by Pam Godwin
This is really happening. It won’t be stolen from us this time. It’s not faceless or nameless. It’s just him and me and vibrating awareness.
“It took us twenty-two years to get here.” I wrap a hand around his steely girth and stroke a hoarse moan from his throat.
He lowers his mouth to mine, filling my horizon with his sexy bedroom eyes. “You know what they say about hard-earned happiness.”
“We won’t be so quick to part with it.” I kiss his scruffy jaw. “No matter what happens, I’ll fight for this. For us. For—”
His tongue parts my mouth and feeds on my words, flooding my taste buds with the tang of my arousal.
It’s a touching, sweltering, slow-burn kiss that sizzles through my veins and smolders the passion between us. His lips worship mine, and his hand holds my face, orienting my head as he ravages me, lick by wicked lick.
The lazy swirls of his tongue, his caressing fingers, his soft groans of contentment—this is my cowboy, devoted and patient, taking his time, indulging himself while building a fire that will never burn out.
As that fire grows and roars into something more demanding, he edges back. Not to end this, but to bask in the moment before we begin.
He runs his fingers up my bare arms, sending electricity to my heart, his eyes firmly fastened on mine.
Staring isn’t what I’d call it. His gaze inhabits, like it belongs on my face, connecting us between slow, infrequent blinks.
His eyes remind me of a fine-grained saddle, deep brown with striations of golden hues. Tough and dependable, crafted to hold and support through years of hardship.
He moves closer with those eyes that peer so deeply into mine. Then he whispers my name as the wide crown of his cock breaches me.
Slowly, he sinks inside, and a long groan vibrates in his throat. His sounds, the intense feel of him, the warmth of his breath on my lips—he’s my heaven.
He begins to thrust, and my breathing grows shallow. The focused look on his face melts me into the mattress, the pleasure enormous, gripping my body with bursts of sensations. I squirm against the invasion, throwing my head back and gulping for air.
With a finger on my chin, he directs my face to his, his gaze absorbing the hunger in mine and returning it tenfold. There’s no smile in his expression. Only white-hot intensity, the sparks of what will soon become an inferno.
He drives deeper inside me, and my inner walls relax, welcoming him, needing more. Being with him in such an intimate way is mind-blowing. He is love and safety. A proven cure for the soul.
His deep grunts are therapeutic. His kisses are remedies, but it’s the feel of his body inside me that heals. Or maybe it’s all of him and all of me combined.
Every thrust restores what was stolen from us. His constant gaze revives what we lost. There’s something in that look of his I’ll never find in another person. It’s the bridge between us, the bond that cements us together.
His lips touch mine, and his tongue carves out my mouth, his kisses long and penetrating.
I gasp, and he thrusts harder.
We moan together and move faster.
Arms and legs entwined.
Tongues rubbing and tangling.
Lost in the rhythmic throb of our beating hearts.
Then he slides out and shifts to my side.
From the nightstand, he grabs a remote and aims it at the stereo across the room. A second later, the intro to a familiar song hums through the speakers.
“Now we’re going to do this the reluctant way.” He flips me to my stomach. “Until you’re no longer reluctant. Focus on my voice.”
Before I can resist, he covers my back with his warm, heavy body and jumps in with the music, singing Meant to Be by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line.
The darkness tries to pull me under, seizing my chest and tensing my muscles. But I cling to the security of his heavy weight and the sultry twang in his voice as he sings.
I’m with Jake, and his presence is so potent it armors me in a sheath of warm protective skin and humming notes, promising I’ll never be alone again.
Not everything’s meant to be, but Jake and I are inevitable. We’re knotted together, and damn if he doesn’t know how to tie a knot that withstands the test of time.
He wraps tendrils of red hair around his fist and tilts my neck back, positioning my face in his line of sight. His knees push my legs apart, and his free hand notches his cock against my pussy.
My breaths careen into gasps, and his singing cuts off.
“I love you.” With his lips on mine, he sinks into my wet heat from behind.
The indomitable size of him stretches my inner walls, and I arch off the bed, moaning against his mouth.
“Goddamn, Conor.” He buries himself to the root, his body iron hard and shaking against me. “You’re so fucking tight. Do you feel that? You’re clamping down on me.”
“I feel everything.”
I don’t know if it’s the position or the fact that he’s riding me bareback, but my God, I feel his hardness, his heat, every ridge and twitching pulse of him.
Neither of us have ever had sex without a condom. Willing sex, that is. When we had a conversation about it last week, he learned that I’m still on the pill.
“Nothing between us.” He thrusts slowly, spiraling electric sparks through my body. “Never again. Fuck, you feel incredible.”
He pulls out and moves me onto my side, facing away from him. Then he kneels against the backs of my thighs and drives into me from behind.
“Ahhh.” His head falls back. “Feels so fucking good.” He surges into me, panting as he tweaks my nipple and plays with my clit. “God, you’re so wet and snug. Fucking perfect.”
The position gives him full access to my body, and his hands roam everywhere, rubbing and pinching my heated flesh. I rock against his thrusts and reach up to scrape my fingers along his sculpted torso, delighting in the flex of masculine strength as he bends over my hip and drives harder inside me.
Ravenous desire mounts between us. His pelvis collides with my backside, his cock stabbing in and out, demanding more, needing release. We’re famine and drought, starving and wanton, fucking like our lives depend on it.
“I need your mouth.” He rolls me to my back.
Crawling between my legs, he plants his lips over mine and grinds his way back inside me.
With a groan, he grips the back of my head and pulls me closer to his hungry mouth. His other arm hooks around my lower back, crushing our bodies together.
Then he fucks me into a languid rhythm, his hips rolling against mine with delicious friction. He holds me buoyant, drifting through a lofty, dreamlike state, with none of the frenzied desperation that reunited us. We’re just as impassioned, more so, but in a dazed, spellbound way that drugs the senses and intensifies the fever.
I’m lost in him, in the fusion of our heart beats, in the hooded sensuality of his eyes as he watches me.
He moves in and out of my body and kisses me achingly. Then he watches me again. Back and forth. Kissing, watching, both connections are possessive and inescapable as he digs his cock deeper inside me.
I slide my hands down his back and palm his ass, gripping the rigid muscle.
He’s a stallion between my legs, possessing me with his touch, all brawn and power and huffing breaths, a steady and bucking rush of animalistic hunger and watchful eyes.
It’s his unwavering eye contact that sends me over. I grind against him, moaning and gasping as every pleasure zone inside me bursts into full-body shock waves.
His mouth swallows my screams as he joins me with spasmodic jerks of his hips. We climax together with our entire bodies, every inch of him sliding against every inch of me in a rhapsody of prickling skin and electric ripples.
He continues to thrust, kissing me languorously as his cock strokes in and out, throbbing against my walls. I wrap my arms and legs around him, inhaling his gasps and locking our souls together.
“That was… Jesus, Conor.” He half-groans, half-laughs against my neck. “And we’re only getting started. I fucking love you.”
For the next few hours, I relearn his rough edges, the intoxication of his breath, the scar on his calf from the rattlesnake bite, and the sounds his throat makes when he’s turned on. I rediscover all my favorite things—the dimples above his ass, the way his hair falls around my scraping fingers, the twitches in his legs when he comes, and the elation in his eyes when I scream his name.
When we aren’t lost in the throes of orgasm, I curl up against his chest and fall into an enchanted coma as he strokes my hair with reverent fingers. We talk about everything from school work to cattle ranching and the mischief we stirred up as kids. He hates snakes and wants children. I love all animals, and I’m terrified to get pregnant. He thinks I smell like wildflowers and sweet cream frosting. I accuse him of taking Viagra and injecting steroids. We both wish we knew our mothers before they died.
I snuggle against his hard body, chest to chest, and hook a leg over his hip. “Why do you think my mom created those hoops for Lorne and me to jump through?”
“It’s an incentive trust, which isn’t uncommon. My guess is she thought if you cared about the land, you would live here and work for it. College was the exception, as long as the ranch was your permanent address.”
“Makes sense, I guess.” I nuzzle my nose against his neck, breathing in his spicy male scent. “What’s the state of the ranch? Did it go into bankruptcy?”
“I retained some of the profit from the drilling and kept the business out of the red. Jarret streamlined the entire operation and hired better workers. Now I’m focused on the accounting and making better investment decisions.”
As he launches into a long-winded explanation on business models and money stuff, my eyes start to glaze over.
“By next year, we’ll be profitable again.” He pushes me onto my back and slides over my body, licking and kissing my breasts.
“What are you doing?” I shiver beneath his diabolical tongue.
“Clearly, you need to be stimulated by something other than my intelligence.”
“Hey, now…” I laugh. “Don’t judge me because I have a thing for naked cowboys with killer abs and endless stamina.”
“Well, this naked cowboy has a thing for you.”
The thing in question jabs against my thigh, buzzing a throb between my legs.
“The best course of action on this investment,” he says, biting my nipple, “is to go all in.”
He does just that, loving me hard into the mattress until we both pass out. Then he wakes me a few hours later and takes me again. By the time morning rolls around, I know Jake in every way—fast and brutal, slow and sensual, front and back, over and under, and side to side.
I fell in love with him when we were kids, before I understood the language of love.
Tonight, I fall harder than ever before. With every kiss, glance, smile, and evocative word, he doesn’t just stitch my heart back together. He welds it to his own.
TWENTY-FIVE
Conor
We sleep in the next day and take the horses out for a ride before lunch. I’ll never grow tired of seeing Jake in the saddle. With his legs encased in denim, worn boots in the stirrups, and the Stetson perched low on his pensive brow, his sex appeal ropes me in and ties me up.
The fit of his t-shirt outlines grooves of six-pack abs, the curvature of pectorals, and the nub of nipples. The shadow of his hat darkens his tanned face, his features made darker by the scruff on his chiseled jawline. His striking good looks, the sensual way his lips move in a kiss, the devotion in his hands as they trace the curves of my body—who he is, what is captivating about him, comes from deep within.
His soul glows through his skin and radiates from his actions. He embodies all the rugged beauty in the world, and I’m caught up in it, in him, in the magic floating across the meadow and swirling around us.
But as nighttime approaches, I can’t ignore the nervous energy gathering inside me.
Levi Tibbs goes free tomorrow.
We’re all thinking about it, dwelling on the details of the plan. After a silent, tense dinner, Jake and Jarret decide to take me dancing to get our minds off it.
Since the Big Sugar is the only bar in town, that’s where we end up an hour later.
The townsfolk of Sandbank congregate in packs of denim, leather, and wide-brimmed hats. Their boots scrape across floors covered in ground peanut shells, and distrust tapers their eyes as our party of three settles into a high-top table.
It’s not just my tattoos that raise their hackles. Though, that’s part of it. Women in this town just don’t put ink on their skin. Period.
Their main point of interest is the arm Jake rests around my shoulders. The fact that we’re together is enough to ripple whispers of controversy through the bar.
He leans in and drags his nose along my cheek. “Ignore them.”
Hard to ignore all the women ogling my cowboy like he’s the juiciest slab of meat in three counties. Last time I was here, I swore to a table of old classmates that I wouldn’t take their playboy off the market.
The fact that he’s been with a lot of these women riles a toxic, gnawing ache in my gut.
I shove back my shoulders and rise from the stool. “I need a beer. You guys want anything?”
“A beer?” Jake narrows his eyes. “You’re going to drink?”
“I’m twenty-two years old.” I shrug. “’bout time I give it a try.”
“You can share mine.” He gets Jarret’s order and ambles to the bar.
Every female in the bar watches him pass, eyes glued to his ass as he leans a denim-clad hip against the bar and tips his hat at the bartender.
He has the kind of intimidating beauty that stops a woman in her tracks. He must be used to it, the hitching of breaths and the sweep of greedy eyes. His confident nonchalance about it only makes them stare longer and pine harder.
My hands ball into fists on my lap. “I’m in high school again.”
“You were pretty back then.” Jarret uncurls my fingers and gives my hand a gentle pat. “But you’re unbelievably gorgeous now. Those women are so threatened by you they don’t know what to do with themselves.”
I glance down at my plain white tee, tattered jeans, and beat-up square toe boots. I’ve never put girly products on my face or in my hair. Jarret’s judgment must be clouded by his affection for me.
The familiar faces around me are all done up with pretty make-up, their hair ironed and sprayed or whatever they do to make it so shiny and straight. Except that one. I squint at the blonde perched at the end of the bar, watching her as she stares a hole through Jake.
She’s not even trying to blend in with her fitted black trousers, button-up shirt, high-heeled pumps, and curly hair that cascades around her shoulders, down her back, and everywhere. She runs a hand over it, patting down the unruly locks, like it’s a nervous habit. Her hair is natural and beautiful. Hell, she is beautiful.
And she’s not from around here.
“Who is that woman?” I poke Jarret’s leg. “Do you see the…?”
He’s already gawking at her with his tongue sliding across his lip. “I don’t know, but tomorrow morning, I’ll tell you what her O face looks like.”
“Don’t be a pig.”
He laughs and cuts himself off. “Oh shit. Here she comes.”
She slides off the stool and glides toward us, navigating those heels through the sawdust of tossed peanut shells.
“She has that gleam in her eyes.” He stares at her with creases marring his brow.
“What gleam?”
“She’s on the hunt, and it has nothing to do with my irresistible charm.”
“Oh, brother.” I shake my head, biting down on a smile.
At the bar, Jake collects the beers and heads back. His longer strides catch up with the woman, and they arrive at the table together.
He straddles
the stool beside me and passes a beer to Jarret.
“Um… Hi.” The woman hooks a thumb under the purse strap on her shoulder. “You’re the Holsten twins, right?”
“Yup.” Jarret takes a long draw on the bottle and stares her up and down, lingering on her chest, then her lips.
I kick his boot beneath the table. “Women don’t like to be leered at.”
She inclines her head at me, blue eyes shining with gratitude. “You must be Conor Cassidy.”
My scalp tingles. How does an out-of-towner know my name?
Jake slides his beer in front of me, his attention on the woman. “And you are?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Jarret rests his forearms on the table and captures her gaze. “That’s your name?”
“Yeah.” Her smile tightens at the corners. “Maybe Quinn. Mind if I sit?”
Jarret nods and waits for her to lower onto the stool.
I sip from the beer, surprised by the tangy flavor. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it, either. I pass it back to Jake.
“So, Maybe…” Jarret tilts his hat, scrutinizing her. “Which news network do you work for?”
News network? A chill works its way down my spine. Is she a reporter? How does he know?
“Oh, that’s not…” She purses her lips. “I’m just passing through.”
Jake bumps the hat up on his head and shoots her his patent glare. “The only folks passing through this town are investigative journalists.”
My stomach buckles. He said the police wouldn’t be snooping around, but I never considered the likelihood of reporters smelling out our story.
“Who do you work for, Maybe Quinn?” Jarret takes another sip of beer, eying her around the bottle.
She sighs and drums pink-colored nails on the table. “Freelance. I write the story and sell it to the highest bidder.”
What the fuck? She intends to profit from our misery?
“What’s the story?” I can’t stifle the bitterness in my tone.
“Levi Tibbs is getting released tomorrow.” Her hand goes to her hair, pressing down the curls around her shoulders. “What are you three planning to do about that?”