She was with him at once, hooking her arms over his neck, opening her mouth wide, luring his tongue into her mouth. He leaned in more, wrapping her warm, wetly silky body, fragrant with sandalwood oil, in his arms until her breasts were crushed to his chest and the side of the tub dug into his belly.
“Get in with me,” she gasped, but didn’t let him go. Instead, she leaned back, trying to drag him in herself.
“Hold up, hold up.” Without making her let him go, he leaned back himself, drawing her forward, and worked his way out of the jeans he’d yanked on in distress.
He still felt that distress, coiling through his blood like the last wisps of smoke rising from a dying forest fire. His heart slammed against his eardrums, and he couldn’t catch his breath. Gabe had turned a black, fathomless mirror on him, and the murky image he’d seen rising up at him scared him nearly witless.
When he was bare again, he reclaimed her mouth and let her pull him into the tub.
Usually, Gabe wanted him to sit behind her when they bathed together, but this time, she pulled him in facing her. It wasn’t uncomfortable; Heath was tall, and he enjoyed a soaking bath himself from time to time, especially after a long ride, so he’d installed the biggest clawfoot tub he could find, with a side-filling faucet. On his own in here, he could submerge to his chest and still stretch his legs out. The tub was wider than most as well. It was quite accommodating of guests.
As soon as his ass hit the bottom of the tub, Gabe came forward, pushing him to lean back, and straddled him, setting her knees on the bottom, alongside his hips. They were still kissing ravenously, and he thought nothing of her self-assertion—nothing except the relief and oddly painful joy of having her so eagerly with him after that horrible talk, and the always powerfully arousing sensation of her skin on his. He slid his hands up her slick back and tangled his fingers in her mass of damp curls until he had fistfuls, then pulled her head back and latched his mouth onto the side of her throat, just under her ear.
She moaned and flexed—and he felt her slide over his cock, hot and wet with more than bath water and bubble oil. His hips jerked, hard and automatically, and his tip pushed in.
Throwing his head back in need and frustration and all the other crazy feelings caroming through his brain, he gritted out, “Shit, shit, shit.”
But Gabe flexed again, and he went in farther. Her eyes, locked on his, flared wide and then fluttered closed as she flexed again, with more obvious intent, and he filled her completely.
Oh, so long since he’d been bareback inside a woman. Her heat enveloped him, consumed him. She felt like…he didn’t even know. Like every good thing he’d ever touched. Like home. Like love.
But this was dangerous territory, especially after everything about this fucking day.
“Gabe. What are you—we—what…” He couldn’t form the question. With effort, he managed to force out, “Condom.”
Her eyes still locked with his, her hands grasping his shoulders, she shook her head. “I don’t care.”
“What?”
“I don’t care if it happens. I need this right now, and I don’t care if it happens.” She rocked her hips, and as the bolt of need shot through him, he dropped his hands from her hair to grab her hips and hold them in place. He could feel strands he’d pulled out coiled around his fingers.
He wanted to make her pregnant. It wasn’t even the first time he’d had the thought. But she was twenty-one years old, and, though she’d obviously sobered up, neither of them was currently in a state to be making any big decisions.
Reason was hard to come by for Heath just at the moment, but he tried to marshal up enough to protect her. “This feels fucking amazing, Gabe. But you can’t take a risk that’ll change your life just for this good feeling. If you want this, we’ll get you on some birth control, and we’ll have it. Just not right now.”
She traced a finger over the arc of his scar. “It’s not a risk. Unless you don’t want it. I want to make a family.”
“You just said you were afraid of me. You said I was like your father. Now you want to make a baby?” It was all he could do to keep the conversation going, to lay rational thinking out between them while her pussy clenched around him and her mouth said things he wanted to hear.
“And you promised me you weren’t. You swore you wouldn’t hurt me. You swore you’d stop. I believe you.”
“Just like that?”
“Did you lie?”
“No.”
“Do you want it?”
“Yes.”
She smiled—beautiful and real. “Then shut up and fuck me.”
He knew he should tell her no. He was older and wiser. He knew better. He was the one who’d let his pain warp him into something she feared. He could hurt her, despite his solemn vow and his wholehearted intent to keep it all his life. Even if they were ready so quickly to make this choice, now was not the time to make it.
But staring into her gorgeous eyes, free in that moment of haunted age and full of love, he couldn’t be older or wiser. He couldn’t be better. He could only need. And love.
He let go of her hips and buried his hands into her hair again. As she began to rock, he let her set their pace while he devoted himself to tasting all he could reach of her, sucking her lips, nipping her jaw, drawing his tongue down the sweep of her throat. When he caught a tight, dark nipple into his mouth and pulled it between his teeth, she arched back like a dancer, offering her body to him. He let go of her hair and took hold of her breasts instead, working one with his fingers and the other with his mouth, moving back and forth, taking all she offered.
The change of her position shifted his path inside her, and he obviously now struck an especially good place, because her nearly languid, rolling thrusts became abrupt and emphatic, and soon she let loose a stream of short, loud grunts that echoed off the tiles and filled the room.
As always, her arousal aroused him, her climb pulled him with her, her climax brought him to the brink of his. When she went over, her silky body tensed on him, around him, pulsing, milking him so hard he had to bite down on his lip to let her finish.
It was often said that simultaneous orgasm was the holy grail of good sex, but Heath had never agreed. It was good, no question, and it was rare, sure. But what he loved better was this—when he could just barely hold his back until the moment her body first began to relax, and then could turn his efforts to his own finish. At least with Gabe, he could prolong her climax, sometimes even find another peak for her, and her body pulsing around his all the way through—nothing was more intense.
When Gabe made the little gasping whine that was the sound of her last throe, Heath closed her up in his arms and bent forward, laying her back on his lap, moving her body on him as he rocked his hips off the bottom of the tub. Water sloshed wildly, splashing all over the floor. Gabe’s eyes flew open and she cried out.
It was only seconds before he was done, shouting at the ceiling as he went off inside her. When he fell back against the tub, he pulled her with him, and she flopped onto his chest, gasping. Her hair went every which way, and he brushed it from both of their faces.
This was more than they’d ever felt before—closer, hotter, more electrifying. The condom wasn’t the only barrier missing between them. The buzz saw of emotions had flayed them raw. Heath realized that, torturous as it had been to hear it, Gabe had given him something important when she’d asked him to show her how he was different from her father. She had given him her trust. She’d shared her fear and trusted him to ease it.
“I love you,” she whispered, her lips moving on his chest.
“Always, little one.”
“And forever.”
*****
Heath leaned against the propped pillows and watched Gabe sleep. They’d spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening in bed, even eating dinner on the sheets. He’d come inside her twice more, before she’d finally simply fallen asleep during their last post-coital cuddle. Now she lay besi
de him in her most frequent sleeping position: on her stomach, her hands under her pillow, the leg nearest the side of the bed cocked. Many times, he’d woken and gotten something going by sliding his hand over her ass and into her pussy, so open and inviting in this position.
She often had bad dreams, and she talked in her sleep, so he knew they were about her father. They weren’t always about what he’d done, though. Sometimes the words she said seemed silly and mundane, but the dreams always ended with her distress.
He knew something about bad dreams and how they got tangled up with memories—good memories as well as bad, like the dreams pissed blood all over everything that had to do with the loss. He’d had countless nightmares that had started as happy times spent with Ruthie and had been warped into fire and blood.
Now, though, Gabe slept quietly. She seemed at perfect ease. Heath, on the other hand, could not shut his brain up.
Was he like her father? Was he capable of something like what Stuart Kincaid had done? No—how could he be?
But he’d beaten down Black on four separate occasions in the past four years, twice just after it had happened, and now twice since he’d come back to town, and he could remember almost none of it. He could barely remember where and when they’d happened. When he’d seen Black afterward, he’d always been surprised at how bad he looked, how much damage he’d taken. That Heath had dealt him.
He knew full well that if he ever lost his shit at Black when there weren’t other people around, he wouldn’t stop. He knew that he would kill him. He would intend to kill him.
Because the only thing he remembered clearly about any of those beatings was that: the need to kill Brandon Black.
Not until tonight, kneeling in the bathroom, hearing Gabe compare him to her father, had he ever felt remotely guilty about that. Black deserved to die. Heath believed that right now, sitting in his dark bedroom beside his sleeping love, whom he might have made a child with. Brandon Black deserved a slow, painful death.
For the past four years, Heath would have been happy to have been Black’s executioner, and he wouldn’t have cared about the consequences. Prison, death row, whatever. If Black was dead, the price would have been worth it. His life had been over when Ruthie had stopped screaming.
But now, unexpectedly, it wasn’t. He had someone to live for, something to strive for. Once again, he had everything to lose.
He had to let Brandon Black live his life. Not forgive—never. Not forget—never. But set it aside.
Could he? That bloodthirsty fire that filled him, that wasn’t rational. It wasn’t a clear choice he made when he went for Black. It might start that way, but once he was actually on him, there was something else, something dark in his heart, at the controls.
Heath had made Gabe a solemn promise, and he meant to keep it. But he didn’t know if he was capable of keeping it.
Christ, was he some kind of homicidal maniac waiting to happen?
The thought made him too upset and restless to stay in bed, so he eased out, trying not to disturb her, and grabbed up his clothes from the day before.
Out in the living room, he flipped on a light and got dressed. Fuck, there was blood all over the front of his shirt and streaked down the sides of his jeans. No wonder she’d been so damn afraid of him. It was a lot of blood; he’d never noticed. Even while he’d been promising not to hurt her, he’d been wearing somebody else’s blood.
He turned and stared at the closed bedroom door, contemplating the possibility of her remaining asleep while he went in and dug up fresh clothes. Deciding that that chance was too slim, he stayed in his bloody clothes and pulled on his boots.
When he went for his hat, it wasn’t where it belonged. Fuck. He’d lost it? Fuck. It must have fallen off in his clash with Black. Maybe Reese had picked it up. He hoped so; he’d had that hat more than a decade.
Once outside in the muggy, deep night, Heath saw his truck parked in its usual spot, next to Gabe’s little SUV. Steve must have brought it back. He didn’t remember handing over his keys, but he must have.
He reached down and picked up a handful of dirt, rubbing it over the bloodstains on his jeans. He used another handful on his shirt. He wanted to go up and talk to Maggie, and horses were not generally great with the scent of blood, not unless they’d been intentionally adapted to it. Maggie was particularly sensitive about it.
Satisfied that the blood was old enough, and now well enough covered, not to upset her, he headed off up the ranch road. Being with his horse always calmed him down, and she’d be happy for the surprise visit, which meant cookies.
Chapter Fifteen
After a couple of hours grooming Maggie, talking to her, stuffing her full of cookies, Heath felt calmer. The shouting in his head had muted, but the questions still had no answers. Finally, he put her up, packed away the grooming supplies, and went back down to his house. The night was still dark, but he could sense, in the stirrings of the world around him, that dawn was not so far off.
He’d fixed a pot of coffee up at the stable and had cup or two. Knowing that he wouldn’t sleep, he didn’t even bother to go into the house. He sat instead on the porch glider and let his mind have its head.
Rarely did he simply let go and open himself to whatever thoughts his mind could conjure; he knew what hunkered in the dark corners, and he didn’t like to take the risk that the worst of his demons would leap out at him when he wasn’t armed and ready for the fight. But tonight, still feeling the lingering mental tremors that his confrontation with Gabe had brought him, he was too weary to hold it all back. So he slumped down on the glider and stared out at the ranch, and he let his defenses down.
His thoughts careened everywhere. He thought about Ruthie and her little brown cowboy boots, then Anya and Kendall. He felt guilty about missing the rodeo, then remembered watching Sybil, when they were in high school, running barrel races on her mustang. That brought him to Phoebe, bringing Ruthie down to watch the foal come into the world, setting her on top of the stall wall, holding her tight, while Phoebe’s mother cleaned her and nudged her to stand on those wobbly stalks of legs. He thought of Gabe, the first person to ride Pheebs regularly, because Ruthie had been long dead before the filly was old enough to carry a rider.
His throat twisted with sorrow, and he swallowed hard as his mind brought him back to the day and night just before. The town and its fascination with Gabe, and with him. The way it hurt her. Black. Gabe’s fear. Her accusation—her truth. Their desperate emotion. The choice they’d made when they shouldn’t have.
Had he made her pregnant? What did he think about that? Did he want it, really?
Yes. Yes, he did. He wanted a new beginning. He wanted a chance to be better, to take better care, to raise a child, to know that love again. He wanted to give that to Gabe, to share it with her.
The light had brightened to pale, pearly grey when the screen door screeched, and Heath looked over. Gabe stepped out, her hair wild over her shoulders, wearing one of his white t-shirts and nothing else—no, as she stepped onto the porch, he saw that she had on a pair of those small, snug knit shorts she wore as pajamas bottoms, on those rare occasions when she wore pajamas. They were barely more than underwear, really. He loved them.
“What are you doing out here? I got worried.”
He held out his hand. “Sorry. Couldn’t sleep.”
She came over and took his hand. As he pulled her to sit on his lap, she frowned and held back. “You’re a mess, even worse than last night. What happened?”
Glancing down at his bloody, filthy clothes, he chuckled. “Yeah. Long story.” He patted the seat of the glider at his side instead, but she smiled and sat on his dirty lap anyway.
For a few minutes, they sat quietly like that, Gabe leaning against his chest, her head on his shoulder, his hands brushing over her hair and smoothing over her thigh.
Finally, he asked, “How are you feeling this morning? Any regrets?”
She picked his hand up from her th
igh and set it on her flat belly. “No. You?”
Removing his hand from her belly, he took her arm and pulled gently, shifting her so that they were face to face. “Then marry me.”
That hadn’t been one of the thoughts bouncing around in his brain that morning, but all the thoughts together were, at their core, that one: what he needed to make everything else settle and be still.
Her eyes went wide with surprise, and he added, “I love you. I want to love you and take care of you always. I want to make you happy and keep you safe. I want a child with you. I want a new start. You want it, too. So marry me.”
She studied his eyes, his whole face, silently as his heart beat between them. Then, just as silently, she nodded.
He kissed her. Then he wrapped her in his arms, stood up, and carried her back to their bed.
*****
With a kiss on her cheek and a swat of her ass, Heath sent Gabe off to the kitchen to help Emma put breakfast on. He watched her move down the hallway. She turned and blew him a kiss before she ducked through the doorway. The clouds between them the night before had wafted away and left blue skies and sunshine.
They’d decided to keep their news to themselves. Gabe had said the only way they could keep it a truth of their own was not to let anyone else know, and she didn’t want to share it yet. He’d been happy to agree.
He went through the living room, into his father’s study, where he found, as he’d expected, his father, brother, and brother-in-law sitting on the sofa and chairs, sharing parts of the Sunday paper.
“Morning.”
“Morning, little brother. You better?”
Heath smiled and picked through the remaining sections of the paper. “Yeah, I am. Sorry about yesterday.”
Logan shrugged, and Wes simply looked interested, but their father set his hands down, crushing the paper on his lap. “I understand, Heath. You know I do. But I am growing very tired of cleaning up after you. This feud with Catherine is making things messy enough.”
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 19