"Yeah." He sounded wrecked himself, barely holding it together. "Thinking about that. Already. All day out there on that fence line, thinking about you in my house, in my mother's kitchen, and then thinking about—" He broke off, squeezed hard, and I cried out. "Mine to take care of. All of it. Every part of you." His mouth dragged across my shoulder. "Mine to feed. Mine to take care of. Mine."
I was shaking.
"Please," I managed. "Please, I need?—"
"I know what you need."
He drove forward hard and his hand slid back down between my thighs and I came for the second time with his hands full of me, his name on my mouth, his voice low in my ear telling me I was perfect, I was good, I was exactly right, I was his.
He followed me over this time—deep and still and shuddering, his arms crushing me back against his chest, his palms spread wide like he was trying to cover as much of me as possible all at once.
We stayed like that until the shaking stopped.
Until the dust settled back in the light.
Until I remembered my own name.
"Gage," I said finally.
"Mm."
"You snapped a button off my dress."
A pause.
"I'll buy you another dress," he said.
"You'll buy me another—" I laughed, helpless and a little hysterical. "It was my favorite dress."
"I'll buy you ten." He pressed his mouth to my shoulder, unhurried. "Every color."
I looked down at his hands still spread across my stomach and my chest, warm and heavy and entirely unashamed, and thought about what he'd said.
Mine to take care of.
The terrifying thing was that I didn't mind.
I didn't mind at all.
ELEVEN
Gage
The next two weeks passed the way good weeks do—fast and full, so you don't notice anything changing until it’s already the new normal.
The ranch ran the same as it always had. Up before five, cattle, fence line, whatever Neto needed, the property's thousand small demands met one at a time in the dark and the heat. That didn't change.
Everything else did.
I couldn't keep my hands off her.
That was the plain truth of it. I'd spent thirty-eight years being a man who kept his hands to himself and then Millie Calloway moved into my cottage and something in my brain simply stopped working the way it used to. If she was in a room I wanted her out of her clothes. If she was close I wanted her closer. If we were alone—in the cottage, in the barn, in the shower at six in the morning when she'd wandered in half-asleep and I'd been standing under the hot water thinking about her—I had her.
Every time.
She didn't object. That was the thing. She'd look at me and her eyes would go dark and she'd reach for me and I'd think:good. Good.Like some ancient, wordless part of me recognized something it had been looking for and had finally stopped looking.
Monday I had her against the kitchen counter before coffee was finished brewing. She'd been standing there in one of my shirts, nothing else, her hair loose, and I'd come in from the early check and found her like that and lasted approximately forty-five seconds before I had her up on the counter with her legs around my waist.
