by L. J. Stock
“You’re gonna forget all about me by the time you set foot in the bar again.”
“You’re kidding, right?” The exasperation in his tone was flattering.
“A little.” I craned my head so I could place a kiss on his neck and then rested my forehead on the spot my lips had just been. “You’re not short of admirers.”
“Except none of them are as hot as you.”
“You’re so full of shit.” I snorted, but the sound died into a small gasp when Garrett spread his legs under mine, forcing mine apart, allowing cool air to hit my overheated and sensitive flesh. He let his palm flatten on my stomach before sliding lower and covering the apex of my thighs, the promise of something more forcing my breath from me in little stutters. “Garrett…”
“Shh,” he whispered, dropping his chin to my shoulder where his beard tickled the bare skin there. “Just listen.”
I didn’t have much of a choice. My capacity to think was dwindling as he inched his fingers closer to the dampness of my arousal. So I nodded and was rewarded with a finger slipping between my folds and stroking my sensitive clitoris in a circular motion that was too soft, too slow.
“Hear me out here. What if you and I tried the whole long distance thing? Phone calls, texts, video chat and phone sex, and we can visit when the opportunity presents itself.”
“I…” My voice died once again as he penetrated me with two of his thick fingers, his thumb continuing the ministrations on my clit.
“I’m not fucking ready to let you go, and I sure as hell don’t want to share you with some asshole.” He pumped his fingers slowly, the pads of them stroking the walls inside of me so sensually that my head fell back against his shoulder and a strangled moan fell free. “That’s my girl. I’m not saying you have to agree now but think about it. We’re fucking good together.”
One of my hands dropped to his, guiding him in and out of me with more ardor. His lips closed around the lobe of my ear sucking gently before biting down as his finger pressed against the sweet spot he’d found the second time we’d had sex.
“Tell me what you want, Kay.”
“Fuck me,” I grunted.
“Oh, I plan on that, baby. Will you think about what I said?”
“Garrett… Oh, fuck.” His thumbnail pressed again, and I came undone in his hands, calling out his name to the stars as tremors took over my limbs and my hips rocked my body against his fingers drawing out the pleasure.
It was so easy for him to unravel me like this.
Effortless.
Garrett waited me out, milking me slowly while his lips roamed my neck and shoulders as the pleasure coursed through my veins. I wasn’t willing to give this up, not yet anyway. I was too greedy to let him go that easily. I didn’t need to think about my response any more than I had.
“I want that,” I said, my hand tightening around his as it stroked me calm again. “I don’t need to think about it.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes. Of course, I do. How the fuck am I supposed to even think about anyone else?”
I was barely conscious of his movement, but I found myself on my knees in the chair as he plunged himself into me in less than a blink later, and he took what he wanted from me, again and again, all night until my voice was hoarse and my body ached.
I woke up after only two hours sleep, legs sore but satisfied, and my cheek pressed against Garrett’s warm, muscular chest while I was encased in his arms. I stayed as still as I could, listening to his breaths as he drew them in and released them, and I realized with a deep sense of satisfaction that I’d identified that as his sleeping rhythm.
I lifted my head slowly and studied him for the last time. I watched him sleeping, the twitches of his eyes, and the slight curve to his lips as dreams I could only imagine passed through his mind. I wanted to share them with him, to greedily take more of his time before we would be apart.
He looked so peaceful in slumber that I didn’t dare move, even if I did need to be back at the barn apartment before Holly woke up. She was taking leaving harder than I was, but she hadn’t known about my decision to put off the sale of my father’s assets—a decision that came from a slow nagging buried deep in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to be hasty and make a decision when I wasn’t sure what was best for Holly and me. The house I was certain about, but I wasn’t in a rush for that anymore, either. I needed to know the lay of the land before I decided how many acres I would sell of it. Then again, knocking the house down and planting a weeping willow there sounded like a better use of the land.
All I knew for certain was that I had to go back to Colorado. Holly had to finish out her school year, and we had to go on with life and discuss what we wanted for the future together. My strong-minded teenager was a thinker. This would give us time to do exactly that.
“You’re thinking looks like it hurts,” Garrett said, brushing my hair back from my face and behind my ear in languid strokes.
“It does. I was thinking I should go before Holly gets up.”
Dropping his hand, Garrett tugged the ends of my hair with a sad smile, looking exactly how I felt.
“Can I make you coffee before you go?”
I nodded, swallowing back the emotions as I rolled from his chest in an excuse to hide my face from him. Pushing up from the bed, I started toward the bathroom, but a hand caught mine and pulled me back to the mattress with a squeal. Before I’d landed, I found myself under his muscular body, grinning up at him.
“No tears.”
“I wasn’t crying.”
“You were thinking about it.”
I laughed and pushed up from the bed to kiss him. It was indulgent, and I committed the feel of his lips and the taste of him on my tongue to memory before I tugged on the end of his beard with a grin. “No tears, I promise.”
He nodded, kissed the tip of my nose, and pushed up so he was kneeling between my legs looking down at me with those unfathomable pools of melted chocolate. Once he was confident I was going to keep my word, he rolled from the bed and pulled on some boxers as he headed to the kitchen, leaving me on my back in the center of the bed, head shaking from side to side as I laughed silently.
It didn’t take me long to get dressed and drink my coffee, but I took my time admiring his body as he leaned against the counter in just his boxers. The sight of him was yet another thing to commit to memory for later assessment.
“You’re staring, baby.”
“No, I’m memorizing. Drink your coffee and let me work.”
“Take a picture.”
“Only if you lose the boxers.”
He slipped his cup onto the counter, pushed his thumbs under the waistband of his boxers, pushed down and let gravity do the rest. Standing with my mouth curved into a very satisfied smiled, I patted my pockets for my phone and finally found it in the back pocket, dead. That was just my luck.
“Damn.”
“I’ll send you one.”
“Just like that?” I asked, pushing my bottom lip out in a pout. “I want to remember this moment.”
“Just like this.” His laugh filled the room as he bent to pull up his boxers and cross the room to cup my face in his hands. “Maybe I’ll come up to see you soon, and you can have your phone charged.”
“I like that idea even more,” I admitted, leaning forward to kiss him. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“Thanks for the amazing sex.”
“I feel like I should be thanking you for that.”
Garrett lifted his thick shoulders in a shrug. “I think we should pat ourselves on the back. We’re good at that together.”
“Agreed.”
“Don’t say goodbye,” he said, his smile faltering. “I don’t want to say goodbye to you.”
“How about see you later?” I smiled up at him.
“Much better.”
“See you soon?”
“Warmer.”
“Call you tonight?” I asked, backing toward the door
as he followed.
“You’d better.”
Leaning in, Garrett kissed me. This was a kiss filled with promises and intent. Garrett was warm and musky, and he smelled of man and sex. I took it all in with a sigh of satisfaction as he reached around me to open the door, while my ass pushed the screen door out of the way. I cringed as it screeched into the serenading birdsong of the impending dawn.
Stumbling out into the porch with a giggle, I took him in one last time before spinning on my heel and jogging down the steps to the gravel drive where my car was parked. I hadn’t thought it would be this hard to say goodbye, and with the mutual promise of the night before, I really hadn’t expected all of the emotions to rise like daggers inside of me, but they did, and the pain left me breathless.
I clamored into my car and unwound the window, waving as I pulled away and headed down the drive to get to Megan’s. My promise only lasted to the country road at the end of the driveway, and as I turned to head into town, the tears came.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Garrett was only supposed to be a fling that supplied me with much-needed sex and maybe a little flattery to keep me going for a while longer. He wasn’t supposed to mean something. I wasn’t supposed to feel sad about leaving. But I did, which meant only one thing… I was yet again screwed.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Trinidad, Colorado
May 2017
It had been two months since I’d come home from Childress. I hadn’t sold any of the property there. After spending my last days with Garrett, I hadn’t come to a decision on what I wanted. There was a part of me that wanted to keep the land out of nostalgia, but there was a larger part of me that wanted at least the house gone so I wouldn’t have to look at the place Dustin had died.
Jen and Megan had kept all the paperwork in their offices, ready to sell if I said the word, but there was no pressure. I think the two of them hoped I would sell some and build a home on whatever I kept, and that was a consideration. Holly had become much more interested in residing there when Katie had mentioned taking riding lessons and getting a horse for Holly to ride.
Garrett had been to visit me four times in the months we’d been apart.
We spoke every night on the phone. We spoke on our phone’s video system, too… and though I wasn’t proud of myself, most times we both ended up naked and staring at one another as we did things I never thought I would ever do on a video screen or over a phone line. We were officially an item. Even I couldn’t deny the fact that we were coupled together and somewhat happy. Ten weeks so far, and that was the longest relationship I had been in outside of my time with Dustin. Whether I wanted to or not, I was beginning to feel how deeply I was getting involved. I felt it in my head and in my heart, and that terrified me.
Garrett was amazing. He was funny, warm, kind, and affectionate. The first time he’d come to my home, I’d watched him pull up from the door of the bar. He hadn’t seen me, so the moment he set eyes on me as he stretched to that full sexy height of his, he lit up, his dark eyes flaring to life before he ran to me and dragged me up his long body for a long, hungry kiss. Seeing that change in him when he saw me was my first indication that he was as lost in us as I was.
Each time he was in Trinidad, we stayed in a hotel, while Holly stayed at home with a sitter. The bed was the place we really clocked most of our time together, our hunger for one another taking precedence over other things like eating or sightseeing. We basked in the glow of our time alone and got lost in those few precious days we had together. Waking up in his arms with his hands tangled in my hair as he watched me sleeping was becoming something I longed for with more fervency.
After his second visit, I’d started doing some real consideration about what I wanted, and what was best for Holly and me. Before I made any real decision, Holly and I talked about what a change like this would mean for us both. With her head and heart in the idea of moving to Childress, I had to be the one to play Devil’s advocate and question all the things we’d be giving up in Colorado. Turned out that Holly had inherited my talent for reasoning and debate, and in the end, she had sold me on the compromise.
So, with our plan in hand, I had hired a general manager for the summer—something Holly had dubbed the trial period—and arranged to take Holly to spend her summer vacation from school in Childress. Something I’d never imagined I would have ever done willingly, and though most of the plans had been confirmed, I still wasn’t sure about her and Garrett meeting just yet. Things were going great between the Garrett and me, but four three-day weekends in ten weeks wasn’t a lot of time spent in one another’s company. I needed to be absolutely certain. Therefore, nine weeks in Childress was designed to tell me where the relationship between Garrett and me was going and where my head was about the property my father had left me, what I wanted to do with it and to give Holly a taste of life in Childress for longer than two weeks.
“Momma?” Holly knocked on my bedroom door and pushed it open as she strolled in with a magazine in her hands and a spring in her step. She looked like a teenager now with her hair in a messy bun and a tank top that was beginning to get too small for her. “Look at this horse.”
Sitting up in bed, I ran my hands through my hair before patting the empty space next to me. “Come and show me.”
Holly sat on the bed and folded her legs under her before she handed me the magazine she was reading. I’d loved horses at her age, too, but I had no dreams of owning one. I’d known that would never happen. I wanted to fulfill the dream for her though, and our yard in Trinidad would never be big enough which meant it was yet another consideration for Childress. The plus column was growing larger by the day.
“The palomino?”
“Yeah, I love the colors. Aunt Jen said that there was a stud farm close to her that bred them.”
“She did, did she?” My amusement was easy to read in my tone. Jen and Megan had been encouraging a move back to Childress for almost fifteen years, so I wasn’t surprised they were ‘helping’ fulfill Holly’s dreams. I had to admit one of the biggest draws for me was that I’d missed living close to them, too.
“Is it true your friend Garrett works with horses?”
“It is.” My response was cautious, but after a second of thought, I suddenly knew what was coming next.
“Can I meet him?”
“Soon,” I said, closing the magazine and dropping it next to me. “We have to get there first. Are you packed?”
“Mostly.”
“That’s a no,” I teased.
“No,” she elongated the word and grinned her Dustin grin at me. “It means that I started packing. I have most of it done, but I got distracted and still have to finish.”
“Then finish, munchkin. We have to be on the road by nine, or you’ll miss your first riding lesson.”
“What?” Her tone was one that would probably set dogs off in neighboring counties.
I lived for these moments. She’d had no idea that I’d arranged to have riding lessons for her this summer. She’d asked for them, pleaded even, but I’d told her we’d look into them when we got there. Jen had finalized all the details as a surprise for Holly, and I was reaping the benefits of her shocked smile and squeal of utter delight.
“Really, Mommy?” she asked, sliding from the bed, her hands clasped in front of her.
“Really.” I laughed and pointed to the door. “Better finish packing before you miss that first lesson, huh?”
There is nothing like the squealing scream of a fourteen-year-old. The pitch is enough to scramble your brains and the joy enough to ignite a light in your heart for hours. As Holly ran from my room in an impression of The Roadrunner, I smiled to myself and headed in to get ready for the journey ahead.
The summer drive was different to the one we’d experienced months earlier. Holly was in a good mood for one. Her phone was gripped in hand as she fired questions via text to Jen, Megan, and Katie in our group message. Giggles of pure joy were foll
owed by smiled pauses as she watched the world go by her window, probably imagining riding a horse over the rolling land that was the northeast corner of New Mexico.
We sang to my old rock songs and some of her pop music, making up lyrics to the ones we didn’t know. We drank milkshakes and ate burgers on our one stop, then just in time, we finally arrived and rolled out from the car to the full crew of people ready to welcome us.
Megan and Jen were given big, but brief, hugs from Holly before she sprinted off to find Katie, who had all of her riding gear, leaving the adults alone to follow her with our gazes.
“She looks happy,” Jen said, her arms folding around my waist as she embraced me.
“She is. The entire drive was full of questions and smiles. She’s wanted a horse since our summer riding in the mountains when she was ten. I want to get her a horse, but there’s no room in Trinidad. If we move back, I’ll at least have the land for it.”
“So, you’re serious about this then?” Megan asked excitedly.
“I’m seriously considering it. If no drama has surfaced by the end of the summer, anyway.”
“What drama?” Megan asked, eyebrows raised.
“You don’t think shit will hit the fan when people realize who I am?”
I’d put a lot of thought into that aspect of my little dream. I was sure Libby wasn’t the only one who blamed me for Dustin’s death, and there was still what was left of his family to consider. There was no telling what would happen when they realized I was back, let alone what they would do when they realized the child of Dustin had lived and was with me. That, more than anything else, terrified me. I wasn’t afraid of them taking her away now. I was a good mother, and Holly was happy and healthy, and with age, I’d learned—after much research—they probably would have only managed to keep me from leaving Texas if they’d known when I was pregnant. I was now more afraid that they would make unfair demands of her and her time, and even try to control her like they had with Dustin. Only now, I would fight them to the ends of the Earth to prevent that from happening.