Page 40 of Claimed By the Cowboys

Piper’s body contracts. I can tell that she’s close, and the idea of pressing all the seed that I just gave her back into her is making me hard again. But I want Piper to enjoy this.

The steam from the shower is making the whole bathroom hazy. I rub big circles around her clit, slowly pressing my fingers into her slick channel. She gasps, and when I know she’s about to explode, I bite gently on her neck.

Piper shudders, the orgasm contracting her around my fingers.

I let her come down, the urge to kiss her burning through me. Instead, I stare at her face, and when she opens her eyes, I smile.

“There. Now. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I shower with Piper. I wash her hair, cleaning it gently and giving her a scalp massage. She tries to reciprocate, but I shrug her off. This is about her.

Her rules around this suck. But I am doing my best to show her that it could be like this… always. If she just wanted to be ours.

It’s weird, because in many ways, we have a great actual relationship with Piper. She’s our longest friendship, aside from each other. We show up for each other to help when we need to,as more than just neighbors. It’s a better relationship than many marriages I’ve seen. There’s just not a sexual aspect to it.

Clean, with Piper in a pair of my old basketball shorts and a baggy shirt, we head downstairs. I clean off the island, noticing how Piper keeps blushing when looking at it.

I wink at her. “Nothing that a little cleaner won’t handle, Piper.”

She puts her head in her hands at the kitchen table. “Oh, my gosh. I don’t think I’m going to be able to look at that island ever again.”

“Oh, I think you definitely should.”

She gives me a look, and I dart closer to her, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “Because then you’ll be thinking of me.”

Piper swats at my shoulder, and I laugh, walking the couple of feet back into the kitchen.

“You’re a shameless flirt, Tate.” She rolls her eyes as she relaxes into the kitchen chair.

“No. I just really like you, Piper,” I murmur as I smile at her.

She blushes and looks away, and I ache to have her know that I’m serious.

It’s the truth. I’ve never been shy about how I feel about Piper. She’s just never really seemed to reciprocate it.

Piper gives me another eye roll. “Be useful and hand me my camera.”

“As you wish, my lady,” I intone.

I bring her the camera, then turn my attention back to the cake. I usually do the lemon cake as a bundt, just for the ease of it, but this time, I did it up good. The blood orange cake, though, is going to be a monster, a four-tiered cake soaked in the syrup from Piper’s incredibly delicious, canned blood oranges, with fresh whipped cream between each layer.

I want her to love it. After what we just did together, I want Piper to love everything about the life that we have. I want her to see that we’re already so much more than just friends.

I peek back over my shoulder while I’m getting everything together for the cake. She’s sitting in her chair, tapping at the iPad that she dropped in the kitchen earlier. It looks like she might be uploading pictures from her camera to the device, because her nose is wrinkled in concentration, and she glances between the two things.

God. She’s fucking adorable.

“You know, I really think that Dalton is going to sell this better than you and Brent,” she murmurs as she taps on a picture.

I huff. “Yeah, right. Dalton doesn’t like to take pictures, and he’d rather die than do an interview.”

“Okay, well. Be that as it may, check these out.” She turns the tablet around.

I walk away from pouring the heavy cream into the mixer. My eyebrows raise.

“Shit, Piper. Why’d you make him look like a damn model?”

She laughs. “I didn’t do anything! That’s just how he looks.”

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