Chapter 27
DAISY
I wake up to the sound of his heartbeat.
My cheek is pressed to his chest, steady and deep under my ear. His arm lies heavy across my waist like he never plans to let go.
Wyatt Hartley is dead to the world, and I’m the reason why.
The sheets are pulled off two corners of the mattress. One pillow is on the floor, the other jammed behind the headboard where it’s shifted three inches from the wall. The quilt didn’t make it past the first round.
And I don’t care about any of it.
What I care about is the fact that his face, right now, looks nothing like the man I’ve known my whole life.
The hard line of his jaw has gone slack, and the crease between his brows has smoothed out entirely.
His lips are parted just enough that I can hear each breath, and his hair is a disaster.
Pushed in three different directions from my hands and the pillow.
He looks younger like this. Like a man who hasn’t spent his whole adult life putting everyone else first.
My fingertips skim lightly along his collarbone, following the ridge of bone to the base of his neck.
His skin is warm and tan even here, where the sun never reaches.
My hand drifts up to his jaw, and my thumb finds the scar on his chin through the stubble, a smooth line where nothing grows.
I trace it the way I did last night. The way I will do every morning for as long as he lets me.
If I get in that bed, I’m not getting back out.
He wasn’t asking permission. He was telling me what it would cost him if I said yes and didn’t mean it.
Not when this is over and you come to your senses about what you’re doing with a man like me.
A man like him. As if wanting Wyatt Hartley is a temporary lapse in judgment I’ll eventually recover from. He carries his whole family on his back and never once considers that someone might want to carry him. Not because he’s owed it, but because he’s worth it.
My mind keeps returning to it. The moment he pushed inside me, slow enough that I could have stopped him, deep enough that I had to remind myself to breathe. Six years of wanting, and the only thing that surprised me was that I didn’t shatter in that very first second.
His every stroke was a question, every pause answered with my hands in his hair.
With every grind of his hips, my vision narrowed, and when I came, I felt his control fracture.
The rhythm he’d kept for me broke apart, and I felt him follow me over with my name torn from his chest so rough, I almost came again at the sound.
Stay.
My lips curve upward as a thrill goes straight through my chest. The smile widens until I’m grinning into his chest, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to laugh out loud and wake him up. Because Wyatt Hartley asked me to stay.
And I get to.
I get to stay.
I press my mouth to the scar on his chin, slow and sure, and his arm tightens around me in his sleep.
He stirs, pulling me flush against him so that every inch of my body is pressed to every inch of his. A low rumble builds in his chest before it reaches his throat. Half groan, half sigh, and completely involuntary.
I press my mouth to his throat, right where the stubble gives way to smooth skin, and feel his pulse jump under my lips. His hand slides down from my lower back, dragging along the curve of my hip, fingers catching on the hem of his shirt before settling on my bare thigh.
“Mornin’.” His voice is gravel—rough and sleep-thick and so low it vibrates through me where our chests are pressed together.
“Morning.”
His eyes open. Green, still hazy, blinking against the light until they find my face, and I watch the moment he registers where he is and who he’s holding.
I’ve spent years imagining what the morning after would look like on Wyatt Hartley, whether there would be walls rebuilt overnight and distance measured out in careful inches.
There aren’t any.
His mouth curves into the slow, quiet version of a smile that I’ve only ever seen directed at Boone after a long day. The one that means he’s content all the way down to the bone and doesn’t have the energy to pretend otherwise.
“You’re starin’.” He blinks once.
“You’re worth staring at.”
“Debatable.” But his hand tightens on my thigh, thumb sweeping a slow arc across my skin that makes my breath catch. “How long you been awake?”
“Long enough to know you snore.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do. A gentle rumble. Very distinguished.” I prop myself up on one elbow and look down at him.
The sheet has pooled at his waist, and the expanse of his chest and shoulders is frankly unreasonable in the early morning light, broad and tan with dark hair that narrows to a line below his navel.
Last night I woke him when I traced that line with my mouth and felt his whole body go rigid, and the memory of it sends a flush crawling up my neck. “Like a bear in a very respectable cave.”
“You’re comparin’ me to a bear?”
“A handsome bear.”
He pulls me down before I can say anything else, one arm hooking around my waist as his other hand slides into my hair and tips my face to his to cover my mouth with his.
His mouth is warm and sure, and when his tongue slides against mine, I make a sound that would embarrass me if I weren’t already past the point of caring.
His hand on my thigh tightens and slides higher, dragging the shirt up with it, and I arch into his touch because my body already knows the map of his hands.
I shift on top of him, straddling his hips, and the feel of him hard beneath me through the sheet makes us both go still. His hands settle on my hips, fingers pressing into the soft skin, and he looks up at me with those green eyes gone dark and half-lidded.
“Hi,” I whisper, tugging my bottom lip between my teeth with a sharp inhale when he pumps his hips upward into me.
“Hi.” His thumbs trace circles on my hipbones, and his gaze drops to where his shirt hangs open on my frame, the collar slipped off one shoulder and the hem barely covering my thighs. The way he’s looking at me right now could power a small town. “That’s my shirt.”
“It is.”
“Looks better on you.” He sits up in one fluid motion, both arms wrapping around me so I’m in his lap with my legs around him, and presses his mouth to the exposed shoulder where the collar has fallen.
His lips are warm, his stubble scrapes lightly against my skin, and I shiver despite the heat building between us. “Looks a hell of a lot better on you.”
I tilt my head to give him access, and his mouth trails down my neck to my collarbone, open-mouthed and slow, taking his time. His hand slides up my back under the shirt, palm flat against my spine, pulling me closer until there’s no space left.
“Wyatt.” Breathless and low. The version that’s his alone.
“Yeah, baby.” He swivels those hips again, making me gasp.
“I want—”
A truck horn blares from the driveway.
We both freeze. His forehead drops to my shoulder, and the groan he lets out is so tortured it borders on theatrical.
“Ignore it,” I whisper.
“Can’t.” Despite that, he doesn’t move. His arms stay locked around me and his face stays buried in the curve of my neck, and for three glorious seconds I think he might actually choose this over whatever fresh crisis has arrived at his front door.
Then Colt’s voice carries through the open window, loud and cheerful in a way that can only be intentional, and the reality of ranch life floods back in.
“Mornin’, sunshine! Rhett’s got thirty head on the county road—they pushed through the east fence overnight and Brennan’s already called twice about ’em blockin’ his feed truck.
Also, someone backed into the squeeze chute gate and it’s hangin’ off one hinge, and I need the keys to the equipment shed because apparently I’m the only person on this ranch who can weld.
Oh, and West called. He’s stayin’ an extra day in Billings.
That mare he went to see needs more time before she’ll trailer. ”
Wyatt exhales against my neck. A long, measured breath that sounds like a man counting to ten and getting stuck at four.
“I’m goin’ to kill him.”
“You can’t kill him.” I try and fail to keep the smile from my voice. “He’s just too useful.”
“Watch me.” But he’s already easing me off his lap with the careful reluctance of someone setting down something precious. His hands linger on my hips, thumbs pressing lightly before he drops a kiss to my lips.
Then he stands up and pulls on jeans without bothering with underwear. The view is medically inadvisable for my heart rate, and I press my thighs together, keeping my mouth shut, because if I open it right now, Colt’s heifers are on their own.
He grabs a flannel from the back of the chair and shrugs into it without buttoning it, then turns back to me, one hand braced on the doorframe.
The morning light catches the hard lines of his shoulders and the strip of bare chest between the open flannel in a way that confirms God does indeed have a wild sense of humor.
“Don’t move.”
“Where would I go?” And I realize as I say it, I’m not being cute. I genuinely can’t think of a single place I’d rather be.
His mouth does the thing again, that slow curve. “Nowhere. That’s the point.”
Then he’s gone, down the stairs two at a time, only stopping to pull on his boots at the front door. Colt’s voice rises in mock offense at something I can’t catch before the screen door bangs shut.
I press my face into his pillow, breathing him in one last time, and let myself have it for exactly five seconds.
Then I get up, wincing at the protest of muscles that haven’t been consulted in a while, and pad across the hardwood to the window.
Colt’s truck is parked at an angle that suggests precision wasn’t a priority, and I can see them by the barn.
Wyatt has his arms crossed and his hat on, already back in ranch-owner mode.
He glances up at the window, finds me there, and touches two fingers to the brim of his hat without breaking stride in whatever Colt is saying.