Chapter 10 Delaney
TEN
DELANEY
I climb the ladder like I’m sneaking into trouble, palms dusty, heart tapping quick against my ribs.
The barn smells like clean hay and summer heat, like leather and something warm I can’t name without saying his name too.
Moonlight slides through the gaps in the old boards in pale stripes.
Above me, I hear the soft thud of his boots and the creak of the loft boards as he shifts his weight, unhurried, like he’s got all night to take me apart.
“Careful,” he says, voice honey-low. “Those last two rungs like to surprise a girl.”
“I’m not a girl,” I shoot back, lifting my chin as I step onto the loft.
“No,” he says, and the way he says it—slow, certain—puts heat in my cheeks. “You’re not.”
He’s in shadow, hat tipped low, one hip against a hay bale, rope coiled easy in his hand like it belongs there.
It does. So does he—broad shoulders sketching a silhouette I could find blindfolded, sleeves rolled, forearms tanned and strong.
A strip of moonlight catches the buckle at his belt. My breath catches with it.
“What are you doing here so late?” he drawls.
I take a step closer. Hay whispers under my boots. “I wanted to see you.”
His mouth curves, the kind of smile that starts trouble and ends it, too. “Well, darlin’, you got me.”
He lifts the rope. It’s nothing fancy—just soft, worn cotton that’s seen more fence posts than games. Still, my pulse answers like it recognizes an old song. He reads that in my face. I know he does. He always does.
“Hands,” he says. “Let me see ’em.”
I offer them out, palms up. His thumbs skim each one, slow, grounding. The rough of his skin against mine makes me shiver. He notices that, too. He notices everything.
“You been thinkin’ about this all day?” he asks.
“Since you said my name like a command this morning,” I say, because if we’re being honest, we’re being honest.
He makes a sound that lives somewhere between a laugh and a promise. “Come here.”
Two steps, maybe three, and I’m in his space.
He smells like cactus and clean sweat and sunlight trapped in cotton.
He hooks a finger into the belt loop of my shorts, tugging me forward that last inch until my knees bump the hay bale and the brim of his hat slides against my forehead. He tips it back so he can see my eyes.
“I’m gonna put this on your wrists,” he says, voice gone slow and deliberate. “Soft. Just enough to remind you you’re mine right now. That all right?”
“Yes,” I whisper, already leaning into him like I can’t remember how not to.
He lifts my hands between us, kisses the inside of one wrist, then the other.
The heat of his mouth there says more than anything he could say out loud.
He loops the rope with a gentleness that makes my chest ache, wraps once, twice, then ties a loose knot I could slip free of with the slightest tug.
The knowledge of that—of the trust, the choice—makes me dizzy.
“Too tight?” he checks.
“No.” I try to sound sassy. It comes out soft. “Cowboys always this careful?”
“Only when we’re invested.” His thumb strokes over the knot, testing. “Hands where I put ’em, sugar.”
He guides my bound wrists up, hooking the rope over a low beam just above my head. Not hung there, not helpless—just stretched enough that I have to rise onto my toes to meet him. My shirt rides up a little. His eyes go dark, appreciative and hungry.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “Prettiest thing in this barn by a country mile.”
I’m about to tell him he’s ridiculous when he leans in and kisses me, and the thought blows apart like thistle down.
His mouth is warm and sure, slow at first, then deeper when I open for him, my breath catching on a sound I’d deny if he didn’t like it so much.
One of his hands settles at my hip, big and steady.
The other finds the small of my back and eases me closer, like he’s aligning us to some grid only he can see.
He kisses me like he’s got time and intent, like there’s a checklist and it says: taste her until she forgets her name. I forget everything but the slope of his lower lip and the way he smiles against my mouth when I chase him for more.
“Impatient,” he says, amused and pleased.
“Bossy,” I fire back, breathless.
“That too.” He tips my head back with the brim of his hat and trails his mouth along my jaw, down the side of my throat.
The scrape of his stubble wakes every nerve I own.
He finds the spot that makes my knees go a little loose and lingers there, sucking just enough to make me gasp, to make me arch into him like the hay bale behind me might catch fire from how hot I feel.
The rope hums against my skin when I shift.
I tug, testing, and the knot holds—gentle, stubborn.
My breath shivers out. He feels it. He slides his hand from my back to the front of my thigh, fingers spanning, thumb slow and certain as sunrise as it traces over denim.
Every place he touches turns into a live wire.
“Tell me where you are,” he says against my skin, voice dust and velvet. “In that pretty head.”
“Right here.” I swallow. “The rope. Your hand. The way you—” I break off on a shiver when his thumb presses a fraction harder. “The way you always know.”
“Good girl,” he says, low. The words roll through me like heat. “You keep your eyes on me.”
I do. He steps back half a pace, just enough space to let his gaze travel, greed and reverence sharing the same seat.
He takes off his hat and tosses it onto the hay with a flick of his wrist, like we’ve crossed a line where we don’t need the pretty manners anymore.
He drags his knuckles down my side, slow, then back up under the hem of my shirt, fingertips skating the warm edge of my ribs.
My breath hitches, and my shoulders press into the rope.
“You’re shakin’.” It’s observation, not worry. He likes it. I can hear it.
“Maybe I’m cold,” I lie, because being at his mercy makes me brave in the most reckless ways.
He huffs, amused, then cages me in, forearms braced on either side of my head, rope brushing his skin. “You ain’t cold,” he says. “But I’ll warm you up anyhow.”
He kisses me again, deeper this time, like he’s tasted the first rain and now he wants the storm.
The hay rustles beneath us, punctuating the little noises I make when he does that thing with his tongue, when he pulls back to catch my bottom lip between his teeth and then soothes it with a sweep that makes my toes curl in my boots.
“Hands okay?” he asks, breath a little rougher. He doesn’t take his eyes off my mouth.
“Mm-hmm.” I tug again, just to feel the drag, the reminder. “I like it.”
“I know.” Pride twines through his voice. “I can feel it on you.”
He bites back a smile when I blush and then crowds me, all quiet power, his chest against mine, his thigh pressing between mine just enough to make me forget why I thought words were useful. I chase the friction without thinking. He groans, low and grateful, and it lights me up from the inside.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, guiding me, coaxing me. “Use me.”
The barn might as well be another planet.
It’s just us and the rope and the slow, careful rhythm he sets, the way he kisses me like he’s promising to end me soft and put me back together sweeter.
My head falls back against the rope as his mouth finds my throat again.
My hips find a pace that makes my breath stutter.
I don’t say please. I don’t have to. He hears it anyway.
“Good girl.” The praise slides through me, molten. He noses along my jaw, breath hot, words even hotter. “Look at me when you let go.”
I do, eyes on his, the world narrowing to that line between us, to the way he looks at me like I hung the stars he works under.
My hands flex in the rope, not to get free—just to feel it, to know I could.
The choice hums under my skin like a secret.
He’s close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his eyes, the focus there, the way he’s holding himself on a tight, tender leash for me.
When it breaks inside me, it’s quiet and deep, a wave that steals my breath and gives it back newer. I bite his name into his shoulder, and he exhales a curse that sounds like worship and holds me through it, strong, patient, steady.
“Easy,” he says, kissing the corner of my mouth, my cheek, my hairline. “There you go. Breathe.”
I do, shaky and smiling, a little dazed.
He waits, foreheads touching, our breaths evening together.
When my knees soften, he’s already there, hand at my waist, one arm under my thighs, lifting like I weigh nothing.
He turns us, sets me gently on the hay bales, warm and prickly under my legs.
The rope brushes my wrists. He reaches up and loosens the knot with deft fingers, slower than he tied it, careful like he’s unwrapping something that matters.
“How’re your hands?” he asks, massaging my wrists with his thumbs. He kisses the red crescent where the rope sat, both sides, like a benediction.
“I can still feel you,” I say, which is not an answer and exactly the truth.
“That’s the idea.” He smiles then, open and wicked, and I want to frame that smile and hang it on a nail where I can see it every day. He drapes the rope around my neck like a scarf, soft and silly, then takes it back with a tug that says we could keep playing until the sunrise finds us.
“Want more?” he asks, voice a rasp that curls low in my belly. “Or you want me to take you slow and sweet ’til the crickets fall asleep?”
I slide my hands up his chest, feeling the heat and strength and the steady thud of his heart under my palms. I hook a finger in his belt again and tug him closer, greedy and honest.
“We can’t do this. You know that,” I say, even though there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
He smiles, slow and lazy, like he can see through my lies. He’s always known me too well. Better than I know myself. “Maybe I need to be reminded every now and then.”