Page 37 of The Back Forty (Whitewood Creek Farm #5)

Dani spins around without any hesitation. Bends slightly at the waist, palms braced against either side of the downstairs sink, the back of that velvet red skirt hitches up, clinging to the curve of her ass like it was stitched onto her body.

My hands settle at her hips, greedy and eager to touch her after what feels like has been days. “You want to come?”

She nods, watching me through my reflection in the mirror. Her eyes are hazy and heated, but there’s something else flickering behind them too. I'm not sure what it is but I sure hope it's not doubt in her decision because I’ve never been surer.

I wonder what she sees when she looks at me like this.

If she still sees her boss, the complication, the boundary that she set and then invited me to break again.

Or if she sees past all that now. Past the title, suit jacket, boardrooms and expectations—sees the man who’s spent most of his life feeling invisible, only ever really seen when he’s performing and making the family rich.

Pitching. Closing. Interviewing. Selling the dream of the perfect, Marshall products that each of my siblings have dreamt up.

A name that I’ve never felt worthy of claiming for myself.

“Words, Dani,” I remind her gently, my voice deep and coaxing.

She exhales shakily, mouth parting. “Yes, please. Please let me come.”

That’s all I need.

I reach for the hem of her skirt and ease it up, bunching the velvet around her waist until it pools like crushed wine.

And fuck, she’s unreal. Her ass, thick and round and framed perfectly in a black thong that’s begging to be removed.

I snap the band, just hard enough to make her hiss, then crouch down into a kneel and peel it from her legs, guiding her to step out of it.

It feels like I'm unwrapping an early Christmas gift.

Then I rise, trailing my hands up from her ankle to the plush curve of her thighs, fingers skimming and claiming. I nudge her legs wider, grip her ass with both hands and spread her open until I can see her glistening pussy from behind.

“Bend over just a little more, sweetheart.”

She obeys without protest, folding deeper, back arching for me, spine a taut line of submission. Her legs tremble slightly but she’s willing and that pleases me.

“You okay?” I ask, voice softer this time.

“Uh… yeah,” she breathes.

I nod and then lower my head, inhaling the scent of her—sweet and heady and so uniquely her it makes my chest ache.

My favorite smell. A visceral kind of craving.

And I wonder, briefly, if this will be the last time she lets me get this close.

If this is just a final taste before she shuts me out again.

If it’s not really me she wants, but the way that I make her feel—wild, unraveled, wrecked in a way no one else gets to see.

Even if that’s true, I’ll still give her everything. Every time she asks. Always. Because I don't want to shut down anymore, I want to show her that what we have transcends what we do for work.

I use my thumbs to part her gently, then rub slow circles on either side of her clit until she whimpers, shifting her hips like she’s torn between running and grinding back on me.

“Gotta be quiet for me, sweetheart,” I murmur, teasing my mouth closer. “Don’t need the whole Marshall family finding out what we’re doing in here on my dad’s birthday.”

“Yes, yes sir,” she whispers, and it shreds the last of my restraint.

I smile against her as I finally lean in and lick a long, stripe from her entrance to her clit. She moans quietly in response as I flick my tongue across it a few times.

I do it again, slower this time, and feel her legs tremble. Then I wrap my lips around her clit and suck hard, tugging down, the way I know she likes, the way that makes her knees nearly buckle. She gasps, biting down on the back of her hand to stay quiet.

I slide two fingers inside her deep and curling just right, and she grips around me, slick, hot and soaked.

“Fuck,” I groan. “You’re drenched.”

“I am,” she whispers, breath stuttering.

“You been thinking about this all dinner?”

She doesn’t answer right away, and I glance up to catch her flushed face in the mirror, mouth parted, hair falling loose from her bun, wild around her cheeks while I pump my fingers easily in and out of her.

“No,” she says, breath shaky.

“Liar,” I growl against her, letting the vibration ripple through her clit as I suck down hard and deep, not relenting this time, not giving her space to think, just to feel.

“Lawson,” she gasps, sharp and hushed. “That’s too fast—”

“Wouldn’t be too fast if it was your vibrator,” I mutter, only half pulling back before diving in again, licking against her open and groaning as her taste coats my mouth and beard. “You taste unreal.”

My fingers pump into her harder, stroking that sweet spot inside her opening while my other hand grips her thigh, anchoring her to me.

Her legs quake, body tenses, and I press my tongue into her right alongside my fingers before dragging it back to her clit.

Wet, messy, frantic. Devoted. The kind of worship that’s got nothing to do with control and everything to do with need.

She bucks back against me, panting now, rocking into my mouth as I work her harder. “Yes, right there,” she whispers, voice all breath and desperation, and I know she’s close. I can feel it. I can feel the way her body’s unraveling under me, the way her cunt tightens with each stroke of my tongue.

I drag my mustache across every part of her—her thighs, her pussy, her clit—leaving no part untouched. No part unloved. Then I zero back in, flicking and sucking on her clit with no break. Her body stiffens, and she starts to fall apart.

“Ugh, yes,” she moans softly on a whimper.

I feel it as she comes, her pussy clenches around my fingers, rhythmic and wet and pulsing like a heartbeat. The taste of her mixed with the saltwater taffy I just consumed is a taste I'll never get over. It wrecks me. Shatters something inside me that was already hanging by a thread.

I stay with her, coaxing her through it, mouth and hands steady, gentle now as I let her come down, knowing she's going to feel vulnerable and probably start to regret what we just did. I let her ride it out. I let her take everything she needs from me until she’s completely satisfied.

When her legs start to give and her breathing slows down, I pull my fingers out, carefully easing her skirt back down over her hips.

She’s still trembling. Still a little dazed while I stand behind her, hands at her waist, letting her feel every inch of my hard cock pressed to her back.

Letting her feel just how turned on she makes me; just how much she’s still got me on edge even after giving me that.

We look at each other in the mirror. Her cheeks are flushed, lips swollen, dark hair spilling out of its bun in soft, chaotic waves. She looks fucked-out and wild, like some half-tamed dream I’ll never be able to hold on to.

“Lawson… I—”

“No,” I cut her off gently because now more than ever I'm convinced she's all that I want, and I can't have her regretting what we just did again. “Don’t ask me to do that again unless you’re serious about giving us a shot.”

Her eyes widen as I turn her to face me away from the mirror. Then I reach up and cup her jaw, thumb brushing over her cheek tenderly, tipping her face downward so she can see the strain of my cock pressing hard against the front of my denim jeans.

“I wanted that just as badly as you did,” I tell her, voice rough, aching.

“But now I’ve gotta walk out of here with your taste still on my tongue, knowing I can’t have you the way that I want to.

Knowing I can’t be inside you, where I belong.

That I can’t bury myself in that tight pussy and finally let go.

That you won’t say my name the way I need to hear it, and you'll regret it if you did.”

Her mouth parts like she might protest what I said, but I shake my head, jaw tight, heart splintering in my chest because if she wants me, it's going to have to be in different circumstances where we can have an honest conversation about our future and not one forced out of an orgasm. If she wants me after this, I’m going to need her to beg for it.

“You drive me fucking insane, Dani,” I whisper.

“Everything about you—your mind, your body, the way you look at me like you might see me. I can’t do this halfway anymore.

I don't know if I've ever seen you as just an employee and that's why I'm saying no and stopping this conversation from going forward in this moment.”

I want to lean in and claim that mouth, pull her lip between my teeth and bite, taste, take. But I don’t.

I drop my hand from her face, the absence of her skin already burning.

Then I turn, adjust my pants, and grab the bathroom door handle, trying to steady my breathing before I go back out there and pretend like none of this happened.

Like she didn’t just fall apart in my hands.

Like I didn’t just give her everything and still walk away with nothing.

And then I leave.