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We were locked against the door still, panting and feeling and touching each other. I knew there was a chance that this wasn’t more than right now, that I couldn’t have him beyond this. All I could do was let him know that I was here, I could be his, if he wanted me. So I looked into his eyes, touched his beard, thumbed his bottom lip, and kissed him with all that I felt. With tender appreciation, with a gentle ask for his trust.
With a returning kiss, he gave it to me. And when our lips parted, the rest of us didn’t. We wound together again, our faces buried in each other, our arms clasped tight and hands splayed.
For the first time in a very long time, I felt whole.
Overwhelmed by the feeling, I held on to him. And when I found myself, I eased my grip, wanting to see him.
He was as I knew him to be—strong, stoic, dark. But there was something alive in him, like the bright edge of an eclipse that promised the sun would shine again.
I smiled, and he smiled.
“Tell me we can do that again, but slower?” I asked.
When he laughed, his head kicked back a little, exposing his Adam’s apple. And when he met my eyes again, his were bright with joy.
“If I wasn’t secure in my manhood, I’d take offense.”
“If it’s been as long for you as it was for me, I’m impressed.”
At the mention, his expression softened. Again I worried he’d turn away, but instead he held my jaw, thumbed my cheek. “Next time it’ll be slower. Painfully slow. Might take all night.”
“I’ll go ahead and clear my schedule,” I answered with a smile.
He picked me up, held me by my thighs like I was weightless, kissed me like I was the only thing he needed.
And god, how I wanted to be.
16
BECOMING
KEATON
The storm passed as quickly as it had appeared, the rain slowing to a drizzle as we righted ourselves, talking and laughing. I couldn’t stop touching her, whether it be her arm, her hands, her fingertips. The wet mass of her hair that I gathered at her back, loosening the wet strands stuck to her neck and shoulders.
Her smile, the one I’d admired for so long, was different now—I instantly knew it was mine alone.
On inspection of the weather and the thinning clouds behind the front, we mounted up and I followed her back to the house. I kept my eyes on her every yard we covered, the sight of her leaving me dumbstruck.
She was a force of nature, speeding through the woods with raven hair whipping behind her in whorls. Her soaked clothes clung to her skin, her skirt licked by the wind with every gallop, her thighs pinned to her horse’s ribs and a bundle of chocolate mane in her fists. She rode that horse with no saddle as if she was born to, with the unnatural ease of a queen born of fables—her torso barely moved, tuned to her mount in a connection so close, it was unearthly.
Neither of us had remembered our phones in our haste, so when we approached, Mrs. Blum ran outside, flushed with relief. A few minutes later, Jo bolted into the clearing on her horse and Poppy from the opposite direction, her brute of a mount stamping his general disapproval. And when the celebration of safety had passed, she drove me to my truck where we said goodbye, if only for a few hours.
The long, languid kiss we shared leaning against my truck replayed in my mind as I drove away, replaced by the memory of her body. It was all I could think of as I showered, the evocation driving me to madness relieved only with my palm on the cool tile and my cock in my fist. Not as I told my brothers as little as possible while letting them know to make themselves scarce tonight, which they owed me, and more. I thought of that kiss as I prepared a simple dinner, smoking steaks, asparagus, and potatoes, my stomach in knots with anticipation of her arrival.
Had I ever felt this way before? I searched my memories and thought maybe, once upon a time I’d felt this with Mandy. But it was different at sixteen than it was at thirty-three. At sixteen, my motives were very different, short-sighted, not for lack of imagination but lack of experience. After that initial burst of uncertainty, Mandy was comfortable, without mystery.
Daisy was unknown to me, and I was hungry for the knowledge that would change that.
The feeling zinged through me all day, firing nerves from head to toe, to keep one corner of my lips raised all the way down to putting a jaunt in my step.
Was this how it felt to be happy?
