by Lexie Ray
I was an idiot.
“Hadley, I’m sorry,” I said quickly. If I lost her now, I wouldn’t know what I would do. Even though I’d gotten back in the saddle—both literally and figuratively—I wasn’t ready to be on my own. I still needed her to prod me into my exercises, and I craved her constant and comforting presence, the guidance and direction she provided me, and the insight she had into my recovery. I wasn’t ready to let all that go yet. I wasn’t ready to let Hadley go, even though I’d just kissed her, like an idiot, and probably erased whatever fondness she might’ve had for me. Fondness—that was probably too strong of an assumption. People who were shoved together learned how to put up with each other. There wasn’t necessarily any fondness between them, but they learned to work with and around each other. That was probably what Hadley felt for me—that I was just someone she’d been dealing with for these past few months to endure to earn a paycheck, someone whose jokes she’d laughed at only to be polite and to maintain an effective relationship so her work would be more effective.
It was laughable to consider that I had ever harbored the hope she could feel something for me, that she could feel even an ounce of what I felt toward her.
Her hand had flown to her mouth, and she touched her lips with her fingertips gently, as if she were having a difficult time understanding what had just happened. I wondered if I should apologize again, if she’d heard me the first time, if I should back slowly away from her and leave her to her ruminations. She looked at her fingertips as if she was seeing them for the first time, then she looked at me.
If I had to guess, I would’ve guessed terror—even if that didn’t make complete sense to me. I was expecting disgust—that I was a pig for kissing her, for assuming she would want me to kiss her, even though I couldn’t rightly say just what was going on in my head the moment our lips made contact. I knew I was overthinking it, but it was hard not to, especially as the silence stretched on, Hadley’s green eyes wide, her hair rumpled from a long car ride.
Stupid. I was stupid. I hadn’t even asked her how Emmett was, how the journey had been, whether his injury was what she’d feared, how long he would be out of commission for. All of that had dropped away when Hadley saw me walking toward her after dismounting from that horse like I hadn’t been robbed of a leg and whole months of my life.
“Come on,” she said suddenly, taking me by the hand and leading me around to the back of her car. She popped the hatchback and shoved a couple of things aside before lying down, wriggling out of her jeans, pulling me toward her.
“Is this…is this okay?” I asked, hesitating.
“I just don’t want your brothers to see us. This is more than okay. Come on, Hunter Corbin. Fuck me.”
Christ. She was so straightforward it made me pause…even as my cock hardened again. I fumbled with my pants for a moment and frowned at her.
“What?”
“I haven’t done this since, well, since before I lost my leg.”
“You lost a leg, Marine, not a dick. Now fuck me with it. I’ve wanted it for a long time. Don’t make me wait anymore.”
She was defiant, as if she didn’t give a shit, and something about that was a huge turn-on. I pulled my cock out and shoved her underwear roughly aside, plunging into her body with not even a hint of foreplay. She gasped, and I thought I’d hurt her, but she just dug her heels into my lower back and dragged me forward, deeper into her.
“I said to fuck me. Don’t be a pussy about it.”
“I like it when you talk dirty,” I said, grinning at her, thrusting with each syllable as hard as I could. Fine. If she wanted it rough, I was going to give it to her rough. This was a celebration after all.
The car started rocking, but if Hadley cared, she didn’t say so. She wrapped her legs around my waist and squeezed, her inner muscles squeezing, too, both of us riding each other, grappling, fighting, fucking.
It was pure fucking. There wasn’t any romance to it, but maybe there didn’t need to be. This had been building ever since that first kiss, and it had reached a point neither of us cared to resist anymore.
She bit my nipple through my shirt and I howled, ratcheting up my thrusting, pounding into her, the car’s shocks squeaking in warning at our efforts. Hadley panted at me with an open mouth, her auburn hair messy, spread out in a halo behind her head, looking for all the world like a porn star, enjoying herself as only she could.
It was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever experienced.
“You’re going to come for me now,” she said, looking at me through her lashes, and my body seized in response. I gripped her with near-bruising force, gritted my teeth to keep from yelling, and filled her with my seed, well aware of the last time I’d come, wondering if we’d flood her car out, if I could end the drought on the ranch with this single act.
“Touch me,” she insisted even as I was still riding that wave, and I did, thrusting a few last times as I found her clitoris and pushed, working her until she reached between her legs and showed me how she liked it, keening as she reached the same mountain peak I did and tumbled down the other side of it.
I thought that would be it, that it would be a one and done deal, that Hadley would leave me after all that. But she was there the next morning, her hand grabbing at my cock right before we started rehab, squeezing, promising much more.
I was a lucky, lucky man.
Rehab took on an entirely new dimension. Hadley wanted me to work out before I took to the back of the horse, so we both got up well before dawn so she could direct me in my exercises.
“Fifty more lunges, then we’re going to fuck,” she said, sipping on some instant coffee.
I burst out laughing and quickened my pace on the lunges. That was an exercise I never thought I’d get to do again—the lunges and the fucking.
“Where are we going to do it?” I asked, out of breath but better than I had been doing. Slowly but surely, I was coming into my own again, reclaiming my body with the help of my new leg.
“You’re going to lift me up and push me up against this wall,” she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the wooden wall behind her.
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“You’re going to have to do that. I’m not lying down on the dirt floor.”
I was always so eager to please Hadley, always doing much more than I thought I could do because she told me I could do it. She had so much more faith in me than I had in myself, and I nearly splintered the barn wall pounding her against it.
Morning workouts turned into evening workouts—two-a-days, Hadley liked to call them—as soon as I got done with my chores on the ranch. Chance sent me riding along the fence lines to check for breaks and repair them, something I enjoyed. It was nice to be back in the saddle, galloping faster than I’d ever thought I’d be able to again. But as sore and tired as I was in the evening, I was always happy to oblige whatever exercises Hadley had in mind, always out in the barn, away from everyone else. She was just as demanding having sex as she was directing the rehab sessions, and I realized that as much as we were enjoying ourselves and each other, she always had exercise and strength building in mind.
“Doggy style,” she’d bark at me, exposing herself as she got on her hands and knees. That challenged my trust in the prosthetic’s microprocessor knee, working different muscles for balance and power.
“Sitting,” she’d say, already naked, dragging a chair across the dirt floor. That was another exercise, my calf and thighs burning as I thrust upward, pulling her down simultaneously, my hand on her breast, sure I’d never touched something so sweet.
“Standing,” she’d said, and I was even better at it than before, whipping her around to hold onto the wooden slats and hitting her at a new angle that made her gasp and grab at my head.
I was a red-blooded man. I loved the sexual workouts. But one evening, when she beckoned me out to the barn for our nightly rendezvous, I wagged my finger at her and beckoned her to the front
porch steps, two beers in my fist.
“Don’t tell me you’re already tired of me,” she said, cocking her head at me as I sat down and patted the step beside me.
“Hell, no, woman,” I said, kissing her so deeply I could taste what we’d had for dinner. “Never. I thought that this would be nice, though, out here. Something different.”
“You’re tired.”
“I’m always tired. That’s what it is to be a rancher.” I kissed her lightly and smiled as she darted a glance over her shoulder. “Relax. If they’re not already asleep inside, they’re on their phones or watching TV. No one’s going to see us.”
“I’m not worried about that,” she said.
“Liar.”
“Okay, maybe we should slow things down a little.” Hadley took a long drink of her beer to avoid following that statement up with any sort of explanation.
“You mean only have sex once a day instead of twice? You’re the expert, but I think it’ll harm my recovery.”
It was a joke, but she sighed instead of laughed. “I just…I enjoy our time together, but I feel guilty.”
“Why? What’s there to feel guilty about? You’re helping me get stronger in every way imaginable. Can’t we enjoy ourselves in the process?”
“It’s just that Chance is continuing to pay my retainer every month.”
“So? You’re still working.”
“What if he were to see us…together?” She gulped again at her beer, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “He’d realize he was basically paying me to have sex with you, and that would make me probably about the world’s highest-paid prostitute.”
I laughed. “Oh, Hadley. Don’t worry about Chance. He’s oblivious.”
“It’s not just Chance,” she said. “You’ve made progress in leaps and bounds. As long as you keep up with your exercise and keep on working the ranch, you don’t need me to be here anymore.”
“That’s not true. I do need you.”
She shook her head. “You don’t. You know what you need to do to keep on getting stronger. You’re already so much more capable of being independent than when I met you. You’re ready to do it on your own.”
“What if I don’t want to do it on my own?” I countered.
Hadley smiled gently. “What, you want someone to wait on you your entire life?”
“I want someone I care about at my side, always,” I said, brushing her hair back away from her face. We didn’t have very many tender moments like this. With the rigors of the ranch and our demanding schedules, there wasn’t an opportunity beyond a couple of minutes after our sex sessions, curled up on the dirt floor, slowing our breathing together.
Hadley’s throat bobbed. “You want me to stay here. On the ranch. With you. Not working.”
“I know it’s selfish,” I said, grimacing. “I know you haven’t been working. You’re probably homesick for your fancy apartment, too. But a man can dream, can’t he?”
“You can always dream,” she said. “Your dreams might not always come true, though.”
“If you don’t want to be here with me anymore, just say it, Hadley.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “I…care about you, too, you know. More than I probably should, especially since you’re my patient.”
“You have very unconventional treatments,” I said suggestively, grinning.
“Effective, though, aren’t they?”
I had an awful thought that maybe she’d done this before—brought someone back from the brink with sex and caring and a whole shit show charade, but I dispelled that notion quickly. Hadley wasn’t like that. We had something that was real, that went beyond a physical therapist helping a man find himself again.
Or at least that’s what I thought we had.
“It’s a lot to think about, Hunter, that’s all I’m saying,” Hadley said after I might’ve been silent for a little bit too long. “You’re asking a lot of me, you know.”
“I know. But you’ve been consulting online, and I thought that if you liked that, maybe you’d like staying on here with me. Without the retainer. As my…” I struggled for the right word to say. Girlfriend seemed almost trite, but it wasn’t as if I were proposing marriage. I just didn’t want her to go anywhere, didn’t want her to leave me, and didn’t want to be alone when being together was such a beautiful thing.
“Can’t I think about it before giving you a definite answer?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Think about it all you want.”
“What did you want to show me out here, anyway?” she asked, drinking her beer, her shoulders relaxing in relief that I wasn’t demanding an answer from her right now. What could I do to convince her to stay?
“I wanted to show you the stars,” I said. “I bet there are a lot more out here than you’re used to seeing in Dallas.”
She lifted her head to the sky to judge for herself, and I kissed the soft swell of her throat gently, nibbling a little at the skin there, eliciting a sigh of recognition. Sex was a territory both familiar and comforting to Hadley, one where she didn’t have to tiptoe around possible land mines. I couldn’t hide a smile. I was about to turn her world upside down.
“I’ll lie back on the stairs,” she instructed. “You’ll plank above me. Arms workout. Modified missionary.”
“No,” I said, kissing her behind her ear. “If you’re not going to be the physical therapist anymore, and I’m not going to be the patient anymore, then you’re not in charge anymore. You’re going to have to share the reins.”
“Plank,” Hadley insisted, but I smiled against her lips and kissed her.
“Stop. I’m in charge tonight.”
She opened her mouth to lodge a protest, but whatever she was going to say died as I touched her softly between her legs, taking advantage of that smooth material of the yoga pants she favored when we were doing our little workouts. They came off and went on easily, but I had plans for them tonight.
“Hunter…” Hadley sounded unsure of herself, which was somehow even more of a turn-on. She was always so certain about everything. This unpredictability was making her second guess everything.
“I’ve made a bet with myself,” I said softly, tracing the shapes I knew by heart beneath the slick fabric. “Want to know what it is?”
“What…what is it?”
“I’ve bet myself that I can make you come without even taking your pants off.”
“What are you…oh…what are you wagering?”
Hadley couldn’t form a complete sentence, and I kissed her forehead as I scooted down a step.
“I’m not wagering a damn thing. This is a bet I’m going to win.”
That’s all the warning I gave her before I circled the sweet bell of her clitoris with my thumb, pressing the side of it firmly but gently, guided by both memory and the way she gasped and arched her back, reclining against the stairs. She wasn’t wearing any panties—all the better to get in and out of the pants out in the barn—but it put me at a distinct advantage. I drew my finger up and down the crevasse between her labia until it came away damp, and then I spread her legs even farther apart with my hands and rubbed my face against that cloying smell, the best perfume I knew of.
“Hunter, what if one of your brothers comes out here?” she whispered, desperate to regain control. “Let’s move to the barn, at least.”
“No,” I said. “No one will come out here as long as you’re quiet.”
It was a challenge issued, and Hadley recognized it as such. My cock was hard against my jeans as I smelled her flower. I halfway wished I could just rip her pants off of her and plunge my tongue into it, but that would be forfeiting my own bet. Instead, I worked slow and steady, knowing that I would have to be even more patient than usual, eking out the pleasure, being exact in my motions, knowing when to strike.
It was rewarding to see Hadley melt against the porch steps, one of her hands covering her mouth for insurance, the other flickering over her torso as
if it didn’t know what it wanted to do. She came undone so prettily, and it made the tip of my cock weep to know I did that to her.
She gave a muffled groan as I suckled her clitoris through the crotch of her pants, the fabric doing a good job of protecting the electric nub from becoming too sensitive. I tongued that mound, giving it all the attention I thought Hadley could handle before nuzzling it with my nose, pressing against it even as she tried to buck me off. I swapped my face for my fingers, rubbing it until she gasped and screamed through her hand, the fabric getting even wetter as she shuddered and fell apart.
I worked to put her back together again, scooting back up to share a stair with her, taking her in my arms and petting her hair until her breathing slowed and she came back to herself.
“Hunter?”
“Yeah?”
“That was amazing.”
“Thank you. I thought it would feel nice.”
“That felt more than nice. It blew my damn mind.”
“I hope no one heard us.”
“I don’t care if anyone heard us.”
I looked up at her. “Does that mean you’ve decided you’re going to stay?”
Hadley looked nervous. “Hunter, I…I want to stay. I really do. I just have a lot to consider. Some planning to do. Some loose ends to tie up in Dallas.”
I gulped. “You have a boyfriend, don’t you?”
Her face darkened in a flush. “No! Just things I need to do before I make any kind of big decision like moving.”
“You wouldn’t be moving. You’re already home.”
My heart melted as she took me by the cheek and kissed me, not caring that I’d just eaten her out right through her yoga pants.
“I do feel at home here,” she said. “But for right now, I need to go back to Dallas.”