Chapter 20 #2
“Please,” she whined, rolling her hips into my hand, chasing after that friction I knew she needed. “Now. Do it now, Wyatt, please.”
“Come for me first,” I ordered, pumping my hand faster. “Show me how bad you want it.”
Her pussy clamped around my fingers, walls fluttering, as she came. Moaning loud enough to plaster a smug smile on my face. She was magnificent when she looked up at me. Cheeks flushed, breathing shaky, eyes sparkling.
“Gorgeous,” I murmured. I lifted my hand to my mouth, holding her gaze while I sucked my fingers clean. “Still as sweet as I remember.”
I kissed down her jaw, along her neck and collarbones, swirled my tongue around one of her hardened nipples. She jumped, inhaling quickly at the scrape of my teeth.
“These are bigger,” I said, taking her breasts in my hands, kneading them roughly. “I noticed that back in the barn.” And had been thinking about them since. Hell, I’d been thinking about Ivy and her body these last fourteen years.
“You like them?” Concern tinged her voice.
“Love them, Ivygirl.” My gaze met hers. “Love everything about you. Always have. Always will.”
She gave me a small smile. “Good, cause you’re stuck with me.”
I shook my head, moving lower. “Nothin’ stuck about it, darlin’. You’re mine.”
“Yeah,” she breathed as my lips trailed along the plane of her stomach, pulling her bunched-up dress down her legs. “I am yours. Always have been.”
Her panties joined her dress soon after, leaving her bare and spread out for me. I ran my hands up her thighs, spreading them. “Could look at you ‘till the day I die.”
“Stop looking and do something,” she demanded, needy.
A shocked laugh slipped past my lips. “You turned into a bossy little thing, didn't you?”
“Mhm,” she nodded in a daze, watching with hooded eyes as I slipped my jeans off. I settled on top of her, her skin soft and warm against mine.
The feel of her beneath me was familiar, yet somehow brand new. She was my other half and a stranger. A foreign language I’d mastered only to forget with the passing of time. But it was coming back to me now.
“I need you,” she whispered.
I leaned down, our noses brushing. “Never could tell you no,” I replied, just as soft. I reached between us, running my cock along her entrance. My hands shook with anticipation, my heart beating like a drum against my ribs.
I pressed forward slowly, watching the way her eyes widened slightly, how her lips parted as her body gave way to mine.
Our moans blended together in perfect unison as I filled her.
This was different than the barn. That had been a combustion of anger and grief.
This was coming home. A reclaiming of everything we’d lost. A promise to never let it go again.
“God, I’ve missed you.”
“Show me how much.”
I pulled back only to surge forward again, harder this time. Ivy cried out, clinging to me as I drove into her, slow and deliberate like I’d promised. The truck rocked under my movements, the shocks creaking with each one.
I took her hands, pinning them over her head with just one of mine. The other went between her legs to her clit. “Wyatt,” she gasped when I started rubbing little circles.
“Need you to come again.”
“I can’t,” she whimpered. But it didn’t matter. I felt her getting tighter, heard the hitch in her breath that always gave her away. She ground her hips into mine, trying to take me deeper, faster, harder. She was just as desperate as I was, wanting this just as much.
“You will. You’re gonna be good for me and come. You’re gonna take everything I give you, aren’t you?” I picked up my pace now. My muscles burned with effort, my skin prickled with sweat.
Her voice shook. “Oh God.”
“Aren’t you, Ivy?” I repeated through gritted teeth.
“Yes!” she cried out. “Yes…yes, I’m gonna—fuck, I’m coming!” Her head tilted back into the blankets, heels digging into my ass. Her body shook beneath mine, thighs clamped around my hips as if she were afraid I’d vanish. But nothing could pull me away from her. Not now. Not ever.
I shattered right along with her. Shattered like glass, only to come back together into something completely new. Something that had her name written all over it.
We lay tangled afterward, the blanket pulled over us against the cooling night air, her head on my chest where she could hear my heart still racing. The creek sang its approval, or maybe I was just projecting onto nature the rightness I felt in my bones.
She lifted her head to look at me, hair wild around her face, lips swollen from kissing. "Take me home, Wyatt. To our cabin."
Our cabin. The words settled over me like a physical touch.
We dressed hastily, laughing when my shirt was inside out, and when she couldn't find her panties. The drive to the cabin was short but felt eternal, her hand on my thigh, my body still humming from her touch.
I'd left the porch light on, and it cast a warm glow as we pulled up. The cabin sat perfect in its setting—cedar logs gone silver with age, stone chimney reaching toward stars, windows reflecting the night like knowing eyes.
"It's exactly what we planned," Ivy breathed, standing beside the truck, staring at it. "Every detail."
"I had the sketches you drew. Kept them all."
She turned to me with tears streaming down her face. "You built our dream alone."
"Built it for us. Just took you a while to come home to it."
Inside, I watched her explore—fingers trailing over the mantle we'd imagined would hold Christmas stockings, the kitchen window we'd said should face east for morning coffee, the built-in bookshelf she'd insisted on for all the books she'd never had room for growing up.
"Shower," I said when she'd made a full circuit. "We should clean up."
"Together?" A blush spread across her chest.
"If you want."
"I want everything with you."
The bathroom was the one luxury I'd allowed—a huge shower with dual heads, bench built into the tile, a window that looked out over the pasture because Ivy had once said she wanted to shower with a view.
Steam filled the space as I adjusted the water, and when I turned back, she was watching me with dark eyes.
We undressed each other properly this time, slow and thorough, revealing bodies that had changed with the years but still recognized each other. The shower was about more than getting clean—it was a baptism, washing away the years of pain, the loneliness, the half-life we'd both been living.
I washed her hair, remembering how she used to purr like a cat when I played with it. Sure enough, the sound rose from her throat as I massaged her scalp, and I had to press her against the tile and kiss her until neither of us could breathe.
I traced the trail of water that slid down her neck, felt the flutter of her pulse against my tongue. Her nails scraped against my shoulders, sending goosebumps along my skin despite the water’s heat. “Wyatt…”
That breathy sigh had my body moving on its own accord, and I had her in my arms a second later. Ankles locked around my hips, I surged into her in one swift thrust that stole both our breath.
“Can’t get enough of you,” I murmured into the curve of her neck.
Ivy angled her hips, taking me deeper. “Never enough,” she moaned.
The glorious sound rang against the tile and settled deep in my bones.
She cradled my face in her hands, looking up at me with so much devotion in her brown eyes.
“Good thing we have forever.” My grip on her tightened, and it took everything in me not to lose it completely.
“Forever,” I swore to her before pressing my lips to hers.
I drove into her until my muscles burned with effort, until she was nothing more than a string of moans and whimpers and kisses that held all the promises we’ve ever made.
We fell into bed still damp, too tired and sated to care. She curved into me like she'd never left, her back to my chest, my arm around her waist, legs tangled. I breathed in the scent of her—my soap on her skin, but still essentially Ivy underneath.
"Don't leave," I murmured, already half asleep. "Promise you won't leave."
"Never again," she whispered back.
I woke to sunlight streaming through the windows and the weight of Ivy's head on my chest. For a moment, I didn't move, afraid I was dreaming. How many mornings had I woken alone in this bed, reaching for someone who wasn't there?
But she was real—her hair spread across my chest, her breath warm against my skin, her hand resting over my heart like she was making sure it still beat for her.
She stirred, made a soft sound of waking, then froze like she was doing the same reality check I'd just done.
"You're here," I said, wonder in my voice.
She lifted her head, eyes soft with sleep. "You're here too."
"This is my bed."
"Our bed," she corrected, then stretched against me in ways that made coherent thought impossible. "In our cabin. On our ranch."
"Say that again."
"Which part?"
"The 'our' part."
She smiled, slow and wicked and full of promise. "Ours. Everything ours."
Later, we sat on the porch with coffee and the eggs I’d scrambled while she wore my shirt and nothing else.
Morning sunlight spilled over the hills, the breeze soft, the smell of rain still clinging to the air.
The cattle were lowing somewhere down by the creek.
It was so domestic, so normal, that it made my chest ache with how much I wanted this forever.
“We need to talk about Dallas,” she said finally, and reality slid back in like a shadow.
“You’re leaving.” Not a question.
“To close that chapter properly,” she said quickly, reaching for my hand. “I’ve got an apartment to pack, a lease to break, furniture to deal with. I can’t just disappear this time. I need to do it right.”
“How long?”
“Two weeks. Maybe less.”
Two weeks. After all this time, what were two weeks? Still, the thought of her gone—even for that long—made my chest feel too tight.
“You’ll come back?” I hated how vulnerable it sounded.
She set her mug aside, then climbed right into my lap, knees bracketing my hips. The shirt slid up just enough for me to realize—yep, still no panties. For a second, every logical thought in my head short-circuited.
“Well, hell,” I muttered, voice rough, “you really expect me to talk about logistics right now?”
Her lips curved, that slow, knowing smile that had always been my undoing. “Focus, cowboy.”
“Hard to,” I said, and she laughed, low and throaty, before pressing her forehead to mine.
“I will always come back,” she whispered. “This is home. You’re home. I just need to close that door properly so it never calls me back.”
I nodded, swallowing the knot in my throat. “Then go. But take this with you.”
I shifted her onto my other leg, reached into my pocket, and pulled out the silver horseshoe pendant she’d left behind. I knew keeping it on me all these years would come in handy. The morning light caught it as I fastened it around her neck.
“Wear it,” I said. “Remember what you’re coming back to.”
Her fingers brushed the charm, tears bright in her eyes. “As if I could forget.”
“Two weeks,” I told her. “I’ll be counting the days.”
“So will I.”
We spent the rest of the morning tangled up between sheets and sunlight, making love and talking about the future between kisses—plans for the breeding program, new ideas for the co-op, little things that felt big because they were ours.
When she finally drove away that afternoon, dust rising behind her car, I stood on the porch and watched until she disappeared beyond the ridge.
But this time, I wasn’t broken. This time, I knew she’d come back.
The horseshoe would bring her home.
And this time, home would be forever.