Page 58 of Rancher's Return

Yes. Everything was complicated. Yes,theywere complicated. But she was falling in love with him all the same. It could never be physical only. Because she had too many feelings for him.

She had made him her bad object once.

She had been slightly concerned for a moment that she was just making him a good object, rather than a whole person. But that wasn’t it. He wasn’t the one who needed to change. She was. She had closed off so much of herself because of fear. She had been the best mother she could be. She loved her daughter. She put all her ferocity, all her care into that relationship. But she hadn’t tried to make friends. She had never tried to have relationships. She had been so careful with her parents.

It was all just trying to protect herself. From bad feelings. From difficult feelings. Trying to be healed when... There was healing to be had, she believed that.

But perhaps more than healing, she wanted to be brave enough to try and dig deep and find a purpose in the tragedy that had happened. Not to make bland comments about how it was God’s will, or it was Jason’s time—she didn’t believe that. It was a mistake. It was a bad thing that happened. And if she could go back and choose it all over again, of course she would never shorten her brother’s life in the name of her personal growth.

But she didn’t get to choose it.

What she got to choose was what she did with it now.

She wanted to love Buck.

She wanted to be a great mother.

She wanted to be a good daughter.

She wanted to be a businesswoman. Someone who mattered in the community.

She wanted to be everything. She wanted to be bold. She wanted to risk. She wanted to care.

She poured all of that into him now. Into pleasuring him.

Everything.

And right when he was on the brink, he gripped her and pulled her to her feet, branding her mouth in a searing kiss. “Marigold,” he said, his eyes wild.

She was pretty sure she had done to him what had just happened to her. That all the walls were down, that everything was flooding out.

That he was everything.

The good man and the bad one. The one who had made mistakes and the one who had spent years trying to correct them. The one who had been made a scapegoat when he didn’t deserve it. The one who had hurt his family. The one who had loved his family.

The boy she had been attracted to then. The man she loved now.

She took his hand and led him up the stairs.

Brought him into her bedroom.

They fell down onto the bed, and he stripped her the rest of the way, rolling her over so she was sitting on top of him. Then he handed her a condom packet.

She tore it open, rolling it over his hard length and positioning herself on top of him.

She took him in, inch by inch, relishing the feeling of joining, knowing that she cared for him. Or rather, enjoying the immense, incredible feeling of not trying to hold anything back.

She clung to his shoulders, clung to him. Rolled her hips in time with her need, riding them both to completion, their harsh cries of pleasure mingling together as they both found their release.

She collapsed over him.

“Stay with me,” she said. “All night.”

“Of course,” he said.

The complicated stuff was just going to have to work out. It just was.

Because she wanted him.