uld feel it erupting, flowing through me with consuming power.
“I’m coming!” I shouted as I started to gush inside of her, pouring my hot seed into her depths.
“Yes!” she screamed, shuddering and coming around my cock, milking it with her contractions.
“Kara!” I groaned, one last thrust, sweaty and thoughtless and completely, utterly spent.
CHAPTER 6
Kara
Then
I sat out on the porch swing in front of our house, dangling my feet and staring off into the middle distance. I was useless. I knew I should be doing laundry or cleaning the kitchen or getting things ready for dinner. It was four o’clock on a Tuesday. I had no business sitting around doing nothing, but I seemed incapable of doing anything but that.
A soft rain fell all around the porch. It had rained pretty much non-stop these last couple of days, like the sky had given in exactly when Declan and I had. There was only so long you could hold things inside. Sooner or later, that dark, looming cloud would burst open and you’d find yourself in a deluge.
Last night in the barn I’d practically thrown myself at him. I couldn’t help it, when I was with him my body took over. I could still feel the stroke of his fingers, hot and rough and urgent, reading my body like he knew it by heart. I hadn’t known it could feel so good to be with a man. Now, it was all I could think about.
After all those months, all that fantasizing, he was more incredible than anything I’d ever imagined. My own brain couldn’t conjure it up on its own. I had nothing to compare it to. Technically, I’d had some experience with boys. I’d kissed three of them, Bruce, of course, plus a guy in 10th grade who, for three weeks, had carried my books and waited for me outside of school every day. And, if you insisted on counting it, there was the 9th grade Spin-the-Bottle game with Tony Falcone. Then Bruce and I had spent some time making out in the cab of his truck, his breath steaming up the windows as his paws roamed me and tried to make their way up and under my clothes. It had felt a lot like a game of whack-a-mole, my hands finding his and battling them off until he found the next opening somewhere else. I’d thought it hadn’t been too bad, that maybe that was all there was to it anyway. Now I knew.
You could buy a strawberry from the supermarket that had been shipped, packed, maybe even frozen along the way until it turned into an angry little nub that tasted like cardboard. Or you could pick a strawberry right off the plant in late June, pushing aside the leaves and twisting it off from the stem to pop it into your mouth where it exploded, melted, and pulled together all the flavors of summer into one, sweet, succulent bite with the juice dribbling a bit at the corner of your mouth. Technically they were both strawberries. The experience sure wasn’t the same.
When I was with Declan, my heart started beating out of my chest. I could barely remember my name. I knew, when we were together, when I was in his arms and could smell him and feel and touch and his lips were on me, he could ask me to do anything. Without a moment’s hesitation, I’d say yes. He touched me like he was worshipping me, memorizing every curve.
And who knew it could feel so good to be bitten? It wasn’t like he bit me hard, he never drew blood or anything, but every now and then he’d give me a light nibble on my lip or my earlobe. I blushed at the memories, my body responding instantly. Sitting pretty on the porch swing, I felt a throb between my legs and my breasts felt heavy, restrained in their bra, with two hard, ripe pebbles at their centers pressing against the cotton of my dress.
Now that I knew, how could I manage to stay away from him? I already felt like I couldn’t breathe during the day, like I literally held my breath until midnight. Sometimes I’d see him around the ranch and it physically hurt not to be able to run to him, to throw my arms around him and bury myself in his chest.
He was supposed to leave soon. It was the end of August and he had plans to head out in a couple of weeks. But that couldn’t happen. Most days I simply pushed the thought of him leaving out of my head, telling myself it couldn’t actually come to pass. I knew I couldn’t live without him. He’d become like air to me. The way he held me all night long, breathing me in like he couldn’t get enough of me, like I was his oxygen support, I had to guess he felt something like the same way. He’d want to keep seeing me, wouldn’t he? He couldn’t see this just ending, abrupt, never seeing me again just because his season as a ranch hand happened to be over?
I knew he’d be going to work at another ranch a couple of hours away. I’d drive those two hours in 90 minutes flat, watch me do it. We could keep seeing each other, keep spending time together. And then, maybe, who knew what could happen next?
I wasn’t dumb, I knew my father wouldn’t like Declan and me together. I knew it made sense while Declan worked here to only see each other in cover of darkness, a deep secret, hidden away. I liked the world we’d created in the barn, warm together in the hay, resting my head on his chest so I could hear his heart beat. But it was also true that we were hiding out.
Because Daddy, if he found out about us, he might more than not like it. He might flip the hell out. Declan was right, my father was a bit overprotective. Or, OK, crazy overprotective. I was his only child, his princess, the only family he had. He’d raised me all on his own and he’d made it his life’s mission to make sure everything worked out perfect for me. In his mind, that meant getting me safely tucked into a picture frame with exactly the right kind of stand-up guy from exactly the right kind of respectable family. He’d warned me off of no-good, tattooed, low-life guys my whole life and that I understood. Where we parted ways was I loved life on the ranch, but he was dead set on wanting more than that for me. He still talked about me going off to college, like we could ever afford that. He told me he didn’t want me worrying over the weather and government policies affecting prices, he didn’t want me toughing it out under the sun, calluses on my fingers and sweat on my brow. He wanted me in the lap of luxury.
But Daddy would come around. It might take him a little while to adjust, to move off of that college-kid mayor’s son track he liked so much. Bruce was OK, but Declan. Every other man paled in comparison. My father was stubborn, but he loved me more than anything and, if I had to say so myself, I had him wrapped around my little finger. What I wanted I generally got. And I wanted Declan.
I believed in him. I knew he didn’t have a penny to his name, but I didn’t care about that. He was smart, tough and hard-working. He was full of ideas and somehow I knew he’d make good on them. I wanted to be part of it all, take on life together as an adventure.
I loved him with all my heart. I hadn’t told him, of course I hadn’t. I didn’t want to scare the man like that. I’d only admitted it to myself that day the rains came when Declan had called me over underneath the weeping willow tree and finally taken me into his arms and kissed me like his life depended upon it. That moment with him, the feelings had flooded through me: bliss, safety, home. Love. Not to mention the deep fires he stoked within me, the urges, the needs he’d uncovered in me and turned on full-blast. I couldn’t get enough of him and knew somehow that I never would. And I knew in my heart this wasn’t a teenage infatuation, this was a deep love that would only ripen and mature over time.
If only he felt the same way. When we were together in the darkness, I knew he did. I felt it deep in my bones. Our hearts beat together as one. But then daylight would come and with it, doubts. Maybe he thought I was boring? I had no experience, that must be clear to him, and he was used to girls who knew how to please a man. I probably seemed like a grade-school idiot to him. He might lose interest. Maybe he even looked forward to leaving the ranch?
But at night I didn’t worry. I knew, in his arms, it was exactly where we both wanted to be. I felt his craving and had no doubt that he needed me as much as I needed him.
Down past the barn I saw a tall, lean form. In a fraction of a second I knew it was Declan. The slope of his shoulders, his stride, everything about him had been burned into my DNA. I thrilled to his t
ouch, his nearness, everything in me zipping to life at the sight of him.
We usually met at midnight, but I couldn’t help myself once I’d seen him. I’d only have a couple more weeks, a handful of days and nights when I’d be able to see and touch and taste. Who knew what would happen after then? It made me reckless.
I flew down to him, not even wearing shoes on my feet.
“Declan,” I called out, breathless. He looked up, his face twisted in pain. “What’s wrong?” I rushed to his side.
“It’s nothing.” He tried to brush me off, but winced again as he reached his hand around to his back.
“Let me see.” Bringing my hand to his arm, I turned his back to face me. Blood smeared his t-shirt right at the center of his upper back. “What happened?” I gasped.
“It’s nothing,” he tried again, though now I could see it wasn’t nothing. “A stupid thorn. I’d pull it out but I can’t reach it.” He brought his hand around and up his back again, but his fingers landed a few inches short of where they needed to get.
“Let me help you,” I insisted.
“It’s fine.”
“Um-hum.” I was used to big, tough men who didn’t know when they needed help. My father had made that mold. I took Declan’s hand in mine. “Let’s get this thorn out and clean you up.” I remembered he had a First Aid kit in his medicine cabinet.
He gave a frustrated grunt and followed me, admitting defeat.
Inside his cabin, I headed straight for the bathroom. He sat outside of it on his bed and stripped off his bloody t-shirt. He groaned as he did it, probably pushing that thorn deeper inside of him as he twisted to get it off.
“I could have helped you with that,” I chided. Men. Sometimes they behaved like big, overgrown bears. I half expected him to take a swipe at me with his paw.
Now that I got a closer look at his back, I could tell it wasn’t a serious injury. He just needed someone to get the thorn out.