Page 30 of Reluctant Bride

Her jaw tightens through three different reactions at that word, blackmail, like she’s tucking it away to ask about later. She lets it go. For now.

Her fingers move to my right arm instead, and her whole face changes. This one’s darker. A knife, precise and clean-lined. Coiled rope. A revolver rendered in geometric shards like it came apart and reassembled wrong. Black lines that don’t apologize for what they are.

“This one’s new.” Her eyes lift from the ink to find mine, and I lose the thread of what I was about to say, caught on the color of them, deep brown like sunlight hitting Birch Creek. “Since when?”

“Since you.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, barely a whisper. “Every year you were gone, I added something. The mountains were who I was before you left. This arm is who I turned into after.”

She traces one shard of the geometric gun, taking her time, and I feel it everywhere, need spreading through my whole body and knotting low, my cock twitching against the towel like it’s got its own opinion about how long she’s making this take.

Then her thumb finds the sagebrush.

On the inside of my right forearm just above the wrist, small enough to miss if you’re not looking, and she goes very still, because it’s the only color anywhere on either arm. Soft green, the exact shade of the sagebrush that grows wild along every fence line on both our properties, the plant she was named for.

“Dawson.” Just my name. Barely a breath behind it.

“Don’t ask me about that one yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I tell you what it means tonight, I won’t be able to stop myself telling you everything else that goes with it, and I’d rather earn the rest of it first.” I turn my wrist so the ink catches the light, and I watch her decide not to push. “Your turn. Nashville. Twenty-three. I want the story.”

Her mouth curves, wicked and in no hurry, the same look she gave me on the porch the day Cricket caught us mid-standoff, right before she called me a liar and meant it as a compliment. “Not tonight.”

“You’re going to make me wait?”

“I let you keep a secret. I’m allowed one too.” She steps into me, close enough now that neither of us is talking about tattoos anymore, and her hands go to the hem of the shirt she stole. “Tonight I have other plans for your mouth.”

She pulls it over her head in one motion, no rush in it, and wiggles out of her cut-off shorts. Underneath she’s wearing red lace, another set, skimpy panties and a bra that pushes her perfect tits into luscious mounds. She’s been wearing it under my shirt through dinner and the whole tattoo conversation and let me sit there having absolutely no idea.

“You’ve been wearing that since I got home.”

“I told you I’m a thorough researcher.” Her chin comes up, daring me. “You texted me this morning asking if I was wearing lace. Figured I’d deliver the notarized version in person instead of making you wait for a photo.”

There’s no room left to cross. I wrap her hair around my fist, pulling down and tilting her chin up to meet me. My mouth finds hers and it isn’t careful. Not after all these years of imagining exactly this and getting every version of it wrong in my head.

She meets me with the same lack of mercy, her fingers twisting in my hair. Our teeth catch once before the kiss goes deeper, tongues tangling, both of us trying to make up for lost time in the space of one breath.

Her knees give out halfway through it, and I catch her, one arm banded around her waist. I swipe my phone off the bathroom counter on the way past without breaking the kiss, because apparently that habit survives anything, and walk her back down the hall and into her bedroom.

The train has left the station. No going back now.

I lay her down at the edge of the mattress. The towel’s the only thing still on me, and I let it drop before I follow her down, watching her watch me do it, her breath gone fast and shallow in a way I intend to spend the rest of the night taking credit for.

Then I take my time with the lace.

I peel it off her piece by piece, deliberate, and when she’s bare in front of me in the low lamp light I have to stop and just look, because my memory is nothing, nothing, compared to the actual truth of her laid out in front of me.

“You’re staring,” she says.

“You’re beautiful. Every God damned inch of you.” I drag one hand up the inside of her thigh, watching her breath catch. “I want a closer look.”

I push her back onto the mattress and spread her thighs and settle between them, and I take her apart by degrees, with my fingers first, learning what’s changed and what hasn’t.

“You’re so wet for me.” My voice comes out wrecked, barely mine. My cock’s never been this hard in my life, and I haven’t even gotten inside her yet.

She moans, throaty and unguarded, her hips rocking up into my hand. “Don’t stop.”

“Does it feel different,” I ask, rough, “with the jewelry?”