Slade told me very clearly on that overlook that he’d never been in love and that wasn’t something he could offer me.
When someone tells you about themselves, you should believe them the first time.
So, yeah. The impending emotional damage is going to be significant. But I’ve survived the people I love breaking my heart before this.
And I didn’t get to have nearly this much fun before they did it.
I take his hand, the one with the wedding ring on it, andrub my cheek against the cool metal. “Yes, I’ll move my stuff into this bedroom.”
He smiles. Slow and warm and real. Only for me. He wraps a hand around my nape and kisses me. “And I can keep kissing you?”
“You better,” I murmur against his lips.
His mouth moves down to my neck, a drag of his stubble sending shimmers of pleasure across my skin. “And I can keep touching you?”
He palms my breast, thumb moving in circles around my nipple.
“Please do,” I say, more breathlessly.
He rolls us so he’s on top of me, his hips pressing mine into the mattress. His gaze wanders covetously over my breasts and hips and I feel him thickening against my leg.
He’s hard again already. Damn. What was that, a couple of minutes? I guess cowboys really are built to ride.
“Good,” he says, “because I really love fucking my wife, and I’d like to keep doing it.”
“Right this minute?”
Taking my hands, Slade pins them above my head. The movement stretches me out, serving up my tits to him like an offering. That dark, primal, animalistic heat comes back into his eyes as they roam up and down my naked body. The whole time he examines me he keeps my hands pinned, trapping me beneath him. I feel the grip of it, the way his fingers tighten, like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
He kisses the inside of my wrists, one by one, lips pressing into my pulse. “I’m just getting started, sweetheart.”
Chapter 39
Rough Justice
SLADE
The following week, Lila’s busy on an install. She explained to me that’s the term for when a house gets all the furniture moved in for the client so it’s turn-key, move-in ready. So I’ve got Lucky with me while I work the south herd, cutting out the stragglers, moving the cattle to the winter pasture before the next cold snap hits.
Lucky’s taken to ranch life like she was born to it, bad leg and all. The prosthetic slows her down some but she doesn’t seem to know that, moving around the edges of the herd with utter confidence.
Lila’s gonna be so proud of the dog when I tell her.
Today’s a crazy day at Wild Rose, though. There’s a film crew here. Trucks and equipment cases and cables snaking across the ground, a catering tent set up by the barn, a generator humming somewhere out of sight. They’ve got cameras trained and trailers and crew members are scattered across themeadow with clipboards and headsets looking completely out of place against a working ranch.
Though he gets a million requests for it, Dad very rarely lets Wild Rose be used for filming. Only when he loves the project or the director does he allow it. Back when we were kids, they filmed a period movie that took place in the Old West here. It was so cool to see the actors in their costumes, imagining Wild Rose as it might have looked two centuries ago.
Truth be told, it’s likely not much has changed since then. The mountains are the same. The creek that runs along the south field is the same. The old timber barn my great-grandfather built is the same, just with fresh red paint and a new roof every decade or so.
What’s changed is the details: the row of John Deeres, the modern calving barn with its vet room and hydraulic chutes, the climate-controlled stables. Dad believed in honoring the past and investing in the future. Wild Rose runs like the well-oiled machine it is because of his forward-thinking spirit.
What’s forever is the land. The big sky. The way the light gilds the mountains with every sunset. That part hasn’t changed since the first Rhodes set foot here. Won’t change after the next generation of Rhodes kids either.
Not kids of mine, I always figured. I swore off children just like I swore off marriage. It was hard enough losing my mom. The possibility of going through that kind of pain again, but losing my wife? Losing a child? I never wanted to risk it. I didn’t see how the risk could be worth the reward.
Except now I have a wife, and I’m thinking real hard about how much I’d like to put a baby in her.
The fact that I’m having those thoughts should scare the living shit out of me.
