Flipping through the playlist, I select Like a Wrecking Ball by Eric Church.
“Proceed.” I set the phone aside and clasp my hands behind me. “Do it to the music.”
Just the very first note of this song inspires friction and tangled sheets. But it has nothing on the salacious striptease that fills my view.
It’s an unhurried torment of discarded clothes and wandering hands. As each dip and curve is revealed, all I can think about is sinking into my home.
I prowl toward her, follow her down to the bed, and surrender to the gasping heat of her mouth and body.
She pleasures me with passion.
I love her with fire.
Together, we reduce the night to ashes.
Nine days later, I collapse onto our new king-sized bed in a pile of sore muscles and overworked joints. We’re only halfway through branding week, and I’m dead.
“Think of it like this,” Raina says from the bathroom. “At least it’s not your ass getting branded or your penis being whacked off with a dull knife.”
“We remove the testicles, not the…” I lift my head, and my throat dries.
She stands in the doorway, backlit by the bathroom light. The rounded outline of her hourglass figure beneath the thin nightgown is even more erotic than her nudity.
But it’s her riveting eyes that hold me, luring me like a drug. There’s something so mystical in the way she looks at me. It’s a look that listens and finishes sentences without an uttered word.
“Don’t even think about getting hard.” She walks through the furnished room, picking up clothes and setting things away. “You need sleep.”
I’m already hard, but she’s right about the sleep.
At least our room is finished. When the online purchases arrived last week, we decorated the space, fought and seethed while assembling the furniture, and reconciled in a sweaty heap of stripped clothes and panting breaths.
We officially moved in, marking the start of our future together.
If I could only wrap up the damn loose end in our past, I might actually sleep through the night in our new bed.
During the few days we had left before the branding began, we worked on practicing her aim with the shotgun. She’s improving and gaining confidence with it. She understands every part of a firearm, how to assemble them, and the proper procedures when they jam.
I would never send her out to take down John Holsten, but she has the skill to do it.
“I have something for you.” I roll my tired ass to the nightstand and remove a small envelope.
She approaches in a swirl of warmth and flowers that intoxicate my brain.
“What is it?” She accepts the package and sits beside me on the bed.
“Open it.”
Her fingers feather over the paper, and she slides out a bracelet of woven wire that matches the color of her bronze skin.
“Lorne…” She traces the brass ball ends that gather like charms where the bracelet fastens together. “Are these your guitar strings?”
“Yeah. They needed to be replaced, so I ordered new ones. But I couldn’t throw the old ones away.”
They’re the same steel strings I played the night at the ravine. They lived on my guitar all these years and survived just like the rest of us.
I don’t have to explain the meaning of that to her. It’s there, in the glistening sheen of her eyes.
“I used the entire set of six strings. Since the steel is wrapped in copper and silk, it shouldn’t irritate you. And I didn’t weld them. They’re just braided together and held by this.” I tap the tight coil of wire near the grouping of ball ends. “If you loosen the coil, the strings will unravel and return to their original shape.”
She slides it on her wrist with trembling fingers. “I’ll cherish it, Lorne. It’s…” Her chin quivers, and she turns to me, hands on my face and lips against my mouth. “It’s beautiful and perfect and… Thank you.”
“Thank you.” I hold up my arm, indicating the dream catcher necklace I’ll never take off.
As she touches it, the appreciation in her eyes imparts an echo on my soul.
This is just the beginning. Someday, she’ll wear my mother’s ring, and if I’m lucky, she’ll carry my child.
She leans her forehead against mine and whispers over my lips, “I love you.”
“I hear you, too.”
Our noses fit together, sliding side by side as our breaths mingle without expectation. There’s desire there. It keeps a constant vigil between us. Her tongue peeks out, tasting our chemistry, eager to feed it despite the late hour. But I hear her protest before it migrates to her vocal cords.
“We’re going to sleep,” I say.
She’s putting in as many hours as I am at the ranch, in addition to preparing our meals and keeping the house clean.
A sigh pushes off her lips, making them pout. “I need to check the laundry and—”