I kiss him. It’s short, sweet, and chaste. And yet, it sends shivers through my entire body.
“You still coming home with me?” His voice is low.
I smile at him. “Most definitely.”
It was cute how we thought we could make it all the way to Wes’s cabin.
I don’t know what happened after we left The Chute, but it was urgent. Wes’s hand was on my knee, then my thigh, slipping under my skirt, traveling up, up, up until I was gripping the door. He pulled over on a side road closer to the ranch than to Sierra Grande, a dirt road lit by nothing but the stars and the pale light from the half moon.
Now the truck’s passenger door is open and my head is almost hanging out of it. The cool night air swirls around us, and my hair tumbles down out of the truck. Wes is on me, in me, all around me. His presence is commanding, both physically and emotionally.
I moan, maybe I say his name, I’m not certain. My nose presses into his neck and I inhale. He smells spicy and manly, and it’s the best thing my nose has ever come across. I want to dig in, to stay here forever. And what Wes is doing to my body right now? The slow, unhurried pace, one hand in my hair, the other trailing over my hip, cupping my breast, thumb brushing over me. I don’t want that to end, either. Ever.
The sensation builds, slow and delicious and excruciating, and Wes feathers kisses over my throat as my head tips back and I let go. My pleasured cries stretch into the half-lit darkness. Wes follows soon after, his back muscles flexing under my palms as he reaches his high, then collapses on top of me.
Our breathing evens out, and he lifts his head. The dim moonlight shines through the windshield, illuminating half of Wes’s face. He looks calm and sated.
My hand abandons his lower back, traversing the smooth, hard muscle of his body, over the nape of his neck and around, so I can touch his face.
He turns into my touch, pressing a kiss to the inside of my palm. “I want to take you somewhere.”
“We were on our way to somewhere when this happened.” My hips wiggle to make my point.
He breathes an amused sound. “Not my cabin. Somewhere else. Will you go with me?”
“I’ll go anywhere with you.” To your cabin. To your favorite place in the world. To the place inside where you hide your pain.
I can see how much my words mean to him. He sits back on a bent knee between my splayed legs, ducking his head so he doesn’t hit it on the truck roof. I push to sit, swinging my legs so my feet are on the floor.
Reaching into my purse, I pull out a few tissues and hand one to Wes. “I don’t know about you, but I’m a mess. And it’s your fault.”
Wes plucks the offered tissue from my hand. “How about we stop at my place to clean up, then I take you somewhere?”
I nod my agreement as I close the passenger door. Wes gets back on the main road, taking it to the turn off for the homestead, then bypassing the house and driving on to his cabin.
We spend a few minutes cleaning up, then Wes grabs us each a bottle of water and we get back in his truck. He drives slowly, his headlights brightening the road. The way in front of us is bright, but everything around us is dark. It’s not long when I see another clearing ahead, and the shine of more headlights. Someone else is out here?
Wes pulls into the clearing and I see it now. The second set of headlights are ours, reflecting off water.
“There’s a lake on your property?”
“More like a pond. There are a few of them, including one by the barn. This one is closest to me, and the other one is near the far edge of our property.”
We get out and Wes reaches into the truck bed. He comes away with a green and black Mexican blanket.
“Do you carry that with you?”
He winks at me. “Never know when a pretty lady might want to sit by the pond at night.”
My eyes narrow playfully. “Like Jericho?”
He scoffs as we get closer to the water’s edge. “Hardly.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice she was into you.”
“I was preoccupied with someone else that day.” He gives me a meaningful look as he shakes out the blanket and lays it on the ground. We sit down, and Wes leans back on his forearm, but I stay upright, legs criss-crossed and facing him.
He traces the length of my leg with his fingertip. “I want to tell you my version of the night we met.”
My eyebrows lift. “You have a different version than mine?”
He nods, grasping a long strand of my wayward hair between his fingers. “I know you think you saw me first—”
“I did,” I insist. “I literally watched you walk in the front door.”
Slowly he shakes his head. He releases my hair and palms my shoulder, his fingers running down my upper arm. “I was sitting in my car, parked down the street from Jason’s house. I’d told him I’d come and visit, but I couldn’t make myself get out of my car. Jason served with me, and I hadn’t seen him since he got out eight months before. I thought he’d take one look at me and know how fucked-up I was. My hand was on the key in the ignition, I was a quarter of a second from turning it, when I saw this girl. She was with two other people, but they could’ve been purple coyotes and I wouldn’t have noticed. All I could see was the girl on the left, the one with gorgeous hair and a smile that made it seem like everything would be alright. Her step was light, and her hips swayed.” Wes takes a breath. “Your gaze swept over my car when you passed. I didn’t think you’d seen me, but it felt like an arrow had pierced my chest and pinned me to that exact moment. I watched you walk into Jason’s house, and I knew I had to cowboy up. At first I thought I was being courageous and doing the hard thing by facing Jason so I could meet you, but later on I realized how it was more cowardly than anything else. Leaving without meeting you, Dakota? That would have been the hardest thing, the most impossible, the most painful.”
“It turns out I was right, too. The first time you were in my arms, there was this odd sensation in my chest, and it was something I’d never felt before. I still can’t describe it, except to say it felt like my soul was being called up, because another soul had called out to it.”
He sits up, and now we’re face to face. “I never meant to leave you that morning. You were sleeping, your face looked so sweet and innocent. I was mortified that I cried in front of you, but also, I realized you were the reason I’d cried. You made me want to heal, to talk about what happened, but it was the last thing I wanted to do. Everything was raw, and I couldn’t bear to revisit it. I thought that to survive, I needed to push it down.” He cringes. “I took a picture of you. Just your face,” he hurries to add when he sees my eyes widen. “But I felt like a creep, so I deleted it two days later.” He shakes his head, like he’s trying to get back on track. “Anyway, I’m telling you all this because I have something to give you, and I want you to know that even though we’re going through with our plan, I’m not taking it lightly.” Wes reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ring.
He holds it up, and in the moonlight I notice the simple gold band has a floral design cut into it. “Can I put this on your finger?”
“Of course.” I offer him my ring finger. As sweet as this is, there is a small part of me that feels disappointed, but what did I expect? It’s a marriage of convenience, whether we’re developing feelings for each other or not. No grandiose proposals necessary.