Chapter 21
CAMMIE
We’d gotten our clothes put back to rights and I was sitting between his spread legs, my back against his chest. He’d moved his jacket up the grass so he could lean against one of the boulders.
We stared out at the view as he nuzzled my neck, kissed me behind my ear.
His hands roamed over me, as if he couldn’t help himself from touching me.
I loved it. I was far from cold, not with his huge body behind me keeping me warm.
“This is my spot,” he murmured. “With eight older siblings, I’d come here to get away from all of them. You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, but I used to be much smaller than all of them and I got picked on.”
I looked around, seeing a place he’d come to probably hundreds of times. A group of boulders that sat up on a bluff, prairie grass, views for miles and miles.
“Your parents let you come out here by yourself?”
I felt him shrug. “They knew where I was headed. I’m sure Pops knows this is where I took you.”
Being out here, just the two of us, leaving the world behind… it felt different. It felt like this could be our life someday. Me, Zeb. All the sex we wanted.
Then I realized I was getting ahead of myself. I’d only known him a few days! But still, I had the taste of his cum in my mouth. We were far past any kind of closeness I’d ever had with anyone else.
I had so many questions for him. One burning one.
“Zeb?”
“Hmm?” he murmured, stroking my hair and kissing my cheek.
“Um… how come… how come you waited so long to have sex?” It was an embarrassing question to ask, because I hadn’t had sex before last night either, but it confused me.
I patted his thigh, the muscle so big and strong it was like a tree trunk.
“I mean, look at you. I’d think you could have any girl you want. ”
He seemed to be very focused on my ear lobe. “Yeah, I did. You.”
I angled my head to give him better access. “You know what I mean.”
He lifted his head and we looked out at the horizon. All browns and golds and blue sky. “Because my parents laid eyes on each other and that was it. They talk about how special it was and you should see them together. Their love is… amazing. I wanted that too and I wasn’t going to settle.”
I liked that answer. It was romantic and earnest and surprising.
“What about you?” he asked.
I shrugged, studiously eyeing the tiny frayed spot in the denim right above his knee. “No one was interested. Neither was I.” I flicked a glance at him over my shoulder. “Until you.”
I bit my lip, suddenly realizing this was a pretty heavy conversation for only knowing him for such a short time.
“What?” he asked.
“You’ve got a huge family,” I said, stating the obvious. “Now that I know who they are, I know it’s not just my brother and Lainey who are having babies this year.”
Zeb grinned. “Yeah, I think my brothers–and yours–are fucking like rabbits.”
I blushed, thinking about what we just did. We’d gone from being virgins to having oral sex and taking sex pictures out in the open. Photos! I hadn’t even thought of the things we did before yesterday. My pussy was still sore from the night before. “I’m–”
“You’re not ready to have a baby,” he said, finishing for me. “I respect it.”
I frowned. “What about you? You want kids?”
“Hell, yeah. But not right now.”
“Yeah, we just met. Besides, you’re going to probably go pro with football and–”
“Nope.”
I paused. Tipped my head again.
“No?” I asked, frowning. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to do that. I want to run the ranch with my family. Like my brother Buck. He and I are the most alike, I think.”
That surprised me. Of course, until a few hours ago, I only knew the football college student version of Zeb. I saw how everyone adored him for his throwing arm. I saw it in action in the game. He was good. Amazing, even. It was the next step for a winning player like him, to go pro. “You do?”
“Yeah. I got a full ride for football, so I took it. Other kids would kill for that opportunity I was given and I wasn’t going to squander it. But I’d be content to quit right now and stay home. Here.” He waved his arm like a rainbow. “Never leave this.”
Oh.
My heart felt like it fell off a horse and got stomped on.
I had two years left of school. I wanted to be a teacher. No, I was going to be one. I couldn’t quit if I wanted to keep that dream. I needed the degree.
Yet, sitting here in his favorite spot on his family’s ranch, Stetson on his head, it was much easier to see why Zeb wasn’t interested in school. Not like I was. He was an ag major, which would help him with whatever he wanted to do on the ranch, but he didn’t need it.
He just said this was exactly where he wanted to be.
So was this temporary, us? Or did he expect me to give up my dream for his?
“We should get back,” I said, pushing up to my feet, then brushing my butt. I wasn’t wearing panties. Zeb had pulled out his pocket knife and cut them off since he’d ruined them. I didn’t miss the way he’d tucked them along with the knife back in his pocket.
I started walking toward the horses which were grazing nearby. My cheeks stung from the chill, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t really know Zeb and he mentioned marriage in the car.
Mom had been in a marriage that had been horrible.
Her first one to Beau’s dad. I didn’t think Zeb was physically or verbally abusive like her first husband had been toward her, but Zeb’s dreams didn’t align with mine.
Mom had been stuck, pregnant and with no way to support herself and Beau if they left.
It’d taken her years stuck in a horrible marriage to escape.
I couldn’t quit college to be here on the ranch with Zeb.
I would lose my chance at a career, at making my own money and making myself self-sufficient in a way Mom hadn’t been.
“Whoa there, what’s going on?” Zeb asked, catching up. He reached out and his fingers brushed my arm.
I looked to him.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart? Don’t you like it here?”
I huffed and shook my head. “Yeah, of course. It’s amazing.”
He smiled and pointed at the ground. “Then this is where we’ll live.”
I gave a little head shake and he studied me. I wasn’t used to the Stetson and it only was a very big reminder of what Zeb really was, deep down.
A cowboy.
He made a picture, him, his horse, and his ranch.
And while I loved everything about it, it also scared me.