by Hamel, B. B.
I laugh and grin at her. For a second, I want to kiss her, but I hold back.
I give her a nod and pull myself away. I’ve got work to do, even if all I want is to linger by this stall and flirt with this gorgeous fucking girl.
11
Holly
Just like he said they would, Tina and Violet swing past around noon and take me out with them for a few hours. I get my own ATV and I ride with the girls, watching them work and listening to their advice.
It’s surprisingly fun. I thought it would be just more work but they don’t make me do anything. Mostly we ride around the cattle, checking them out, herding them where they need to go, and watching the land.
“It’s a boring job, mostly,” Tina says to me as Violet checks on a nearby pregnant cow. “We ride around and get all muddy and shit then go back to the ranch and shower. That’s about it.”
“Sounds like a dream.”
Violet makes a face. “If you’re into that.”
“Come on. You two are cowgirls. I mean, that’s cool, right?”
Tina laughs a little. “I guess so. My momma always said I should be a proper lady, but instead I ride around in the mud. Guess I’m not a good listener.”
“You’re a lady, all right,” Violet says. “A proper cow lady.”
“Don’t I know it,” Tina answers.
I join in with their laughter and I feel good. They show me some tricks of the trade, some quirks of the landscape, and by the time we’re done, I’m good and tired but I feel like I understand this place better.
“Thanks,” I say to Tina as they drop me off before heading back out again. “That was fun.”
“Anytime. Tell the boss how helpful we were. Maybe he’ll give us raises.” She laughs wildly and waves as she rides off.
I shake my head, grinning. Those girls are nuts but they’re a lot of fun. I could definitely see how hanging around them would be a lot of trouble but a ton of excitement. I’m going to make it a point to try and spend more time with them.
I head back toward the main house and I spot Connor coming from the barn toward me. A smile breaks out across my face as he approaches. “Have a good day?” he asks me.
“Your employees are insane,” I say.
He laughs a little. “They’re probably just showing off for you.”
“Maybe. But they’re still nuts.”
“You learn anything out there or were they just riding around like idiots?”
“I actually did learn a lot. I mean, most of the animal stuff I knew already, but they talked a lot about the work and the land and… I don’t know, it was a lot of fun.”
He smiles softly and crosses his arms. “Hell, maybe you’re ready to be a cowgirl yourself.”
“Does it pay as well as being a vet?”
“Probably not.”
“Speaking of which, are you going to go bankrupt keeping me here?”
“Nah. Roy’ll give me a discount. And I’m not paying if Dodger doesn’t survive.”
I laugh and shake my head. “I don’t think either of those things are true, you know.”
He just shrugs a little and watches me for a second. I’m smiling at him, wind whipping through my hair, and I feel good. I feel really, really good.
“I think I want to show you something,” he says. “Think you can spare the rest of the day?”
“Let me check on Dodger first.”
“Okay. I’ll get the ATVs ready.”
Without another word, he stalks off. I’m still smiling as I head into the barn and check on Dodger. He’s doing good, better than he was yesterday, which gives me hope. If the old horse can survive that surgery, I think he can probably survive anything. It says a lot about him that he’s still up on his feet right now.
I head back out and find Connor standing next to two ATVs. “Ready?” he asks.
“Lead the way.” I climb on and reflect on how I’ve just been following this man around this ranch these last few days. We’ve gone from one thing to another and it’s never been boring. I’m almost on vacation out here, aside from doing surgery and watching over Dodger, of course.
We ride out past the main house. We skirt around a little stream and pass by another small house. I think that’s Faye’s place, her little cabin with her husband, Carter. Connor leads us around it and through a small valley before turning up a little rocky path.
The sky is beautiful as we climb the steep terrain. We go slow and I make sure to stick to Connor’s path. He leads us gracefully through the ugly rocky ground before we finally come up through some short trees and onto the top of the rise.
Up ahead is a single cabin with enormous solar panels on its roof. There’s a porch on the front with two rocking chairs, a lamp on a table, and another light next to the front door. It looks like your typical log cabin, but the solar panels suggest it’s a little bit more than that.
Connor drives straight for it. We park out front and he gets off.
“This is the first thing I built on this land,” he says to me as I walk over and lean up against his ATV.
“Really?” I ask.
“Sure. Built it the first year I bought this place. Lived here for a couple more years before I built the main house down there.”
“You didn’t build it all yourself, didn’t you?”
“This cabin, I sure did,” he says with a fond and distant smile. “But not the main house. I had professional help for that.”
He stands and heads over. I follow him and we walk up the porch and into the building. It’s a single open room with a small kitchen ahead and to the right that leads into an open living room. There’s a couch, a television, an armchair, lamps, a table and chairs, and a black stove that vents out the roof.
He grins and flips a switch. Lights come on and everything powers up at once. It takes me a second to notice that all the electronics are much nicer than they should be, top of the line stuff. The range is gleaming silver, the refrigerator is humming beautifully, and the television is small but clearly a modern flat screen.
“This is my secret hideout,” he says.
“Secret?”
He walks in and looks around with a smile on his lips. “Well, not exactly a secret. Everyone knows it’s up here. But this is all mine, off limits to everyone else.”
There are books on shelves, little paintings on the walls, and other knickknacks. I walk around and inspect things with a smile on my lips before I stop in front of a bookshelf.
There’s a picture of Connor wearing a football uniform. He looks young and he’s sweaty, holding a football in his hand and his helmet under his arm, the sunlight glinting in his brown hair.
“When was this?” I ask him.
He lingers behind me for a second. “High school,” he says. “One of the only football pictures I keep around.”
“Yeah? Why this one?”
He hesitates just a second before he answers. “That’s the last time I remember really having fun while playing.”
I frown and nod a little before putting the picture back. I look around the rest of the space before a little ladder catches my eye. It goes up into a space above the kitchen that I hadn’t noticed before.
“What’s up there?” I ask.
He grins at me. “Would you like to see?”
I give him a look. “That’s a little ominous.”
“I know.” He walks over to the refrigerator and opens it. He takes out two beers, nice and cold, and hands me one. “Shall we?”
He goes up the ladder first and disappears into the space. I hesitate for only a second before climbing up after him a little awkwardly with the beer in my hand.
“Connor?” I make it up and feel something soft under my knees. It’s darker and my eyes haven’t adjusted when I hear him flip a switch.
The room is small with a low-pitched ceiling, but it’s almost entirely dominated by a single bed. There’s a little table and a short shelf with some folded clothes and such along one side, but o
therwise it’s just one enormous soft bed.
“This is where I sleep,” he says. “I love it up here.” He lounges back and opens his beer, taking a long sip.
I laugh and join him. I have to admit, it’s really cozy. I open my own beer and sip it slowly, just basking in the soft orange glow of the lighting.
“This is pretty amazing,” I say softly. “Do you come here a lot?”
“Not as much lately, no,” he says. “There’s too much to do down in the valley so I don’t come out this way. I mean, we’re only twenty minutes from the main house, but still.”
“I get it,” I say. “But still, it must be nice having an escape like this.”
“It is.” He smiles at me, cocking his head in my direction.
“I keep meaning to ask you something.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“You’ve been here for a few days now and you haven’t really gone back to town. Do you miss it out there?”
I shake my head. “Not really. I’m new in town so there’s not much back there anyway.”
He nods and silently drinks his beer again. I watch him, his gorgeous face, his muscular body, and I wonder what he’s getting at.
“You know what really got me to quit football?” he asks suddenly.
I shake my head. “No. I’d like to hear though.”
“It was a fight over money. I wanted more and my team wouldn’t give it to me.”
I frown. “I thought you said…?”
“It’s true that I hated what I was and what I was becoming,” he says softly. “But I don’t think I would’ve walked away on my own. That’s what I’m most ashamed of. That’s why I hate talking about it.”
I sit there quietly and absorb what he’s saying. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of that.”
“I knew I was going down a bad path. I was doing drugs, partying, sleeping around, being a fucking asshole. And the thing that really got me to quit was money.” He shakes his head. “I really was a bastard.”
“You were young,” I protest. “You were thrown into the NFL, given money and power and girls, and I bet that was hard to give up, even if you knew you should.”
“Maybe. I’m still not proud of the person I was.”
“But you’re not that person anymore, are you?”
He thinks about that for a second. “No, I guess I’m not.”
“So you walked away for a shitty reason. But you still walked away.”
“Yeah, true.”
“You took your money and you built this. You work with good people and give them a good life. How many ranches around here let their people live on the land basically for free? How many ranches built a house for a couple just because?”
He smirks at me. “Faye demanded that house, you know.”
“And you gave it to her.”
“Couldn’t lose her. She’s half of what makes this place work.”
“Still,” I say softly, “give yourself some credit.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He leans toward me. “You’re not so bad yourself, you know.”
I grin at him. “I know that.”
He reaches out and touches my cheek, looking into my eyes. He doesn’t move to kiss me, not right away. He just lingers there for a second, our eyes locked, and it’s the most intimate thing I’ve ever experienced. I swear, I can see that young man in his face, that partying NFL quarterback, but that young man is gone, replaced by a weathered rancher.
Sometimes we really can be what we want to be. Even if our past was something bad, sometimes we can move on and become the thing we want. Maybe we did something stupid or maybe we’re going against our nature… but I think people can change. I think people can become something better if they really want to.
At least I have to believe it, because I’m going through that myself right now. I want to be better than just another jaded doctor, seeing the world in black and white, treating human beings like statistics. I want to be more than that.
I have to be more.
He finally closes the distance between us and kisses me softly, and it’s the kind of kiss I know I won’t ever forget. Soft, slow, deep… he tastes me and I taste him right back.
12
Connor
I put my beer aside and pull her on top of me. She smiles and puts her beer down next to mine before kissing me, her hair falling down around me. She wiggles her gorgeous ass and grinds it down over my hard cock as I grip her hips and taste her perfect, plump lips.
I’ve never brought a woman up here before. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever brought a woman in this cabin at all, except for Faye, and she doesn’t count. Holly is the first woman I’ve really wanted to see this part of me, to see the picture of me as a young man, back before I fucked up my life and turned into an asshole. Back before I had to fix myself again.
I don’t tell people the story about why I really left. All the other stuff is true, about going down a bad path and knowing it, but it was ultimately the money that got me to walk away. Once I was gone, I knew another team would take me, and maybe I’d even get my shit together and have a good career…
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Once I was away, I had to be away. So I moved back to Montana, bought this ranch, built this cabin, and moved on with my life.
That’s why this place is so important to me. It represents the guy I was when I walked away from so much to become something else. Not many people would’ve made the decision I made. Not many people would think I did the right thing.
But she does. I know she does. I think she understands it more than I even realize. She did something similar, walked away from a life she didn’t want and came out here to start over. Maybe we didn’t follow the same exact route, but we got to the same place.
I pull her tight against me, kissing her hard. God damn, I want her, need her right now. I need her in this place, this room that means so much to me. The place I slept when I was just starting out, tired and sore every single fucking day, hating myself for doing this but knowing I had to do it anyway. I want to feel Holly’s tight, wet pussy wrapped around my cock in this room where I remade myself.
I run a fist through her hair and grab it tight as I taste her lips against mine. I’m burning with need for her, letting it fill me with that fire that drives me to keep tasting her again and again. It’s almost dizzying, the rush I get when I feel her lips against mine, and I know I can’t stop now even if I wanted to.
I sit up suddenly, pressing her breasts against my chest. I unbutton her shirt slowly, letting myself really feel the fabric against my fingers until finally her skin is completely revealed. I pull it off, kissing her neck. “Feeling you against me,” I whisper in her ear, “it drives me wild.”
“Feeling you kiss me drives me wild,” she says back, slightly breathless.
I reach behind her and unhook her bra. It falls down onto the bed between us. I kiss her neck and move down to her breasts, cupping them and teasing her nipples with my tongue.
She groans and it only makes me harder. “God damn,” I whisper. “Where did you come from? I didn’t know I could still feel this way.”
She tilts my chin up and looks into my eyes. “Are you sure?” she whispers.
“I’m sure,” I say back. She doesn’t need to explain what she means.
I kiss her and tease her breasts before she reaches down to take off my shirt. I toss it aside as her hands move over my skin, tracing the lines of my old tattoos, starting to fade from age and wear. Nothing stays perfect, but it doesn’t need to, not when it feels like this.
I turn her and pin her down onto the bed. Her hair spreads out around her like a halo and I kiss her breasts and stomach as I move down to unbutton her jeans. I unzip them and slide them off, peeling them off her like the skin of a ripe fruit. Fucking hell, her panties are small and black and I can barely contain myself as I toss her jeans aside.
I kiss her inner thigh, tasting her skin. She sits up on one elbow, biting her lip.
“Nothing I love more than these legs spread wide,” I whisper as I push them open even more. “Except maybe for this soaking wet pussy.”
“Connor,” she whispers as I tease her gently. I push her panties aside and slide two fingers deep inside of her, almost sensually. She groans and I push them deeper, filling her with my rough fingers before sliding them back out.
She grabs my hair and pulls me up. I kiss her rough then shove her down onto the bed, pinning her there. I drop back between her legs and find her pussy, tonguing her top to bottom, pressing her folds open with my tongue before licking her clit in soft, slow circles.
“I do this because I love it,” I growl at her. “I love your fucking taste. I love making you come before I even fuck you.”
She gasps, these amazing, fucking sexy little groans. Her body’s tense as I lick her, lapping her up, sucking her hard little bud and I know she can’t hold back. I know she can’t take too much of this.
I slide two fingers into her pussy, fucking her with them, licking her clit faster now. She groans, her breasts shaking. Fucking hell, she’s so beautiful right now. I look up and meet her eye just as she throws her head back and moans, loud and low.
She arches her back and I know exactly what to do. I roll my tongue along her clit in little circles, sucking at it softly, while my fingers push deeper into her cunt. She rolls her hips, moaning faster now, syncopated and groaning. I can taste her, feel her, know her. I keep going, lapping her, sucking her, until she gasps again.
I taste her coming and I know she’s beyond the point of no return. I keep going, sucking her through it, licking her until she’s going insane with her orgasm. Her body twitches, tenses, and finally she throws her head forward, eyes wide.
“Oh, fuck,” she says. “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck.”
I pull back then, fingers still inside her, and kiss her lips. She kisses me back hungrily, her body curled and poised like a snake ready to strike. She’s fucking perfect, her muscles tensed and gorgeous, her body lean and curvy in just the right places. I kiss her neck and breasts again before sitting back to admire her.