“Give it to me,” he purrs. “Give me everything you have.”
My thighs clench around his hips suddenly, and I cry out as my orgasm seizes me. I grip his hair, and my body trembles and jerks as waves and waves of pleasure wash though me. I’m throbbing, twitching, squirming, lost in the lovely torment of this unending ecstasy. His hand is on my back—anchoring me—holding me tightly against him as I ride it out. Only once I’m satisfied do I feel him give up control—he releases with a shudder and a low moan, hot and pulsing inside of me.
I’m putty—a stringless puppet. My limbs don’t want to work, and I lean my full weight against him. Eventually, he caves too and relaxes onto his back, so I find myself lying on his chest.
We lie like this, entangled, for a quiet moment. I can hear the old barn creak; I can hear the crickets outside. Braxton’s breath ebbs and flows.
Bits of straw and clothes hiss and crunch underneath him as we shift—that painful moment where he slides out of me. I don’t want to leave him just yet, so I rest my head on his chest and my hand on his middle. He doesn’t push me away, so I take that as a sign that this is okay. I can hear his heart, though. It’s beating machine-gun fast.
“You were right about what you said, you know,” Braxton says, the first to break the silence. “I’m a tank.”
“You sure are,” I say, my fingers splayed out on his steel-hard stomach.
He laughs—but barely. The way his eyes wander the ceiling, I get the impression that now is not the time for jokes.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask earnestly and lift my chin to look at his face.
He goes quiet again. But I’ve come to learn that, from Braxton, that’s not a no.
“I’ve figured it out, you know,” I inform him as I trace a fingertip around his navel. “It’s not that you don’t trust Ray. It’s that you don’t trust anyone.”
“Aren’t you a regular Sherlock Holmes?”
“I resent that,” I huff. “I’m obviously a Nancy Drew.”
Braxton seems to be memorizing the ceiling. “My father owned the winery,” he finally comes out with, “before his rapid descent into alcoholism.” His tone is flat and unmoved, like smooth glass. I’ve heard people get more emotive about the wrong Starbucks order.
“That must have been hard,” I say.
“Sometimes.” He’s unaffected. Any pain there has long been scarred over and numbed. Eventually, he continues. “He was…well, the house was a war zone. No place for kids. So when I turned eighteen, I left and took Cora with me. It’s been just the two of us ever since.”
I swallow hard. Whether or not Braxton lets himself feel anything, I hurt for him. My big, bleeding heart goes out to him.
“I can tell how much you love her,” I murmur.
“I’m all she has,” he says.
You were all she had, I want to say, but I hold my tongue. I have a feeling bringing Ray up right now won’t bode well. Braxton is peeling off his armor, bit by bit, and I don’t want to give him reason to crawl back inside that shell of his.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I tell him.
He drops into a deep silence before he says, “I used to hate it when people apologized for him.” He glances down at me, and there’s clarity to his eyes that I haven’t seen before. “When you say it? It feels real.”
I grin. “You like it.”
“I do.”
“You like me.”
“Yes.”
“That’s two things that you like today.” I tap his stomach and yawn again. “Baby steps.” I rest my palm on his bare chest. I like the warmth of his skin and the small coarse hairs here. He wraps an arm around me, and he cups my side. His thumb rubs over my hip bone, back and forth, back and forth. I feel safe here, cradled against him.
“Speaking of taking care of people,” Braxton prompts. “Can we talk about you?”
“What about me?” My whole body feels heavy, sunken into him. “I’m an open book.”
“You don’t do a very good job of taking care of yourself. Case in point.”
I sigh. “It’s not that I…purposefully don’t take care of myself.”
“What is it, then?”
I think. The nighttime air feels heavy and quiet, like I can say anything here and it’ll never leave this barn. “I get a new project and I get…excited. And passionate. And…”
“You fall in love.”
“Yes. I fall in love.” I distract myself by writing shapes into his chest. “I love Cora. And I love Ray. I want them to have something special at the end of all this.”
Braxton lapses into a silence at that. It’s not an uncomfortable silence. It’s a thick, navy blue, nighttime silence, and it envelops us.
“We should go inside,” he says.
But the thought of leaving his warmth seems unbearable. “One more minute,” I whisper as I feel my eyes start to drop.
“Okay.”
Before I know it, I fall asleep to the steady rhythm of his breaths.
23
Susie
I squint against the shaft of light. It flickers off my eyelashes, peeking through the rust-colored maple trees outside. I groan and roll over, away from the light. My brain has been thickly marinating in alcohol all night, and I need a couple more seconds to sleep it off.
I roll onto Braxton’s strong, sturdy chest. He’s still asleep, his breaths rising and falling deeply. He’s warm too, body heat radiating like a furnace, and I snuggle tightly against it.
At some point last night, he managed to get me back into my clothes and carried me back into the house, into his room. We’re still on top of the covers, both fully clothed. Well. Mostly. I managed to kick off one sock in the middle of the night, and the sleeve of my shirt is twisted around my arm. Apparently, I was fighting beasts in my sleep. Braxton, on the other hand, sleeps like a corpse. I don’t think he’s moved once all night, his legs still straight out in front of him, one arm around me, the other on his stomach.
I feel like poking the statue. I slip my hand up his shirt and trace my fingertips over the muscles carved into his stomach. Still nothing. I press a kiss to his neck, underneath his jaw. “Braxton,” I murmur softly.
Again, nothing. I nibble his ear and tug his earlobe between my teeth. “Braaaaax,” I coo.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t even open his eyes, but this time, I get an audible response. “What?”
Grumpy. Did I think he would be any other kind of morning person? I stroke my hand over his chest. “Guess what day it is?”
“Friday.”
“Accurate. But not what I’m going for.” I rest my cheek against his chest. “It’s the day of the rehearsal brunch. Which means I have exactly twenty-four hours to pull off a full-fledged wedding. You know. No big deal.”
Braxton shifts his arm around me so he can look at his Rolex. “Twenty-five hours.”
“Oh, goodie.” I tickle my fingers over his chest. “What should we do with the extra hour?”