He took me in a way that was completely consuming. His body scored into mine.
I clung to the headboard, shaking and gasping and tremoring as he took me as deep as he could.
As he filled me.
Possessed me.
I moved with him, rising up before I sank down to meet him.
We arched and curved and rolled.
Our bodies as in sync as the thrashing of our hearts.
And I fell completely into him.
Lost in his darkness.
Covered in midnight.
“Ryder.” I whispered his name in adoration.
“Dakota.” He murmured mine in praise.
His fingers moved to my clit, strumming light, and the pleasure that blazed gathered to a pinpoint.
A flash.
A spark.
A scattering of light.
“Come for me, sweet girl.”
Ecstasy split through me with the force beyond anything I’d experienced before.
A complete sundering.
Only this time, that earthquake I always felt when Ryder came into the room?
It fully cracked.
And I was no longer spinning on the same axis.
A new orbit had come into existence. Time and space and location setting on this man.
He burrowed his face in the back of my neck as he let go. Every muscle in his body went rigid as he pulsed. “Dakota. Fuck. So good. You feel so good. Everything. Everything.”
We both struggled for air.
Oxygen held.
A moment given to us as we remained like that for the longest time.
It felt as if the last wall had been demolished between us.
The last chink undone.
Nothing to keep us apart but the fear if we let it.
And I wouldn’t let the unknowns keep me from this.
This connection that hummed in his room.
A sated song.
A silence brimming with so much meaning that neither of us could speak.
Ryder never let go, he just shifted me in his arms and carried me into the bathroom.
His touch so tender. His care so fierce.
He turned on the shower, and once it warmed, he stepped into the stream, only then placing me onto my feet.
He angled me under the fall, urging my head back so he could wet my hair. Chills lifted as the hot water rushed over my body.
His hair was wet and the water pounded into his skin and those eyes never looked away as he tended to me.
And my spirit resounded with truth.
With us.
With the promises we’d made.
Both the unspoken and the ones that had fallen from our lips.
He didn’t need to say anything as he wrapped me in a towel and carried me back to his bed. He situated me in the middle and didn’t hesitate to climb in and wrap me in his arms.
His fingertips played through the wet locks of my hair as we both lay facing each other.
Staring for the longest time.
Finally, I broke through the bated stillness. “I need to tell you something.”
His sharp brow furrowed, but he kept gentling his fingers through my hair.
Sure encouragement.
“What is it?”
My mouth suddenly felt dry, and my pulse quickened in a fray of anxiety. “Kayden’s biological father came into the restaurant today.”
Every molecule in Ryder tensed, worry treading through his features, though he set his hand on my hip, his thumb running circles in an effort to chase my apprehension away.
“How?” The single word cracked down the middle.
I inhaled a shattered breath, forcing myself to speak through the fractured peace. “He saw me with Kayden at the store a month ago. He said he didn’t recognize me at first, but when he did, he realized Kayden might be his child. He’d seen the Time River Market & Café sign on the back window of my car, and when he came back into town, he came in.”
Ryder flinched, but he kept running those circles on my hip. “Did he tell you what he wants?”
My head shook on the pillow. “He’d come to find out if his suspicions were true. When I confirmed them, he said he needed time to process it.”
I stalled, then whispered the fear. “I’m terrified he might want custody or something, and I know that makes me selfish, but I got so used to the idea of him not being a part of our lives.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty for that, Dakota. You don’t even know this guy.” I could feel the protectiveness well in Ryder.
A rising tide.
One that would demolish when it hit land.
“I know.” My teeth plucked at my bottom lip. “I’m scared of what this means.”
“You’re allowed to be. But the only thing we can do is take it as it comes. And know that no matter what, we’re always there for Kayden. He has us, and that love will never fail him.”
My spirit thrashed, and a tear slipped free. Ryder reached out and gathered it with his thumb before he pulled me closer to him, strong arms wrapping me in their protection as he pressed his lips to my forehead when he whispered, “This life is for you two now. Whatever that looks like. Whatever that means. I promise you, Dakota.”
FORTY-THREE
RYDER
“I watch Wion King.” Kayden patted his chest and dipped his chin real deep, shooting me one of those dimpled smiles that completely slayed.
The one that cut to the core and guaranteed the choice I had made was the right one. One that affirmed I wasn’t just taking this action to get myself free, but because our kids deserved better. A safer place to grow up. A safer place to live and learn. One that didn’t fester with greed and prey on their innocence.
On their pain and their grief.
It wasn’t like I was going to change the world or shake up the order of things, but it was the one small footprint I could make.
Because I could see myself standing in that very spot at Kayden’s age, and there wasn’t a question in my mind that my mother had looked at me the exact same way as I was looking at him now.
With a love so fierce that she felt like she might explode with the magnitude of it. Ribs hardly strong enough to contain it. With a hope so fervent that I would grow into a good man. That I’d find joy and peace and all the things in this life that made it worth living.
But I’d followed my grief down the wrong path. It was insane that I could go back all those years and pin it on one reckless, foolish decision made in a place of desperation. A choice to walk through a door I never should have walked through.
There was no choice left now but the one I’d made to end it. Consequences be damned. Gazing down at Dakota’s son was all the proof I needed.
“You want to watch the Lion King, huh? We just watched that two nights ago.”
“Again, my Rye-Rye.” Another dip of that chin, and that love was pounding wild.
“Lion King it is.”
“Old or new?”
At the sultry voice hitting my ears, I shifted to find Dakota in the arch between the two rooms, wearing that soft affection on her gorgeous face as she watched where Kayden and I stood in front of the television flipping through the options on the screen.
Kayden pointed a chubby finger up at where the TV hung on the wall, jumping in place. “Dis one, Mommy!”
Dakota giggled. “My son is one for the classics.”
“Watch yourself, woman. I was born the year this movie was made.”
A flirty grin ticked up at the edge of that seductive mouth, but because it was Dakota, it dripped this sweetness that slipped through my veins.
A straight shot of honey.
“Don’t worry, Ryder, I always thought it would be sexy to date an older man.”
“Older man?” I let the growl of a warning glide into the words, though it was a lightness that possessed. An easiness that had taken us over.
“That’s right.” She purposefully bit at her lip because the little tease knew exactly how to get me hard.
There she was. Sweet with all that sass.
I stalked her way, real slow. Swore that the air actually trembled around us.
The glow of gravity as it pulled and lured, tugging so deep at my soul there was nowhere else I could go. I looped an arm around her waist and jerked her against me, and I let my palm splay down over her ass as I pressed my cock against her belly.
Her heart thudded, but the flirty smile only grew.
“You’re going to pay for that, Cookie.”
“I do hope that’s a promise.”
With a groan, I buried my face in her throat. “What you do to me, Dakota.”