“No?”
“You’re not carrying me to bed. You’re not doing a single thing tonight except what I tell you. Is that clear?”
His throat moves. “Yes, ma’am.”
That nearly undoes me. The biggest man on this ranch, the ordnance specialist, the one who runs toward every problem, is looking up at me from a swivel chair with his glasses off and his jaw tight and sayingyes, ma’amlike it’s a vow.
I kiss him.
Hungry. Celebratory. A little reckless. My hands on his face, in his hair, my tongue in his mouth finding the shape of everything I haven’t let myself take yet. He makes a noise in his throat, half groan, half surrender.
Julian Vance texted my phone today, trying to put his hand back on my life, but this woman is Ethan Sutton’s. This mouth, these thighs, the patches on my arms, the breath in my lungs—the woman still wearing her husband’s flannel—all Sutton territory.
I pull back to look at him. He’s already wrecked, and I’ve barely started.
“Bed,” I say. “Now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He stands. His hands find my waist to steady me as I slide down. I step back and take him in. His flannel is open at the collar, belt crooked from sitting, the long solid body of a man who’s been up for twenty-two hours and doesn’t know how to stop.
I take his hand and lead him toward the stairs. On the third step, I turn and kiss him. His shirt comes off on the fourth step. His belt gets unbuckled somewhere around the sixth. By the landing, I’m walking backward in the flannel and my underwear, and he’s in just his jeans, open at the waist, his eyes pinned to me with something bigger than hunger—something like awe, still, after everything.
“You’re staring,” I whisper.
“I’m memorizing.”
I smile. “Faster.”
“No.”
It’s the exact call and answer from last night.
The bedroom door closes behind us, and I push him toward the bed. He sits on the edge, and I stand between his knees.
“Tonight,” I say, trying to sound stern, but it comes out tender because I can’t help it with him, “you’re going to let someone take care of you. And it’s going to be me. You’re not going to protest, apologize, or try to flip it. You’re just going to let it happen. Yes?”
His hands are on my hips, big and warm and steady. “Yes.”
“Good.”
I stoop and plant a kiss on his forehead, his temple, the corner of his eye where the line deepens when he’s tired, the stubble on his jaw. I work my way down his throat the way he worked down mine last night, pressing my mouth to the pulse, to the hollow at his collarbone, to the place where his shoulder meets his neck that I want to nip with my teeth. So I do.
He exhales like I’ve hit him in the chest.
His jeans come off. His boxers. He’s beautiful, with long muscles built by labor, a body that’s done real work and never traded on its looks.
I push against his chest, and he sinks onto the mattress. I climb between his knees.
“Jen,” he says roughly. “There’s no need?—”
“I said no protesting.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“You were about to.”
His laugh is breathy; the kind he only ever gives me. “Yeah. I was.”
