Page 81

I reached down and hooked them with my thumbs, pulling them down slowly, until he took them and pulled them the rest of the way. Tossing them aside, he grinned and lowered down over me again. I opened myself to him, and he settled between my thighs. The head brushed through my folds, and I gasped. I was wet and hot and ready.

He slid inside.

Never in my life had my body felt more alive. As he rocked slowly into me, he stretched me, and I molded myself around him. Soft moans filled the air as he increased his speed, and I grasped the back of his neck with my hand and stared deeply into his eyes.

We made love under the stars for hours, our bodies dripping with sweat against the cool air, naked and exposed in the open doors of the barn. It was a freedom I’d never even contemplated. It was pure. It was carnal. It was incredible.

I rode him until he couldn’t take it anymore and rolled me to my back again. His head buried into my neck as hegrunted with effort, slamming into me as I drifted in and out of reality, a seemingly never-ending climax lighting my body on fire, bringing it anew, rebirthing me into this person that I was becoming.

April was gone. Charlotte had grown.

I was not just me.

I was his.

Fully, completely, totally his. And he was mine.

My voice raised into the night until his matched it. He roared as I cried out into the stars, and he came. Slowly, joyfully, he lowered himself, completely spent, into my arms. And there we lay for quite some time, naked and peppering each other with kisses, under the velvety black night and its bright, shining moon.

Chapter Forty-One

Jesse

It had been a month since I asked her to be my wife, and things had moved quickly. We didn’t want to set a date yet, not with Amber and Luke still to be married. It took a lot to even tell anyone about it because we didn’t want to usurp their day. But she wanted to wear her ring, and we knew that wasn’t going to last long, so I took Luke aside and told him while she did the same with Amber. They both gave their blessing to let people know, and things started rolling.

Unfortunately, the legal battle began almost immediately after that. Papers were served to the Andersons, and Oland was arrested again. I refused the deal they’d proposed, and now he and Lacey were going to be tried criminally for what they’d done. That had triggered another investigation by the feds, and the governor got involved personally, suspending the Andersons from their positions and hiring interim deputies.

I’d been dealing with that for days when I woke up to a text message that was much better news. Smiling, I stuck the phone back in my pocket and went to pick Charlotte up at her parents’ house. She’d gone back to Dallas to officially quit, and they’d given her a pretty nice severance package to stay for two weeks and train the next regional manager. When that was over,she essentially moved back home, though she spent quite a few nights at the ranch with me.

“Where are we going?” she asked as I drove her along the road.

“You’ll see,” I said.

“Last time you said that, it was a horse barn,” she laughed.

“Well, I can assure you, it’s not a horse barn this time,” I said.

“All right,” she said, settling back in her seat. “I’m game. Can we listen to some music?”

“Sure,” I said.

She placed her hand over mine before I could hit the button for the streaming station on my phone.

“I want to hear your stuff,” she said.

“Really?” I asked. “Aren’t you sick of it yet?”

She shook her head, and I shrugged.

“Play the song you wrote for me.”

“Which one?”

“You know which one,” she said.

I grinned, cueing up the song that I’d written for her after our meeting in Oklahoma. It was my first hit with my self-named band, and the lyrics were pretty damn clear about who it was for.

As we pulled up to the lake, she leaned forward in her chair and peered out curiously. Glancing back at me, she looked almost sad.