Chapter 1 #8
I wrapped my arm around him, pressing my chest to his back.
I toyed with the fabric of his shirt over his flat stomach, scant inches above his belt buckle.
He tipped his head forward, thumping it against the door.
A deep groan vibrated through him. The low, primal, male sound made me clench my thighs together.
“If you keep going, two things will happen. One, I will never get this door open. And two, we may get caught having sex in public.”
“At our siblings’ wedding.” I nestled my cheek against his broad back. This guy must work out. Accountants didn’t normally have these muscles at our age. Was he a runner? A weightlifter? There was so much I wanted to know about him.
“It’s the drunken party two nights before the wedding. It hardly signifies.” His words sounded as breathless as I felt.
“In that case…” I slid my hand lower, cupping his thick erection through his pants.
His sharp inhale almost obscured the click of the key turning in the lock. We tumbled through the door, spinning to face each other. Our greedy mouths and aching bodies found each other unerringly.
I let my sparkly shoes tumble to the floor, and Henry kicked the door shut with his foot, muting the noise from the wedding party. Desire for his body, his touch, burned through me like a one-hundred-degree Texas summer day.
Between kisses, he asked, “Is this too much too fast?”
“Never enough.” To prove it, I plucked a strip of condoms from his welcome gift basket and tossed them on the bed. It might have been presumptuous of me to arrange for easy access to protection, but right now I felt like a certifiable genius.
“Damn, you really have arranged everything this weekend.” He chuckled.
“What can I say? I’m amazing.”
“Yeah, you are, and I want to see every amazing inch of you. All we need is a bed and some more light.”
Any other man on our first night together and that idea would have stirred up insecurities.
My boobs weren’t as perky as they had been twenty years ago.
An extra layer of flab padded my ass and belly.
But Henry’s reverent tone and the way his hands roamed over me like I was an idol he coveted made me reach out and tap the wall switch.
I wanted him to see, and I wanted to be seen.
The one-room cabin, identical to mine, filled with soft light from a table lamp.
The earthy color scheme and terracotta floors reminded me of sunlight slanting through a window on a lazy Sunday morning.
For a split second, a vision so real it felt like a memory filled my head.
I saw Henry and me cocooned in my bed. We each held a cup of coffee.
He was laughing as he wiggled his toes under the blankets so Midnight could pounce on them.
In the corner, Bruno was asleep on his favorite bed.
A mastiff-sized snore echoed in my head as the premonition faded.
“Is this magic?” I asked him. Pressing a hand over his heart, I searched his face, trying to understand what I was experiencing.
“It feels like it, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” We hardly knew each other. Yet, I’d never felt one tenth of this attraction for another man.
“Call it what you want. Magic. Chemistry. Insta-lust. A gift? I’m not going to ignore it.” He steadily held my gaze as he lifted my hand from his chest and placed a kiss in the center of my palm.
I pulled a shaky breath in through my parted lips. His kiss burned my hand as if I held a hot coal. The heat spread up my arm, down my spine, and coiled tight deep in my belly.
The moment of charged silence detonated.
We tore at each other’s clothes. My simple dress came up and off in a single tug, followed by my underthings. His pants, shirt, shoes, and socks almost seemed to evaporate. We tumbled onto the bed naked.
The sensation of his bare skin against mine was electrifying. I wanted to touch every part of him, from the sharp ridge of his Adam’s apple down his body to his toes. I’d linger over each feature like an explorer traversing an uncharted sea.
He had the same idea—and more leverage to see it through.
I shrieked as he flipped us so I lay on my back.
He rose above me on his elbow, an expression of awe etched into every line on his face.
The reverent way he touched my body sent shivers coursing over my skin.
He cupped my jaw, traced my cheek. Moving downward, his hands slid over the pulse racing in my neck to cup my breasts.
He dipped his head and took one peak in his mouth.
He laved and sucked my nipple into an aching point while his hand slipped between my thighs. I was hot and wet. So hungry for his touch that I lifted my hips up to meet his caress.
“Henry.” His name was a needy whine that only expressed a fraction of my longing.
He nipped the side of my breast as his fingers parted my flesh and teased my entrance.
It was heaven. All those years of using an adding machine at an accounting office must have paid off.
His fingers were magic, finding my clit with precision.
The tight coil of need that had been anxiously waiting deep inside me began to come apart.
I drowned willingly in the delicious sensations that unfurled.
“I want to watch you come the first time. Then I want to feel it the second.” His cock jumped, pressing into my hip as he spoke. The liquid evidence of his desire seared the skin of my leg.
“I want you to watch. I need you to.” Circling my hips, I found the perfect amount of friction for my clit. And for the first time I could remember, I locked eyes with a man who was pushing me over the edge into bliss. His sapphire gaze grew increasingly intense as I climbed closer to my release.
Clutching his arm with trembling fingers, I closed my thighs around his hand. I was on the edge, ready to fall headfirst into his gaze and an earth-shaking orgasm. I panted, then screamed his name. My back arched up from the mattress and—holy fuck—I came.
I convulsed. I damn near blacked out. Where had this kind of sex been all my life?
Henry
I knew lust. This was not my first time with a woman. But with Cindy, it was so much more. It was all-consuming. Enthralling.
I watched her float back down to earth, a satisfied smile on her face. And I wanted more. Of her, of us, of the magic we created together.
She opened her arms, welcoming me into her embrace. “You promised me two of those.”
“At least two.” I grabbed the strip of condoms off the bed and made quick work of suiting up.
I eased on top of her, angling my hips, poised to slide inside her.
The amount of sheer will it took to stop my dick from exploding on contact was incalculable.
Sweat popped out on my forehead, and the muscles in my arms trembled.
My restraint was fraying fast. I took a deep breath, trying to think unsexy thoughts and get back some control—1099 forms, depreciation tables, IRS audits.
Men my age sometimes had penis problems, but they were the limp-noodle kind, not the randy as a nineteen-year-old boy problems.
“Henry, please.” She lifted her hips, grabbed my ass, and… fuck.
That was the end of restraint. Her body was made for me. I slid home. From tip to base, I thrust completely inside her willing body. It was exquisite.
“Cindy, this, you, us.” I pressed my forehead to hers. Words weren’t enough to express the sensations. It wasn’t only physical. My heart ached, and my head swam with thoughts of our future.
“I know.” She cupped my jaw and fit our mouths together.
Unlike words, a kiss had all the power in the universe to express what we were experiencing.
I dove into the kiss with everything I had, matching the thrust of my hips to the play of my mouth over hers.
We moved together like dancers perfectly in sync with the music and each other.
Not a bumped nose, not a clack of teeth. It was pure and powerful.
This was the Phipps Gift manifested in full. I’d never believed it. I’d never known.
Cindy tore her mouth from mine and sucked in a deep breath, gasping my name. Her eyes squeezed closed, and her hips drove up off the bed.
“Oh, yes. Please. Keep. Going,” she panted.
The bed could collapse, the ceiling fall in, or the world end, and I would do as she asked.
My pleasure was a wild tempest, building and growing. I drove my hips into her, loving the slick sound of our bodies coming together. I hitched her thigh up my hip, opening her more fully, and it was like dropping a lit match into a pool of gasoline.
She was fire. Molten bliss.
The heat and need engulfed us both. She sank her teeth into my neck to muffle her screams. It was wild, primal, and amazing. I understood because I felt the same. Her body clenched around my shaft so hard that I had no option but to join her in the fire.
We were consumed and reborn.
I collapsed onto her, holding as much of my weight as I could on my spaghetti-like arms. She closed her arms around me and pulled me fully onto her. I relaxed and let her bear my weight. Our hearts beat in one rhythm.
I nuzzled her damp hair away from her neck and kissed under her ear. She hummed with happiness, on the verge of sleep.
“This is the best wedding I’ve ever been to,” I told her in a soft, gravelly voice.
“Ours will be better.” The smile—and the promise—in her voice were unmistakable.
I squeezed her to me, letting her words wash over me. Apparently, Aunt Verna wasn’t the only supernatural being in the family—Cindy was a prophetess.
Henry
It was late, but I was determined. I needed a toothbrush.
The fuzz that coated my teeth had been growing since this morning in Chicago.
The level of unpleasantness couldn’t be overstated.
Afraid my raging halitosis might scare Cindy away, I left her sleeping in my cabin and stumbled into the night to find my luggage.
I cursed the bats as I tripped over something on the dark path.
“You alright?” The man’s deep Texas drawl drew the words out and mashed them together into one. He lopped off the final t completely.
I jumped and looked over. “Umm, ah yeah.”
I felt like I’d fallen through Alice’s looking-glass. Silhouetted in the glow of the dying bonfire was the Marlboro Man. At his feet was a small dog with a mohawk. I did a double-take. It was green. The mohawk… not the whole dog.
“If my wife hears you cursing the bats, she’ll regale you with twenty reasons bats are amazing.”
“Is she a biologist?” The dog danced happily around my feet. Cute little guy.
“Nah, she loves trivia.” His fondness for his wife was a flash of brightness in the dark.
Just yesterday, a cynical voice in my head might have ridiculed the cowboy for his sentimental affection for his wife. But after tonight, that angry voice was gone. Silenced by the magnitude of what Cindy and I had shared.
He extended his hand, and we shook.
“I’m Atley Rivers. Rae and I own the ranch.”
“I’m the groom’s brother, Henry. Need to get my suitcase from the rental.”
“Ah, the one that flew in late.” He gave me a knowing look that said he’d met more than one dude uninterested in being part of a family celebration while running the resort.
He was right too. When I’d booked my tickets, I’d planned to be in Elmer for as few days as my mother would allow.
My goal: to minimize the amount of wedding I had to endure.
But now… I glanced back at my dark cabin and thought about Cindy.
Maybe I’d change my flight, see if the two of us could spend an extra day here.
“Been married long?” The topic was at the forefront of my mind for so many reasons.
“Not long. But she is the best decision I’ve ever made.” He was imparting a truth—like the earth is round, or the sky is blue.
“Did you know it the moment you met?” Once more, I thought of Cindy.
Atley chuckled. “The first night.” He whistled a low whistle and raised an eyebrow suggestively. “No, hell no. But by morning, I was halfway there.”
Now it was my turn to chuckle. A one-night stand that leads to love. That had to be a great story. A lot sexier than my inadvertently stealing Cindy’s delivery.
“Can I ask how long it took you to get the rest of the way there?” I thought back to the text messages Cindy and I had traded in the weeks before the wedding.
They had been the highlights of my tax season.
I should have realized something was brewing between us.
But apparently, like Atley Rivers, I was slow on the love uptake.
“Too fucking long.”
I barked out a laugh. At least I wasn’t the only man moving slow when it came to life-altering realizations.
“Come on, Georgie and I will help you find your car.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a small but powerful LED flashlight.
“It’s out front by the office.”
Atley nodded and led the way. Georgie close at heel, trotting in and out of the light’s bright beam. In the distance, I heard a pack of coyotes howling.
Atley stopped and scooped up the little dog. Georgie licked Atley’s square jaw and bonked his mohawk against the brim of Atley’s hat, knocking it cockeyed.
“Think you can manage on your own? Those coyotes sound too close for comfort. If I let anything happen to this little guy, my wife will never forgive me.” The affection in his voice for the dog and his wife was at odds with his chiseled features and rough-and-tumble cowboy look. It made me smile.
“Yeah, no problem. I got this.” I took the flashlight he offered me.
“Great. See you around, enjoy your stay.”
As Atley crunched down another path, murmuring to the little dog in his arms, I vowed to take his advice to heart and enjoy the weekend.
I’d jump into the wedding hoopla with both feet and drag Cindy along beside me.
Then drag her away for some high-quality, XXX rated alone time.
Saturday morning, I’d put on that hideous bow tie and cummerbund with joy.
Then stand next to my brother as he married his wife and smile.
Because in a few months when I asked him to do the same for me, he’d have no reason not to be there.
I was going to enjoy the hell out of this wedding.
THE END
Howdy, welcome to Elmer, Texas—a one-of-a-kind Hill Country small town where Gen X couples get their happily-ever-after endings. Expect all the feels, big laughs, and spice hotter than Taco Tuesday. Start your Texas vacation with Just a Client by Michelle Donn, available now on .