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He doesn’t turn, but to my relief, he does respond.
“I think we said everything there is to say, didn’t we?” he answers, but he sounds tired, defeated.
As he enters through the kitchen, he leaves the door open for me to follow, and I do, Bounce and Silo immediately at my hands, tongues lolling out, tails wagging. I pet the dogs, but my eyes are only on Connor.
“You didn’t sell,” I comment, noting that everything is back in its place again. He scoffs lightly.
“MVP is going bankrupt. There’s a class action lawsuit the size of Texas snowballing against them right now,” he replies, opening the fridge.
“I know,” I reply, wondering if I should tell him the whole story. I decide to wait. I’m not there about MVP or anything pertaining to the ranch. If I never hear that hell-spawned company name again, I’ll be a happy woman.
“You want a beer? Water?” he offers from the still-open fridge.
My shoulders relax, if only slightly. He’s not barking at me like he was the last time I was here with Eli. This has to be progress… right?
I shake my head and amble closer to him. “No, Connor. I wantyou. I miss you. It doesn’t feel right without you.”
He starts to scoff, but I cup his face in my hands. “Don’t do that,” I beg him. “Stop acting like you’re not just as important to me as Eli and Hudson.”
His hands fall over mine, and for a second, I think he’s going to pull them away, but they only linger.
“Gran made a desperate decision a long time ago, one that had nothing to do with Eli, Hudson, you, or me,” I remind him. “You see it as a secret? I think Eli and Hudson see it as a burden they had to maintain. The BB was never profitable. They held onto a piece of land for Gran. It had to have been costing them out of pocket—over and above the repairs you put in for her out of the kindness of your hearts.”
His jaw twitches, and he avoids my pleading stare.
Slowly, I let my hands fall down. “You saw the state of the property, Con. It isn’t making any money. It’s not like they were keeping some kind of lost treasure from you.”
“That’s not the point,” Connor growls as I slide onto the marble countertop. He pops open his beer and guzzles some down. “It’s the secrecy.”
“Then you need to be mad at Gran. It was her secret. She was the one who should have told you. And she ultimately did.”
Connor grimaces, and I throw up my hands. “I don’t know how to make you see that we need you, that I love you. It just doesn’t function the same without you. I don’t want to do it if you’re not there, too, Connor.”
His head lifts, and he meets my eyes. “What?”
I shrug and nod. “I love all of you, but we need to be together for this to work. We grew this together. This is all of us, working, building, overcoming. Without you… it just doesn’t feel right. It’s not right.”
“You love me?”
My mouth twists in surprise. “Of course I love you,” I murmur. “How could I not?”
He answers my question with a kiss, his tongue instantly lashing out to mesh with mine. A fusion of salt and heat wash through my taste buds as his strong arms envelop my back, setting me further back on the counter. The cool marble sends goosebumps down my bare thigh, the hem of my shorts riding higher.
I raise my calves around his waist, drawing him nearer to me, pulling my head back to look into his expressive, chocolate eyes. “I’ve really missed you,” I whisper.
Again, he responds with a kiss, the intensity stealing my breath.
He misses me, too. He’s been struggling as much as I’ve missed him.
The hands at the base of my back sweep beneath my gray tank top and in a singular motion pull it over my disheveled waves before he sets me back on the counter again, his intentions clear.
He lowers his face to mine, inhaling, me, his lips crushing to mine. Our tongues meet, electricity pulsating between us, and he releases his hold on my mouth to rain more kisses over my flesh, the urgency inside him growing. Connor’s head lowers, nose buried against the flesh of my neck, exploring the curve of my throat.
A hand cups the taut skin of my erect nipple, his fingers growing more eager, a slight pinch eliciting a moan from my lips. Between my legs, his cock is throbbing through his jeans, the material so tense, I’m sure he’s going to poke a hole through it. There’s my Connor, my smoldering, always-ready cowboy, ready to be ridden.
I see him in the training pen, riding along on his stallion, with his strong body moving in tandem with the animal. And now he’ll break me the same way he breaks all his horses.
His free hand falls to his zipper, his face trailing lower to capture my exposed nipple in his mouth. As his pants and boxers fall around his ankles, he works on my shorts, wriggling from my body as I unhook my ankles from his broad hips.
