Page 31 of Reluctant Bride

“You tell me.” Her breath catches as I find out for myself. “You’re the one with your hands on it.”

“I’ve never done this with a woman who had one.” I look up at her, and there’s nothing performed about the honesty in it. “You’re my first.”

Surprise crosses her face, then a warmth underneath it she doesn’t hide fast enough. She doesn’t get to decide what to do with either, and I use the moment to put my mouth where my hands just were. I drag my tongue up her pretty, pink cunt to the little jewel at the top of her, circling it once before I settle in and stay there, and her hips buck up into a wild rhythm I do everything I can to keep pace with. I slide two fingers back into her while my tongue stays right where she needs it, and she thrashes under me, one hand fisting hard in my hair.

“Fuck, Dawson.”

I keep her right there, on the edge and not over it, her whole body drawing tight, her hips pressing up into my mouth like she can’t stand another second of almost. I don’t let her off that edge until I want her to come, one last long stroke of my tongue up the full length of her, from her ass to her clit and she detonates, legs locking around my head, thighs shaking, a sound tearing out of her that isn’t a word at first and then is, my name breaking on her tongue like she forgot she wasn’t supposed to still want to say it that way. I don’t stop until she’s completely wrecked, until the sound of my name is the only thing left in the room.

She’s still catching her breath when she pulls me up by the jaw and kisses me, tasting herself on my tongue and not caring one bit, and if that isn’t enough to have me pressing hard into her stomach already, her hand finds me between us, testing, deliberate, until she rolls me onto my back and follows me down, her mouth lowers before I can stop her, though fuck knows I don’t try very hard.

She takes her time with it, taunting, learning me again like I was learning her a few minutes ago. My hips arch up to meet her, and I groan when her tongue swirls around the head, merciless, like she’s got every intention of taking me apart the exact same way I just took her apart. She hollows her cheeks and sucks, and I have to grip the headboard and remind myself, out loud in my own head, that I am not going to come like this, not yet, not before I’m inside her.

“I have an implant,” she says, breathless, pulling back just enough to say it. “And nobody in three years. I’m clean.”

“Two years, since Chicago. Clean.” I don’t need her to ask twice, and she doesn’t either. “You’re the first since I came home.”

Then I pull her back up and lay her down, spreading her thighs wide. Her pussy is soaked and swollen and so ready for me it nearly wrecks what’s left of my control. I line up the head of my cock at her entrance and finally, finally, sink into her.

Neither of us is quiet. I don’t care. I cannot make myself care.

I go slow when every part of me wants to go fast, because slow is the only apology I know how to give her without saying the word sorry out loud, and she lets me, arches into it, says my name again, pleading and broken, every bit of polish stripped out of it, like the word belongs to her again after so long spent pretending otherwise.

Fuck, my name on her lips undoes me completely. I thrust into her deep, to the hilt, and set a punishing rhythm, hitting her G-spot. I feel the release rising hot and fast, out of my control now, out of anyone’s control. I pump into her over and over, filling her up, and I hear myself groan her name like it’s the only word I’ve got left.

She erupts at the same time, pulsing and clenching around me, her release mixing with mine and sliding down her thighs.

“Sage.” The only thing keeping me tethered to sanity at all.

I roll us both, taking her weight onto my chest, still inside her, neither of us in a hurry to be anywhere else. Over her shoulder, the dresser comes into view.

Her locked file case sits where she left it this morning, the little brass latch catching lamp light. My eyes land on it once, involuntary, and I look away before I let myself think too hard about what’s inside it.

“You didn’t look,” she says, drowsy, her voice already halfway to sleep, one arm thrown loose across my chest.

“I know.”

“You could have. I wouldn’t have known.”

“I’d know.”

She doesn’t answer that, just tightens her arm around me, and I take it as the closest thing to trust she’s got to give me tonight.

Afterward, she curls into my chest like she’s done it a hundred times before, like all those years simply evaporated. Her palm settles flat over my heart, fingers spread, and I feel her pulse still hammering against my ribs where our skin meets. I lie there with her weight against me and try to remember the last time I believed I’d ever get this again.

I didn’t. Not really. Somewhere under all the discipline and the routes and the freight contracts, I’d made my peace with a version of my life that didn’t include her in it, and now she’s here, breathing deep and even against my ribs, and it feels less like getting something back and more like being handed a future I already grieved.

She shifts closer, tucking her cold feet against my calf without waking, a habit from that summer that guts me more than anything she’s said tonight.

I’m terrified. That’s the truth of it, lying here in the dark with her hair spread across my arm. Terrified in a way nothing in this war, not Cruz, not Robbie’s murder, not the fence line, has managed to make me feel. I know what I’m not telling her yet, and I know what I stand to lose the day I finally do, and right now, with her this close, I can’t make myself want to trade tonight for that reckoning. Not yet. Just this. Just her, a few more hours, before I have to risk losing her all over again.

I’ve never been more in love with anything in my life, and I’ve never had less of a right to keep it.

She falls asleep first.

I lie there a long time after, listening to her breathe, watching the sagebrush ink on my own wrist catch the last of the moonlight before I finally let my eyes close.

My phone buzzes on her nightstand, face down, glowing faint blue against the wood.