Chapter 6
Mason
We ride back to the ranch with stars overhead and her hand against mine and the adrenaline settling into something deeper and warmer and more dangerous than what made it.
She shot a wolf off me. A woman in a borrowed jacket and too-big boots sat on a horse in the half-dark and put a bullet through a charging animal and saved my life.
I’ve worked with ranch hands for years. Experienced men, men who grew up with rifles, men who know the land.
None of them have ever done what she just did.
Not because they couldn’t. Because the speed of it, the calm of it, the way she raised the rifle and breathed and fired like the moment was a song and she already knew the melody. That’s not training. That’s instinct.
She told me she could shoot. I thought she was being brave. She was being accurate.
The ranch hands take the horses. Mark nods at me as he takes the reins.
He doesn’t say anything about Paige. He doesn’t have to.
The look on his face says enough. The dubious glances from earlier are gone.
What’s there now is the expression of a man who’s been corrected by evidence and accepts the correction.
We walk to the house. The porch light is on.
The kitchen is still set up from dinner, the plates on the counter, the grill cooling on the deck.
It feels like a different night than the one that started with steaks and a guitar.
It is a different night. This night has a dead wolf and a first kiss and the taste of her still on my mouth.
She walks inside. She pulls off the borrowed jacket and hangs it on the hook by the door, the same hook where my jacket hung, the one she returned, the one that started this. Her hair is wild from the wind and the horse and the dark and she looks like something I’d build a house around.
She looks at me. I look at her. The kitchen is quiet. The house is quiet. The whole ranch is quiet and the only sound is my blood in my ears and her breathing, which is faster than it should be for a woman standing still.
I cross the kitchen. I stop in front of her. Close. Close enough to see the adrenaline still in her eyes, mixed with something else now, something hot and certain.
“You are so beautiful,” I tell her. My hand comes up to her face.
My thumb on her cheekbone. My fingers in her hair at her temple.
“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and you just saved my life on horseback and I need you to know that I have never wanted anyone the way I want you right now.”
“Then stop talking,” she says.
I pick her up, and carrying her feels effortless. Her legs go around my waist. Her arms go around my neck. Her mouth finds mine and the kiss from the clearing continues in the kitchen, harder now, deeper, with the urgency that comes from almost losing something before you’ve had it.
I carry her to my bedroom. Down the hall, through the door, into the room I’ve slept in alone for three years. The bed is big and clean and it has never had a woman in it and tonight it’s going to have this woman in it and the thought makes something primal and possessive move through my chest.
I toss her on the bed. She bounces once and her hair fans out and her eyes are wide and dark and she’s looking up at me with an expression I want to see every night for the rest of my life. Want. Raw and real and aimed at me.
I pull my shirt off. Shoes. She’s already reaching for her boots, the too-big ones, kicking them off, and I lean down and pull the jeans off her legs and then the sweater, up and over her head, and she’s in a white lace bra and matching panties and she’s lying on my bed in the lamplight.
Curvy. Full. Her breasts round and straining against the lace. Her hips wide and her waist soft and her thighs full and she is every single thing I’ve been thinking about since the gravel shoulder and the reality is better than every thought I’ve had.
“You,” I say. I climb onto the bed. I’m over her, my hands on either side of her head, my body above hers. “Are so goddamn beautiful.”
I kiss her. I kiss her neck, her collarbone, the space between her breasts where the bra meets her skin. I reach under her and unclasp the bra and pull it away and her breasts are bare and full and her nipples are hard and I take one in my mouth and she arches off the bed.
“Mason.” My name in her voice. I want to hear it louder.
I kiss down her body. Her stomach. The soft curve below her navel. I pull her panties down her legs and she’s bare and I’m looking at her and she starts to cover herself. A reflex.
“Don’t.” I catch her hand. I hold it against the bed. “Don’t hide from me. Not ever.”
She lets her hand relax. She lets me look. I look because she needs to see what I see: a woman who is perfect. Every curve. Every inch. Nothing to cover.
I put my mouth on her. My hands on her thighs, opening her, holding her steady. My tongue on her clit, slow and firm. She gasps. Her hand comes down to my hair, gripping.
“That’s my good girl.” I say it against her skin. I feel her whole body respond to the words. A shudder that runs through her like a chord being struck. “So wet for me. So perfect.”
I work her with my mouth. Slow, patient, paying attention to every response and adjusting until I know exactly what she needs.
When her hips rock up, I give her more. When her breath catches, I stay right there. When she whimpers, I press harder.
“Open your legs wider for me.” She does. Immediately. “That’s a good girl.”
She’s climbing. I can feel it in the tension of her thighs and the rhythm of her breathing and the sounds she’s making, high and broken and beautiful. I slide two fingers inside her and she’s tight and wet and she clenches around me and I curl my fingers and find the spot that makes her cry out.
“Mason, I’m going to...”
“Come for me, sweetheart. Let me hear you.”
She comes. Hard. Her thighs lock around my head and her hand fists in my hair and she says my name like it’s the only word she knows. I feel it pulse through her, her whole body contracting, and I stay with her through it, my mouth gentle now, bringing her down.
I rise up on my knees. She’s spread out on my bed, flushed and breathing hard and looking at me with heavy eyes. I unbuckle my belt. Push my jeans down. Her eyes drop and widen and her lip catches between her teeth.
“Flip over.” I keep my voice steady. Low. The voice I use when I want something and I’m going to get it and the getting is going to be good for both of us. “Hands and knees, sweetheart.”
She rolls over. She gets on her hands and knees and her back is arched and her hair is down her spine and I run my hands over her. Down her back. Over her hips. Over the curve of her ass. I grip her. Firm. My fingers pressing into her flesh.
I press against her. The head of my cock against her entrance, slick and hot. She pushes back against me and the sound she makes is impatient and needy and I want to hear it again.
“Tell me you want this,” I say.
My voice is rough now. My hands are on her hips. “You are so tight. So perfect. Are you going to be a good girl for me and take my cock?”
She doesn’t answer immediately. She’s breathing hard, anticipating.
“I asked you a question, sweetheart.” I spank her once. My palm against her ass, firm, the crack of it sharp in the quiet room. She gasps. She moans. She pushes back against me.
“Yes. Yes, I want it. I want you.”
I pull back and thrust forward. Hard. The sound of the contact fills the room and she cries out. Not pain. Pleasure. The deep, startled cry of a woman who didn’t know she wanted it like this until she got it.
I grip her hips and take her. Hard and deep, the rhythm building, my thighs against hers, the sound of our bodies together filling the room. I watch where we’re joined, my cock slick with her, sliding in and out, and the sight of it drives something wild through me.
She’s moaning. Constant now. Her arms give and her face drops to the mattress and her back arches deeper and the angle changes and I go deeper and she screams into the sheets.
I’m close. I’ve been close since she shot the wolf off me. I’ve been on the edge since she walked into my house and picked up a guitar and sang a song that took the roof off my heart.
I angle my hips. I find the rhythm that makes her clench. My balls slap against her clit and she’s shaking under me.
“Come for me again,” I tell her. “I want to feel you come around my cock. Be a good girl. Let go.”
She breaks. She breaks around me with a scream that I feel in my spine. Her walls clench tight and rhythmic and I can’t hold it. I slam deep and come inside her, hard, pulsing, my hands gripping her hips, my forehead dropping to her back. I come saying her name.
We collapse. Side by side. Breathing hard. The sheets are wrecked and the room smells like sex and sweat and her and I’m staring at the ceiling of a room I’ve slept in alone for three years and it’s never felt this full.
“That was,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know it could be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I didn’t have to be less.”
The words hit me in the chest. I roll onto my side. I pull her against me. Her back against my chest, my arm around her waist, her hair against my jaw.
“You never have to be less,” I say into her hair. “Not here. Not with me. Not ever.”
She’s quiet. Her hand covers mine on her stomach. Her breathing slows.
“Paige?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re just getting started.”
I grin against her hair, then I roll her onto her back and she looks up at me, surprised and delighted, as I settle between her legs again.
“Already?” she says.
“Sweetheart, I’ve been waiting thirty-nine years for you. I’ve got a lot of time to make up for.”