16. Bryn #2
He drew back only then, his beard and his lips slick, eyes intent and full of an animal pride I’d never seen him own so openly. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and loomed over me, careful not to press his weight onto my body, but so close I could taste the salt of his skin in the air.
“You good?” he asked, hand on my knee, thumb sweeping where my skin shook.
“I’m…yeah, god, I’m—” I tried to form words but only managed a broken laugh. “—drenched.”
He kept a hand on my thigh so I couldn’t close them, not that I wanted to.
He stood, crowding in, and one-handed unbuckled his belt.
I didn’t have a view of anything but his chest and the damp mess of my own body, but the scrape of zipper and the thump of denim said he was getting himself out, and that alone made me pulse.
My lungs hadn’t caught up yet, but my hands had—they found his hips, the skin tight and hot over muscle, and I tried to pull him in.
“Waited all day,” he mumbled, and the tip of him dragged over my entrance, already wet enough he didn’t need to guide.
He slid in slow. Not careful—just deep, in a way that made my body clench around him.
My legs bent up, feet kicking for purchase on the underside of the desk, and he pushed all the way to the hilt.
“Yes,” I purred. “Yes.”
“I want you to look at me,” he said. His voice was rough and low, and his hands chased up my sides to spread along my ribs. “Want you to know who’s fucking you. Who’s got you knocked up.”
I did. I met his eyes, and Stetson’s face was so open I felt the center of myself go soft, near to tears again.
He started to move, a slow grind, deeper with every stroke, so deliberate it was nearly torture.
The first few thrusts punched the breath out of me.
I locked my arms around his shoulders and let him carry my hips up off the wood, nothing under me but his hands and the promise of not being dropped.
“You feel different,” he said. “Slicker. Tighter.” His voice rumbled low in my ear. “Can’t believe that’s really in there. You’re gonna get round, Bryn. Gonna fill out for me.”
My hands clutched his forearms, bracing myself, and I whined. “You’re a pervert.”
“Yeah. Yours.” He held my gaze and fucked me, never picking up speed, just working in and out. My hips went raw from the edge of the desk, but I craved the ache—wanted it so much I locked my ankles behind his back and pulled him deeper, made him work for it.
He said, “That’s it. Take it. You want me to fuck you for keeps, don’t you?” and when I could only nod, he said it again, filthier, “Tell me you want it. Tell me you want to be mine.”
“I’m yours,” I managed, voice catching on the words. “You know I am.”
His hand wrapped behind my neck, thumb working at the seam of my jaw, and he kissed me, mess and all. He fucked me slow until my eyes rolled up, until my muscles started to flutter and my hands clawed for anything to hold.
The heat built again, not slow this time, but urgent and mean.
I wanted to drag him in, make his bones rattle; I wanted to keep him there until forever was the only thing that made sense.
Stetson’s face was sharp with focus, sweat at his hairline, arms shaking from holding me just so.
Each movement punched at the place inside me that felt like wanting and hunger and love, all tangled up and unsortable.
My whole body went tight and hot, and I fell apart a second time, sobbing into his neck, clutching fistfuls of his shirt until my nails nearly shredded the fabric.
He groaned, full-throated and urgent, and drove in a last time, grinding so deep I thought I’d crack apart. He stayed there, shuddering, noise spilling out of him—my name, half-swallowed, his breath coming wild.
He stayed buried inside me, breathing hard, forehead dropped to mine.
"Bryn."
"Yeah."
"Marry me."
I went still. Felt my whole body pause under his hands before my brain caught up to what he'd said.
"Stetson—"
"Not askin' because of the baby." His voice came out low, unsteady in a way I'd never heard from him. "Askin' because I've never wanted anything the way I want you. Every damn day since I found you stuck in the mud out at Holt Creek."
I reached up, framed his face in both hands, still trying to catch my breath.
"That's the least romantic proposal in the history of proposals," I said, and I felt myself smiling against his mouth even as I said it.
"Never claimed to be romantic."
"I know." I ran my thumb along his cheekbone. "That's what makes it work."
"That a yes?"
“That’s a fuck yes.”
“Even without a ring?”
I pried one hand off him to knock on the desk. “I’m an academic. Desk is better.”
"Gonna hold you to sayin' that."
"Hold me to whatever you want. I already said yes."
He huffed something that was almost a laugh, pulled back just far enough to look at me properly—desk beneath me, ultrasound photo somewhere on the floor where it had slipped from my jacket pocket, both of us still a mess in every sense of the word.
"Love you," he said. "Ridiculous, mud-covered, bossy as hell. Love you anyway."
"Love you too, cowboy. Ring or no ring."