“Jake. He pretty much only cares about horses.”
“And there’s enough money from growing and selling cows to support you all?” This was the part that amazed me.
“Yep. Everyone likes to eat good food, and there’s always someone willing to buy well-raised cattle. Although if you’re sticking around, you should know cows aren’t the name of the animal. Cows are milkers, obviously always female, and steers or heifers are beef-cattle.”
“And bulls are...?”
“Bulls are used for breeding stock.”
So it wasn’t as simple as “cows” and “bulls”?
“I feel like Sesame Street lied to me,” I grumbled.
Barrett chuckled. “I think it’s aimed at city kids who will never see a steer in their life.”
For a moment, I pondered on the insulation people put around themselves. Hiding out in cities, thinking they never had cause to venture beyond their own little bubble of reality, so far removed from where food comes from or how anyone else lives... wasn’t that part of what I was running from? Living my life and dying in one place terrified me. I had to see everything. I had to do everything. I needed more than a changeless, dependable existence surrounded by people who all thought the same way.
“Hey, you okay?” Barrett asked. I snapped out of my dark turn of thoughts.
“Yeah. Just thinking about cattle, I guess.”
“Here, peel these carrots while you’re thinking. We get them fresh from the farmer’s market every Sunday and you’ll taste the difference.”
“Sure.” I took the carrots and searched for a vegetable peeler before getting to work. Being still and focusing on this small task was relaxing, in a similar way to fixing my van. Sliding the peeler over the outside of the carrot, watching the skin get pared away until it revealed the fresh, bright vegetable beneath the surface, was immensely satisfying for reasons I couldn’t explain. Why did I crave stillness and suffocate whenever I got it?
Harper
That first day with Barrett seemed to go in slow motion. I noticed everything, my brain working on overdrive trying to catalog things. The way his dark hair glimmered in the sunlight; the sparkle in his eyes while he was educating me about cattle—and how his gaze had darkened when he’d been teasing me with the ice. Even stupid little things like the shape of his hands when he changed gears in his truck.
My mind believed it was only a matter of time before I would never see him again, and it was savoring each moment.
By the time I awoke on the third day in Barrett’s bedroom, however, the jumble of events from the past seventy-two hours suddenly seemed like they were a lifetime ago. I was lying beside him, and this had quickly become the most natural thing in the world.
On the sixth day, I roused briefly when he went to check on the cattle early in the morning, and when I awoke again, tangled in bedsheets, he was laying beside me, his eyes studying me.
“What?”
“Your face,” he replied. The warmth in his eyes... I don’t think anyone had ever looked at me like that before. I’d never waited around long enough to let them. Not since... well, anyway, it was many thousands of miles ago.
My stomach growled and killed the moment.
“Breakfast time,” he remarked, getting up.
I brushed my teeth then followed him to the kitchen but the speed Barrett whipped up breakfast was impossible to beat. He had everything frying before I entered the room.
“If quick-draw cooking was a thing, you’d be the fastest bacon-slinger in the west,” I quipped.
“I aim to please.” He turned from the skillet to give a mock-bow.
Pleasing was definitely one word for it. I’d had more mind-blowing orgasms since I’d been here than I’d ever had in my life. He seemed to decode my reactions to take me to new heights every time we had sex.
He’d even stuck a plug in my ass and made me like it.
The way his arms tensed, biceps flexing, when he quickly moved the skillet back and forth over the flame, made me weak-kneed. I was pretty sure that was the same movement he’d made last night when four of his fingers were fucking my pussy while he’d trailed a vibrator over my clit until I came four times in a row.
It was impossible to concentrate on anything normal when he was around.
“So... six days. Got any plans for Christmas?” Barrett asked me. Part of me knew he was teasing but the rest of me bristled deeply at the insinuation. I didn’t want to think that far ahead. Didn’t want to think at all.
I only wanted to feel.
“What’s the matter, Harper? It was only a joke.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Mind elsewhere.” I didn’t want to be confrontational about it; I knew I’d taken it the wrong way.
After breakfast, we went back upstairs and Barrett blindfolded me, tying my wrists and ankles to the bed before placing what felt like suction cups over my nipples, pulling on the sensitive dusky flesh and filling my core with a heat that was becoming familiar.
“You like that? You like being bound and helpless while I do what I want to your body?” he teased.
“I love it,” I sighed. The usual urge to move and explore in my van was... fading. The thing that surprised me most? I was okay with that.
With my eyes covered, sensations felt more intense and sounds were louder; clearer somehow, like most of the background noise in life was actually background picture.
He fastened what felt like a wide elastic band between the nipple cups, binding them to each other, so when he twanged the elastic, shockwaves of pleasure and pain shot through me.
I moaned with need. My pussy spasmed around nothing and even though I was tightly bound my back arched off the bed.
His fingers kept twanging those elastic bands, literally playing a tune with my body while I writhed and roiled from the incredible energy growing inside me. His endless inspiration for unusual ways to make me come was amazing.
My eyes were almost rolling into the back of my head by the time he placed another suction cup over my clit. This one was larger, and I squeaked as it tugged on my bundle of nerves and ignited a hunger like nothing I’d ever experienced.
He flicked the cup with his finger and my world turned pink.
“Please,” I keened, straining my wrists against the ropes and convulsing as he flicked my cupped clit again and again.
“You want something?” He was playing dumb.
“Please fuck me!” I begged, unable to wait for him to do it of his own volition.
He merely chuckled.
“You don’t make the rules, sweetheart.”
When he flicked my clit harder, my slightly whiny sigh turned into a squeak. He was all about the control. And I craved his dominance. If any other man had done these things to me, I would have run the opposite way and never looked back. But Barrett was different. Special. I couldn’t explain it, even to myself.
He pulled the elastic band, hard, so it must have stretched all the way to my belly button. I felt it tugging on the cups, and I don’t know how they stayed put but somehow they did. A split second before he did it, I knew he was going to let go. When he did, the shockwave channeled straight through my nipples, turning into brilliant neon sensation that coursed down to my clit and made me ache harder to feel him in me.
“Who’s in control?” he prompted.
“You!” I didn’t need to hesitate or think about the answer at all.
He pulled the elastic band taut again, and my tummy wavered as I anticipated the elastic’s release. It vibrated deep into my tightly-strung body and made liquid jump out of my pussy.
“Who makes the rules?” Oh, we had rules, now?
“You!”
The elastic was pulled a third time, so tight my breasts slid higher along my rib cage as the two nipple cups were pulled closer together.
“Who decides when you come?”
“You do!” There was no other answer, and in that moment I knew I’d spoken the absolute truth of my heart. The elastic re
leased and tangled for a moment around the other half of the rubber band as they intertwined, before unfastening themselves. The sensations it produced were exquisite.
“Good girl.”
In direct contrast to his last words, he suddenly ripped the nipple cups off my breasts, making blood flow back into them in a blossoming rose of sharp pain. He was a little more gentle with the one on my clit, but it still made me squeal when the air rushed against my most sensual areas and blood returned.
I hadn’t heard him undress, but I heard the tearing of foil and the sticky rolling sound of a condom being put on. It perpetually made me happy that Barrett never tried to argue or coerce his way out of safe sex.
“I love seeing you spread before me like this. Helpless. My plaything.” His voice had gotten deeper. The mattress dipped between my legs and I knew he was lining up to enter me. I held my breath. He was so big, but so committed to ensuring I enjoyed it when he took me. His fingers swirled over my hyper-sensitive clit for several seconds and I burbled with pleasure.
When his tip touched my entrance, I rolled my lips together. Barely a second passed before he slid into me smoothly, fully seating himself inside me. His girth and length would never stop making me gasp at how completely he stretched me, his steely cock firmly pressing against me in every direction.
“Ohhhhh.” It wasn’t very coherent, but it was the only sound I could make to express the deep satisfaction that his cock filled me with.
He pulled out a way and held himself at my opening for just enough time to make me try to thrust upwards, but I’d barely moved before he’d slid straight back in again, his tip pressing against my cervix and igniting a warm tingle of pain, the perfect counterbalance for all the mind-boggling pleasure I was receiving.
His hips ground against me in little circles, his cock sending explosions through my G-spot, while I couldn’t fuck him back, couldn’t wrap my legs around him to take him deeper, couldn’t even rake my nails down his back to express the passion he was invoking. I was his plaything, just as he’d said, until he decided otherwise.
He drove me to the point of insanity with those little circling movements, and just when I thought they couldn’t get any better, he leaned forward and the skin beside the base of his cock ground into my clit at the same time that his cock stirred my pussy and turned me into a puddle of melted chocolate.
“Gahhhhh!” I declared. I never claimed to know enough words to have the right ones to say during mind-blowing sex. Or maybe it wasn’t about knowing the words so much as getting that area of my brain to respond to anything at all.
I couldn’t ponder this for long because thoughts just didn’t last inside my mind right now. He was too much. I thought I might pass out from so much pleasure.
Instead, I toppled into freefall, as the energy exploded out of me in every direction, making me strain harder against the ropes while my voice screamed his name and my hips shook uncontrollably. It wasn’t so much waves of pleasure as one huge tsunami which tore through everything in its path until I was flying, knowing only the searing sparks rolling through my nerves and the fact Barrett had elicited them.
He pulled my hair and I came harder as the pinpricks of pain mixed with the deep, soul-rending pleasure. As I sank back into my own consciousness, I had to stop myself from crying. This sex was too good. Too right. I had a momentary flash of fear, at the idea of getting attached to him—falling for him, even—knowing it would not last. Nothing ever lasted. Everyone left me eventually.
He began fucking me hard and I forgot to be maudlin, as my body quickly pulled me back into the gently-smothering fold of too much pleasure.
By the time he came, I’d had five scorching climaxes and my eyes literally would not stay open for another minute. I was asleep before he pulled out of me.
Chapter 7
“So it’s gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames.” — Taylor Swift, Blank Space
Barrett
This girl was a dynamo. Everything I gave her, she took beautifully, her body silently begging for more when her voice had screamed itself hoarse.
I untied her wrists and ankles, slid the blindfold off her eyes, ditched the condom and held her to me, unwittingly causing an avalanche of our discarded clothing as it fell off the end of the bed. Who cared? I just wanted to touch her.
At first, I’d been wary that she might leave any moment, but she’d been here six days, now, and at no point had she shown any signs of discontent. In fact, if her climax-driven screams were anything to go by, she was perfectly satisfied with our lovemaking and I knew the food situation worked for her, too. Did she need anything else in life?
I wanted to see her first when I awoke, and gaze on her right before I went to sleep. She was perfect, and I adored her. Very quickly, I knew I was falling hard. It wasn’t the slow burn of two people who spend years getting to know one another. This was the fast, frenzied sort of love that either lasted forever or went down in flames.
Only time would decide which way it was going to play out.
I drifted off to sleep imagining us on a porch, sitting side-by-side in matching rocking chairs while we watched the sun setting over our lives. It was more than I ever hoped for. I didn’t know if I deserved it. Part of me still dreaded the whole thing. But I wanted it, all the same.
Harper
When I awoke, the sun was high in the sky, illuminating the room through thin cottony curtains. The sunlight seemed to be waiting for us to get out of bed and appreciate this fresh day. Every day was beautiful in Arizona and I loved it.
Barrett’s arms were surrounding me, as though he were protecting a tiny rabbit from a rainstorm. I was quite a bit larger than a bunny, of course, but that’s how he made me feel. Delicate and innocent. Soft and lovable. These were such rare feelings that I had to pause for a moment and revel in them.
My shoulder and hip cramped where I pressed into the mattress, but I didn’t want to move because it would signal the end of letting him hold me like this. I wasn’t sure I could take an ending, right now.
Was he asleep, or just very still? I didn’t know how to tell the difference. His breathing was virtually inaudible. The usual rhythmic throbbing in one of the veins on the back of his hand had stopped, which told me his heart rate was low. That didn’t mean he was asleep, but at the very least, he was deeply relaxed.
“You awake?” His low murmur answered my uncertainty about whether he slept.
“Yeah.” I breathed the word reluctantly, drawing it out because the sound ended with conversation. Movement. Change. And right now, I wanted none of those things.
“How d’you feel about pancakes?” He kept his volume to a whisper.
“Got nothing against them, I guess.” I don’t know why we were speaking in such low tones, as if someone might catch us together and disapprove. Perhaps we were trying not to startle the day into noticing we hadn’t participated in life, yet. Either way, talking more loudly seemed sacrilege, somehow. Like it might summon gremlins to tell us we needed to shower, eat, and get a life outside this tangled bed sheet.
This whole staying-put-thing was on a tightrope. While I didn’t think about where my feet needed to go, they could keep drawing me across the line, one step at a time, but when I looked, doubt crept in and made me falter. I wanted to avoid uncertainties or fears until I was standing on a solid platform, safe and sound, at the end of this big change.
The other side of the tightrope seemed so far away I couldn’t even see it. Didn’t know what awaited me over there. It might be on fire for all I knew. But I had to let myself be pulled toward it or I would tumble.
Perhaps the fall was inevitable.
It seemed the further I stepped across the line, the more painful it would be when I finally stumbled and hit the cold, hard ground.
Barrett’s arm tightened around me and I realized I didn’t have to do it by myself. He wouldn’t let me fall.
Harper
It was late afternoon and the shad
ows were lengthening as the sun got closer to the horizon. We had spent most of the day either stuck to each other or eating and drinking—to give us more energy for sex.
“What day is it?” I kicked my feet, skimming the floor as we sat in the kitchen together.
“Tuesday.”
“Laundry day.” I was supposed to do it last week but forgot, and I knew there was a huge pile that had waited all this time.
“You have a laundry day?”
I laughed. “Sure. In this heat I don’t want the van to start smelling bad.” He was going to think I was organized. Probably better than him knowing I was a bit of a slob who had left my laundry over a week in a van.
“Well, I feel a little bad that you didn’t get to find a laundromat today. Why don’t you use our machines?”
“You guys have laundry?”
“Sure. In a shed out back. There’s two washing machines and two dryers. It made more sense than each of us having separate appliances.”
That would save time, money and effort. “Neat, I’ll just go get my laundry bag.”
I stood up too quickly, my vision darkening for a moment as my body caught up with what I was doing. Blackness pressed against my head and I wobbled on my feet. Barrett might have said something, but I didn’t hear him.
After a few seconds, everything was clear once more and I went out. When I dug the van key out of my pocket I realized it was the first time I’d held it in almost a week. The first time I’d opened the door to my home.
I was staying at a man’s house, and now I was about to do my laundry here. It was so domestic—so settled—that the idea of doing household chores on a ranch was completely alien to me.
The key stuck in the lock to the sliding door. It was a regular occurrence. My van was old and set in its ways, and I was just a whippersnapper that the van’s mechanisms frequently ignored. Perhaps the van was pissed that I’d abandoned it so much lately. Murmuring apologies to an inanimate object, I tried the driver side door instead. It creaked open with the sort of grumbling noise that suggested the van was reluctant to do what I wanted, right now. I got in for a moment and sat on the comfortable foam cushion that time had indented in the exact shape of my butt. Leaned my head back to look at the pattern of the mushroom-colored fabric upholstering the ceiling. The stains from so many people who owned the vehicle before I did.
Make Me Stay (Arizona Heat Book 2) Page 5