Page 57 of Rancher's Return

“Colton is seventeen. They’ll be fine. I just have to drop them back at home.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’ll meet you back at your place.”

She drove home, giddy and fizzy. They had a whole night to themselves. The luxury was almost impossible to take on board. Normally, they only had stolen moments during the day.

She wanted to sleep with him. Share the bed with him all night. Let him hold her.

She had ordered some sexier underwear, since this new situation had developed where she actually needed it. So she took the extra time she had to herself to get a bit of a performance together. She found a red lace bra and panties, and put a red silk robe over the top of it. It was a little a cliché, but men were simple. Buck was very simple, in the best way. She didn’t worry about being sexy enough for him. He seemed happy no matter what she was wearing, or not wearing.

She had never really been in... She hesitated to call this a relationship. But it was the closest thing. The same man, a man she talked to, a man she knew, a man who had gotten to know her body as she had gotten to know his.

When he knocked at the door, she hopped in place a couple of times, trying to get the excitement more reasonably distributed through her body so she wasn’t shaking when she went to kiss him.

She opened the door. There he was. Tall and perfect and beautiful. The exact delivery she had been hoping for.

“I can’t believe we have all night.”

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He didn’t grab her and kiss her like he normally did. He took his time. Slowly, he put his hat on the peg by the door, took his jacket off and hung it there too.

And she was mostly naked.

It was erotic, if a little bit irritating, because it seemed imbalanced.

But instead of commenting on it, she just untied her robe and let it drop down to the floor.

And she could see that whatever he had been intent on doing, he’d lost his resolve completely when he saw her body.

His eyes were like a blue flame, and she felt his own need echo inside of her.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said.

“Do you like it?”

She sounded more hopeful than she had intended to. A little more insecure. She wasn’t normally insecure. But she did want to hear how much he appreciated her. It was like he had opened up a well of need inside her that she hadn’t known previously existed.

It just felt really good to have someone who seemed to want to spend time with her. To have someone in her life who thought she was beautiful. To be touched, casually and intimately. Intensely and softly. He was everything, all the time.

And she was used to carrying all the things by herself.

But not with him. Not with him.

He closed the distance between them and began to kiss her, deep and hot, carnal.

It didn’t even feel strange anymore. To be everything—every part of herself—that she contained. To know she could have this wildness and still be the Marigold she wanted to be. To know she could be sexual and sensual and responsible and good all at once.

She began to unbutton his shirt, pushed it off his shoulders. She kissed her way down his body and knelt down in front of him, slipping his belt through the buckle.

He grunted as she exposed his hardness to her touch and then, leaned forward and took him in her mouth.

She felt wicked. In the very best way.

Luxuriating in this, in him.

She wanted to give to him.

It was like a dam had broken inside of her. And she knew one thing above all else. She didn’t have a place inside her that was angry at him. Not anymore. She didn’t have a place inside her that grieved her brother separately from everything else in her life. Just like she didn’t have a place inside her that was only good and responsible or a secret chamber where she kept her sexuality. She was everything. Everything all at once. And only when the intensity of those emotions, the certainty of what she felt, was free to flow, to be, could she see the truth.

---