Chapter Nineteen
Runa
I couldn’t sleep.
Not even Denali’s slow, rhythmic breathing and her stars projected onto the ceiling and walls were enough to lull me to sleep.
Not after all the news York had just given me.
My family: dead. All of them. My entire lineage, gone. Without me even knowing.
There was grief—more than I expected. But the more I sat with it, the more it felt like grief for what could have been, not for what had been.
I grieved the mother and father I should have had, the ones I maybe hoped they would grow into one day.
But the news of their money-wasting, extravagant ways told me not much had changed in the years I’d been away.
Was I horrified at their manner of death? Sure. I wished everyone could go at night, in their sleep, none the wiser that it was happening. But that wasn’t what they’d gotten, and my heart hurt for the fear they must have felt in those final moments.
As for my grandfather, my feelings were even more complicated.
He was a monster in many ways, yes. We argued constantly.
He beat me often. But he was the only consistent adult figure in my life.
He might not have been warm and fluffy about it, but he was there to take me to doctor’s appointments or to get a cast at the hospital.
Did he lecture me about climbing things I shouldn’t?
Sure. But he was there. The only person who was.
He taught me to ride a bike, ride a horse, shoot a gun.
There was a lot of bad.
But it hadn’t all been bad.
It took me years away from home to put it into perspective. There was still a lot of anger and pain at some aspects of my childhood, but there had been some good moments.
And any chance to try to sit down with my grandfather and have a talk about that, introduce him to his great-granddaughter—that was all gone.
Worse yet, he’d been sick. For a man as strong and prideful as he was, I knew that couldn’t have been easy. And I hadn’t been there. There was some regret about that too.
So all that was spinning around in my mind until I felt sick enough to have to get out of bed and leave the room, go seek some fresh air.
I hadn’t even been letting myself think about the money. If there even was any money coming to me. It was too risky to hope.
Growing up, my grandfather claimed he’d been hard on me because I was his legacy, because I was who had to take over the ranch and keep it successful for the next generation, and the one after that.
So most of my life, I’d lived with some strange comfort knowing something would come to me one day.
Even if I chose to sell the ranch for the money to start my new life.
When I’d left home, I’d assumed that was all over. That he had given the inheritance to my parents, or simply been a vindictive prick and left it to no one at all. Certainly not the granddaughter who’d never been what he wanted me to be.
So there was still a chance I was getting nothing but my childhood belongings or something like that.
Still.
It would be a full-circle moment to go home, to see the ranch one last time, to show it to Denali.
Then head back to Golden Glades where, I hoped, we could figure out this stalking thing and be done with it once and for all.
I hadn’t been able to hold myself back from texting Amanda one last time before giving my phone to York to destroy.
How fucking dare you put my daughter’s life at risk?
That was all I needed to say.
The only message that mattered to get across.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to text her at all, but I needed her to know I knew. I wanted the guilt to eat her alive. Because I’d been so, so close to death, to leaving my daughter without her mother.
If this information had come to me about her just a week or so ago, I would have been curled in a ball, inconsolable. Aside from my daughter, Amanda was all I had.
Now, though, that wasn’t the case.
We’d only been in the clubhouse for about a week, but I’d already formed such deep bonds with the people there.
Eddie, because of his love and patience with my daughter.
The other wives and moms for their advice, their backup, their steady friendship—even though it was new.
And even some of the guys, who I found myself hanging out with when Denny was occupied.
That wasn’t even mentioning York. Who had come to mean a lot more to me than was probably normal or healthy. But I found myself looking for him, moving closer to him, my spirit lifting each time I heard him laugh or interact with our daughter.
It was like there was something buried in me that tugged me closer.
We hadn’t really been alone together since the last time we had sex. Which was maybe good. I felt way too exposed, raw, and emotional about the whole thing. I needed some time to get my mind and heart together.
The night air was thick, the tree frog calls and cricket trills interrupted on occasion with a deep, lonesome-sounding owl’s hoots, as I walked across the backyard.
I didn’t dare cross into the thick tree line of the woods behind the house, but I stood near it, trying to sort through the thoughts that refused to let me sleep.
“Runa.”
I jumped, gasping as I spun around to find York walking toward me. And the bastard didn’t have the decency to be wearing a shirt.
My body tensed and pulsed.
Despite the heat, goosebumps rose across my skin.
I tried—really, I did—to keep my gaze on his face. But there was no stopping how I scanned his wide chest, the deep cuts of his abdominal muscles, and the way his sleep shorts made it clear he wasn’t wearing anything below.
When the moon caught the material, I could make out the outline of his cock, making my sex clench hard.
It felt like I watched him forever, but when my gaze made it back to his face, he didn’t give me that slow, lazy smirk like he’d caught me.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Can’t sleep. Decided to get some air, clear my head, then try again.”
“Afraid to go into the woods?” he asked. And I appreciated him not immediately badgering me about why I couldn’t sleep.
“Well, snakes.”
Not a whole lot scared me about being out in the wilderness. I’d seen and experienced so much. But venomous snakes scared the shit out of me. Venomous snakes, moose, and polar bears. That was it.
“No cottonmouths around here. It’s too late for a diamondback or canebrake. You might encounter a coral snake around here. But more at dawn or dusk. It’s a little late for them now. Plus, if you stay on the path, you’re even less likely to see anything.”
“If I get bitten, I’m sending you the three-hundred-thousand-dollar bill.”
With that, we moved onto the well-worn trail in the woods.
“Do you guys walk in here a lot?”
“This leads to the shooting range. We spend a decent amount of time there, keeping sharp. Or blowing off steam.”
“I’ve heard things about the range. Not sure how comfortable I am with Denny around it.”
“It’s basically impossible for a stray bullet to escape, given how it’s been built. And once everyone started having kids, they put up a big fence to keep them from getting anywhere near it.”
“I’m not against it as a whole. But it needs to be a discussion with Denny. I understood guns when I was a kid. But her life hasn’t been around them yet, so that needs to be a discussion.”
“We’ll get there. For now, I’ve asked everyone to go to the indoor range if they want to practice.”
“Always thinking ahead,” I said, glancing over at him.
He was mostly in shadow, with just streaks of moonlight across his face when he moved between trees.
“We shouldn’t go too far. What if Denny wakes up?”
“Velle is in the kitchen, scrubbing out the cabinets.”
“At this hour? Why?”
“He does it on occasion. Think it’s a stress thing. For a guy always trying to get us to talk about our feelings, he’s shit at letting anyone in on his own.”
“That’s always the way, isn’t it? The people who need it the most are always giving it to everyone else. Oh, you weren’t kidding about the fence.”
It was a massive, wrought-iron rectangle encompassing the enormous mountain of dirt on three sides.
“What’s under the dirt?”
“The berm itself is about ten inches thick on each side of a heavy lumber core, as well as sandbags. I think there might even be some commercial ballistic material in there. It’s gotten thicker and thicker over the years. Everyone worried about the kids.”
He unlocked the gate with a code and moved inside.
“Wow. I feel like I’m at the foot of a mountain. This is high.”
I turned in a circle, taking it all in. The thick inner walls of the berm were covered in lush, soft moss that I ran my fingers across.
When I came full circle in my twirl, there he was. Close. Close enough for our chests to brush.
Unsatisfied with that, York’s arm went around, pulling me flush against his chest.
Heat sizzled through me as my breath caught and my hand moved out automatically, grabbing his arm to steady myself.
Before I could even adjust to his chest crushing my breasts, or the press of his hardening cock against my belly, his head dipped and his lips sought mine.
I melted into the kiss, into the feel of him, into the aching need building in my core.
It had been far too many days.
Our bodies had been aching too much for soft and sweet.
York backed me up against the moss-covered wall of the range, his hand impatient, slipping into my shorts and panties to work my clit.
My cry was muffled by his lips as his fingers thrust inside me, working me with quick movements that had my breath catching, had the ache coiling tighter inside me.
Desperate, I reached down, shoving my shorts and panties down, making York let out a low rumble of approval.
Impatient, I reached for his shorts, pushing them down, then closing my hand around his hardness.
A gasp escaped York as I stroked him, my hand restless and tight, moving up and down his length as his fingers thrust faster inside me.
“York, please,” I begged, my walls clenching around his fingers, desperate to feel the fullness of him inside.
“I don’t have anything,” he said, his forehead pressing to mine.
“We’re covered,” I reminded him of my IUD. “And I’m all clear if you are.”
“Fuck,” he groaned, his hand sliding out of me.
Then he was grabbing my knee, lifting up my leg, pinning it to the moss wall, then slamming deep inside me.
We both groaned at the sensation.
But we were both too far gone to sink into the moment.
Everything was heat, and ache, and need.
Pressure built with every shift.
My moans and his groans spilled out and bled into the night sounds as control slipped, hot and inevitable.
“Fuck, yeah, come for me,” he hissed as my walls started to spasm around his cock.
He worked me through it before slamming deep.
His heated gaze on mine, he came deep inside me, making both our breaths catch.
“Fuck, baby,” he murmured afterward, his forehead pressed to mine, his length still inside me.
I curled my leg around his hip, keeping him exactly where he was, something within me begging me to force the moment to last.
Until, with a soft chuckle, York murmured, “You can have my cock inside you anytime you want, babe. But you gotta let me go eventually.”
With a sigh, I let my leg fall and he slipped away to pull his pants back into place, then fetching my panties and shorts for me to slip back into.
“I never do that,” I admitted once I was dressed again.
“I’ve never done that,” he confessed.
“Never?”
“Never. I’m sure it didn’t escape you that I wasn’t exactly a virgin when you rolled into town.”
“I heard stories about the club girls.”
“Yeah. And to keep shit fun, you keep shit wrapped. Some sage advice I got from my old man when I was a teen. Think it was why learning I had a kid out there was so shocking.”
“I know. No one was more shocked than me. Speaking of, we should probably head back in case Denny is looking for us.”
It was usually the moment when things shifted, got awkward or uncomfortable.
But after locking the gate again, York slung an arm around me, keeping me close the whole walk back to the clubhouse.
And when he came into the room I shared with Denny, I didn’t object to him being in bed next to me.
I slept better than I had in years with him beside me.