Chapter 16 Daniel
Daniel
The second we step into the bedroom, my wife closes the door behind us and pushes me toward the bed.
“You know what I kept thinking about in that meeting?” Delaney asks, her hands splayed on my chest.
“How much you wanted to murder my tie?” I mumble, kissing my way up her neck.
“Besides that.” She nudges me until I sit on the edge of the bed. “I kept thinking about this. About coming home with you. About celebrating properly.”
“This is pretty proper.” I grip her hips, pressing my lips to her stomach through her shirt. “Very dignified.”
“Liar.” She rocks her hips, and I groan. “You're thinking about bending me over every flat surface in this house.”
“How did you—”
“Because I’m thinking the same thing.” She reaches behind her for the zipper of her skirt. “Starting with this bed.”
The skirt drops to the floor. She’s wearing nothing underneath.
“Jesus Christ.” I reach for her, but she pushes me onto my back.
“My turn.” She palms me through my pants, squeezing my hard cock.
I nearly come off the bed. “Delaney—”
“Shhh. Let me take care of you.”
“You’ve been taking care of me.” I catch her wrist, bring her hand to my mouth, and press a kiss to her palm. “Let me return the favor.”
Before she can argue, I pull her on top of me and flip us. She lands on her back with a surprised yelp. I make quick work of her shirt and bra, stripping them from her gorgeous body. Then, I’m between her thighs, shouldering them open.
“Beautiful,” I breathe.
“You're still wearing pants.”
“I’m busy.” I grip her hips and pull her forward. “Spread your legs.”
She does. Trusting. Open. Mine.
I lean in and lick a long, slow stripe through her folds.
“Fuck.” Her legs twitch. I do it again.
She’s wet. Soaking. Dripping down my chin as I work her with my tongue, licking and sucking and re-learning every inch of her. She tastes like salt and honey, like victory, like everything I’ve ever wanted.
“Daniel—” Her fingers twist in my hair, pulling hard enough to sting. “Oh, God, right there—”
I focus on the spot that makes her shake. Circle it with my tongue. Slow. Deliberate. Making her feel every stroke.
“Please—” She’s panting now, hips rocking against my mouth. “I need—”
“I know what you need.” I slide two fingers inside her, curling them forward, and she cries out. “I've got you.”
I work her with my fingers and my mouth, building her higher with every stroke. Her thighs tremble against my shoulders. Her breath comes in sharp gasps. She’s close—I can feel it in the way her walls clench around my fingers, the way her whole body tightens like a bowstring.
“Come for me,” I growl against her clit. “Come on my tongue, wife. Let me taste you.”
Her orgasm hits hard. She convulses, crying out my name. I work her through it, gentling my touch as the waves subside, pressing soft kisses to her inner thighs.
“Holy shit.” She sinks into the mattress. “That was—”
“Just the beginning.”
I rise to my feet. She looks like a feast spread out for me, flushed and panting and thoroughly debauched.
And wearing my great-grandmother’s ring.
“You’re still wearing pants,” she says again, breathless.
“Noticed that, did you?”
“Hard to miss.” Her eyes drop to the obvious bulge straining against my zipper. “Looks uncomfortable.”
“Agonizing.” I shuck my pants and boxers in one motion, kicking them aside. Her gaze rakes down my body and lands on my cock, hard and leaking and desperate for her.
“Come here.” She holds out her arms.
I crawl over her, settling between her thighs. The head of my cock nudges her entrance. We both groan.
“Slow down,” she whispers, echoing my words to her that afternoon at the lake. Her soft smile wraps around my heart.
“Can’t.” I position myself at her entrance, meet her eyes. “I've been waiting all day. My whole damn life, feels like.”
I enter her slowly. Inch by inch. Watching her face as I fill her, watching her eyes flutter closed and her lips part on a moan. She’s tight and hot and perfect, and I have to stop halfway just to breathe.
“Okay?” I grit out.
“Wonderful.” She clenches around me, pulling me deeper.
I sink all the way inside her, my pelvis aligned to hers. I pause. “Pull your knees to your chest.”
She does as I ask, and I sink impossibly deeper. “Fuck.”
“Oh!” she gasps. “So good. Move, Daniel. Please.”
I pull out and thrust deep. Long, slow strokes at first, savoring the drag of her walls around my cock. She meets me thrust for thrust, her hips rising, her nails raking down my back.
“Harder,” she demands.
“Bossy.”
“You love it.”
“I love you.” I snap my hips forward, driving into her hard enough to make the headboard crack against the wall. “I love your smart mouth and your spreadsheets and the way you told Marlon Ennis you weren't finished.”
“I didn’t—ah!—I didn’t tell him to sit down.”
“You said it with your eyes.” I thrust again, grinding against her clit at the end of each stroke. “You said it with every document you slid across his desk. You said, ‘I’m not finished,’ and I almost came in my pants like a teenager.”
She’s laughing and moaning at the same time, her body arching beneath me. “That’s—oh, God—that’s the weirdest dirty talk I’ve ever heard.”
“Competence is sexy.” I shift my angle, and she keens. “Your competence makes me insane. Watching you work, watching you think, watching you win—” I pound into her, losing rhythm, losing control. “Makes me want to bend you over every flat surface in this house and show you what you do to me.”
“Promise?”
“Guarantee.”
I’m close. Too close. The pressure builds at the base of my spine, my balls drawing tight, every nerve ending screaming for release.
“Delaney—” I reach between us, find her clit, rub in tight circles. “I need you to come. I need to feel you come on my cock.”
“I'm close—” She gasps, writhing, her walls fluttering. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t—”
She breaks apart with a scream, her whole body clenching around me like a vice. The sensation rips my orgasm from me, pleasure crashing through me in waves as I bury myself deep and let go.
For a long moment, there’s nothing but the sound of our ragged breathing. The pounding of our hearts. Her body wrapped around mine.
I collapse beside her, pulling her against my chest, and we lie tangled together in the wreckage of the sheets.
“Best celebration ever,” she murmurs against my chest.
“Beat the bank and your husband in one day.” I press a kiss to her hair. “Good Tuesday.”
She snorts. “I didn’t beat you. That implies competition.”
“You definitely won.”
“We both won.” She props herself up on one elbow, looking down at me. Her hair is a disaster. Her makeup is smeared. She’s never been more beautiful. “We won, Daniel. We actually won.”
“We held the line.” I trace the engagement ring nestled above the wedding band on her finger. The diamond catches the lamplight, throwing tiny rainbows across the ceiling. “Today, we held the line.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow we keep building.” I pull her back down against my chest. “But tonight, we celebrate.”
“I thought we just celebrated.”
“That was round one.”
Her laugh vibrates through me. “You’re insatiable.”
“Only for you.” I roll her beneath me, already feeling my cock stir again. “Only ever for you.”
Later—much later—we lie tangled in the dark.
The house is quiet. The stars are bright through the window. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howls.
“Six months,” Delaney says softly.
“Six months to make this ranch untouchable.”
“We can do it.” She kisses my chest. Right over my heart. “We’ve got each other.”
I tighten my arms around her. Think about the patterns she mentioned. The irregularities she’s noticed. There’s something bigger happening—and LandCorp is involved somehow. I know it, she knows it. But that’s a fight for another day.
Tonight, I hold my wife. Count the ways we won. Think about the future we’re building.
Whatever comes next, we face it together.
That’s not hope anymore.
That’s certainty.