Page 76 of Wellspring
Cade took in the cabin, the shower, the contributions large and small from his friends and the town, and knew he was the richest man in the world.“A Comanche couple has two things they share: their horses and their home.I grew up in a tipi with Nocona and Pahayoko and our parents.When I left the tribe, I mostly slept rough with just a bedroll, other than a few months I spent with a different outfit before I came to Wellspring, where I moved into the bunkhouse.I’ve never had a home of my own.I never really believed I would.And then I met you and things that had seemed impossible suddenly became possible.And now you’ve gone and given me a home.”
He swallowed down the emotions threatening to choke him and pulled Erick into his arms.Their bodies fit together like they had been carved from the same stone, separated into two pieces but only complete when slotted back as one.“Nocona asked me if I was sure when I told him about you, about how you’d left your life in Europe to come here.He wasn’t sure if someone from such a different life could be happy with a simple cowboy, much less one who had grown up among the Comanche, but I told him you weren’t like that.That you didn’t need a big house or fancy clothes, that you would understand and accept my gift the way any Comanche would, even if I had to explain it to you first.That we would figure out a place to live and a way to be together even if the white man’s world doesn’t accept our love.”
“Mein Lieber,” Erick murmured against Cade’s neck.
“Kamak?na.”Cade brushed his lips over the top of Erick’s head as he spoke.“Wanna try out our new shower?I’ve been riding hard and living rough for the past few weeks.I’m dusty and sweaty and I’m sure I stink.”
Erick raised his head, a wicked glitter in his eyes.“We would only need to shower again after, if we do not wish everyone at dinner to know what we have been doing.”
“I think they’d guess anyway—” Cade gasped as Erick nestled his head against his neck again, nipping down hard.“We did just get married, even if no one but my Comanche family recognizes it.”
“And Burke,” Erick said dryly.“More importantly,Irecognize it.I never dared to dream of even a lover to call my own.To have this life with you now is a gift beyond price.”Erick soothed the bite with his tongue before moving lower, parting the thong that held the beaded tunic closed.“You do not know how many times I have imagined you like this….”
Cade arched so he straddled Erick’s thigh and ground down against it.“Hard and desperate for you?”
Erick shifted enough for Cade to feel his answering hardness.“Even more magnificent than I imagined.”He slid his hands under the buckskin, making Cade shiver.“Michele described you confronting Sanders and Lutz, and all I could see was you dressed like this, claiming your heritage.”
“Not exactly like this,” Cade admitted.“I wasn’t wearing these clothes that day.My mother gave these to me when I became an adult in the eyes of the tribe.I’ve worn them three times since then—when we laid my mother to rest, when I stood witness as Nocona gave his betrothal gift to Tatsinuupi, and today, when I brought home the horses for you.Sanders and Lutz didn’t deserve the honor, but marrying you?I couldn’t have done it any other way.”
“I would have you in any clothes, or none at all.”He unfastened the tie from around Cade’s waist, setting the tail aside reverently before drawing the tunic over his head.“The wolf for which you are named?”
“Yes, a gray wolf,” Cade replied as he started on the buttons of Erick’s shirt.“I found the pelt less than an hour before I found Nocona and his band.I claimed the tail as a sign that my totem approved of my quest.”
Erick shrugged out of his shirt and knelt to nip and lick at Cade’s chest.His nipples tightened, drawing Erick’s attentions until they were hard and glistening.Cade shivered, though the cabin was warm and Erick’s breath was hot against his damp skin.He nuzzled lower, following the trail of hair that arrowed down beneath Cade’s leggings.
Cade tore at the leather tie holding up his leggings and pushed them off, grateful for the soft moccasins that slipped off his feet easily.He grabbed Erick and pulled him back up to standing so he could strip him the rest of the way as well.He ran one finger down the line of the scar on Erick’s chest.“No more pain?”
Erick shook his head.
“Then tell me what you want.Anything you want.Let me make your dreams come true.”
“I want you.”Erick wrapped a hand around Cade’s cock, smearing the droplet of fluid over the head.“In me, around me, over me, until all I smell, all I taste, all I feel, all I am is you.”
“It will be my genuine pleasure,” Cade growled as he backed Erick toward the bed.The mattress gave easily between their combined weight—feathers, Cade thought distantly, even more of a gift than he’d realized—as he laid Erick down on the quilt and stretched out next to him.He traced the line of Erick’s collarbone with one finger, reveling in the freedom to be together without fear of interruption or shame, of beingallowedto love this man for the rest of his life, even if the only people who knew it were the family he’d built for himself on the ranch.The feast that was Erick’s body tempted him far more than any spread Javier could put together, and he fully intended to savor every last inch.
“Küss mich,” Erick murmured.Cade grinned and bent his head to mate their lips in a tender kiss.Erick tasted of coffee, despite it being some hours after breakfast.He must have filled a flask and sipped out of it over the course of the morning.
He pulled back so he could stare down into Erick’s blue eyes, deep with emotion and desire.“I love you, kuhmap?.”He had never dreamed he would find a man among the Comanche or in the white man’s world who would accept him as he was, who he could call his husband.
“And I you.”Erick caught one of Cade’s braids in his fingers, drawing him down gently until their mouths mated again.Erick opened to him so sweetly, so fully, and Cade gave thanks to the gods of both his birth parents and his adoptive parents that he had been blessed to find this man, the perfect match promised to him in his spirit quest.
Erick shifted beneath him, and Cade eased up on his elbows enough to allow Erick to reach into the drawer of one of the bedside tables and draw out a tub of salve.“Mac’s housewarming gift,” he explained with a smile.“He told me he made an especially large batch just for us.”
Cade laughed and buried his face in Erick’s neck.“I don’t know whether to thank him or shoot him.”
“Thank him,” Erick replied dryly.“Definitely thank him.”
Cade took the tub and set it within easy reach, but as much as he ached to sink into Erick, he had been dreaming of this moment for months, and he wouldn’t be rushed, not even by Erick.“I have quite a few people to thank, it seems.”He kissed Erick more deeply, letting his hunger seep into the contact as he claimed Erick’s mouth.Erick responded in kind, his tongue dueling with Cade’s until Cade pulled away, panting hard.He mouthed his way down Erick’s neck until he reached the line of paler skin usually covered by Erick’s shirt.Then he latched on and sucked hard, drawing a mark to the surface, the first of many he intended to leave before they left the bed.Erick washisnow.
Erick arched up beneath him, the hard length of his cock hot against Cade’s.“Mein Gott, I missed you,” he groaned as Cade latched onto a peaked nipple.“You should not have stayed away so long.”
Cade raised his head, rubbing a thumb over the wet nub.“It took longer than I hoped to find Nocona’s camp.And then I had to find enough mustangs to make you a proper gift.”
“He said something to you that made you laugh.”Erick ran a hand down Cade’s back to squeeze his ass.The way their cocks slid against each other was almost enough to make him forget the answer to Erick’s question.
“He told me that, having met you, he understood why I insisted on so many horses.”He kissed his way down Erick’s abdomen and sucked another bruise to the surface in the crease where hip joined thigh.“And then he told me to be careful neither of us were too sore to ride tomorrow.”
Erick bucked up against his mouth, and Cade lost all will to resist.He angled his head and took Erick in his mouth, the hard length pressing all the way to the back of his throat.He hummed and swallowed around the flared tip.Erick thrust into the contact, but Cade rode out the movement.When Erick subsided, Cade pinned his hips to the mattress and set out to drive his new husband wild.
