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One searing kiss later, and I was staring after him in a daze. He looked over his shoulder and winked. God, I liked this side of him.
The door shut, and Grace slammed her hands down on the worktable. “Okay, what the hell did he just say to you because you’re red as a tomato, and your face went all gooey.” She was cracking up.
“That,” I said, “I’m keeping to myself.”
Because if I didn’t, it was all I was going to think about, and the last thing I needed in my mind while talking to customers was how badly I wanted my boyfriend to handcuff me to my bed and fuck me.
I slipped into my office before they could notice I was blushing all over again.
Chapter 17
Jude
There was a spring in my step as I came down the stairs of my house and got back into the truck. I’d packed a bag with a couple fresh pairs of clothes, my handcuffs—as I’d promised—and more essentials. Lena’s house was far more inviting than mine, and I was content to spend all our time there, though I would have to bring her here eventually. She’d already asked.
Now that I was looking at everything through the lens of Lena, my house was kind of sad. I preferred the quirky, colorful space she’d created for herself.
But the spring in my step wasn’t because of the amazing sex or that she bloomed like a fucking rose under my control. Those things were perfect, and I couldn’t quite believe they were real.
No, the extra energy I had today was because I’d slept with her. Last night after we’d done all of it, I was too tired to keep myself in the shallow, half-asleep state I’d been staying in so far whenever I slept over.
And I didn’t hurt her.
I didn’t even wake up once. It felt like a miracle, and once again, I had to confront the possibility that a lot of the assumptions I had about myself might be wrong. Maybe Noah was right and the loneliness which had been my constant companion had been making the nightmares worse.
I certainly felt more at ease when I had Lena close. Not just because she helped me sleep or because we were together, but because deep down on the instinctual level, where my purest reactions came from, Lena was mine. I already knew it, but every day we were together proved it more.
Those instincts told me to protect her at all costs. Keep her in my orbit so I could be there if she needed me. To extend both my control and my support in any way possible.
It was only one night, so I wasn’t going to dismiss my concerns out of hand. There was still a very good chance my demons would pop up to haunt me again, but the hope I felt now was like one of those clear Montana sunrises—completely beautiful and incomparable.
I couldn’t wait to pick up Lena and take her home. Spend hours listening to her moan while I instructed her in every filthy thing my brain had been concocting for the last three years, and finally holding her as I slept. If I could let myself.
But first, I wanted to get her flowers. Something to make her smile.
Since it was past Thanksgiving, the selection of flowers in the local shop was different than it’d been in the summertime. The blooms were darker and richer than I would have chosen for Lena, but I still wanted something.
I smiled at the shop owner. “Hi, how are you?”
“Hi, good to see you. Can I help you find something?”
The last time I’d been here had been during Lucas and Evelyn’s ordeal to ask whether the shop carried the black roses Evelyn’s stalker had tormented her with.
Would Lena be shy of roses because of it? We still needed to talk about her nightmares, and that might be a good opening. But I also didn’t want a gift I was buying out of kindness to be attached to something so dark. “I’m looking for flowers for my girlfriend,” I admitted. “I’m just not sure what she’ll like, and I’m not sold on roses.”
She looked at me for a second. “I have a couple things I can show you. I have a few flowers which look similar enough to roses but aren’t quite the same. Lisianthus, for one thing.” She gestured to a bunch of white flowers, but white wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Not when I was planning on taking her home and ravishing her until she had no voice left.
“Anemones too. These are great for the time of year.”
The gathering of blooms she stood in front of was a wild mix of colors, everything from white to pink and red. But it was the purple ones that caught my eye—a deep royal color that would look beautiful in Lena’s home surrounded by all that green. The flowers themselves were oddly lovely, somehow a cross between a daisy, a rose, and a black-eyed Susan. “Can you make me a bouquet of those, but only purple?”
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “Give me a few minutes.”
I wandered the store, looking at the various flowers and plants and enjoying the scents. For working on a ranch, I knew almost nothing about this area of horticulture.
Movement across the street drew my eye. Someone going into a store. I watched and did a double take. That wasn’t a store; it was a coffee shop. There was another coffee shop in Garnet Bend? A sign sat on the sidewalk, but I was at the wrong angle to read it. When the flowers were finished, I needed to check it out. The shop looked decently busy.
“Here you go,” the owner called. The bouquet was gorgeous, with some greens and baby’s breath, which was dyed a light purple to complement the rest of the flowers.
