“I’m just saying,” she continues on a blush. “It’s a very potent thing, watching a strong handsome cowboy be so gentle with something so little.”
“Sure, sure.” I press my lips behind her ear, to the soft skin just below it, and feel her shiver all the way down. My handslides around to the front and cups her breast, warm and soft and bare under the flannel. “Because the way I see it, you coming in here, no bra, wearing my shirt, you’re just asking for me to fuck you. And we got a long winter ahead of us, sweetheart. Ain’t gonna be doing much else but keeping warm together.” I slide my hand down her stomach, dipping beneath her jeans.
She swats lightly at my wrist. “Slade. Not in front of the children.”
I look over at the puppies. Lucky is flat on her side in a long rectangle of morning sun, one paw twitching in her sleep. All four pups are piled in a heap against her belly, boneless and oblivious. Outside the window the last of the autumn grass moves in a cold wind off the mountains. First frost on the ground this morning. I saw it when I came out to the barn before six, the fields turned silver in the pale light.
Winter is coming. Everything is going cold and quiet.
Except this. This is warm.
“They’re asleep,” I say.
“They’re impressionable.”
I look at my wife. Pink-cheeked, bright-eyed, sitting in my lap in my flannel, rose gold hair messy and soft. And I feel it surge up in me: my love for her. It feels as deep and inexorable as the tides. I could no sooner cut myself off from her than tear the earth from the moon. I was a fool to ever pretend I could.
I stand up with her in my arms.
She grabs my shoulders with a laugh. “Slade?—”
“Impressionable,” I agree, and carry her down the hall. “Which means we need to go back to bed.”
Our bedroom smells like the candle she lit this morning, like bergamot and something sweet I don’t know the name of, just know it’s hers now. The sheets are soft linen, rumpled fromwhere we lay together an hour ago, and the light through the curtains is thin and silver-white.
“You were right. There’s something to it,” I murmur between kisses. “Lazing around in bed in the mornings.”
“I’ve turned you to the soft side, huh?” she teases. “Made you slow and lazy.”
I set her down on the edge of the bed and she reaches for my shirt buttons immediately, her fingers quick and sure, and I pull the flannel off her shoulders and let it fall and take a moment just to look at her. She lets me. And I’m glad because I intend to spend a significant portion of the rest of my life just gazing at my wife.
“Slow, sure,” I agree. “But I’ll show you lazy.”
I press her back into the sheets. The linen is cool and soft and she sinks into it and pulls me down with her, her hands moving from my shirt to my shoulders to my hair. I kiss her mouth, her jaw, the soft skin below her ear that makes her breath catch every time.
I’ve learned her by now. Learned exactly where to linger, exactly what makes her fingers tighten in my hair, exactly what makes her hips shift up against me.
I use all of it.
I drag my mouth back up to her ear. “I think you want me to fuck a baby into you,” I murmur, low and unhurried, feeling her whole body respond to it. “Don’t be shy, sweetheart.” I press my lips to the soft skin just below her jaw and feel her pulse hammering there. “You never have been before.”
The smile she gives me then is beautiful and entirely too sad, like I’m saying something bittersweet, like this conversation is ironic instead of completely sincere.
I want to tell her what’s been going through my head, to tell her what I’ve done. But I have bigger plans than just blurting it out like I did my first proposal.
Iwant to do it right this time.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I ignore it. Lila’s fingers are in my hair and the candle is still burning and the sheets are warm and I am not a man who checks his phone in the middle of this.
It buzzes again.
I lift my head. My father’s name on the screen.
That’s not right. Dad doesn’t call during my time off unless something’s wrong.
“It’s my dad,” I tell Lila, pressing my lips to her forehead and reaching for the phone. “Hold on.”
