Page 83 of Dark Horse

“I want every part of you. Your mind. Your heart. I’m gonna earn them all. It’s gonna take time, though, and you’re gonna have to be patient with me while I learn to trust myself with them. I have to figure out how I can balance how much I don’t deserve you with how much I need you. That’s probably gonna take a lifetime and then some, and I don’t know if either of us is ready for it.” I hold her blues with mine, worried I’m gonna get both our hearts broken in the process, but I can see the way her eyes soften with the words. The quiet way she relaxes into my arms.

“I’m ready to start whenever you are,” she whispers back.

“Thank fuck because I don’t think I can wait any longer.” I grin before I kiss her.

She wraps her arms around me and pulls me close, her fingers searching over my skin as desperately as my tongue tangles with hers. We’ve both needed this way too long. The touch of someone who sees us for who we really are, all the ugly flaws and doubts and worries, and loves us for exactly those reasons.

A feeling we get to enjoy for all of five seconds before the water turns ice cold.

“Fuck this!” I shout, pulling her out of the spray of the water and shielding her with my body until I can turn it off. When I turn around, her arms are wrapped over her chest, and she looks frozen.

“Oops,” she chatters, laughter bubbling through. “Got a little too carried away.”

I help her out of the tub and hand her a towel. We make quick work of drying ourselves off, and then I scoop her up, carrying her back to the bed and laying her down in the middle of it. I climb on after her, and she wraps her legs around my hips as I start to kiss my way over her chest, pausing to flick my tongue over one of her nipples on the way to her throat.

“Think you could fuck me again?” she asks, amusement and admiration seeping through her tone in a way that melts away whatever ice was left.

“Yeah.” I slip my cock through her wetness, teasing it over her clit as she rolls her hips. “I think I might be able to help with that.” I grin at her. “Condom?” I ask when I realize I don’t have one on me. It was part of my say-no-to-her reinforcement plan, but clearly, it’s out the fucking window now.

“There’s one in the drawer, but I’m on birth control. I’m good if you are.”

“I’m good,” I reply softly.

“Do I get the sweet cowboy or the rough gangster this time?”

“Which do you want?” I ask, studying her face as she looks up at me.

THIRTY-FOUR

DAKOTA

It’s not an easy decision.I love them both equally.

“Can the gangster wrap his hand around my throat again while the cowboy tells me how pretty my eyes are and calls me sweetheart?” My fingertips draw circles over his shoulders as I cradle his cock between my thighs. He’s growing harder by the second, and I’m dying to have him inside me.

He laughs, a full genuine one that I haven’t heard often. Definitely not much in the last few years with all the stress he’s been under, and my heart swells a little in my chest that I’m the cause. That I might be his soft place to land after all.

“Yeah, sweetheart. I’ve got you.” He kisses his way up my neck, pausing at my earlobe to nip it gently before he speaks again, lower this time. The kind of thick, graveled, throaty tone that travels all the way to my clit. “But just know I’m claimingthis last part of you, and then you’re all fucking mine. There’s no way back after this. You understand? You ever think you want another one of your college boys up here? This is your last chance to run.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve ruined me for all other men, Cowboy.” If I’m being really honest, no other man has ever lived up to him in my head.

“Good. ’Cause I think you’ve had me ruined for all other women for a long time. Longer than I want to admit.” He makes the confession, the kind that feels like he’s pulled back more of the curtain than he planned.

My heart skips a full beat in my chest as his lips press against mine. The idea that this man might want me as much as I’ve wanted him feels like the perfect kind of whisky burn, the kind that seeps into your chest and wraps around your soul. For his part, he kisses me like it’s his last night on earth, each one more heated than the last, and I melt under his touch. My hips rise to meet his, and I tease the tip of his cock over my clit.

“Fuck me,” he curses softly, and his lips make their way up my jaw. “Your body feels like fucking sin. I can’t believe how perfect you are.” He takes me slowly, easing in inch by inch like he knows I need this to last. I want every single memory of the way this man claimed me for himself. I need it like oxygen. “And every perfect inch is mine.”

He bites down on my neck, and I arch up into it. I love this man’s obsession with marking my skin, the way he needs to leave visible marks showing that I belong to him. I need it after how long it took for us to get here.

My fingers drift down his side and over his back and ass. The fact that I get to touch every part of him the way I want, that it’s mine to take as I please.

I wrap my leg around him as he starts to fuck me harder. He pulls back so he can look at me, and his lashes lower. Helooks lost in his thoughts as his knuckle drags down over my lips and chin, making its way over my throat until he wraps his hand around my neck.

“Say my name, the one you use when you don’t think I can hear you. I want to feel it vibrate against your throat when you moan it.” He rolls his lower lip between his teeth as I lift my chin for him to rub his thumb down the column of my neck.

“Devil,” I whisper, and he starts to fuck me harder.

“There we go. That’s my girl. So perfect. Taking my cock like it belongs to you,” he mutters as I wrap my leg tighter and raise my hips to meet his strokes. “You can take more, can’t you? You can take all of me fast and hard like this because you were made for it. Made for me.”

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