Chapter 22
ZEB
We were back on Pike and Shadow heading back to the ranch. While I’d come home to see my family, I also wanted Cammie to myself. Returning to the house meant… everyone.
Something was up with my girl. She was quiet. Thinking too hard for someone who’d just had her pussy eaten out. I’d said something, done something. I just didn’t know what it was.
Even though I was usually away at school, I had most of the summer at home to see how my brothers and Beau interacted with their women.
I didn’t really think about how different things would be from being and thinking and living as “just me” to now, living and being and thinking and breathing and fucking Cammie.
She had moods and thoughts and feelings and desires that I had to meet. And learn.
I only gave her until we were back in the stable to herself. It was warmer inside, the scent of hay and the pungent and familiar tang of horses filled the air. It was quiet except for a nicker from one of the stalls.
I went to her, pulled her in my arms and hugged her. Held her soft, warm body against mine and just breathed in her sweet scent.
“What’s the matter?” I whispered against her hair, then kissed it.
She shook her head against my chest.
“Beau threatens to spank Lainey all the time. Want me to do that to you to get you to tell me what’s wrong?”
Her head popped up and she stepped back, eyes wide. “No.”
I grinned. “So that’s not your kink then. Besides being in naughty photos just for me, we’ll figure out what gets you hot together.”
“Zeb,” she sighed.
“It’s you and me, sweetheart. Look at me, I got big shoulders. I can handle whatever is the matter.”
She sighed. “My mom taught me that a woman should always be self-sufficient, to be able to make her own money.”
I nodded. “Sounds smart.”
“To have an education and a career so if a relationship falls apart,” she continued. “She’s not stuck.”
“You said Beau’s father is from her first marriage.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I never met him, but he was a horrible man. Mom couldn’t get out of the marriage easily because she had no skills, no way to work that could support her and Beau.”
Oh.
“I can support you.” I tipped her chin up so she knew I was hearing her. I also wanted to make sure she heard me. “I sure as hell am not going to beat you.”
She gave me a smile and it lit up my whole world. “I know that. I wouldn’t have given myself to you otherwise. But while I’m yours, I also need to know that I can be okay on my own.”
“That makes sense. I don’t expect you to bale hay alongside me.”
She bit her lip.
There was something else that I wasn’t getting. “I still don’t see the problem.”
“You want to live here. On the family’s ranch. You said you didn’t want to play football professionally and that you’d be happy quitting school. Now.”
Oh. “You mean if I quit and came home to run the ranch, you’d have to quit school, too.”
She looked at my chest. “Yeah. I don’t want to quit, but I don’t want to give you up either.”
Give her up? Never. I leaned in and kissed her.
“I would never let you give up your dreams.”
She looked up at me through her dark glasses. “What about yours?”
I looked around. “My dreams? This place? It’s here waiting for me.
For us. You think I’d leave you at school all by yourself?
You think I could spend one night without you now that I made you mine?
Now that I know how sweet that pussy is?
How your mouth looks wrapped around my dick?
Shit, I’m getting hard just talking about it.
Besides, who else are you going to tutor? ”
The corner of her mouth tipped up. “What are you saying?”
I brushed her hair back. “You’re my life, sweetheart. Where you are, I am. I’m in college until you’re done.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“I go where you go.”
She put her face to my chest and hugged me tight. “I love you,” she whispered.
I stilled at those three words. I felt my world fall into place.
I was happy at school, but I’d just been living.
I was good at football and winning felt good.
My brother Trig had been a rodeo champ and he kept climbing on the back of an angry bull for over fifteen years because he craved the win. The rush of the ride.
He walked away when he met Ellie. Sure, he’d had a bum knee, but I had no doubt he’d have quit and settled down even if he hadn’t gotten hurt.
Me? I was fourteen years younger. I wasn’t ready to settle down and make babies, but I was ready to start my life with Cammie. Now that I found her, I couldn’t imagine anything else.
Being twenty, our life together was different than what my siblings had with their spouses.
I didn’t have a house on the ranch. Yet.
I’d shown her the spot where it would be.
Maybe these two last years in college were when we could build it together.
Have a place to come to when we graduate.
Enough Wilder kids went through the Devil’s Ditch school system that we knew lots of teachers.
Lots of administrators. I had no doubt Cammie could get a job here in town.
“I love you, too,” I murmured, then tipped her chin up and kissed her. Because I had my whole life in my arms.