A Cowboy's Plan

by Mary Sullivan

She stepped close. With a tug on her hand, he pulled her down, settled her across his legs gently. She felt treasured.

  Heat flared in his eyes, but he held himself in check and she loved him for that care, that generosity. She had nothing to fear from this man. So much intimacy, and none of it frightening or painful.

  When he bent to kiss her this time, she opened to him. He explored her mouth and she his.

  She squirmed in his arms, wanted to get closer to him, and pressed her chest against his, hard, trying to ease an ache in her breasts.

  He pulled back, touched her throat, her collarbone, the first button of her shirt. All the while, his wrist rested between her breasts, a warm heavy masculine weight.

  Her chest rose and fell. Her breath came quickly. Her pulse played a frantic rhythm.

  She let him slip the button through its hole.

  “You okay?” he murmured.

  That wariness returned. “Don’t talk. Just do it. Don’t talk.”

  He pulled her to him, held her gently in his arms. “No,” he whispered into her ear. “I won’t just do it.”

  She eased air into her lungs, slowly, to calm herself.

  He kissed her neck. “I want you to be happy. To enjoy this. I won’t talk if you don’t want me to, but I won’t rush it either.”

  The wariness left, replaced by tenderness, love, confidence.

  “This is right,” she whispered.

  “This is right,” he said.

  When he slipped the second button through its hole, she gazed at him steadily. He undid the third button and the fourth, then parted the fabric.

  He opened the front clasp of her bra and her breasts spilled out. The cool breeze from the window washed over her skin and she shivered.

  “So pretty,” C.J. whispered. “So white, like alabaster.”

  He took one nipple into his mouth and Janey gasped. A thrill ran from her breast to her belly. Her nipple hardened beneath his tongue.

  She closed her eyes. He kissed one breast then the other, kissed the tip of her nose, and her lips, her chin, her throat, her chest, licked the crevice between her breasts, leaving every inch of her skin moist and honored by his touch.

  Then he took that dark nipple into his mouth again with its hard proof of her arousal.

  Instead of words, his tongue and lips spread his message of love. He whispered secrets over her skin, words of love she’d never thought her body would know. Every molecule of her skin and bones and muscles responded.

  When he opened her pants and nuzzled her round belly, she gasped and threaded her fingers through his hair. When he licked her, she held him still.

  “Don’t make me stop,” he whispered and it was more plea than command. “I need to do this.”

  She released his hair.

  He shifted her underwear and pants lower and moved his mouth on her skin.

  Her stomach trembled, but she didn’t stop him.

  With one swift movement, he drew her pants and undies off.

  When he breathed on her, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  Resting his lips there, he breathed, in and out, waiting for her signal that she was okay with this. He gave her time to stop him, but she didn’t want to.

  She reached a hand down to touch his cheek. Yes.

  He licked her and she nearly fell from his arms. He tightened his grip, twisted on the side of the bed and put one of her legs on his other side.

  She felt the cool air on her parted legs, then C.J.’s hot, hot breath. He touched her with one finger. Stars burst behind her closed eyelids.

  With one finger, he found her. He looked up at her face. She watched him.

  C.J. WAS HUMBLED by Janey. How much courage did it take for her to let a man touch her after what she’d lived through?

  He kissed her, there, and she tasted like new growth in spring fields, and like the mild Chinooks that blew across his land during a winter thaw, and like sun-warmed water in a shallow stream.She tasted like herself, unique, pure and loved.

  He tasted sweet Janey Wilson, and tasted more, until she fell apart in his arms.

  He pulled her up and held her while she trembled, caught her when she fell back to earth, cradled her in his arms until she opened her eyes and gazed at him with wonder.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “I owe you so much more for what you did today.” His voice rumbled out of him onto the breast he kissed. “I love you, Janey Wilson.”

  She let out a long sweet sigh. “I love you, C.J.”

  C.J. closed his eyes, held her tightly and leaned his forehead on hers.

  Finally, C.J. was going to have it all in his life, those things he’d wanted for so long—the ranch. A wife he loved. His son loving and accepting him. More children.

  He was so frigging blessed.

  A breeze blew the curtains into the room and raised goose bumps on Janey’s dark areolas, on the perfect alabaster of her breasts.

  “Cold?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  When he moved to get up and close the window, she said, “No. I like it.”

  She touched his face, ran her finger along the cleft in his chin.

  “I want to see you.”

  She unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it from his shoulders. She unzipped his jeans over the erection that hadn’t abated since he’d sat on this bed with her, then pulled the tails of his shirt out and tossed it onto the floor.

  With a look of awe, she touched his chest, her hands hovering over him with the lightest touch, raising hairs on his skin.

  HE WAS BEAUTIFUL TO LOOK AT, his skin smooth and tanned in some areas with sun-bleached hair lightening it, and pale with darker hair dusting it where his skin saw sun less often.

  She touched it all, marveled at the contours of this man who said he loved her. She loved him, too, but as her fingers drifted toward the waist of his jeans, she wondered if she could do everything.He’d given her a gift she thought she would never know in her lifetime. She wanted to give him so much more.

  He lay back on the bed with his hands at his sides. She frowned. She didn’t know what to do.

  “Touch me everywhere and anywhere,” he said. “It’s up to you.”

  “I don’t know if I can do everything.”

  He studied her with a measured look. “Okay. We can do only what you want.”

  “Really?” She touched his chest. “If I need to stop it will be okay?”

  He nodded. She touched his stomach and he sucked in a breath. With one finger, she traced the bulge in his underwear. She’d hated that part of a man, and the searing pain it had caused her, for seven years, but she didn’t want to hate any part of C.J.

  When he bunched the quilt in his fists at his sides, but made no move to touch her, she began to believe that he would honor her, that he would respect her fears.

  “Janey,” he said, “I can control myself.”

  She believed that, too.

  “I like touching you,” she said, and he smiled.

  He caressed her cheek, his touch as nonthreatening as a butterfly’s wing. “There is no right and no wrong.”

  He kissed the palm of her hand. “Janey Wilson, I want you to be happy. So do as much or as little as you like. Sweetheart, we have our whole lives ahead of us.”

  His face blurred in her vision. She knew what he implied.

  “Do you mean it?”

  “Yes, every word.”

  Oh, a future. A real future. A chance to have a family. To have Liam, if he forgave her. To have another child with C.J.

  After a moment’s trepidation, she pushed aside his black underwear and touched him there. His flesh reacted, bounced ever so slightly, a living thing. She touched him again and he reacted again.

  She felt a split second of anger that someone had taken this away from her for so many years, but she’d expended most of her rage that other day with C.J.

  Now, she wanted to explore, to know all of this man, to experience what most other wome
n had with men.

  Moving slowly, she tugged his jeans down over his hips, then followed that with his underwear and then, there he was. Bare and erect.

  She’d never seen one before. C.J. was big. At least, she thought he was. She had no standard by which to measure him.

  This piece of his body stood erect, smooth and hairless along the shaft and tip. It looked almost proud, as if it had a personality.

  She put her fingers around him, measured him, felt how smooth the skin was and how stiff the shaft.

  C.J. made a noise and she looked at his face. His eyes were closed. A sheen of sweat coated his upper lip. She spread her palms on his chest, one of them over his heart, and felt the steady forceful beat of C. J. Wright.

  She lay down beside him on the bed and said, “C.J., teach me how to make love.”

  He kissed her, smoothed his hands over her body, everywhere, and she did the same with him, caressed on him the parts of his body that he caressed on her.

  He smelled like soap and a distinctly male scent, like nothing she’d ever smelled on herself. Like musk.

  He felt like bedtime secrets shared under the covers in a dark room, where there was only feeling and sensation.

  She brushed his secret with her fingers and he brushed hers and an answering response hummed low in her belly.

  C.J. stared at her with a look she’d never seen in a man’s eyes before. Awe.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered.

  Reaching for the quilt, he lay down with her again and pulled it over them both. The soft time-worn cotton settled over her skin, whispering around them with words like love and safety and peace.

  A breeze kicked up through the window and C.J. pulled the quilt over their heads and their lovemaking became a dim cocoon that harbored her even as it set her free on a journey of discovery and adventure.

  C.J. shared more of his secrets and asked her for more of hers and she gave to him.

  Everything.

  When he entered her, she held her breath, while he stretched her. Her body welcomed him, recognized him.

  Their bodies touched from forehead to toes, warm, damp and dark. Janey felt the strength of C.J.’s arms around her while he moved, into her, with her, through her. His strength grounded her even as she flew, as she shattered while a shower of stars rained down around her.

  She was reborn.

  When he turned onto his side, he took her with him, his arms still sheltering her, still joined to her very core. His breath thundered in her ear. Hers whispered over his skin when she kissed his chin, licked his neck, touched the tip of her tongue to his nipple.

  Their cocoon grew tropical, smelled earthy. He moved in her again, and then again, and took her on another journey, to the equator, to the hottest place on earth, to the core of the universe where they melted together and became one.

  JANEY ROLLED OVER, aware of sunlight warming her eyelids. She floated in its warm orange haze, unwilling to open her eyes yet. So many lovely memories of last night drifted through her mind.

  She reached her hand across the bed and encountered warm male skin, an arm. Then again, if she opened her eyes she wouldn’t have to remember. She could see the real thing, and maybe they could make more wonderful memories.Lifting her heavy eyelids slowly, she found C.J. lying on his side, watching her, that half smile playing about his beautiful mouth. She rose on one elbow and placed a kiss on the warm vein beating in his neck.

  His arms, whipcord strong, folded around her. She’d never felt so safe, so cared for, so excited.

  “We should get Liam,” Janey whispered. “I miss him.”

  “Me, too,” C.J. responded. “We’ll go in a little while.”

  C.J. took her hand and placed it on his stomach. Watching him steadily, Janey moved her hand down his body and realized he was fully aroused.

  “Did I do that to you?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh. That’s the effect you have on me.”

  She smiled. C.J. smiled.

  They made love again in the morning sunlight.

  Afterward, Janey lay on her back and sighed.

  It didn’t matter that this pleasure and sensation and fulfillment had been denied to her by past violence. She was having it all now.

  She brushed her hand down the dimple in C.J.’s chin. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Rolling toward her, he kissed the palm of her hand.

  “Let’s go get breakfast.” His voice rumbled deep in his chest. “I’m starving. How about you?”

  Janey nodded.

  C.J. kissed her nipple and then growled. “So much beautiful flesh. So little time.”

  He jumped up. “C’mon, woman, get out of bed. I have a question I need to ask you and I can’t do it when you’re naked, or I’ll start kissing you all over again.”

  Shyly, Janey stepped out of the bed and C.J. growled again. She laughed. She’d never felt so adored.

  C.J. hauled on his jeans and shirt, and ran to the kitchen. “Hot coffee coming right up.”

  Janey dressed more slowly, in her undies and a big old plaid shirt. She rolled up the sleeves so they wouldn’t hang down over her hands.

  How had so much good happened to her in such a short time? After all of the hardship she’d survived, her life was coming to some kind of fruition—a store she adored, a child she’d grown to accept, a man she loved. Life couldn’t possibly get any better than this.

  She crossed her arms under her breasts to hold in all of the amazing feelings that were so new to her and walked to the window. She gazed at the picture-perfect sky.

  “Cheryl, baby,” she whispered. “Mommy is happy. Insanely happy.”

  She joined C.J. in the kitchen and asked, “So what did you want to tell me?”

  C.J. put two bowls of cold cereal on the table along with a carton of milk.

  “Be patient,” he said with a wicked gleam in his eye. “I can’t tell you on an empty stomach.”

  His gaze traveled over her. She shivered.

  Through breakfast, Janey floated on a tidal wave of euphoria.

  She stood up to clear the table.

  “Stay put,” C.J. ordered.

  He cleared their dishes and filled the sink with soapy water.

  Janey watched sunlight through the window gild his hair, setting off blond highlights in among the brown. It turned his tanned skin to gold. Not only did she love a man, she loved a crazy-good-looking one.

  “Are you still going to rodeo?” she asked, as much to get her mind off his body as to know his answer.

  “Yeah. I still need more money.” His biceps bulged and relaxed as he worked, draped in a plain white cotton T-shirt instead of plaid button-down starchiness. His jeans fit his hard behind perfectly.

  Janey tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

  “Ranches suck down money.” He put the dried dishes away. “After I pay Gramps’s hospital bills, I’ll still have money left for new cattle, but there are so many repairs I need to make on the house and outbuildings. I need to upgrade equipment.”

  He put the last dish away, turned to her and looked serious.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Absolutely nothing. For once in my life everything is going right.” He approached her. “I’m going to ask you something I’ve never asked another living soul.”

  Janey cocked her head.

  When he knelt in front of her, she gasped.

  “Janey Wilson, will you marry me?” His voice held a thin thread of nerves.

  He was nervous? When he was offering her more than she’d ever dared to hope for in her life?

  Her head spun. “Are you serious?” she asked in a reedy whisper.

  “I’ve never been more serious in my life. I love you. I want to get married. I want you to live on the ranch with Liam and me and help me raise him. I want to make babies with you. They can wear little Goth boots instead of cowboy boots if you want. We can—”

  She put a finger on his lips to stop him. He
was lashing her with too much good news, with so much happiness it hurt. Any more and she would shatter. Every nerve ending bled.

  Her vision misted. “Do you have any idea how much you are giving me? How much I thought I’d never have, that I didn’t think I deserved?”

  Her lips trembled. He kissed them and ran his thumb across them to steady her. “You deserve it all and more. You are such a good person, Janey Wilson. Put me out of my misery and answer me soon.”

  She hadn’t said yes? “Yes,” she blurted, then screamed it again. “Yes!”

  He grabbed her to him and stood, the vise grip of his arms enclosing her in his sanctuary.

  “Come on,” he said. “We have a rodeo to attend.”

  He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bathroom.

  “I can walk,” she protested.

  He pretended to drop her and her arms flew around his neck, pressing her breasts against his chest.

  “See?” he rumbled against her ear. “Isn’t this more fun than us walking separately?”

  They showered and cleaned themselves and loaded C.J.’s truck with a lunch for the two of them and Liam.

  Janey had a candy shop to run, okay, so no high heels and business clothes, but she would be her own boss, she would be a businesswoman. Plus, she would have a husband and a stepchild, then more children of her own.

  She ran out to the Jeep with a big smile on her face.

  They stopped at C.J.’s for his rodeo equipment.

  When he stepped out of the house, he gave her his warmest smile and said, “Let’s go tell our son.”

  Our son. Her heart did a back flip, one hundred and eighty degrees of pure, unadulterated joy.

  At the Sheltering Arms, amid the flurry of trucks being loaded for the rodeo and ranch hands running around and Hank barking good-natured orders to everyone with baby Michael on his shoulder, Liam ran to C.J. and threw himself against his legs.

  “Daddy, look,” he cried. “A red fire truck! From Hank!”

  “Hank’s a good guy.” C.J. lifted his son into his arms and settled him on his hip.

  “Had sausages. They were good.”

  C.J. pushed a hank of blond hair back from Liam’s forehead.

  Liam continued to chatter about his night at the Sheltering Arms, as if he and his father had always had this free and easy and affectionate relationship.