Slow Burn Cowboy(47)

He wasn’t into all the symbolism stuff. Didn’t really buy into trust exercises and all of that. But something had to be done for her. He had to do something for her. He was all out of words, all he had was touch, all he had was this. This demonstration. Skipping rocks, making wishes and hoping it all came clean in the lake.

Slowly, the sadness in her eyes faded and was replaced with something else. Heat, desire, longing. Everything that he felt down deep. Every slick slide of their bodies ramped it up further. Then she pressed her hand between them, curling her fingers around his cock, squeezing him tight before moving her hand up and down, the lack of friction beneath the surface of the water making it a smooth ride.

“That’s right,” he said, his gaze never leaving hers, “show me everything. Give me everything.”

“It felt weird the first time,” she said, her voice hushed, but amplified out here in the water, “to be with you. Because you were my friend, and the two things felt like they didn’t fit. But it’s not weird now. Nothing is funny.”

She looked deadly serious. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen Lane be so serious for such an extended amount of time. Didn’t know if he’d ever seen her exist in a moment quite like this one without trying to make it lighter, make it easier.

He kissed her then, with everything he had in him. Everything he could bear to show her. All that pent-up longing from the past ten years. Every ounce of need he’d carried around for her and done his very best not to show.

And when she kissed him back, there was no reservation. There was nothing but pure need, pure desire. It was as if the floodgates inside her had been opened, and she was suddenly able to pour it all out onto him. He had never been kissed like this. With a desperation that bordered on insanity. But he was more than able to give the same right back. He held on to her tightly, did his best to keep his legs moving, so they didn’t sink beneath the surface of the water.

She shifted and slid against him, his cock making contact with that soft cleft at the apex of her thighs, brushing just hard enough against her to make her gasp. To make her roll her hips against him and beg for more with each needy breath on her lips, each soft moan deep in her throat.

He paddled them back over to the dock, lifted her up out of the water, depositing her carefully on the sun-warmed surface. And then he hauled himself up after her. It reminded him of that last day they’d come down here. When she had looked at him and he could feel, for the first time, her eyes roaming over him with no small measure of interest, no small measure of heat.

He had wanted to do this then. But he hadn’t. He’d pushed it down deep, just like he always did.

But that wasn’t what he did now. There was no room for that here, no room for restraint at all. Their clothes were on the shore, and her pain was sunk down to the bottom of the lake. There was nothing between them now. Nothing at all.

Lowering her down onto her back, he brushed her damp hair off her face. Her nipples were tight from the cold, and from arousal, water sliding down her pale skin, pooling at the center of her stomach.

He put his hand on her thigh, moved it down behind her knee, spread her thighs apart. He had made her keep the lights on that first time they were together, so he’d seen her naked. But this was different. Seeing her like this outdoors, with the sun shining down on them. Nothing to hide. Nothing at all.

His hand between her thighs, he sucked in a sharp breath as he watched himself pleasure her, watched as he rubbed his thumb over the sensitized bundle of nerves there. She gasped, rocked her hips upward, silently begging for more. So he obliged. He groaned as he slipped two fingers into her wetness, feeling just how much she wanted him, just how much she wanted this.

He just stroked her for a while, watching her face as her desire built. As the color mounted in her cheeks, as her internal muscles began to pulse with her need. And then, it broke over her, broke around him, her release undeniable against his hand.

He withdrew his fingers, drawing them slowly into his mouth, wringing every ounce of evidence of her release out for himself, because it was all his, after all.

Need was roaring through him like a storm, but he realized he didn’t have a condom.

“I don’t have any protection,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m on the pill. And I... I trust you. I never do this. But I want to. I want to with you.”

He shuddered, the full impact of that statement, of that trust, of this moment, rocking through him.

Then he moved his hands to her breasts, resting his palms there for a moment before sliding them down to her narrow waist, then down farther to her hips. He squeezed her tight, pulled her forward, pressed the head of his cock against the slick entrance to her body. He tested her slowly, flexing his hips, teasing them both with a little taste of what they wanted.

Then he slid into her, slowly, gritting his teeth to keep himself from going off as her sweet, tight heat closed around him.

He forced himself to keep his eyes open, forced himself to watch her face. To take in every aspect of the moment. The way she looked, the scent of her skin—water, woman and something that was sweet, unique to Lane—and the way she sounded as he pushed himself in all the way to the hilt. The way she felt all around him, like he was made especially to be here, inside of her.

He didn’t want to miss anything. Because if he knew one thing for certain it was that if there was a perfect moment to be had in his life, it was going to happen when he was inside of Lane Jensen.

Her fingertips fluttered to his shoulders, tracing lines down the front of his chest, over his muscles, down to his stomach. Then she put both hands on his ass, urged him forward, whispered commands in his ear. And he couldn’t deny them.

He gave himself over to this. To her. Lost himself in the steady rhythm he established. In her softness, in her heat. Her breath on his neck, her fingernails digging into his skin.

He wanted to hold off. Wanted to make it last. Wanted to make sure that she got to come again before he did. But that was a level of control he didn’t have with her. There was no finesse here. There was nothing but need.

Maybe someday he would be able to impress her with his staying power, but this wasn’t about that. Wasn’t about impressing anyone—least of all himself. All he could do was ride that hot tide of release as it swept through him. He couldn’t control it, couldn’t delay it. Couldn’t do anything but surrender to it. To her.

As he lost himself completely, he was dimly aware of her shuddering around him, his name an unsteady whisper on her lips.

And he knew that, as satisfying as his release had been, as beautiful as she looked naked, as amazing as he felt in the wake of all that pleasure, the one thing he would always remember forever was his name on Lane Jensen’s lips like he was an answer to her every prayer.





CHAPTER NINETEEN

LANE COLLECTED ALL of her lists and headed out the door of the Mercantile, making her way down the street to Rebecca’s knickknack shop.

The sun was setting into the ocean, somewhere beyond the silhouette of the brick buildings on Main Street. There was a breeze filtering through and the American flag that stood tall and proud at the end of the block was currently being lowered by one of the members of the local Lions Club who volunteered for various jobs around town.

She hurried quickly down the cracked sidewalks, pausing to make sure there were no cars coming before she crossed one of the side streets and made her way into The Trading Post.

Rebecca and Alison were already there.

“Where’s Cassie?”

“She couldn’t make it,” Alison said. “One of her kids has an ear infection.” She grimaced. “Children seem slightly overrated to me.”

Rebecca smiled. “I don’t know. I might like a couple.”

Lane’s stomach clenched, but the reaction felt somehow different than it usually was. She kept thinking of what Finn had said to her down by the lake. About how she was different now than she had been.

She’d been thinking about it basically nonstop for two days.

He was right. She had been a different person then. And, had she kept her son, she would be a different person now. There was no way to play that scenario out, not with any accuracy. She couldn’t take the life she had now as evidence that everything would have been fine if she’d made another choice. And mostly, she just had to accept it. Accept that she couldn’t know.

She breathed in deeply, feeling a little bit lighter as she let the breath out slowly.

“What about you?” Alison asked. “Are you ticking biologically?”

The thing about being pregnant at sixteen was that it took care of that biological clock nonsense. She had done it once. There was no mystery left in it. But for the first time in a long time she hungered not for the experience of pregnancy—that had been a lonely, horrible time in her life and no amount of understanding that if she did it again it would be different could change that association—but for the possibility of something new.

Of course, when she thought of that, she thought of Finn.

Her heart squeezed. And she did her very best not to imagine what it might be like to have his baby.

Wow, she was a head case. A few good orgasms and lakeside therapy and she was starting to forget what they had agreed on.