Barefoot, sweaty, and smelling of horses, Tate padded silently down the hall and past the kitchen. His nose twitched at the luscious aromas in the air. Marietta, the cook, was at it once more, whipping up another zesty Southwestern meal. He hadn’t eaten this good in years, nor eaten so much beef or so many jalapeños. He was going to miss her cooking.
She had her back to him, working at the sink, so he kept walking. There was no sense in disturbing a genius at her work. Once in his room, he closed his door before he stripped off his holster. Gun apparel was commonplace on this ranch. Not only did Booker and his wife carry, so did most of their hands. Nice.
His weapon went flat to the dresser where he could easily reach it if needed, his dirty clothes near the spare duffle bag Booker had given him. Tate hadn’t much to put in it, just a change of clothes and some toiletries he’d purchased en route to Amarillo. Some ammo. The barest essentials.
The guest room was done in subtle earth tones with an occasional turquoise accent. Southwestern they called it. The furniture, a bed, chair, and dresser, was constructed of polished logs. Three red clay pots of fake miniature cacti—the kind without the deadly spiny thorns—graced the dresser. A lamp made up of horseshoes welded together topped the nightstand. A thick Mexican blanket, woven of more earth tones with a stripe of turquoise, topped the carved wooden chest at the foot of the bed.
Double-paned windows opened to a western vista of wide-open prairie, now purpling with the last of a sunset at the end of a hard day’s work. Tate closed the curtains. He didn’t need to be reminded what he was leaving behind. Or who.
The bathroom décor was an extension of the bedroom’s, with a twist. A leather harness framed the mirror over a turquoise porcelain sink that matched the commode. The shower curtain, a damned good imitation of burlap, had been craftily hung from a wide wooden oxen yoke in lieu of a shower rod. More repurposed horseshoes served as hooks for clothes and towels. More cacti. A red clay, tiled shower stall.
Tate cranked the water to as hot as he could stand it. With his forearm to the wall beneath the spray, he leaned his head to his wrist and let the hot water work its magic over his back and down his thighs. The bullet hole was healing nicely. He’d removed the bandage days ago, but riding a horse worked muscles he hadn’t known he had. Arching his stiff back, he rolled his shoulders and stretched, letting the heat seep in and loosen the kinks. Letting his mind wander.
Funny thing. It never wandered much farther than the courageous woman he’d met on a water tower one night in Maryland. Knowing he’d done all he could for Winslow should’ve made Tate happy, but he was pensive this late afternoon. In less than a month, she’d come to mean everything to him. It was going to be damned hard leaving her behind. But this was Texas and she couldn’t be safer. Booker and Emma would make sure of that.
Tate soaped shampoo through his hair, rinsed, content to let the gentle spray wash his face and most of his cares away. Even now, the FBI’s Deuces Wild team was in southern Alabama, dissecting the criminal offshoot of all that good Beauregard parenting.
According to Winslow, on the mad dash to Amarillo, Hattie hadn’t once mentioned her brothers by name. For good reason. Except for Ike, the youngest of the bunch, her six living brothers were straight up gangsters. Also known as the notorious BBs—as in Beauregard Brothers—they were a lawless motorcycle gang out of backwater Creola, Alabama. All six were wanted by the FBI for pushing everything from drugs and stolen goods to moonshine—and their luck.
If Hattie had contacted them for back up in her attempt to swindle Booker, no one would’ve ever known where they were. That they didn’t show in Amarillo to support their sister illustrated one thing clearly. The BBs only rode for jobs that paid. They didn’t much care for things like loyalty, honor, or family. ’Course, neither did Hattie.
In between scrubbing his chest and back with the coarse sponge and the manly shower gel that came with the room, Tate decided the wiser thing to do was to leave in the middle of the night. It would hurt Winslow’s feelings, but his not drawing things out would spare her too. She might even be mad enough to forget he’d ever existed. Getting on with her life would be easier without him in the picture.
Yeah, that was the right thing to do. Cut the ties. Let her loose. Then he’d do what he did best. Stay out of sight while he kept her in his sight. Protect her while she grew into the woman she should have been. Love her from a distance that was safe—for her. Yeah. That’s what he’d do.
The slight shift in the steamy sauna atmosphere alerted Tate that his bedroom door had been opened, most likely by Booker. He’d stopped by a time or two with a cigar or a good book, maybe a beer, just being friendly. Tate liked the guy. Booker and Emma were God-fearing people who’d worked hard to build their family and ranch. They considered the folks they employed more friends than just employees. The world needed more good folks like the Lockettes.
“Be right out, sir,” Tate called. He blew out a deep breath, already counting the lasts. Last shower before he left Winslow. Last sunset he wouldn’t get to share with her. Last dinner he’d eat with her sitting across the table from him. Last night sleeping in the same house—not in the same bed—with her. Last damned everything. The least he could do was make certain there’d be no last goodbye.
He swallowed hard, slapped the tap to off, and grabbed a towel from the handy horseshoe hook outside the shower. Only it wasn’t Booker standing there with a good book and a smoke. It was Winslow. And she wasn’t wearing a thing.
The black in Tate’s eyes swallowed the brown as he wrapped his towel around his hips, covering himself. “You shouldn’t be in here,” he said, his voice ten octaves lower. Deeper. Rougher.
“Yes, I should,” Winslow said, her head up and fully aware of her decision. Nervous or not, this was the perfect place to be. And this was the perfect man, dripping wet and with steam lifting off his massive tanned shoulders. This man was a god, and this was her now-or-never. “I’m not letting you break your promise to me.” Honest, she didn’t mean for her voice to come out as breathy as it did.
His brows lifted. “My what?” If he didn’t remember, his body certainly did. That fluffy turquoise towel couldn’t hide his reaction to her any more than she could hold back her pounding heart. Surely he heard it.
She took a step to him, his eyes big and wide, his gaze slipping over her breasts and down her belly like the last rays of golden sun when it kissed the prairie goodbye. “You promised you’d make love to me, and a man always keeps his word. You taught me that.” She had him there. It was a childish ruse, but given her lack of sexy, curly hair and a full figure, it was all she had to fight with.
He rolled his eyes, breathing hard. Trapped and aroused was a good look on Tate. It made her feel—utterly feminine. Kind of powerful. She took another bold step into his comfort zone, her insides quivering like Jello at her audacity. Were all women scared to death their first time with a man or was it only her?
“Winslow,” he ground out, his free hand raking over his hair. “I mean Bdub, I mean...”
“Winslow,” she breathed, reaching her hands to his chest, needing to touch him after all these weeks of not being able to. “I’ve always been Winslow.”
And she was in his arms and that amazing muscle under his towel twitched against her belly. “Kiss me,” she ordered, not asked. Asking might make him think he had a choice when he didn’t. Not tonight. She might be as timid as a mouse, but she knew what she wanted.
He hissed, his throat muscles taut. The man was perplexed, flummoxed, and enthralled, maybe a little angry, too, but he was also thinking. She could almost hear the wheels grinding behind that hard forehead and those dark brows. So this was what it felt like to tame the mighty grizzly. Exhilarating and scary and—wow.
Tate towered over her like a mountain. Broad and bold, the sheer size and bulk of his body should’ve frightened her, but she knew he’d never hurt her. Not this gentle giant. “Kiss me,” she ordered again, her fingertips flutt
ering over his nipples, her voice hoarse with the fire in her blood.
A rumbling growl brought his head to her level. He canted it to the side, his warm breath coming in heated bursts over her bare neck. “There will be consequences,” he breathed, “for both of us.”
Being surrounded by him like this took the air out of her lungs. “I know,” she whispered as she lifted to her toes and curled her arms around his muscular neck. The tantalizing scent of his clean, wet skin, and the lingering fragrance of manly soap nearly combusted her on the spot, but when he pressed his mouth to hers? Her heart erupted with a throaty growl.
Gasoline on burning coals, that’s what they were. One sweeping taste of her mouth with his tongue, and he lifted her off her feet, cradling her against his belly and chest as he took her to his bed.
“I locked your door,” she assured him between nips and licks, still hard at work stroking and tasting each other.
Carefully, he tossed back the blankets and set her head to the pillow. “This is crazy,” he mumbled, his warm wet tongue licking its way to her neck. Slathering as he went. Savoring.
“Crazy in love,” she whispered back, lost in the sensation of this rough male body blanketing hers. Mysteries unlocked at every touch of her greedy fingertips. The brush of crisp hairs that dusted his chest. The latent power in those rock-hard abs. The jut and angle of manly ribs and hips and...
Oh my. The smoothest velvet skin over the hardest steel. A thunderous, vibrating groan came with it.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he said between hot wet licks down her neck that told her he didn’t believe what he was saying any more than she did.
“It’s my choice,” she reminded him, arching upward to align her body with his. That towel had to go.
“Your father’s going to have my balls for this, and I can’t blame him.”
“Then you’d better hurry, Tate, because I know what I want, and I want you. Now. Here.” Way to go. Sound like a spoiled brat. If that wasn’t a turn off—
Rippppppp. His towel was gone, and they were skin to skin and heat on heat. Banked coals on flaming embers. It didn’t get any hotter than this.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
He knew it then. All that noble BS about leaving town before sun-up? Kick that to the field with all the other horse shit. He wasn’t leaving Winslow. He couldn’t. Not tonight and not tomorrow morning. He’d have to cancel his flight, and Tucker’d be pissed, but he’d get over it. There was no denying Winslow. A stronger man might, but Tate was not that guy. This little woman beneath him owned him lock, stock, and barrel. As Booker would say, emphasis on the Lock.
There was manly satisfaction in knowing this was the ultimate of firsts for her, and in a way, for Tate Higgins too. He was no man-whore by even the weakest definition. He’d only been with one female, that back in Alaska when he was drunk and so was she—whoever she was. The sordid affair began and ended in an alley behind a bar he couldn’t remember the name of. It left him feeling dirty and used, unsatisfied and disillusioned. It was just one of those stupid things horny teenage guys did.
But if this was to be his first time with Winslow, it wouldn’t be their last.
“You’re going to marry me,” Tate told her. Not asked. She might as well get that straight right out of the chute. No do-overs, no doubts. No take-backs and no lies.
“Me? You want to marry me?” she asked, her eyes wide with incredulity, her lack of self-esteem showing around the edges of her tough girl façade, the one she didn’t do very well.
“Yes, you, my future bride,” he growled, loving the way goosebumps shivered up her belly and over her breasts at those words. It even made her nipples peak enough to...
Ah, what the hell. He dropped his head and captured that delightful rosebud, savoring the peaches and cream taste of her, and loving what it did to his manhood. The ache that had held him uncomfortably erect for days, now invaded his body like a tide with no ebb. The only thing that could break this hold Winslow had on him was if she said—
“Yessssss,” she hissed, her body turning to the best kind of liquid heat beneath him. “I’ll marry you, Tate Higgins. Tomorrow.”
A grin that actually hurt a little split his normally stoic face as he mumbled around her breast. “You ought to talk to your parents first. Then give me your answer.” Lick. Lick.
“Should I, umm, is that what I should do?” Ah, she was as innocent as a newborn bear cub in spring. She wanted to please everyone.
“Yes, ma’am. Respect them, which is what we should be doing now instead of…” He eased back enough to take in the seductive view of her naked body, her knees bent at the sides of his legs, her sex glistening and ready. Yeah, if he were a gentleman, he’d be putting her parents’ wishes first, but this was Winslow. She’d already had a lifetime of putting others first and of coming in last. Never again.
Tonight she was first and only. Look at the stars in her soft green eyes. No one had ever looked at him like that. You’d think he was Prince Charming or one of those fairytale guys. That look. Sheer adoration. So damned humbling.
Booker and Emma would have to get over it, too, because Tate was in the best kind of love, and this thing with Winslow would happen right here and now. Then he would spend the rest of his life loving, protecting, and romancing this audacious woman.
“You like what you see?” she asked, so damned timid even as she tried to act sexy.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he muttered, his body on fire for this hot babe in his arms, and his soul reaching out for every last particle of hers, expanding to encompass her. It’d been a long time since he’d been this close to heaven.
She’d probably see herself as deficient for the rest of her days. That was what happened when life ran you down, backed up, and ran over you again. When it ground you so far into the dirt that you couldn’t see a way out. But every time she might belittle herself in the years to come, Tate intended to lick her up one side and down the other with encouragement of the best kind.
Starting now. “I like you better than raspberry ice cream,” he growled in the crook of her neck, tickling her as he suckled raspberries up the column of her shivering neck and down her shoulder, ending at the soft as silk mound of her breast.
The sweetest mewl purred out of her.
He drew her nipple into the cauldron of his mouth and growled, “Better than a lemon drop.”
Her body flexed from head to toe, undulating against him. Inciting him. If she kept that up—up being the key word—he wouldn’t last long.
Going for broke, he worshipped at her other nipple to the heady scent of her blossoming and the frantic moaning in her throat. “Tate, oh Tate, oh...” Hip bump. “Do that again.”
Her fingernails dug into his biceps as he shifted his body to where it wanted to go while that heavenly sheath wept for him. Just the thought of what his mouth wanted to do nearly did him in, but that was another adventure for another day. Not eating the entire elephant here. Nor Winslow.
His back stiffened at the tender banquet sprawled beneath him, but this first—this once in a lifetime forever-after-first—was about her, not him. He took special care to make certain she was ready, then—ever so slowly—he eased to his haunches for two reasons. One, to drag his wallet out of his jeans. Nothing was happening without that condom. Two, to look at the woman he’d taken into his heart just weeks ago.
The sight took his breath away. She was bare and dripping. Writhing for him, her toes and fingers clenching the sheets. Her eyes, always too big for her face, were wide and black. Wanton. Needing him to fill her as much as he needed to be inside of her.
Gloving himself, he leaned over her, his elbows at the tops of her shoulders, his big hands cupping her head. Just like last time, the rest of the world fell away, and Winslow became everything.
“Tell me if I’m hurting you,” he whispered into her lips as he began his assault on her virginity. His heart swelled at the thought of this one time gift.
> She grumbled something he couldn’t make out, but the fingertips digging into his shoulders and the thumbnails in his collarbones weren’t telling him no. He slid forward, deeper, taking it slow and easy, giving her time to acclimate to his length and thickness. She was so damned tight. He didn’t want to break her, but the slick warm fire was just a heartbeat away. Just another inch or two.
He froze. There at the cusp of forever, Tate held his breath, not going to take what he wasn’t sure he deserved. Not certain that he was good enough for the innocent woman who lay so warm and tempting within his reach. A better man. Winslow deserved not just a better man, but a richer, smarter man.
She shifted then, her knees bent and her heels drawn up to his ass, spurring him on. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“Are you sure?” he had to ask. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Not now. Not ever.
Ten fingernails scraped over his chest, inciting him as never before. “I’m only sure I’ll love you until the day I die, Tate,” she whispered between angel kisses up his neck and over his chin to his lips. “I’m tired of waiting to live. I’m standing up for myself, and I’m fighting to be with the man I love. Love me. All the way. Now.”
How could he not? Tate eased forward and broke the seal of her virginity, then held still to watch while she adjusted to this most intimate invasion. Winslow’s eyes were closed, but the sweetest smile graced her kiss-swollen lips. She arched her lower back. “More. Do it again.”
He took slow deliberate strokes, alert for any signs of discomfort. This first time was important. He had to make it good for Winslow. Yet with every slow stroke, she lifted her hips and met him halfway. “So good,” she breathed. “You feel so good in there.”
Nature took over then, moving them in sync in slow, steady thrusts until she stiffened and cried, “Tate. Tate. Oh, Tate!”
Tears pricked his eyes. He’d never seen such a glorious sight, such a glow. She put the aurora borealis to shame as she shattered, writhing against his hips for every last second of her pleasure. This was rarest display of love, her opening her body and her heart to him. This was belonging on an elemental level where hearts locked together. Where souls joined. Where a man and a woman had the power to make their own world. Their own time.
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