“Feel what, darlin’?”
“Everything at once. The way I used to when I was with you. I’ve missed that.”
I helped her into the car before hopping in myself and heading back toward the ranch. She stayed mum in the car, leaning her head against the cool glass and staring up at the starry sky through the glass roof of the T-top.
“You all right?” My hand found hers, resting on her thigh. I glanced over at one girl who epitomized a thousand feelings all at once.
Her lips curled slowly upward. “I’m fine. Honest.”
She flashed me a look – one I’d seen a hundred times before, and within minutes we’d arrived back at the ranch. Climbing the stairs to the porch, I reached for her arm, tugging her backward into me.
“Once we get inside that house, you’re all mine,” I warned, cupping her face.
Her blue eyes widened, locking with mine as she gave a slight nod. “You can have me, Beau. Tonight, you can have me. I won’t make any promises for tomorrow. But just for tonight, I’m all yours.”
She looked at me as if it was just something she had to do.
My body ached for hers as my lips found the soft flesh beneath her jaw as she tilted her head back. “I’m warning you, Dakota. Once I start, I won’t be able to stop.”
“Okay.”
One simple word was all it took for me to sweep her up in my arms. With her legs wrapped around my hips tight, I carried her inside with no intentions of letting her go until we were a heaving, breathless pile of naked bodies wrapped in tangled sheets.
Chapter Seventeen
Love is natural and organic in the way it moves. It breathes, softens, and decays. It spins and twirls, rocks and bends. It can be defined by one moment in your life or a million tiny ones. It can make your thoughts all jumbled and it can change everything you ever thought you believed about yourself.
Somewhere along the line, I’d thrown my bitterness out the window with reckless abandon. I’d grown tired of putting up a fight. I’d grown tired of festering hatred and resentment toward the only man I truly ever loved.
It wasn’t the alcohol at the bar, though that may have provided a little bit of lubricant for a complicated situation. But it wasn’t an act.
Matter of fact, I didn’t know what it was. It just felt like something I needed to do.
With my fingers locking around the back of his neck, I held onto him like my life depended on it as he carried me upstairs to his room.
Laying me down across the center of a sweeping, quilt-covered country bed fit for a king, he climbed over me. His hands finished unbuckling his pants as he pushed them down just enough to free himself in all his aroused glory. My hand found him, the warmth of his erect cock pressing against the smoothness of my palm and sending a burst of warmth to my core as I anticipated his next move.
He reached across the bed and pulled a condom from his nightstand drawer, sheathing himself before gripping the undersides of my knees and spreading my thighs. Sex with him back in the day was a bumbling mess of experimentation and exploration. This was a man who knew what he was doing; a sexually mature man with the power to liquefy my desire in two seconds flat.
“I’ve waited years for this,” he whispered while I ran my fingers through his dark hair. He gripped his cock and placed it at my apex, pressing inside me one tantalizing inch at a time. Beau lowered his mouth to my breasts, tugging down the fabric of my bra and capturing one nipple between his teeth before sucking and letting it go. My hips bucked against his, wordlessly urging him to keep going, though it seemed he had other plans.
As my fingers explored the satin-smooth brawn of his shoulders and trailed down the pulsing muscles of his corded steel arms, his mouth sampled every square inch of my body that lay within tasting distance. His triceps tightened with each thrust, and soft sighs escaped my lips in response.
“God, you feel so good,” he groaned, the speed of his movements picking up in intensity. Beau’s mouth was in limbo above mine, lowering himself and dipping his tongue between the crease of my lips. “I could do this all night long.”
He gripped my hips, using them as leverage as he pressed himself deeper inside me, as if he couldn’t get enough of me. The feeling was mutual; at least for the time being. I spread my legs and accepted as much of him as I could take. Every muscle in my body melted, heeding to the intensity of his raw power.
We’d come a long ways from sneaking off at night and screwing like rabbits in the back of his truck. The soft mattress beneath my hips was a welcome change.
He gripped the back of my neck before gathering my hair into a ponytail in his wide hand and lifting my mouth to his once more. My core throbbed and tingled before tightening around his shaft, and his breathing intensified. A wave of pure intensity washed over me, and my thighs widened to accept his final thrusts before we both collapsed into a melded, sticky mess.
He peeled himself off me and climbed to the spot beside me on the bed, tugging a pillow under his neck as he stared at me. Blush rose in my cheeks. Intimacy had a tendency to make me feel painfully vulnerable, and Beau had crushed that barricade with the verve of a man who’d stop at nothing to take back what was rightfully his.
And I was his.
I could choose to fight it, or I could choose to find a way to live peacefully beside it, hoping someday it might fade into the background enough for me to move on.
He’d owned me all those years whether I chose to accept it or not. I’d given myself to him since the day I fell in love with him, though at the time I never knew it’d be the kind of love that would take a lifetime to get over.
He kissed me again, and I didn’t have a chance. My corded steel resolve, my diamond-hard determination, all of it was blown to bits the second we collided.
Beau tugged on a blanket, covering our bodies as the sweat of our skin turned into a cool fog around us. Climbing into his embrace, I found a soft spot on his shoulder and buried my face.
Once upon a time, before I knew any better, Beau Mason was my favorite feeling in the whole world. It took giving myself to him in order for me to discover he still was.
I felt his eyes on me as I listened to the steady drum of his heart beating in his chest, and I thought about that girl who had the good fortune of falling in love with the most popular boy in school and the bad fortune of losing him at the worst possible time.
My heart ached for her and everything she had to go through without him by her side. That poor, young woman who’d grown up to become so strong and resilient she forgot how to feel.
It felt good to finally feel something again even if it was equal parts confusing and wonderful all at the same time.
Chapter Eighteen
10 years ago