Buck You! (Buck Cowboys Book 2)

by Elle Thorpe

  She nodded fiercely. “And I’ve never been prouder of anything than that. You know, I still remember the first time you called me mommy—”

  I groaned. “I know it’s my birthday and all, but do we really need to go down memory lane? There is kind of a party going on over there that we’re missing.”

  “Fine, I’ll save my reminiscing for Addie or your father. Let’s get you back to your party. And your brother. And your girlfriend.”

  I looked at Summer across the yard. She was still watching intently, poised as if she would run across the field to be by my side in an instant if I needed her to be.

  Girlfriend.

  I liked the sound of that.

  25

  SUMMER

  Dominic’s birthday cookout wore on into the evening, the trainees the last to leave. My dad eventually kicked them out, sending them back to their own cabins with a stern warning that they’d be crucified if any of them showed up even remotely hungover for training on Monday morning.

  Dominic and I curled up on the couch together, his arm around my shoulders, and my hand pressed to his chest, while he filled both our moms in on everything that had been going on with his search for his birth family. The two of them watched us with small smiles on their faces, and the occasional grin shared between them like Dom and I getting together had been all their doing. My sisters sat on the floor, listening in, too, though Callie’s phone kept buzzing with text messages that made her light up every time she opened one. Lennon turned a little greener with each one she read over her twin’s shoulder.

  It was hard to watch my sweet younger sister live through a case of unrequited love, and not be able to tell the person closest to her about it. Callie was off in a world of her own, where only she and Preston seemed to exist. And Lennon was on the outside, just like I had been with them our entire lives. But I was well used to it and had made my peace with it. Lennon wasn’t there yet. The cord that held the two of them together was slowly fraying.

  It was nearing midnight as I made my way upstairs and packed a small bag of clothes and toiletries to take to Dom’s cabin. When I came back down, everyone turned to me, gazes drawn to the bag I was carrying.

  “Where are you off to?” Dad asked.

  I gave my mother a look that was a clear cry for help.

  She laughed and pulled my dad to his feet. “Come upstairs and I’ll explain it all to you.”

  He frowned but let himself be guided to the stairs. Lennon and Callie had both disappeared to their bedrooms, leaving only Isabel.

  “Do you need anything before we go?” Dom asked her.

  She shook her head and waved us toward the door. “Go. I’ve been staying here for longer than you’ve been alive. I know where the guest room is. I’ll be just fine.” She kissed her son on the cheek and left, heading for the small spare room on the bottom level that my parents always kept for Johnny and Isabel or any other guests we might have had.

  I slipped my hand into Dom’s and squeezed it.

  He squeezed right back. “Bag, huh?”

  “Bag,” I agreed.

  He took it from me, hefting it up and down a few times, testing the weight. “Seems kind of light.”

  “I forgot to pack pajamas.”

  He towed me toward the door so fast I had to run to keep up. Out across the night we ran, two stupid kids desperate to be alone after being among a crowd all night. We both knew what was going to happen the minute we got behind closed doors.

  There was no short supply of condoms in his cabin.

  He didn’t disappoint me. He threw the door open, dumping the bag on the floor. We both knew I wouldn’t need it before morning. And morning was still very far away.

  “Longest party ever.” Dom closed the door and pulled me into his arms. “Next year, we completely ignore everyone for my birthday. All I want is to stay locked in a cabin with you for an entire weekend. Deal?” He swooped in for a kiss, pressing his mouth to mine, and sinking his tongue deep inside.

  I basked in the idea that he thought the two of us would still be together in a year. So I clutched him tight and kissed him back. Like it did every time he kissed me, my head spun with how much I wanted him. “Totally agree,” I murmured in between hot presses of his mouth. “Parties are stupid. Far too many people. Never again.”

  I threw my arms around his neck, noting the tiny spasm of pain at lifting my bad arm but ignoring it in favor of getting my lips back on his. He hoisted me into his arms but then turned in a circle, first to the left and then to the right, like he couldn’t decide which way to go.

  “Very small cabin, Dom. Only one bed, and it’s right there.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder.

  “But I also promised to bend you over a kitchen counter…and then there’s the bathroom. So many options. I’m struck down by sex indecision.”

  We both snorted on our laughter, but I loved when he was goofy. My experience with sex had never been fun or playful. I liked that he was so different. I liked laughing with him. I liked just being with him in general, no matter what his mood.

  I just wanted to be with him.

  And there went my stupid heart again, getting all big and mushy.

  “Bed,” I decided for him, laughter fading from my lips in place of something more serious. “Fuck me later, whenever or wherever you want, but right now, I don’t want to just screw.”

  His expression changed in an instant, matching mine, and he kissed me tenderly. Instead of throwing me onto the bed like he had in the past, he laid me down gently, slowly stripped me of my clothes, then stood back to do the same to his own.

  I lay there watching him. He fisted the back of his shirt and dragged it over his head. His tattoos curved over his broad shoulders and down the side of his ribs, following the flow of his body. The V lines that ran either side of his hips dipped below the waistband of his shorts, and I followed them with my gaze while he dragged them off, taking his boxer briefs with him. His phone fell from his pocket, clattering to the floorboards.

  He picked it up and went to place it on the bedside table but froze halfway.

  I sat up at the expression on his face. “What’s wrong?”

  He hit a button on the phone and paused a moment while he read whatever was on the screen. “It’s my brother.”

  “Felix?”

  “No, Theo. He’s asking if Mom told me about Dad’s heart attack.”

  “What?”

  Dom shook his head, already calling his brother, phone pressed to his ear.

  I wrapped a sheet around myself, but there was little else I could do while Dom paced the length of the little cabin.

  Theo answered quickly, and he and Dom had a short back-and-forth conversation that I couldn’t follow by only hearing Dom’s side of it. Finally, he swore low under his breath and sank down on the bed beside me. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  I moved in close to Dom’s side, and he put an arm around me and dropped a kiss to my hair.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked quietly.

  He let out a long, slow breath. “I don’t know. Theo said he had a small heart attack last week. Apparently he’s fine, just has to rest for a while. But Theo said he’s been off his game for weeks. They didn’t want to worry me, since there was nothing I could do from all the way over here anyway.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I can’t believe they didn’t even tell me!”

  I put my arms around his middle and placed a kiss on his chest. “Do you want to go talk to your mom about it?”

  He shook his head. “It’s late. We can talk in the morning.” He turned his focus back to me, his gaze running over my bare shoulders and the sheet that was slipping off my breasts. He drew it all the way down, exposing my nipples and stomach, the sheet pooling around my waist.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said quietly.

  I studied his handsome face, the sharp cut of his jawline, and his dark brown eyes that I could just drown in. “I was just about to say the same thing
to you.”

  He reached across to his bedside table and grabbed a condom from the box he kept there. “I’m prepared this time.”

  “You still want to?”

  “Yeah, Sum. I still want to. There’s nothing I can do from here but make you feel good.” He kissed me softly. “I don’t know what I’ve been waiting for. The perfect moment, or for you to forget Austin ever existed, maybe. I’m an idiot.”

  “No, you’re sweet and kind, and the best man I know.” I kissed his lips and then the corner of his mouth. “Your face is giving away how guilty you feel right now.”

  He squeezed his eyes tight. “If I’d been there… If I hadn’t run off to the other side of the country…”

  I silenced him with another kiss. “Stop.”

  “I can’t. It’s all I can think of. If I’d still been there, he wouldn’t have been so stressed. I left him and my brothers with all of my work and without any sort of notice. Hell, I’ve barely even called them since I left because I’ve been too gutless to tell them about my birth family. I haven’t had a proper conversation that wasn’t just about the weather, or the bulls, with any of them in months.”

  “You’re allowed to have a life,” I assured him. “They want that for you.”

  He dropped his head, staring down at his lap.

  I hated that he was hurting. And that he was placing the blame for something that was completely out of his control on his own shoulders. I shifted off the bed to kneel in front of him so he’d be forced to look at me.

  He turned miserable, sad eyes in my direction, and my heart clenched. I cupped the sides of his face and kissed him hard, because it was all I could do. I couldn’t take the blame he was putting on himself. All I could do was help him forget it for a little while.

  He seemed to have the same idea I did. He took barely a moment to respond, and when he did, it was with everything he had. He gripped the sides of my face, mirroring my position, his fingers tight in my hair. He guided me to my feet, the sheet falling away completely when I stood.

  He lay back on the mattress, and I crawled over his body, taking his lips again in a plunging kiss. Our bodies pressed together, his erection thickening between us while we made out.

  His hands skimmed down my back and over my ass, squeezing my cheeks as he rocked his hips up from below. In one swift move, he flipped our positions, rolling me onto my back so he loomed over me.

  The sadness in his gaze had been replaced with a searing heat, and he wasted no time in placing featherlight kisses all over my jaw, then lower to my collarbone, and over the swell of my breasts.

  My nipples beaded for him, aching for his mouth, and I was rewarded when his tongue shot out to taste one.

  “I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon,” he murmured.

  “Me, too.” I dragged his hand between us, guiding it between my legs.

  “Fuck, Summer,” he groaned. “Have you been like this all day?” His fingers slipped through the arousal between my thighs, gliding up inside me without resistance.

  I nodded. I had been. He’d had me so close to orgasm this afternoon in my bedroom that I’d been on edge ever since. Two quick pumps of his fingers, each one hitting my G-spot, had me right back there, trembling with need.

  “Fuck. I should have taken care of this earlier.” He worked his fingers in and out of my core and rubbed my clit with his thumb. “You’re so wet.”

  I reached between us and fisted his cock, jerking the already rock-solid length. His hips rolled in time with the rhythm I set, both of us working closer and closer to the orgasms we’d been denied earlier in the day.

  But it wasn’t enough. For once, his fingers inside me, and his mouth on my lips, and my neck, it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wanted him.

  I wanted his heart, and his soul, and a connection just getting off didn’t bring.

  I found the condom he’d tossed onto the bed and ripped the top off the packaging with my teeth. The lubed condom slipped in my fingers, and Dom held still just long enough to watch me roll it down his thick length.

  Our gazes clashed as he settled between my legs once more.

  All I saw was him.

  I knew who he was. He was the sort of man who waited five years. He was the sort of man, who respected me enough to give me time. He was the sort of man who pushed me to achieve the dreams I’d all but given up on.

  He was the sort of man my heart could so easily love, if only I let it.

  I wanted to let it.

  But then his mouth lowered to mine, and he kissed me. It was softer and sweeter than he’d ever kissed me before. It was full of words that neither of us had voiced. Full of a connection that had started as kids and had finally grown into what it was always supposed to be.

  “You’re mine, Summer,” he whispered, brown eyes locked on mine.

  “I know.” It was all I had to say. Because I was his. And he was mine. He always had been. Everything inside me knew it in that moment. He was why things would have never worked with any other guy, no matter how hard I might have tried to fight it. He was why my heart had cracked so wide open in just a matter of weeks.

  He was easy to love. Because of the way he loved me.

  Neither of us voiced it, but it was there, as loud as if we were screaming.

  His cock moved between my legs, and I opened them wide, lifting my hips so he nudged at my entrance. I ached for him, but he entered me inch by inch, his gaze locked firmly on mine, watching my expression, his concern evident in every movement.

  “Kiss me,” I whispered.

  He lowered his body right down on top of mine and kissed me deeply. His dick slid all the way home and then stilled, giving me time to adjust to the thickness and length of him. We kissed like we had all the time in the world. Deep, drugging kisses that I’d feel long after and remember for eternity. We moved our hips in unison, both of us needing more. He kept the rhythm slow, watching my orgasm build. He reached down, fingers on my clit while he worked himself in and out of my core.

  “Want to feel you come,” he whispered.

  He’d get his wish. He picked up the pace, working me faster, until spirals of pleasure danced behind my eyes and a tsunami of feeling built at the base of my spine.

  “Yes,” I moaned. Each touch of him, each thrust had me closer and closer, the intense pleasure bordering the spot between ecstasy and agony.

  “Dom,” I yelled. “Please!”

  That was all he needed. My permission to send me flying over the edge. His hips slammed home, pounding against my pubic bone and clit, his dick filling me so fully it was a wonder I could take him at all. The pleasure spiraled out of control, and my pussy spasmed hard, clamping down around his dick.

  “Oh!” We both cried out in unison.

  I fell over the edge and into a chasm of pleasure, while Dom dropped his head to my neck, finding his own release in shuddering tremors that racked his shoulders, flexed his abs, and clenched his thighs and ass.

  “Fuck, you feel amazing,” he groaned into my ear.

  I couldn’t even answer him. I was too far gone and floating on a cloud somewhere outside my body.

  I don’t even know how long it took me to come back down to earth. Long enough for him to roll off me and gather my naked, sweaty body to his side. Long enough for him to wrap me in his arms and murmur sweet words in my ear.

  I finally looked up and focused on him. “I don’t know how we got here,” I murmured, trying to memorize every line and plane of his face. “I don’t know why we didn’t get here sooner.”

  He kissed me softly. “We’re here now.”

  I held him tight. We were here now. And that was what I wanted to hold on to.

  Not the tiny voice in the back of my head that questioned whether his father’s illness might mean we wouldn’t be here like this forever.

  26

  DOMINIC

  When I woke up the next morning, Summer was making coffee in my kitchenette, her long brown legs bare beneat
h the T-shirt I’d worn yesterday.

  “You slept in,” she accused, adding milk to the two mugs.

  I stretched my arms up above my head, not missing the way she paused to let her gaze run all over my body. We’d both slept completely naked, in a tangle of arms and legs. I eyed hers now, wondering if she was still bare beneath that T-shirt. “It’s Sunday.”

  She closed the milk carton and put it back in the refrigerator. “You want sugar?”

  I did, but not the sort she was thinking of. I got off the bed and padded naked into the kitchen, circling my arms around her from behind and kissing her neck. She faltered with the teaspoon midway to our mugs, little granules of sugar spilling onto the countertop.

  “I don’t want coffee,” I whispered in her ear. My palm flattened on the back of her thigh and rolled up her leg, taking the hem of my T-shirt with it. I moved my hand over the rounded curve of her ass, my dick stiffening when I found that she was indeed, very naked beneath my clothes. I squeezed her ass, fingers lingering lower, as if I might dip them between her thighs at any moment.

  Her teaspoon clattered to the countertop. “Dom,” she murmured.

  “Yeah?” I pushed the T-shirt right up and leaned back so I could take in the entirety of her rounded ass, as she bent slightly over the counter.

  “You promised you were going to take me like this.” Her words were barely more than a breathy moan.

  Fuck, she was hot when she talked like that, telling me what she wanted. I moved in closer, letting her feel my erection against her skin. “Then spread your legs so I can.”

  This time her moan was loud enough to wake the neighbors. I grabbed a condom and shoved it over my dick, while she moved the mugs of coffee aside.

  “Hands on the other side of the countertop,” I commanded. “Right over.”

  She did exactly what I’d told her to do, but I pushed her down farther until her head rested on it, too, her tits dangling, her perfect fucking ass on display. She’d widened her stance, showing me everything she had, and I swiped the head of my cock through her folds, testing her, making sure she was ready for me.