by Pam Godwin
“I say when and how.” He grabs my neck and gives a warning squeeze. “And you will shut the fuck up.”
There’s the ruthless cowboy beneath the soft caresses.
Panic ripples up my spine, followed by a surge of desire so big it swallows everything in its path.
Those cruel lips call to my heart. The grip on my throat moves my spirit. His hard voice makes my life dance. He’s my battle song in the war of love.
He stares at me. I stare at him, and when we know we’re safe with each other, he releases my throat and kisses me.
“I’ve been so fucking hard for you.” His kiss turns into a winding lick that travels down my chest, my stomach, and delves between my legs.
The electric jolt of his hot, filthy mouth goes all the way to my toes. I fall back on elbows, spine bowed, and release a long, deep-throated moan.
He eats me ravenously, greedily, lapping and sucking and groaning against my pussy. His hand slips up my body to stroke my breasts, and his other enters from below to join his mouth in the delicious attack.
His fingers sink deep and thrust hard as his tongue circles my clit in an assault that sabotages my breathing and wrings my core into a tight coil of need. I’m so close. Right there. Right there…
He brings the pleasure to a halt and nibbles a path to my breasts, his hands trailing, light and taunting.
“Don’t stop.” I’m stretched to the point of snapping. My body pulses and contracts for more. I need. I want. I have to come.
“I want you so bad.” His head returns to my thighs.
He licks me again, using fingers and tongue where I need him most, while studying my reactions, feeling how my legs move, and watching my body buck and writhe.
“Beg.” He stops and touches his lips to my inner thigh.
My breaths come so hard and heavy all I manage is a moan.
In a blink, he’s on me again, fucking me with his mouth, his fingers, just long enough to short circuit my brain before pulling back.
“I’m waiting, Raina.”
“Fuck you and your evil mouth.” I grip his hair and pull.
“Not until you beg.”
I release a scream of frustration that ripples into a breathy cry. “Please, Lorne. Please fuck me with your tongue and your fingers and your hard, fat cock. Give it to me. Make me burn. Please, let me come.”
His huge grin pops that dimple, and I’m owned, completely and utterly.
“Come on my face, you dirty girl.” He crashes his lips against my pussy.
The orgasm slams into me a glorious wet rush, my legs sawing around his head, and my brain shimmering with sparks.
He licks me through it, coaxing my inner walls to clench and clench and clench until the tingles ebb into sweet, swishing bliss.
“You’re fucking gorgeous.” He leans up with his lips stretched back in a wolfish smile, panting past clenched teeth.
“So are you.” My heart sighs with post-orgasmic affection.
Gripping my waist, he yanks me off the ledge and into the water. Desire coats his mouth, and serrated breaths expose the edge of his control.
“Hold onto me.” His voice is crushed rock and carnality.
I loop my arms around his neck and angle my body over his hungry cock.
With a hand on the ledge behind me, his other grips the base of his length. His eyes flick to mine. His jaw clamps, and he slowly enters my body, sinking, stretching, possessing, inch by consuming inch.
Pleasure swarms my blood, and every cell in my body sings for more, more, more.
He stops breathing, his chest hard as steel as he presses deeper, mouth open and shoulders tight.
I grab hold of his face and watch his flawless features twist and contract through the pleasure, the relief, and the glory.
When he’s fully seated, his breathing bursts into a surge of gasping groans. His arms come around me, and he searches my eyes.
Our exhales rise in invisible clouds, and his cock jerks inside me.
“I’m not going to last.” His fingers dig into my back, shaking.
“Don’t last. Just let go.”
He pulls out and slams into me with a demand of hips and strength. I cry out, grappling for any part of him I can cling to.
“Your body feels so damn good.” He plunges again and again, commanding me to take him, to accept every thick, ruthless inch of him. “Look at you. So fucking beautiful when I’m inside you.”
The rocky ledge behind me grinds against my spine, and the water slaps at our legs. We battle to squeeze closer, deeper, bending into each other with a passion that turns into teeth and nails.
He’s a hair-pulling, nipple-biting, skin-heating fury of aggression. No thrust is hard enough, no kiss punishing enough.
He watches me through it all, holding my weight, bouncing my breasts, and ramming into me with a burn that strokes my insides with flames while pushing me further, hotter, harder…
My release implodes in a sucking grip of spasms that devours all the air and shoots along my limbs in iridescent bubbles of rapture.
“Lorne!” I scream, choking, staring into his eyes as my whole body quivers and jerks.
“Fuck, Raina. I’m gonna come.” He grunts, his hips erratic, his gaze dialed into mine. “Let me come in you. I need to—”
“Yes.” My toes curl, and my back arches in anticipation. “Please.”
“Raina, oh, God. Oh, fuck.” His forehead crashes against mine. His lips hunt and claim as he groans and rages and pumps my body full of come.
The flexing strength in his torso, the taut cords in his neck, the blown pupils in his feral eyes… I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than this man in the throes of orgasm.
When he collapses against me with shallow breaths, I brush away the black strands from his brow.
“Are you concerned about catching a disease from me?” I mumble.
A twisted smile adorns his face. “I don’t fucking care.”
He pulls me closer, his cock softening inside me, as he hauls me toward the shore.
Lifting me out of the water, he carries me to a bed of damp grass and lowers me to the ground. He follows me down, still buried inside me, and slowly rocks his hips.
“What about pregnancy?” I hug him to me and kiss his reckless mouth.
“If it happens, it happens.” He thrusts gently, feeding his need and growing harder. “I want you. Without barriers. Damn the consequences.”
He deepens the kiss, and I push him back.
“I’m clean.” My breaths soften.
His quicken.
“John?” His jaw sets. “He made sure, didn’t he? He had you checked?”
“Yes. He also gave me regular injections of the birth control shot.” I run a hand across his cheek, trying to smooth the tension. “I’m glad, Lorne. If I’d gotten pregnant…” I shake off the thought. “I have a month before I need another shot.”
With the door wide open on every nuance in our lives, there’s nothing separating us. Nothing but the fire he stokes with his thrusts.
He holds my head in his hands, rests his eyes on mine, and makes love to me on the soft, wet patch of grass.
Our bodies slide in a leisurely grind that allows us to savor every second. Hands caress. Lips worship. He’s gentler than I’ve ever felt him, though he isn’t gentle at all. His bearing is too intense for that, his body too rugged and muscular. But he’s relaxed, unhurried, as if he simply enjoys the pleasure of moving inside me.
I make wanton noises, and we laugh carelessly together. The silence doesn’t recoil in judgment, and the surrounding trees don’t hover around, wondering what to do. The universe sways with us, glittering and vibrating with approval.
When we come, it’s a soft, sensuous wave of pleasure, pulsing with the lulling rhythm of the night.
We watch each other as we dress. He rides Captain to the stable and holds my gaze during the task of putting away the gear.
At the house, he fucks me in the shower
, rough and fast, then again in the bed, as if it’s been days since he last had me.
Afterward, we lie in a heap of slick limbs, sated breaths, and incoherent thoughts. With a leg thrown over my hips and an arm stretched beneath my head, he trails knuckles around the curve of my breast, his eyes hooded and sleepy.
My core cramps from bowing and crunching through orgasms, and the tissues between my legs tingle from hours of penetration. I struggle to focus my eyes, my head heavy and entire body twitching from his endless attention and stamina. But my chest has never been fuller.
He smashed my heart against my ribs to make room for his. Now we beat side by side, stretching and growing together in the shared space.
His lips brush against mine, his breath so familiar and comforting. How did I live so long without it? How could I ever return to that lonely, hollow woman.
I can’t.
The past two years simmer from the creases of my mind, gathering and building a swell of overloaded emotions behind my eyes.
“We’re never leaving this bed.” His mouth settles against my neck, his voice a rumbling embrace of promise. “I’m never letting you go.”
My breath skips. “You want me to live here?”
“You’re officially moving in.” He glances around the empty, unfurnished room. “We both are.”
My skull pounds with a flood of sadness and joy, fear and relief. It’s been there all this time—the horrors of my past, the hope for something better. His declaration scrapes it all out and sets it free.
The bottomless torrent bombards me with achy, breathless sobs, and I’m too spent to stop the purging.
I cry, silently and cathartically. He holds me through it, supporting me with his arms and encouraging me with a gravelly hum in his throat, while silently promising I’ll never be alone in the hurt again.
As Raina drifts to sleep against my chest, I let myself absorb the colorless, empty room for the first time. I don’t like ceilings, floors, or walls. I hate closed doors and spaces with recycled air. But I like this.
It’s a blank canvas for something new, something extraordinary, with Raina.
In my throat and on my tongue dwell feelings that can’t be shaped into words. But the molecules in my body understand. They multiply and spread out, consuming my veins with purpose and acceptance.
I need this love. I want it. I want to need it. From her.
I want the fiery frustration she ignites in my stomach. I want the strangle around my lungs whenever she’s near.
I want the agony in my heart at the thought of losing her. It keeps me sharp, vigilant, aware.
Tightening my embrace around her naked body, I run my nose through her hair, savoring the silky texture and breathing in her botanical scent.
For the first time in eight years, I’m home. Not home in a prison cell. Not home in my childhood room. It’s the home of my future, and I can turn it into anything I want.
Jarret did this for me. He built me a place to call my own.
I reach for my phone on the night table and launch the internet browser. I’m still trying to adjust to all the changes in technology, but I’m learning how to shop online.
I have a credit card and a small inheritance from my father. I also have an untouched savings account from my labor on the ranch all those years ago.
As I type into the browser’s search bar, I notice a number of bookmarked websites I didn’t put there.
My gaze lowers to the sleeping woman on my chest.
She claims she doesn’t want a phone, but she borrows mine often to look up recipes and herbs and whatever else she does with it.
I click through her bookmarked links and open pages for furniture, bedding, wall art, and Native American decor.
She’s been thinking about this. Dreaming about furnishing this room. For me? Or for us?
A grin pulls at my lips. Perhaps this is a subtle attempt to nudge me, but honestly, the woman doesn’t have a subtle bone in her body.
Either way, she made the task a million times easier.
For the next twenty minutes, I purchase everything she bookmarked and other things she didn’t.
That done, I turn off the light and wrap my body around hers.
Then I sleep.
As always, the nightmares come, rousing us both with my choked gasps.
When I wake for the third time, it’s after a hauntingly sick dream of her and John in the ravine.
“Are you okay?” She peppers kisses along my jaw.
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t real. She’s right here with me.
“You want some tea?” She runs a hand through my sweat-damp hair.
“I want you.”
I crawl over her warm body, fit my hips against her, and sink into her heat in one long, exquisitely slow stroke.
By morning, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been inside her in the last twelve hours.
Maybe a man shouldn’t slack his needs in a woman every hour of every day, but I don’t give a fuck. I’ll never stop getting hard for her. Never stop finding solace in her body.
After breakfast, I lean against the fence railing that corrals a bullpen for horse training. Only the trainees today are Raina and Maybe.
With Raina on Captain and Maybe astride Jarret’s gelding, they listen to my animated sister explain the basics of horse riding.
This was my idea, a way to keep the girls occupied and in our sights while we discuss John Holsten.
Conor canceled her vet appointments for the day, but only after a heated argument with Jake and me at breakfast. We can’t keep her from her job, but we will until we have better security in place.
The horses trot at a controlled gait with Conor walking alongside them, gesturing as she talks. Maybe’s British White Park heifer scampers after them like a thousand-pound, ankle-biting dog and nudges Conor’s hand for a pet.
“Chicken…” Maybe leans down in the saddle and points a finger at the critter, smiling. “Stop distracting us with your cuteness.”
Raina shakes her head and laughs, her bronze complexion glowing in the sunlight. Her entire aura glows with happiness, and I like to think I had something to do with that.
As always, she wears my old jeans, this pair unaltered and bunching around her boots. Raven hair drapes over the graceful lines of her shoulders and swings against the small of her back.
Her fists slide over the reins, and the memory of what those hands can do sets my brain on fire.
She’s a vixen.
My vixen with fingers of sin.
“I know that look.” Jake rests his forearms next to mine on the fence.
Beside him, Jarret’s lips twitch, his gaze never straying from Maybe.
“You slept in your room last night.” Jake studies me from a foot away. “With Raina.”
“I also ordered furniture and other shit. I’m moving in.”
“’Bout fucking time.” He narrows his eyes. “But that’s not what’s putting that look on your face.”
“I’m watching a beautiful woman ride my horse, thinking I’d just like to ride her.”
“It goes deeper than that.”
He’s right. She’s a fathomless desire with bewitching brown eyes and pouty lips sucking on my soul.
“I love her.” Three words are painfully inadequate for what I feel.
“I saw that coming a mile away.” He watches the girls for a moment, and his lips form a flat line. “We need to talk about branding week.”
Our date of brand falls on the third week of every June. That’s next week.
We’ll be immersed in the longest days of the year as we gather as many hired hands as we can to administer shots, castrations, and branding. I used to oversee the annual operation. Hell, at eighteen, I supervised the entire ranch. I’m the oldest of the four of us, the big brother, and the one they once looked up to for guidance.
It’s time I step back into those boots.
“John knows when we brand.” I tur
n to Jake and Jarret and inch up my hat. “He knows we’ll be distracted and dog-tired the entire week. Raina and Maybe will be with us, but we won’t be able to watch them every second of the day. And Conor…”
“She won’t close the clinic for six days.” Jake shoots a concerned look at my sister.
Branding isn’t something we can cancel or delay. This is our livelihood. If our cattle aren’t vaccinated and tagged, we can’t sell them.
“I have some money,” I say. “Not a lot, but I’ll cover the cost of a security guard for the week. What I really want is to hire a man to track down John.”
Where is he staying? What is he planning? Should I try to set a trap to catch him? Or wait him out?
I don’t know what to do. I’m a damn cattle rancher, not a detective.
“Private investigators aren’t cheap.” Jake blows out a breath. “I emptied my savings account keeping an eye on Conor all those years.”
“It’s not just that.” Jarret tips his head toward us. “I have concerns about hiring someone to track the man we plan to murder. Some of those detectives are retired cops. And anyone we hire could be called in to testify in court regarding the surveillance. I don’t know how this will all turn out, but if we’re suspected of killing John, I don’t want the added risk of an outside party saying, Oh, yeah. Those guys hired me to find him.”
None of us want that risk. Especially not with all the bodies in the ravine.
“I agree.” I prop a boot against the rung of the fence. “But I want a security guard, a body guard, someone to patrol while we’re distracted. Just during branding week.”
“I’ll get recommendations from the PI I used for Conor,” Jake says.
“In the meantime, we can’t leave them unattended.” I direct my eyes at the girls. “Not for a second. When my sister’s at work, one of us will be watching her on the cameras.”
“I’ll do it. I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on anyway.” Jake’s mouth wobbles, hiding a smile, as if we don’t already know how much the dirty fucker enjoys watching her.
I turn toward the fence, eyes on Raina, and explain to the guys all the qualifications I want in a security guard, my expectations from the role, and how he’ll man the cameras and patrol the property while we’re in the field for fifteen-plus hours every day. Then I outline the logistics of the branding operation, the things I want to improve and my ideas on how to make it run smoother.