Chapter 10
Boone
Okee and I sit in the downstairs bed, guns ready just in case Hollister’s men tracked us. Lula is up in the loft, and Okee and I whisper to each other so our words don’t carry.
The faint fragrance of soap lingers. Her soap.
It don’t belong in a dusty hunting cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Should reek of leather, tobacco, and sweat.
Easy to notice perfume in a place like this.
Couldn’t forget it after breathing it for hours while we nearly froze.
The scent of flowers and blood while holding this pretty little stranger close.
I shift a little and let my shoulder brush Okee’s. He doesn’t flinch or pull away—just lets it happen. Lets me lean, slow, until my weight settles against him. His body’s warm, solid. Familiar as coming home from a long journey.
He don’t speak.
Instead, he leans in and presses the barest kiss into my hair that sends a shiver through me. I lift my face. So much could be said in his dark eyes when it’s just the two of us, without ever exchanging a word.
“Thanks for playing us a song,” he hushes.
“Well, you said please so pretty.”
That earns me a smile, but he turns away after, tightening his grip on his gun. I let my eyes wander over him, just a little. His hands steady on the rifle, the sharp line of his jaw in the firelight, the quiet strength in his body.
I rest my hand on his thigh.
“So all this time I been sayin’ we’re a matched pair, and you went along with it from the very beginnin’.”
He raises an eyebrow. “We are a matched pair, cvfek cumpv.”
The words hang there between us, soft as the flurries outside. Sweetheart. In his momma’s language. His language. Like it’s nothing more than calling me by name. I feel the heat crawl up my neck, same as always when he lets something sweet like that slip.
I rest my head on his shoulder, burrowing in and pressing a kiss to his neck. I whisper against his cheek, warm breath at his ear. “We are, ain’t we?”
I rub the bulge at the front of his trousers, his hardness warm under my palm.
“We shouldn’t. Not with her here,” he says, soft, before adding, “Between what you said on the wagon and you serenading me tonight, this woman’s liable to run into town and have us both strung up.”
Back on the wagon, he damn near shoved me off the bench for telling him I loved him. “You reckon she speaks Mvskoke? That’s why you tried to shove my dick in the dirt?” I joke.
He chuckles and nudges me again with his shoulder, gentler this time.
I pull my hand back slow, though his thigh is warm under my palm and I ain’t eager to leave it. Shifting closer, I let my knee press firm against his, the heat of him bleeding through wool and denim. “She won’t hear us. She’s worn clean through.”
He don’t answer right off, just stares into the coals. I know that look.
I lean in till my lips brush the shell of his ear. “Let me take the edge off you. Just my mouth.” My hand slides higher, cupping the hard line of him under the cloth. It pulses once when my fingers close around him. “You been carrying us for days. Let me carry you a minute.”
He turns his head just enough that our foreheads touch, wanting written plain in his expression.
“Please,” I beg. “I’ll be quiet. Swear it. Ain’t nobody hearing a thing.” I stroke him slow through the fabric, feeling him swell fuller under my hand. My own cock aches, trapped behind my buttons, but right now it’s him I need to tend. “Just let me taste you. Been thinking on it since the trail.”
I wait a breath for his answer, then his hand comes up, fingers threading rough through the hair at my nape—not pushing, just anchoring. “Quick,” he breathes. “And quiet.”
I sink down between his boots before he can take it back, knees hitting the rug soft. The bed don’t creak. I work his fly open careful, one button at a time, till his cock slips free, flushed dark, the head already slick with want.
The scent of him—clean skin, musk, the faint trace of soap from his bath—strips me down to appetite alone.
I draw him along my face and cheek, dragging him slow over my skin, greedy for the feel of him. Laying my tongue to his stones, rolling them gentle in my palm, holding and tugging till his head tips back on his neck.
He brings his chin forward again, if only to see how I intend to ruin him.
I let him look his fill, wearing the look that says there ain’t a corner of me he can’t claim, no place he’d ask me to go that I would refuse.
Fingers wound tight in my hair, he pulls me close till my lips brush the slick tip.
I take him in deep on the first slide, lips sealed tight, tongue flat along the underside.
He fills my mouth perfect, his thickness stretching my jaw, salty and alive, until the sensitive tip hits my throat.
I hum and a shudder rolls through him. Fingernails claw against my scalp, but he don’t make a sound beyond that first soft exhale.
I set a slow, steady rhythm—down till my nose brushes the coarse hair at his root, back up till just the head rests on my tongue, then down again.
The sound makes my heart race, every noise breaking through the dark silence like a snitch—every click of my throat, the schlick of my spit-slick lips dragging over velvet skin.
Lula best stay in bed. If she catches us, Okee will never forgive me.
But after the few days we’ve had, I need him. Need this. He does too.
My hands grip his thighs, thumbs digging into hard muscle to keep him still when his hips try to lift. If he bucks the way I know he wants to, there won’t be no question what we’re doing.
“Easy cowboy,” I tease, twirling my tongue around the tip. His chest rises, eyes flutter. A firm hand takes my head, pressing it down as his hips rise.
Above me he’s fighting for silence—breath coming shallow and fast through his nose, ribs rising sharp under his shirt.
I glance up once; his head’s tipped back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut, lips parted just enough to show clenched teeth.
Okee is bridled, taut as a drum, and watching him lose his tight grip on control is a beautiful thing to behold.
My own need is a pounding ache now, cock straining painful against my trousers.
I shift my knees wider, trying to ease the pressure, but it only makes me grind against nothing.
I don’t touch myself; this is for him tonight.
My pleasure’s in the taste of him, the feel of him sliding over my tongue, the way his thighs tremble under my palms. In watching the tightly wound threads of him slowly unravel.
He thickens against my lips and comes with a silent gasp, hips jerking once, hard, as he spills. I drink every pulse, till he softens against my tongue.
When I rise, my legs are shaky. He hauls me in quick, pulling me half into his lap. His mouth finds my temple, then the corner of my lips, tasting himself there. His hand slides down between us, bold now, palming the length of me through my trousers.
I bite back a groan. “Okee—“
“Quiet,” he murmurs against my ear, voice rough with afterglow.
But his fingers are already working my buttons open, freeing me to the cool air.
He wraps his big hand around me—calluses rough, grip perfect—and strokes once, slow and firm, thumb dragging over the slit to spread the wetness.
I bury my face in his neck to muffle the broken sound that tears out of me.
It never takes much after tasting him. Two more long, tight strokes and I come hard, sudden, heat spilling over his knuckles and spattering onto my shirt. He works me through it gentle, hand slick and shining, thumb circling the sensitive head till I’m shaking in his arms.
I’m still spending when he eases those slick fingers behind my balls, pressing them against my hole. He gentles them inside, reaching for the spot where he knows I’ll break, and I forget we’re trying to be discreet.
“Oh my God,” I cry.
His other hand flies to my mouth to quiet it. My whole body seizes. The last of my sense goes white and useless, and more spend punches out of me, messy and sudden, over my belly. He makes a pleased sound behind me, low and mean. “Thought so,” he murmurs. “You weren’t finished.”
After, he wipes his hand on the inside of his own shirttail, then pulls me down till we’re lying side by side on the narrow bed, my back to his chest, his arm locked around my waist. My heart’s still hammering in my ribcage.
Upstairs stays silent. We don’t speak. Don’t need to.
His breath evens out against my neck, warm and steady.
My own body feels loose for the first time in days.
I shift in his arms, slow, careful not to break the quiet.
His grip adjusts like instinct, tugging me closer, tighter.
Our legs tangle, nose to nose in the dim. His eyes flick to my mouth.
I tilt my chin and he leans in, capturing my mouth in a slow, open-mouthed kiss.
Nothing rushed. Just the two of us breathing each other in.
My hand comes up to cup his jaw, thumb tracing the scratch of stubble.
He lets out a soft sound against my lips, something almost like a sigh. “We shouldn’t take risks like this.”
“Can’t help it. Been wantin’ you since you told that Hollister guard off.”
He leans in again, another kiss, this one softer, our mouths barely moving, just warmth and breath shared between us. Holding my face between his rough palms, thumbs brushing the corners of my mouth, he says, “I can’t help it either.”
I believe him.
I know what loving me has cost him. But he’s in my bones the way I’m in his—two halves of the same restless creature, two stars in the same sky that can’t quit circling each other.
We’d find each other in the dark of a cell, in the smoke of a lynching fire, in whatever hell they tried to consign to us.
There ain’t a law, nor Alfred Collins, nor the whole damn Confederacy risen from the grave that could tear us apart.
Upstairs, a floorboard gives a tiny pop, and our heads turn toward the ladder, holding our breaths. Has she heard? The wind outside shakes the eaves. Reckon it’s just the cabin settling.