight, his mouth, the rough words he gave only to me, and the private smile that appeared when I whispered that I needed him inside me.
Ryder pushed into me with his forehead against mine and stayed there while I adjusted around him.
There was no uncertainty between us, no question about what either of us wanted.
He knew when to move harder and when I needed his hand between us.
I knew the sound he made before he came and the way his control broke when I tightened around him.
We finished tangled together, my leg over his hip and his face against the side of my neck, laughing when the chessboard hit the floor because his foot caught the dresser.
“Your king’s dead,” I murmured while he reached blindly for the fallen pieces.
“Your queen cheated.” Ryder reached under the bed with his head still on my shoulder, his complaint weakened by the laugh against my skin.
“Your queen is smarter than you.” I found the piece first and held it above his hand until he admitted the part we both knew.
“That part’s true.” He found the white queen beneath the bed, set her on the nightstand beside my inhaler, and pulled the blanket over us. “Sleep. I’ve got the fundraiser in the morning.”
“You have cleanup. I have the fundraiser.” I rested my cheek against his chest, and his hand moved along my back while the week arranged itself behind my eyes.
The gear grinding inside Gladys. The deck oven in Bloomington and six hours of road to go stand in front of it.
Dinner at Leah’s on Thursday, the hydrangeas cut back before August, three hundred pastries out the door by noon.