“Uh, coming is a right, not a reward. If you don’t, I’ll do it myself,” I huffed.
“I don’t give a shit if you slide a finger into that pretty pussy, sweetheart. Wanna know why?”
“I’m dying to know.” I rolled my hips, loving the way his body stiffened against mine.
Bishop leaned in, pressing a kiss to my jaw. “Because you’ll be wishing it was me—that I was the one strumming your clit and making you come so hard you saw fucking stars. How long do you think you could go without begging me to fuck you?”
Suddenly, Bishop stepped back, and I was falling. He steadied me, the stupid prick. I wish he’d let me fall. Maybe it would knock me out of whatever haze he had me in. “This is cruel and unusual punishment, you asshole,” I said, pulling out of his hold.
He tipped his head back and laughed. God, I loved when he did that. It wasn’t often, but when it happened? It almost made me forget why I was mad at him in the first place.
“You know I’d give you whatever you want,” he said, taking my hand and intertwining our fingers. I stared down at the contact, fighting the urge to pull him back into the darkness. “All you have to do is ask.”
“Ha ha, nice try.”
Bishop tugged me out of the woodshed and toward his cabin. We took the long way, strolling beneath the moonlight like two lovers without a care in the world. He tucked me into his side the moment I shivered. Sometimes, he’d press a kiss to the top of my head while I talked. I was burning up with all the physicalcontact. My body was a goddamn live wire, and it was only a matter of time before I burst into flames.
By the time we stumbled into his bedroom, the word “please” had left my lips, and we were tangled between his sheets.
bishop
. . .
The next twoweeks were pure bliss.
Since she stormed in like a goddamn hurricane, Lennox had spent nearly every night sleeping in my bed. On the rare occasion she couldn’t, we were typically up too late on the phone—which gave her far too much ammunition to tease me about my age.
“Why won’t you FaceTime?” she’d asked me one night. I just shrugged and told her I didn’t know how or what the difference was. It wasn’t like I was missing out on anything, and the thought of us just staring at one another seemed strange.
At least, that was what I thought until Lennox called me the next day while I was eating lunch, and I’d opened the screen to her spreading her legs and playing with her pussy on my fucking desk. It’d taken me all of twenty minutes to ride back to the barn as fast as I could to sit down for dessert.
Lennox and I had fallen into this weird sense of domesticity, and it actually feltnice. All my life, I’d been quick to shut that shit down before it had a chance to grow into anything, but now I felt like a goddamn teenager again, smiling and laughing and feeling like I was walking on air. I really needed to turn it downbecause I was starting to get weird looks when someone asked a question, and I responded without barking orders or scowling in their direction.
Neither of us had mentioned our relationship to her family because we were trying to sort it out first. Was this just a fling? It sure as hell wasn’t for me. I honestly didn’t think it was for Lennox either. Her concern lay in my penchant for shutting down and walking away, while mine was undeniably selfish.
If the worst-case scenario happened, if Doug fired me and kicked me off his land, where the hell would I go? I didn’t know anything outside of this life. And again, if that happened, would Lennox and I survive it? Or would the emotional wound left behind fester and ruin the last good thing I’d have?
We promised to give ourselves one month of whatever this was, and then we would decide. While I wanted nothing more than to climb up to the highest point on Black Springs and tell the world that Lennox Hayes was mine, I was also pathetically terrified of stepping outside this little paradise we were living in.
Even now, as we lay in the middle of a field staring up at the sky, I worried about the noise from the outside world. Lennox had her whole life ahead of her. I’d listened to her talk about getting back out on the circuit and winning titles she’d always dreamed of, seen the animated joy in her face when she spoke. If we decided to give this a go, it meant we’d be apart more than we’d be together, and I wasn’t too sure I liked that.
I knew what happened in the rodeo circuit. I had plenty of experience with ranch hands telling stories about it around the campfire. The partying, the sex, the loneliness. It could get wild as hell. While I trusted her explicitly, I didn’t trust all the fuckboys who’d take any chance they could to shoot their shot while I was stuck here running the ranch. They’d whisper pretty words in her ear, telling her how she could do better.
I just hoped she never realized it herself.
“Have you ever traveled outside the country?” she asked, reaching for the bag of grapes between us. She threw one in the air, catching it in her mouth with a juicy pop.
It was a Friday afternoon, and we’d both snuck away under the pretense of scouting the trail for any cows that had strayed from the herd during our round-up. Instead of heading back, Lennox had packed a little picnic basket for us to enjoy. We’d laid out under the sun for a good hour now, chatting about everything and nothing.
The sun was slowly going down, and we would have to get back soon for family dinner, but I wasn’t ready yet.
I shook my head, laughing. “Sweetheart, the only times I’ve even been out of the state were because your dad needed help while doing the traveling clinics.”
“I think I want to go to Europe one day. There’s so much history there, you know? I loved learning about it in school. And it’s crazy to think that some buildings have been around since the medieval ages.”
“I didn’t pay much attention in history class,” I admitted. “Didn’t pay much attention to most of my classes, honestly.”
She rolled onto her side, propping her head on her hand. “Really?”
