Page 46 of His Texas Claim

He stood up so fast his chair scooted back and rattled against the wood floor.

“You sure?” he said, low, a whisper that came out strangled. “Not a mistake?” I managed, “I saw the heartbeat.” He closed the space between us.

Big hands on my arms, grounding me. He looked at the paper, then at me, then at the paper again. I couldn’t stop crying, not even when he thumbed softly over the hinge of my jaw, his own eyes red and wet.

Then he laughed, a single sharp breath that seemed to split him open. He kissed the top of my head, then my nose, then right on the mouth, and my body answered with a flush that caught me by surprise, sudden and bright and embarrassing. I let myself be pulled in, wrapped up in his arms, and I breathed in the honest, living smell of him—sun and horse and sweat, the world he’d made for us out here.

“That’s mine in there?” he rumbled.

“Couldn’t be anyone else’s,” I laughed. “Unless this is some…immaculate conception⁠—”

He grabbed me up with both arms, hard enough that my toes left the floor for a second, and kissed me again, with a heat I only half-remembered from those first nights, before everything else had gotten complicated. His hands were rough and wide and he ran them over my ribs, down my waist, up and under my shirt until he was holding bare skin. I couldn’t stop laughing, which made him laugh too, until he pressed his forehead to mine.

“Do you want to sit down?” I managed.

He shook his head. “Don’t want to let you go. Not for a second.” His hand splayed over my abdomen, just above the line of my jeans. “That’s really in there?”

“Yeah,” I said, and it came out so shaky I barely recognized myself. “It’s in there.”

He bent to his knees, hugged my hips, and pressed his mouth to my belly…then turned his head to press his cheek there, just listening.

“You can’t hear it, you know,” I laughed.

“Yeah I can.”

He didn’t move for a long minute. Just held his face there, hands heavy at my hips.

Then he looked up at me with a rawness in his eyes that made my stomach flip—made it impossible not to reach for him, to run my fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair and tug him back to standing.

I barely got the word “Stetson” out before he was kissing me again, harder now, his hands sliding up my back and under my shirt. He lifted it clean over my head. My hair caught in the collar and he grinned, untangling it gently, smoothing it down before his hands found my sides again.

He pressed me up against the edge of the new desk, crowding me in until the wood dug into the small of my back. His palm moved over my stomach, then drifted lower, thumb rubbing slow circles along the top button of my jeans.

He exhaled—a deep, shaky sound that vibrated against me, then⁠—

“Wanna fuck my woman,” he said. “Can I?”

“Please.”

He mouthed at the seam of my jeans, rough fingers undoing the button slow. Then he leaned up, close enough to speak straight into my skin: “Been thinking about you all damn week,” he said, “but this—all I can think about now.” His hand spanned my stomach again, broad and careful. “Didn’t know I could want anything this much.”

I tried to laugh but it broke in my chest. “Gonna get sentimental on me, Holt?”

His eyes never left mine. “No, ma’am,” he said, and his thumb slid along the waistband. “Just proud.”

He tugged my jeans down to mid-thigh, coaxed my legs apart, and without warning picked me up to put me on the brand new desk.

It was a pretty good desk, but it was an even better vantage. Stetson’s hands bracketed my knees, pushing them wide, steadying me in case I might shatter or tip. He tugged my jeans off the rest of the way, my bare ass now on the edge of the desk as he knelt between my knees.

“You know what I told Wyatt when he handed this desk over?” His shoulders crowded my thighs, his mouth right above the wet heat of me. “Told him I planned to put it to work. Didn’t say how.”

His voice got low, nearly a growl. “Lay back for me.”

When I did, his hands caught behind my knees and bent them up, spreading me open. He pressed his face in without hesitation—like he’d been waiting all week, all his life, to taste me again.

“Missed this pussy,” he said, “but you remember what I like best? I want you wet. I want you loud enough they hear you out at the barn.”

The first pass of his tongue was slow enough to make me beg, but all I could do was moan.