We kiss to the easy-going music. Our hands wander with the heat of the campfire. Hips rocking, reaching, wanting, we melt into flesh and soul and breath.
When the song changes, something completely unexpected thumps from the speaker.
“You have Lady Gaga in your playlist?” I stare into half-lidded eyes.
“The song’s called John Wayne,” he says, as if that makes all the sense in the world. Then he reclines in the chair, reaches out, and tweaks my nipple hard. “Ride my thigh.”
I’m already straddling it, and damn if it doesn’t feel like a steel bar wrapped in denim.
The song is racy, the beats high-powered and vibrating with energy. I let it guide my movements and pull my hips into a slow-building grind.
The twisting, rubbing stimulation swells a greedy spasm between my legs, soaking his jeans and working me into panting, needy mindlessness. I slide my hands through my hair and let go, rippling and rolling my body on his leg, my nipples taut and begging.
But he doesn’t touch me. Instead, he drinks me in with a look so potent, so gripping, I feel him inside me with phantom fingers, curling and stroking and propelling me toward the edge.
With a moan, I yield to the command in his eyes, falling against his chest as whirls of orgasmic bliss smother me in electric sensation.
Before I can catch my breath, he repositions my legs around his hips while unfastening his jeans. He fumbles with the buckle and zipper and shoves his clothes down his legs.
The hot, hard length of his cock presses against my center, his hips rolling, angling him into the right spot.
He grips the back of my neck, and his other hand wraps around my hip. Then he wrenches me close, our mouths open and touching.
Sinking his velvet tongue past my lips, he flicks it in an arc along the roof of my mouth, once, twice, then he drives his thick cock inside me.
“Fuuuuck.” He plunges to the root. Then he thrusts, clutching my neck and hip and using my body to jack off. “Christ, Raina. I love your cunt. You’re so tight. So fucking wet.”
The space between us detonates. He devours my lips ravenously, licking the hollows of my mouth, his fingers rough and possessive in my hair.
My heart spins, and my breaths try to keep up. He adds pressure to my throat, holding my face an inch from his as he slams his hips, thrusting and forcing himself into me, so hard, so fucking perfect.
“Give it to me, Raina.” His eyes glare, his voice an unraveling rope of breath.
“Almost there.” I’m falling, trembling against the incoming waves of pleasure.
“I want all of it. All of you. Marriage. Family. Forever.”
“You have me.”
I surrender to my cowboy, lost in his eyes, wrapped in his love, as he rides me toward a million sunsets.
ELEVEN YEARS LATER…
Under a sky of midnight satin, beneath stars so luminous they light up the field, the musical laughter of children overruns the ranch and nestles against my soul.
It’s the best sound in the universe.
We’ve added a lot of seating to the back porch over the past decade. It took a few years for our family of six to grow to seven. A year later, we expanded to ten.
Raina sits beside me on the outdoor couch, with a long sexy leg slung over my knee and huge brown eyes fixed on the never-ending energy of the five- and six-year-olds buzzing through the field behind the estate.
A year after John died, we married right here. Three weddings. One joyful day. Just the six of us and the wedding officiant.
Raina wears my mother’s ring. Conor wears Julep’s, and Maybe has the one Jarret designed for her all those years ago.
On the other side of the porch, Conor perches on Jake’s knee, strumming her guitar while he sings The Rest of Our Life by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. It’s the song we played at our wedding.
Today’s our ten-year anniversary, and good God, it’s been a busy decade.
We dedicated the first few years to growing the cattle operation. We knew we’d eventually have children and would have to enlarge the estate to accommodate our combined families. Four years after we married, we finally had enough time and money to build a third wing.
Jake, Jarret, and I finished the construction just in time for Jake’s and Conor’s son, Landon, to arrive.
A year later, Maybe gave birth to fraternal twins. Jonah and Jace, now five years old, remind me so much of Jarret and Jake, from their dark eyes and brown hair to their protective rowdiness.
When Maybe isn’t chasing them with a paint stick, she’s fussing around in the extravagant chicken coop Jarret built for her. While she pampers and coddles her rescued poultry, her white heifer, Chicken, is right there with her.
“Daddy! Daddy!” In a swirl of long black hair, my daughter scampers onto the porch and throws herself against my chest, her arms curling around my neck.