Page 89 of Reluctant Bride

“You want the whole valley to hear you.”

“I want the crickets, Dawson. Don’t overthink it.”

I don’t overthink it. Her back hits the mattress and she’s already pulling me down with her, laughing when my knee catches the edge of the nightstand and knocks her water glass sideways, neither of us stopping long enough to right it. I peel the sundress off her in one motion, no patience left for buttons or zippers, and she arches up to help me remove the purple lace panties, her hands already working my belt loose before the dress clears the floor.

“Careful,” she says, breathless, when I finally get her bare beneath me. “You’re supposed to be a controlled man.”

“I control plenty.” I drag my mouth down her throat, her collarbone, feel her pulse jump under my lips. “Not this. Never this.”

“Tell me what you want,” I say against her throat, moving south. “I want to hear you say it.”

“Dawson.” My name breaks apart in her mouth, half moan, half laugh, when my mouth finds the spot that makes her back bow off the mattress. “Please. Fuck me hard.” She’s panting hard. “Like you can’t get enough of me.”

“Look at you, laid out for me, pussy dripping and eager for more. You’re as needy as I am.” My tongue is caressing the jade jewel, rolling and sucking it.

“I need you inside me now.” She’s desperate, hips writhing.

I slam into her in one brutal thrust to the root.

The window stays cracked like she asked, cool night air moving across her skin every time she arches to meet me, crickets loud enough outside that neither of us bothers keeping quiet.

A breath later, wrecked. “Don’t stop.”

I don’t stop.

She wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me deeper, her nails scoring down my back hard enough to leave marks I’ll feel tomorrow, and I don’t slow down for a second of it, driving into her fast and setting a punishing pace in a way that has nothing to do with grief or fury or any of the heavier registers we’ve already spent on each other this month.

I set a rhythm that has her fisting the sheets in one hand and my hair in the other, her whole body drawing tight under mine, and when she comes it’s loud enough that the coyotes join in.

I don’t stop. I’ve already been wrecked once tonight on the stairs, and it buys me all the time in the world, and I spend every second of it on her until she comes again, harder, clenching around me so tight she drags me over with her.

“Sage, fuuuuck.” My orgasm coming in waves that don’t seem to ever stop. We hold on tight through it, letting it wash over us and laughing again before either of us has fully caught our breath.

Afterward she sprawls across my chest, breath still uneven, her fingers tracing lazy circles down my happy trail. I’m almost ready to start again.

“Best welcome dinner I’ve ever snuck away from early,” she says.

“High bar. I’ve only thrown you the one.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late.”

TWENTY-NINE

SAGE

It’s another perfect day, not a cloud in sight, after two straight days of thunderstorms that had Kathleen on the phone with three different tent companies threatening to reschedule an event four hundred people already RSVP’d to. The sky woke up scrubbed clean and impossibly blue, like Montana wanted to apologize for almost ruining this day.

Noon’s come and gone by the time I sit down with my coffee, hair down my back and nothing on but a robe, four hours out from a ceremony that feels like both an eternity and no time at all, when Tessa’s voice cuts through the window screen from somewhere out on the lawn, pitched at a volume usually reserved for grass fires.

“He’s loose again! Somebody grab the rope before he eats all the flowers!”

I cross to the window in my robe, coffee sloshing, and there he is. Felony, grey and sway backed and utterly delighted with himself, standing directly on the white runner that’s supposed to carry me down the aisle, methodically stripping petals off the calla lily arrangement at the end of the second row like it’s a personal buffet set out just for him.

Eli’s got one end of a lead rope. Tate’s got the other. Finn’s circling behind the mule’s hindquarters with both arms spread wide, shouting instructions nobody’s following, and West is filming the entire catastrophe instead of helping, because apparently even on my wedding day some things never change.

“Get him off the aisle,” Knox yells, sprinting across the lawn in a T-shirt and dress pants, sock feet, because nobody puts on their good shoes a second before they absolutely have to. “Not through the flowers, around the flowers.”