“Stop!” I laughed as he leaned into me to watch me butter toast. His cock was hard against my ass.
Instead of stopping, Jared gripped my hips and nuzzled my neck. “I’m thinking I should be late for Georgie after all.”
I gasped as he nudged into me. That’s all it took for the fire of want to ignite. “I think so too.” Pushing the plate of toast away, I fumbled for the button on my jean shorts. Within seconds I’d pushed them and my underwear down.
Jared hissed, cupping my bare ass in his large hands. “You excite the hell out of me.” His fingers slipped down and pushed inside, testing me. “Fuck.” I heard him fumble with his clothing, heard the condom wrapper crinkle as my fingernails bit into the kitchen counter with anticipation.
He nudged my ankles apart as far as they would go with my shorts and underwear wrapped around them, gripped my hip with one hand, and then turned my head up to the side. Jared crushed my lips beneath his, his beard tickling and rasping against my skin, as he surged into me. I gasped into his mouth at the overwhelming fullness. Our kiss broke as this insatiable thing between us exploded beyond our control. Suddenly, Jared spun me, pushing me belly down over the kitchen table. He took my hips in both hands and began fucking me.
I became nothing but my body and how he made me feel. Hot and needy and desperate. I had to push up onto my palms to take the powerful thrust of his cock. “Yes!” I kept crying over and over again in my mindless want.
“Look at you,” Jared’s voice rumbled at my back. “Look at you take me.” His hands cupped the globes of my ass and squeezed. “So fucking perfect. So fucking …” He growled suddenly, his hips snapping faster against me. “Come. Baby, come.”
He was losing it. And the evidence that I turned him on that much was enough to send me over the edge. I screamed my release, my arms giving out as I slumped against the table, the wood cool against my cheek.
“Allegra!” Jared bellowed seconds before he shuddered over me, his cock throbbing inside me as he came.
Suddenly, I imagined what we must look like right now and I began to laugh quietly.
I heard Jared’s amused grunt. “Should I take offense?”
I laughed harder, the sound only broken by a gasp of sensation as Jared pulled out. Pushing up off the table, I turned to him, getting tangled in my shorts. He disposed of the used condom as I pulled my clothes back up.
“I’m just laughing at our inability to get through an hour without jumping each other.”
He grinned as he crossed the room, fixing his own clothes before he reached me. Sliding his arms around my waist, he tugged me against him until my palms rested on his broad chest. “I can’t help it with you.”
Looking up into his eyes, seeing the tenderness in them, made my heart pound. Sometimes I couldn’t believe that Jared had agreed to give our marriage a real shot. Sex with no strings? Yes, I could absolutely see him agreeing to that. But with me, he wanted more. What he said last night were the most beautifulthings anyone had ever said to me. He was the first man to make me feel like I was so much more than the face and body I owed to genetics and nothing else.
Whatever he saw in my eyes made him bend his head to press a soft, sweet kiss to my mouth. Soon it turned into more, our tongues touching, licking. With an agitated sigh against my mouth, Jared pulled back.
“I know.” I smoothed a soothing hand over his chest. “We need to get to work.”
“I wish we could stay here all day.”
“I know,” I promised him. “Me too. But we need to adult now. In a different way to how we just adulted on the kitchen table.”
Laughing, he let me go with one last squeeze of my hip. “Let’s get to it.”
Since we’d already lingered too long this morning, we shoveled down our breakfast and I left Jared in the mudroom to go feed and water the chickens.
I knew almost immediately something was wrong because the chickens and I had become best buddies over the last few weeks. I knew their habits well, in particular, a hen I now called Ginger. She was my bird soul mate. She and her best buddy, Babs, adored me and would come running as soon as they heard the mudroom door open. I’d chat away and they’d preen as I cooed compliments at them. They were more interested in following me as I walked around the henhouse than even the food and water I brought them. They’d sit and watch me for hours whenever I decided to sketch in the backyard.
This morning, however, there was no running. No clucking with excitement. In fact, now that I thought about it … the rooster, Cogburn, hadn’t made a sound this morning either.
“Jared!” I called, panic suffusing his name as I hurried toward the henhouse. The sight of two hens lying motionless inside the run had me screaming, “Jared!”
As I opened the main door to the henhouse, I heard Jared shouting my name in return, his footsteps pounding toward me. “Fuck.” I heard him curse, having clearly seen the chickens.
The sight that greeted me inside the house made me burst into tears.
They were all motionless, lying among one another. Stiff and unmoving. Ginger, Babs, Cogburn, all of them.
I reeled backward and turned, smacking into Jared. While he checked out the house, I stumbled away, unable to stop the tears streaming down my face.
Jared straightened. His face was pale and taut with anger. Whatever he was feeling, however, he put on hold. Bridging the distance between us, he pulled me into his arms and I clung to him, sobbing.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered, his own voice cracking with emotion.
