Chapter 21 Carson
TWENTY-ONE
CARSON
I trudge up the stairs, trying to be as quiet as I can be, not wanting to wake up everyone else in the house.
Every single part of my body hurts in a way it hasn’t hurt since I played football in high school.
Nothing is more obvious that you’re getting old than when your body hurts after doing physical work.
Opening the door softly, I notice that Lennon has kept the bathroom light on.
Hopefully, she did it for me. It feels good to know she was thinking about me when she lay down to go to sleep.
Weirdly enough that while I’m in here, I’m not feeling the same type of anxiety I felt in my own bedroom at home.
As much as I want to slip into bed, I know there’s no way I can. I stink, I’ve been dirty most of the night, and I know myself. I won’t be able to rest well unless I’m clean and warm. Heading into the bathroom, I close the door and then go over to turn on the shower.
While I wait for the water to heat up, I strip off my layers.
The thermal undershirt, the flannel over it, the jeans that are stiff with cold and God knows what else from the night spent in a barn while cows are having babies—all of it hits the floor in a pile I’ll deal with later.
The mirror over the sink is already starting to fog at the edges from the steam coming off the shower, and I catch a glimpse of myself before it clouds over completely.
I look like hell. My hair is a mess, there’s a cut on my jaw I don’t even remember getting, and I’ve got the kind of exhaustion on my face I’ve only seen a few times in my life.
But even through all of that, my mind keeps drifting back to earlier.
To the office. To Lennon.
I step under the spray and groan out loud at the way the hot water hits my back.
It’s almost painful at first, the contrast against how cold I’ve been for the last several hours.
I stand there for a long moment, just letting it work over me, my hands flat against the tile wall, and my head dropped between my shoulders.
The heat loosens muscles that I didn’t even realize had locked up tight.
I could probably stand here until the water runs cold and not feel a single regret about it.
But my mind won’t stay quiet.
It keeps going back to the sound she made.
The way she’d said my name, soft and broken, like it surprised her.
The way her hands had gripped me, like she needed something to hold on to.
I’d been thinking about it out in that barn for hours, turning it over in the back of my mind every time there was a quiet moment between the wind gusting and the cattle shifting and all of us trying to stay warm.
I reach up and brace one hand higher on the wall, and with the other, I wrap my fingers around my stiff cock.
I’m already hard just from the thinking and have been for longer than I’d like to admit.
The warm water runs down my spine as I start to move my hand slowly up and down, letting myself settle into the rhythm.
It’s not enough. It’s nowhere near what I actually want, which is her, in this shower, pressed up against me with those hands of hers doing whatever they please.
But it takes the edge off the ache enough that I can breathe.
I close my eyes and let myself go there. Let myself imagine what it’s going to feel like when we finally get to fuck.
The bathroom door opens.
I stop, like I’m a teenager getting caught jacking off in the shower.
“Carson?” Her voice is soft and rough with sleep. “I woke up and heard the shower, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I clear my throat. “I’m okay.” It comes out lower than I intended. “Sorry I woke you.”
There’s a pause. I can see her shadow through the frosted glass of the shower door, and I watch it stay right where it is instead of retreating back to the bedroom.
“You’ve been out there all night.” Another pause. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I almost laugh. I’m standing here, hand fisting my cock, thinking about her, and she’s on the other side of that glass, asking me if I’m okay. “Lennon.”
“Yeah?”
“Either go back to bed,” I growl. “Or get in here with me.”
The silence that follows is the longest three seconds of my life.
Then I hear the soft sound of fabric hitting the floor.
The shower door opens, and she steps in. Every coherent thought I have left evaporates with the steam.
She’s beautiful in the low light, water beading on her skin the moment she steps under the spray with me.
Her dark hair goes wet almost immediately, slicking back from her face, and she looks up at me with those eyes that have been wrecking me since the moment I met her.
I reach out and brush a strand of wet hair back from her cheek, and she turns her face just slightly into my palm the way she does, like she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi yourself.”
I pull her in by the waist, and she comes easily, her hands sliding up my chest, her fingers tracing over the cut on my jaw with a gentleness I’m not prepared for. She looks at it with a small frown.
“What happened?”
“No idea, but it’s nothing compared to how bad my cock hurts.”
She doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t push it either.
Instead, she raises up on her toes and presses her lips to the corner of my jaw, just beside it.
Enough to tease me and make me want more.
I tighten my hands on her waist and walk her back gently until she’s against the tile, the water hitting my back and the steam wrapping around us both.
“I’ve been thinking about you all night,” I tell her, low against her ear.
“I know.” She tips her head back against the tile to look up at me, and there’s a small smile at the corner of her mouth. “I heard.”
I pull back just enough to look at her. “You heard.”
The smile widens. “You said my name.”
I’m not even embarrassed about it. I duck my head and press my mouth to her throat, feeling her pulse jump against my lips. “And what did you think about that?”
Her breath catches, a moan rips out of her throat. “I thought you should stop doing it alone.”
That’s all I need to hear.
I take my time with her, which is something I’ve been wanting to do since the moment I understood that this thing between us was real.
The shower is not exactly built for this, but neither one of us cares.
My hands move over her like I’m learning her, slow and deliberate, and every sound she makes goes straight through me.
Leaning down, I take her nipple into my mouth as I press my cock into her.
“Fuck, you feel good. Tell me, before I come, do I need to pull out?”
“No,” she whines. “I’ve got us covered.”
That’s exactly what I want to hear, and I press in deeper, pulling her legs around my waist. Opening her thighs, I let my body take control, letting my cock seek her heat.
She’s got her fingers in my hair, and her forehead pressed against mine by the time I have her close, her breath coming fast and ragged, the water running warm over both of us.
“Carson.” The way she says it now is different from how she said it in the office. Fuller, somehow, like she means more than just my name.
“I’ve got you,” I tell her, quiet against her temple.
And I mean that in more ways than one.
When she comes apart this time, I hold her through it, one arm wrapped tight around her waist so she doesn’t have to hold herself up. She presses her face against my neck, and I feel her shaking, just slightly, and I press my lips to her wet hair and let her have that moment without rushing it.
After, she pulls back and looks up at me, and there’s something in her expression that’s softer than anything I’ve seen from her yet.
Lennon Walsh, who holds herself together with both hands most of the time, looks completely undone, and she is letting me see it.
That feels like more than anything else that’s happened between us.
She glances down and back up, and her expression shifts into something that makes my chest tight. “Your turn,” she says softly.
I nod my head, ready to pour everything I have into her. “Hold on tight, babe.”
She grins up at me. “Carson—”
“I’m serious. Hold on tight. I’m about to wreck us both.
” I reach up and tuck her wet hair back from her face again, and at the same time, shove a hand against the wall.
It gives me enough leverage so that when I engage my core, I can pull out and press back in.
It doesn’t take long, because on the third upstroke, I come apart, pulsing deeply inside of her.
“Fucckkk…” is dragged from my throat like a prayer.
As my cock pulses, I lean my forehead against her shoulder and try to catch my breath. Once I do, I pull back and look at her.
She studies me for a long moment, like she’s trying to figure out if I mean it.
I do. Every word of it. She must find whatever she’s looking for in my face, because she relaxes against me, her forehead dropping to my chest, her arms winding around my middle.
I hold her there while the hot water runs over us, and I don’t think about the cattle or the storm or the work waiting for me when the sun comes up.
I just stand there with her, and it’s the most comfortable I’ve felt in longer than I can remember.
Eventually, the water starts to cool, and she shivers. I reach past her to shut it off. I grab a towel from the rack and wrap it around her first, and she laughs a little at that, a quiet sound that I feel more than hear.
“You’re something else, Carson Nelson,” she says, looking up at me.
I grab a second towel and dry off, watching her. “Good something else or bad something else?”
She tilts her head to the side. “Good.” A pause. “Really good, actually.”
I lean down and press a kiss to her forehead, and she closes her eyes for just a second, like she’s letting herself have it.
When she opens them again, there’s that look I keep catching on her face, the one I’m sure she doesn’t realize she’s being open with.
The one that looks a whole lot like something I’m not ready to name out loud yet, because I don’t want to scare either one of us.
But I feel it too. That much I know.
We slip back into the bedroom as quietly as we can, and when she curls against me in the dark and her breathing evens out, I stare up at the ceiling for a long time.
The storm is still going outside. The ranch is still standing.
And for the first time in a long time, so am I.