by Mia Madison
“I need to finish up with work and then – I need to get dressed for later,” I say, savoring the look of surprise that passes over her face. How her slightly turned up nose gives a little twitch at the thought I’m intending to scrub up and make this evening something special. “I want the growing anticipation of coming to pick you up for our date, not just going out somewhere to eat dinner together.”
“Men get excited about that? Even cowboys?” she asks with that little laugh that fills my house with – happiness.
“Sure, even cowboys. You think it’s only girls that like to paint themselves up to attract a mate. Now scooch – I got to find a pretty pink for my toes.”
She stands up on her own tiptoes to kiss me on the mouth. A little peck at first but she can’t break away. She wraps her tiny hands around the back of my thick neck and drags me down, deepening the kiss until my jeans are packed tight and stretched hard on my groin. Then, apparently pleased with herself, she opens the door and skips brazenly down the steps like she’s coming onstage at a Broadway musical.
I laugh and shake my head. But I can’t resist watching her sway and wiggle all the way back to Shea’s house. I’m strangely elated by the anticipation of seeing her later this evening.
*
I head out at the exact right time to pick up Modesty from Shea’s house. I’m exactly on time, not a second late and I don’t even tell her to meet me in the barn or at my truck. I don’t care who sees me stepping out in a pressed white shirt to go call on my girl. In fact I hope the entire posse notice me heading across the yard in a pair of newer jeans and my best hat. Then they’ll know that Modesty belongs to me and lay off with the tantalizing comments toward her. They’ll get the hint loud and clear that she’s all mine.
The door is opened by Dallyce and I’m even able to deal with the way she throws me her best evil eye of suspicion. Seriously, she’s only a year older than my Modesty, but she acts like her mother. She’s going to be an amazing parent some day, or a nightmare one. Depending on whose point of view you see it from. Luckily Modesty’s not her daughter and my girl immediately appears at the door, gently elbowing Dallyce out of the way.
I may have to pick my jaw back up off the floor.
“Wow, you look amazing,” I murmur and am bedazzled by the delighted smile in return.
She truly does, in a blush colored dress that’s tight around her amazing breasts and falls in a short full skirt from right underneath so it swirls out as she moves. She’s wearing sandals that have leather thong ties that snake round her calves and halfway up her thigh that have my cock leaping in my jeans they’re so unbelievably hot.
“You look great too,” she tells me.
Then with a quick goodnight to her friend, I remember to tip my hat to Dallyce as Modesty slides the fingers of both hands around my elbow like she’s staking her claim. And surprisingly I have zero problem with that. I even crook it just a little as we go down the steps. Just enough that I’m supporting her on my arm like we’re on a real date. Which we are, I keep forgetting.
I lead her to my truck and open the door before lifting her up into the cab. A swoosh of her dress grazes my cheek along with a brief glimpse of the sexy white panties she’s wearing. I'm not sure that I’m going to last long around her judging by the way my wood keeps stiffening in response to her.
“I wish we were taking Pegasus,” she says. “I’d love to be snuggled between your thighs with your arms around me, holding the horses reins.”
Yeah, not gonna last long at all.
“I know, Princess, but her table manners aren’t quite up to snuff for where we’re going tonight,” I reply with a grin as I make sure her seat belt is secure before closing the door.
Chapter SIXTEEN
Modesty
I laugh, trying not to let it descend into a girly giggle. Rafe can be really funny when he wants to. He’s obviously making every effort to be his best self tonight.
For me.
He’s completely mine. For tonight anyway. And I’m going to try to focus on each moment and live it to the fullest. I mustn’t go steaming ahead to after dinner and how we’ll definitely be finishing up what we started.
“Where are we going?” I ask when Rafe climbs up and starts the engine.
I’m a little nervous that my own table manners might not be acceptable. I’ve never been on a dinner date before and my dad only ever takes me for pizza or barbecue.
“You’ll see,” he says with a secretive smirk. “I hope you like it.”
“I’m sure I will,” I say.
Because we could be eating tacos at a food truck and I’d be completely happy just being by Rafe’s side. It’s a little crazy, this infatuation I have for him. I wonder whether it’ll dry up suddenly, like the desert wind. Flying through me then dying down as though it was never there.
I wind down the window and let the breeze blow in my face. It’s a beautiful night, with the sun deep red on the horizon. We drive and drive, mostly quiet, but it’s a very comfortable kind of silence. Not awkward at all. I even kick back and put one foot up on the dash, forgetting to act ladylike. Rafe doesn't mind apparently because he grins and reaches for my hand.
Finally, when the sky has turned indigo denim with a tiara of stars, he turns off the road through a pair of tall gates and continues up a wide sand drive. Then he shifts to off-road and I can’t see a thing in the dark.
Ohmigod, perhaps he’s the demon Dallyce thinks he is, an ax murderer about to kill me off and dump me out here.
Then I see a circle of glowing light up ahead and Rafe pulls up, off to one side beneath a lonely stand of trees.
He comes around and I sit rigid until he opens the door and lifts me down from the cab. I land in his arms with a jolt and he leans down to kiss my lower lip. Then he takes my hand and leads me toward the light. As we get closer, I gasp and my free hand flies up to my mouth.
There in the middle of the desert is a table covered with white linen and candles in white bags form almost a full circle around the perimeter. There’s an entrance without fire and Rafe presses me through with one hand in the small of my back, the other holding the hem of my dress, ensuring I don’t catch fire which would signal a very abrupt end to the evening.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“Our restaurant. There aren't too many romantic restaurants, or any, within a hundred miles so I made one.”
“But you didn’t have time to come out here and all the way back to pick me up. And who recently lit all these candles?”
He lays a finger over my bottom lip, telling me to hush.
“You have to surrender and go with the magic,” he says and I can hardly believe I’m with the same man.
He’s suddenly morphed from a gruff arrogant cowboy with only his own needs uppermost, into a man who gets romance. Am I dreaming?
He laughs, pleased with himself and my discombobulation – my first chance to use a word I learned in English class. Then he pulls a bottle from the ice bucket alongside the table. The clinking sound tells me the ice hasn't been here long enough to completely melt. More mystery. The cork goes flying and he pours me a flute of chilled champagne.
“You don’t have to drink it if you prefer sparkling soda. But we have to toast at least.”
“Oh, I’m drinking it. I can pretend I’m in France where kids are served wine with lunch at kindergarten.”
We touch glasses and Rafe leans down to kiss me again. Then he sets his glass down and opens an icebox I notice behind his chair. Covered with a horse blanket. I pick up the rose that’s sitting across my place setting and watch slightly awed, as he unpacks a slew of delicious food from inside and sets it down picnic style on the table.
“Sorry it’s a little informal,” he says with an almost shy grin.
“It all looks amazing,” I say and mean it. “It’s a royal banquet compared to the last time you cooked for me. Remember that rattlesnake you shot when we were out riding.”
“Ge
ez, I’ll never forget the look on your face when I unholstered my gun and pointed it right at you.”
“Hold still,” you ordered me and I was sure I’d been enough of a brat that you were intending to shoot me.”
“That rattler was an inch away.”
“It was three feet,” I laugh.
Obviously cowboys tell whopping lies same as fishermen. Then I hasten to bolster his ego back up, not that it really needs it; “But you were a crack shot, catching it right between the eyes.”
The enjoyment slips from his face a little then and he puts some of the fresh marinated steak slices on my plate. What happened? It’s like he remembers something else about that day.
“You had a boyfriend back then right?”
“No, no one.”
“That’s hard to believe.” I guess he means because of how I pushed him off me when he kissed me. “A beautiful angel like you. And now?”
Tension lands on my shoulders as I remember Andrew, the only guy I’ve ever been involved with since then. If you can call it that.
“No, not now,” I say very quietly.
He looks at me in disbelief and reaches into the cooler for a beer. He opens it with his heel and takes a slug, never releasing me from his intense gaze. I have no choice but to share with him.
“I was dating a guy, a guy in my school – and he was pushing me too hard to – you know.”
“Asshole,” Rafe hisses.
I don't want to continue down this route and spoil our date. I don't want to think about that or enrage him, but it’s out there now.
“I don't know what it was about him, that held me back. I wanted to but – I think I realize now it was because of how he kissed me. It wasn't like my first time, like how – you – kissed me.”
“I was your first kiss?” He really doesn’t believe me now.
“Yes. The first real kiss. I’d kissed men before, boys really, none of them older than twenty and their mouths were nothing like yours
Rafe laughs out a kind of gentle roar. His eyes get all crinkled up at the corners he’s smiling so hard. At first I’m a little offended that he’s laughing at me. But I choose to let it go and not get all uptight about it. I’m soon glad I didn’t because his hand comes down on my waist, on the crown of my hip that spot that feels so intimate for some reason. Like only a man that has rights to will touch you there.
I see by the dancing lights in his eyes that he’s pleased. Not even an arrogant pleased, like I’ve seen in the eyes of other guys, including him. Rafe is genuinely pleased that he kissed me the first time – that he showed me how a kiss should be. Powerful and all-enveloping, a tangle of tongues, bathed in hunger so essential it takes hold of you and holds you gripped. All other kisses before and after had been underwhelming to say the least. Like lips that came together but never really connected.
“So why’d you run away from me?” he husks.
“Honestly? I was afraid,” I say bluntly.
I’m not ashamed to admit it. I want him to know the real me, If he thinks I’m silly or not worthy of his time for being too young then sobeit but I'm determined this time he’ll know me and take me or leave me for who I am. No games. No hiding. No secrets.
“So what happened to that guy? You stay with him?” he bites out.
If I didn't know better I’d have said that Rafe was jealous, from the way his jaw is clamped tight as a vise and twitching slightly. His fists are balled up too like he’s ready to smash them onto something, or someone.
But he couldn't be that possessive over a man he doesn't even know. A boy really. This is Rafe, he doesn’t do jealousy. Right?
Chapter SEVENTEEN
Rafe
“I didn’t know you were this sophisticated,” Modesty tells me when I pull the iced chocolate mousse from the cooler. “You’re making me feel like the hick without a hay-wagon.”
“It’s good to know I’m breaking through my stereotype,” I say without a hint of rancor.
I can’t imagine ever being pissed again with this little angel. And if I am, I’m certain I’ll get over it, let her get away with whatever it is she’s done. I can’t resist her and I’m certain she’s gonna get spoiled rotten by me from here on out.
I’ve even got a flask of black coffee ready and I pour a tiny amount of liquor in as a nightcap.
“You thought of everything,” she whispers, her eyes wide and glistening as she looks at me.
I take her hand in mine across the table, something I have never managed to do without feeling like a doofus the odd time I knew it was expected. With Modesty it feels totally natural. Like I want to hold her hand, entwine my fingers through hers on the cloth just so I can touch her. “All we need is a dance floor.”
“You’ve got ten thousand acres of dance floor all around you,” I tell her.
I tug my phone from my back pocket and swipe to the music app. I pull up a good country tune that I realize, when Modesty rolls her eyes with a laugh, is a corny old number she wouldn’t remember.
“Get up here,” I say, pulling her up so she flies into my arms with a little more force. But at least she’s where I want her, pressed up tight against me, her curves rolling nicely into my ridges like they could settle in for the long haul quite comfortably.
Not to be too unfashionable, when that tune is over I reach for the phone and flip to Ed Sheeran. A song which could become Modesty’s theme tune: I’m in love with the shape of you.
I rasp along with the words as the little vixen circles her hips provocatively against me. We go for it with that song, twirling into each other and doing the full-on hip pump out there with a thousand miles of nothing but stars above us. We dance until we’re breathless from laughing and thrusting and pumping.
Then, with one arm hooked around her waist to hold her against me, I quickly switch the song to a slow dance. I pull her back where I want her, pressed against my chest so her perfect body lines mine from chin to thigh. Even our legs are pressed together, like to be unconnected at any pore is a sin.
There’s so much more I want to talk to Modesty about. Aside from getting to know her dreams, things like why she said she couldn't go home are still playing in my mind. But there’s plenty of time for chatting. Tonight I want to breathe her in, not only the sweet aroma of her through my nostrils, but the sensation of her body into every cell of mine.
When the tune ends, she clings to me like she can’t face unpeeling from my body and for this night to be over. Without breaking apart, I gently pick her up and she wraps her arms deeper around my neck, resting her head on my shoulder as I carry her over to my truck.
She makes a small hum of resistance, letting me know she isn’t ready to go home, back to her faux parent’s house. But she’s not going anywhere. I continue around to the back of my truck, where the roll out I use for sleeping out under the night sky is ready on the flatbed.
Her tinkle of laughter fills my ear as I set her down and press her back onto the mattress. I already covered it with a clean blanket so that no grain of sand abrades her smooth skin. Crazy how I want to protect her from the smallest harm. She’s just so fragile and precious I guess.
She slides up the bed and I climb onto the truck, straddling her to slide those pristine white panties all the way down her legs. I toss them behind me and come back up, kissing the inside of her calves, her knees and inch by inch along her thighs, switching back and forth between the two until she’s quivering with anticipation.
I’m desperate for another taste of her. And she seems to feel the same because she parts her legs wider to allow me between them and the aroma of her fills my nostrils with a heady intoxication.
When I’ve brought her tumbling over the edge on my mouth, she’s still not finished as I slide into her. That incredible tightness shocks me all over again and she holds me in her grip, clawing at me with her fingertips until we both explode with howling cries. Thankfully there’s no one to wonder what wild animals are close by.
*<
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I wake up as always, the instant dawn touches the ground. But instead of leaping up to get on with my chores, my only task is watching my princess sleeping so peacefully as an angel. A fallen one, the little minx, but an angel nevertheless.
My hand still rests on the unbelievably soft skin of her thigh, beneath the blanket I tucked around her as she drifted into a satisfied sleep. The smile is still curling around the corners of the mouth that reminds me of flower petals and I smile to myself, knowing I put it there. She told me I gave her the best kiss and I was determined to be the best everything for her. I slip out from under the blanket so as to leave her sleeping while I build up a fire against the morning chill.
“Good morning,” she murmurs, peeping up over the edge of the flatbed with her eyes flickering as they deal with the oncoming sun and a hint of worry as to my whereabouts.
“Good morning, Princess. You sleep okay out here in the open?”
I go straight to her and lift her down where she’s shimmied to the edge of the flatbed waiting to wrap her arms around me tighter than ever.
“I had the best sleep of my life.”
“Me too. I prefer sleeping out under the sky than being cooped up in a bed.”
I set her down on a rock that I’ve topped with a folded up blanket for those perfect cheeks to rest on.
“I think having two strapping arms holding me secure like a couple of velvet steel bands might have had something to do with it,” she says looking up at me shyly.
“I aim to be of service,” I quip as I hand her a beaker of coffee I pour from the can.
“My first night with a man,” she says half to herself.
My eyes slide up to her face to check that she’s serious. What girl of twenty years old has never spent the night with a man? I write that one off as romantic gibberish.
“Wow, she opines “you made pancakes. On an open flame.”
“Like I said…
“This is like a dream.
“Not too rough for you?”
“I love it rough if I’m with you.”