by Penny Wylder
Languid. Boneless. Totally at peace. “Good.”
He chuckles softly. “Hopefully more than good.”
“Words are hard.”
Glancing at the clock. “You still have time for a shower before you head to the lodge.”
I lean my head on his shoulder. “Shower with me?”
“We both know that if we showered together, you would be late.”
“Worth it.”
He laughs, setting me on my feet. “As much as we’d both like that, I think you need to rest. I need you to still be able to walk.”
I go, stopping myself before I try to argue that walking is overrated. When I come out of the bathroom he is dressed, looking like he is about to go back out and work. Even dressed, he is sexy as hell. “Come to the dining room at the end of the service,” I tell him. “I’ll have something to show you.”
“Okay, wife,” Clayton says, kissing me on the forehead.
“See you later, husband.” What’s weird about calling him that is that it doesn’t feel weird at all.
11
Clayton
I respect Rachel’s request and show up just as the kitchen is closing. I can hear the tell-tale sounds of cleaning coming from the kitchen, but I find her in the dining room—the only person present—next to a table full of food.
“Hey,” I say.
She startles before turning around and smiling. “Hey.” The way her face lights up on seeing me is a sight that I could get used to every day.
“What’s all this?”
She pulls out the chair and ushers me into it, the spread in front of me looks and smells amazing. “I don’t just work in the culinary arts,” Rachel says. “And though my rank was junior chef, I basically ran the kitchen. I did all the tasks of the head chef and had the respect of everyone else there. Not only am I a chef, I’m an excellent one. But you had no way of knowing that.”
I stare at her. That isn’t what I expected, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least. Rachel is incredibly competent, and I’m sure that she excels at whatever she puts her mind to. “Did you think that I wouldn’t believe you?”
She blushes, and nods toward the food. “You would have, but it’s an easy thing to prove.”
I start with a pasta dish right in front of me, and holy shit it’s good. The perfectly spiced and cooked chicken is amazing too. The potatoes. Rice that’s the perfect blend of savory and sweet. Everything that I try on the table could easily rank among the best food that I’d ever eaten, and I wish I had a stomach big enough to actually eat all of this.
“This is fucking amazing.”
“You think so?”
I pull her down so she’s straddling my lap. “Hell yes. So far beyond the other food, it’s insane.”
She’s blushing again, not meeting my eyes. “I didn’t make all this by myself. You’ve got a great staff in there. They know what they’re doing, but all they needed was some guidance.”
“So Martin?”
She smiles. “He wasn’t there, but I think he’d be willing to learn. It takes a lot to run a kitchen if you’re not ready for it.”
I reach for a roll from the basket on the table and dip it in the little ramekin of jam beside it. When I bite into it, I moan. The bread melts in my mouth and the apricot sweetness is sharp enough to ride the perfect line of ecstasy.
“You’ve tried these?”
She laughs. “I hadn’t, actually.”
I dip the roll again, and she takes a bite. A little bit of jam is still on my fingers when I finish the roll in one bite, and Rachel surprises the hell out of me when she grabs my wrist, sucking the jam from my fingers. “I’m a sucker for jam,” she says softly.
“Oh really?”
Dipping my finger in the pot of jam, I run it along her neck and lick it off. Rachel whimpers, hips moving against mine. There are distant sounds from the kitchen, but I don’t care. I open up the first few buttons of her shirt, letting the fabric part to expose her bra. I pull her tit up out of the bra cup and I smear the jam there too. I lick it off her nipple, savoring the flavor on her. Once clean, I tuck her breast back in and pull back. “Tell me how much you love it,” I say. “How much you love it when I lick this jam from your nipples.”
Her words stutter. “I-I love it. I love you.” Immediately she goes stone still. “Jam, I meant. I love jam.”
Rachel’s face is flaming red, and there’s a look of mortification on her face. She’s not meeting my eyes. That’s unacceptable. Especially after saying that. I weave my non-sticky hand into her hair and guide her gaze to mine. “Did you say you loved me?”
Misery is clear in her eyes, but she nods. “Yes.”
“And that upsets you?”
“No,” she gasps. “I just—”
“Don’t you dare regret it,” I tell her in a low voice. “Don’t you fucking be embarrassed about those words.”
She closes her eyes. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s too soon.”
I kiss her hard, still tasting the sweetness of jam on her tongue. “It wasn’t fucking soon enough, Rachel. I should have said it first. I don’t care if it hasn’t been long.” Pressing my lips to her ear in the way I know makes her shiver, I speak the truest thing that I’ve ever said in my life. “I am so fucking in love with you, Rachel Dover. I don’t ever want you not to be here with me, in my life and in my bed. I want you to be my wife, because you’re already my everything.”
There are tears in her eyes when I kiss her again. “Yes,” she breathes. “I want that. I’m your wife. I’m your chef.”
We both laugh, and it’s swallowed by our kisses. But somewhere in-between tangling tongues and battling lips she finds the words, “I love you too.”
12
Rachel
I have no idea what time it is. Sometime in the middle of the night. I’m lying exhausted and sweating with my husband, who I love.
I love him.
The words are a revelation and yet they make perfect sense.
Clayton’s head rests on my stomach, and I’m stroking my fingers through his gorgeous hair. “Mmm,” he says. “Don’t stop that.”
Now that I know that I’m going to be here, there are questions that I want to ask. Things that I need to face. “Will you tell me about Evelyn?” I ask. My voice sounds thin, but it’s all I’ve got.
He strokes a comforting hand up my ribs. “You would have liked her,” he says gently. “No nonsense, sharp as a tack. Some people mistook that for her being cold, but she wasn’t. She saved her warmth for the people that she truly cared about because she’d been burned before. But even without a lot of warmth, she was totally respected and loved. She created this place, turned it into the community that it is now.”
“I wish I could have met her.”
Clayton sighs. “I wish that too. She took me in when I came here looking for work, already on my own and too fucking young to get any real job. I didn’t understand why she took me under her wing until later, but she gave me everything. Made sure that I finished school and taught me everything about ranch life.”
“Why did she take you in?”
Slowly, he raises himself so that he can look at me, and there’s kindness in his gaze. “Because she lost her family. She never talked about it, but I always suspected that her husband was abusive. He’d died before I came, but there were signs. And then her son…he’d cut her off. From the little she would share with me, the son had turned out a lot like the father, and it was painful for her. I think she saw in me an opportunity to get back a little of what she lost. And she gave me the family that I needed, too.”
I pull him down to kiss me. I’ll always be grateful for this woman that I never met. Without her, I wouldn’t be here, and none of this would have happened.
“That son…I’d only heard the bad things. I’m sorry if that’s hurtful to you.”
I shake my head. “It’s not hurtful, it’s the truth. He was an abusive asshole, though I don’t remember much except
being afraid of him. Me and my mom ran, and when we made it to Denver we heard that he’d died. I still don’t know how.”
Clayton pulls me close into his arms. It is the only place that I want to be. “Then mom died when I was seventeen. I already knew that I wanted to be a chef, so I worked as many jobs as I could and took classes at night. When they would finally let me in to culinary school, I took out loans to finish. It may have taken me longer than other people, but I did it.”
“I married an extraordinary woman,” he murmurs against my skin. “An extraordinary woman with extraordinary legs. Even if they’re not quite ready for riding yet.”
I groan and roll my eyes. The ache is starting to subside, but I’m really not looking forward to that kind of pain again. Who knows how long it will take to build up tolerance before riding horses doesn’t feel like I’ve done squats for twelve hours straight?
But as long as the muscle pain leads to more massages from my sexy-ass husband, at the very least that will be nice. “I can be ready,” I say. “If you’re patient. I think it’s going to take me some time to get used to it.”
He laughs. “Of course it is. There’s nothing wrong with that. Besides, I have a lot more to teach you than just horseback riding. There’s archery and herding and all the knots.”
“Mmm,” I say. “I’d much rather you use the knots on me.”
“You bet that I will,” he growls. “Maybe I’ll make you wear some rope under your clothes. A knot right over your clit so when you ride the horse you think of me.”
My eyes go wide. The very idea is…hot. “You wouldn’t.”
“Make it so that you come while riding your horse? Yes, I absolutely would.”
“You’re wicked,” I said. “And cruel.”
“And greedy,” he agrees. “I want everything with you, and forever might not be long enough to teach you everything and take everything that I want.”
“Do you want my name too?” I asked softly.
Clayton looks at me. “As in, do I want you to be Mrs. Burgess?”
“Yeah.”
In a second he’s on top of me, crushing me with his weight and kissing me hard. All consuming. His hands are on my wrists, pinning them to the bed. The kiss doesn’t stop until I’m dizzy from lack of oxygen.
“In case that didn’t answer your question,” he says. “Yes, I want that. It would be the greatest honor of my life for you to take my name, wife.”
I grin. “You always call me wife.”
“Because I’m still trying to convince myself that it’s actually true.”
Arching up into him, I watch his eyes go dark. “What would help convince you?”
“How about I marry you properly?” he asks. “Not a rushed signing that was awkward and forced. A big party with a dress that I get to peel you out of at the end of the night. And then fuck you senseless after. With amazing food and dancing under the stars. Because you deserve a wedding. You deserve more than that.”
Gliding my fingers down his spine, I smile. “I’d love a wedding,” I say. “It doesn’t have to be big. But I want to marry you and see you not run away right after.”
There’s regret in his eyes. “I was afraid,” he says. “That kiss was more than I had ever hoped for, and I knew that if I didn’t walk away from you, I wouldn’t stop kissing you. So I ran, and I buried it deep.”
“I didn’t bury it,” I tell him. “There wasn’t a moment after you left that I didn’t think about that kiss. That I didn’t imagine what it would be like to have you touch me the way that you do now. And I wanted you so much, but I didn’t dream that it would actually happen.
“But Clayton,” I say, stopping him from speaking, “I want a wedding with you, but not having a wedding doesn’t make the marriage any less real.”
“No it doesn’t,” he says, looking long and deep into my eyes. “We start riding again tomorrow.”
I wrinkle my nose. “What kind of riding?”
“Horseback riding in the morning, and cock riding in the evening,” he says with a grin. “No excuses, we’ll be doing both.”
Laughing, I drink in the sight of his smiling face. “I guess I can live with that.”
“I love you,” he whispers, leaning in to take my lips again.
“I love you too.”
Epilogue
Rachel
Six Months Later
There are more people here than I imagined there would be. It’s crazy! The Larder is packed to the gills and people are waiting outside in a line.
The rush to get the restaurant open in time has been a huge project, but it was worth it. Both Clayton and I want the restaurant to be established and running smoothly by the time the next tourist season comes around.
After I turned the kitchen around at the ranch, and the standard of food became far higher, Clayton asked me if I wanted to start a real restaurant with full creative control. He had the place picked out, the business plan, everything. Said it was his wedding gift to me.
So today we’re here at The Larder in Jackson. It’s the grand opening, and I didn’t expect this kind of turnout. But we’re featuring Rocking R Beef, and the word of mouth about the resort food is enough to make people curious.
Clayton weaves through the crowd toward me, and I smile the way I always do when I see my husband. No matter what, just seeing him brightens my day. He doesn’t stop when he reaches me, tucking an arm around my waist and pulling me around the corner. “Hi.”
“Everything’s almost ready,” he says. “Are you sure about this?”
I roll my eyes. We’ve had this conversation before, but he keeps checking in with me. It’s sweet.
“Yes, honey, I’m sure.”
Even though I designed the menu and did the development of all the food, I’m not the head chef at The Larder. That title goes to Martin. He’s actually a great chef who has risen to the task.
Being the chef here would mean a long commute, and a lot of time away from Clayton. And being that we’re still newlyweds, that’s the last thing that I want. Aside from that, the shiny new Michelin star that the Rocking R Ranch just earned made it easy to want to stay there.
I am aiming for two stars next year.
“This will be good for him, and I’d rather be with you.”
He smiles and kisses me on the forehead. “You’re too kind.”
“I think I’m just right,” I say. “Besides, we need to get back before all the jam is gone. I heard from Leslie that they didn’t make much today.”
A wicked grin appears on his face. “That’s true. We need to have them make extra for winter, because I’m not going six months without that jam.”
“You know there are other things to eat, right?”
“I do, but jam will always be my favorite,” he says.
I grip his shirt and pull him closer. “We need to eat, and then…”
Clayton raises an eyebrow. “You know we have plans. You’re not getting out of it.”
I blush, lowering my voice. “Yes, sir.”
“Fucking hell,” he breathes. “You know what that does to me.”
“Yes I do, now let’s get out of here.”
He looks at me for a moment. “You’re in an awful hurry.”
I glance away. “I want to get to those plans, and I’m hungry. I need regular meals now since I’m eating for two now.”
Clayton freezes. Then he gasps. “You’re pregnant?”
“Yes,” I say, already tearing up. “I just found out this morning.”
“Holy shit.” He crushes me to the wall and consumes me in a kiss that I’m sure is smudging my lipstick, and I couldn’t give less of a damn. “We’re having a baby.”
“We are.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, grabbing my hand. “My wife needs the exact food that she wants.”
I’m laughing as he pulls me through the crowd and away toward home.
I writhe as another wave of pleasure hits me. I have no idea how long I
’ve been like this, bound face-down to the bed, blindfolded and gagged, a vibrator between my legs.
Clayton finally brought to life the fantasy that he spun for me the first week that we were together. And I am not good at it. He sets me up on the bed, tied at my ankles and wrists, with the vibrator positioned between my legs. And every time we’ve tried this, despite his instructions not to come, I spend the time consumed by multiple orgasms. I can’t help it.
As soon as we returned from The Larder, we ate a delicious meal and then he carried me back to our house in his arms. He was bursting with pride about the fact that I was pregnant, but he was not about to let me lapse on the lesson he was teaching me on self-control, even if I moaned and begged him to let me stop for the night.
“Absolutely not,” he said, eyes dark as he carried me over the threshold again. “Every day, Rachel. Every fucking day until you make it.”
“What if I never make it?” I whispered, heart already pounding.
He grinned. “We’ll see.”
It has been four days since he fucked me, the vibrations are always too much and send me over the edge before he gives me permission. I am dying to feel his cock again, for him to lose control and finally take me. But he won’t, even when I press myself up against him.
Clayton stripped me and ordered me onto the bed, and I obeyed him.
Over the last six months of our marriage, we’ve fallen into a perfect rhythm. We are equals in everything. The employees at the ranch respect us equally, and there isn’t a moment when I feel less valuable than him. We are partners in chores and in business and in life. Except when it comes to sex.
And I love every damn second. Handing over the reins to him gives me the freedom to feel the pleasure he offers without any guilt or worry, and Clayton revels in the control that I offer him. It fulfills us in ways that we can’t explain and don’t question.