“Stay,” he whispers. “Don’t run from me again.”
I look into his eyes, seeing the vulnerability he’s trying to hide, the fear that I’ll disappear like I did before. But I’m not that scared eighteen-year-old anymore. I’m a woman who knows what she wants, and what I want is this, him, us, whatever future we can build together.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I promise, sealing the words with another kiss.
Outside, the rain continues to fall, but inside Jesse’s arms, I’ve finally found my way home.
SIXTEEN
JESSE
I groan deeplythe next morning when I wake up and Aubree is still in my arms. She’s got her ass pressed against my cock, and it’s standing at attention. The palm of my hand grazes down her front, stopping at the peaked nipple.
She moans, pressing the engorged tip into my flesh. When she pops her ass back, grinding against my length, I latch onto her neck and use my free hand to grip her thigh.
“Jesse,” she says breathlessly.
“Yeah, you’re not getting out of this bed yet.” I push the words out of my tight throat, use my hand to lift her thigh, and then slide my cock home.
“Fuck…” She tosses her head back against my shoulder.
I take her lips, tongues twisting as I press my cock into her pussy, still wet with my cum from last night. Her hands are tangled in the sheets, pulling them as she anchors herself to push herself harder onto my length.
“You’re so fuckin’ hot,” I growl, letting go of her thigh and moving my hand between her thighs. With the tip of my finger, I worry her clit, strumming a rhythm meant to make her come again.
With her head tilted against my shoulder, I can see her mouth is open, hissing as I bottom out and hold still for a split second before I turn her underneath me, and then mount her. My forearms shake as I come up on my knees and thrust so hard I could rip holes in the sheets.
“Oh god, Jesse. Don’t stop,” she breathes, her nose flaring.
“Look at me,” I instruct her. “Look at me when I spill into you. Look at me when you come on my cock.”
Those eyes of hers open, the brown depths wet with some emotion I don’t want to name just yet. But I need her. I need her to tell me that I’m the one making her fall apart this way. “Who’s making you come? Whose cock is owning this pussy?”
“Yours,” she whines, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. “Yours.”
And that’s when she lets go, her body tightening on mine. I can’t hold it anymore. I come, shooting deep inside her, hoping with everything I have she’s not on birth control. That I can make her mine forever. But that’s a different conversation for a different day.
In the aftermath, we’re quiet, and I lazily drag my finger up and down her arm.
When we’ve lain there for longer than we should’ve, she turns over, looking at me. “What were you and Truett doing last night? You didn’t bring anything home. Be honest with me. I can’t help you—or trust you—unless you’re honest.”
“I don’t want you involved in any of this,” I tell her, my stomach aching at the thought of her getting caught up in the aftermath.
“Then y’all should’ve thought about that before this even started. Why did it start?”
I stare at the ceiling for a long moment, feeling the weight of everything pressing down on my chest like a boulder. The morning light filtering through the curtains casts long shadowsacross the room, and I can hear the distant sound of the guys heading to their trucks. The engines turn over, and they leave to head toward Grizzly River. Normal sounds of a normal morning on what should be a normal ranch. But nothing about our lives has been normal for a long time now.
“You remember when our parents died?” I finally ask, my voice rough.
She nods against my shoulder, her breath warm on my skin. “Of course I remember.”
“What you don’t know is what we found out after the funerals. About the money.” I take a deep breath, steeling myself for what I’m about to tell her. “There wasn’t any.”
She lifts her head, those dark eyes searching my face. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we were broke, Aubree. All of us. Your daddy, my daddy, they’d been struggling for years. The ranches were mortgaged to the hilt, there was no life insurance worth a damn, and the bank was breathing down our necks from day one.” The words taste bitter in my mouth. “You know how all the smaller ranches around here have been selling to those big corporations? There’s a reason for that. There’s no help coming from anywhere. We were on our own. Me and Truett against the fuckin’ world.”
She’s quiet, processing this information, and I can see the wheels turning in her head. I keep tracing patterns on her arm, needing the contact to ground me.
