We locked eyes.
No rush this time. Deep, deliberate glides that made her gasp every time I bottomed out, my hips grinding slow circles to drag against her clit.
“Graham,” she breathed, my name a broken plea, nails biting into my shoulders.
“I’ve got you.” I buried my face in her neck, tasting water and skin. “You feel so perfect. So tight.”
We moved together, water pounding, bodies slick, every stroke building toward something massive and unstoppable. Her walls fluttered, tightened, and I felt her start to shake.
“Come with me,” she whispered. “Please. Together.”
I angled deeper, grinding hard against her clit, and she broke first. A sharp, shuddering cry, body convulsing around me, walls pulsing in fierce waves that dragged me over the edge with her. The orgasm hit like a freefall, my vision whiting out as Islammed deep and came with her name on my lips, both of us shaking, locked together, the water the only thing still moving.
We stayed like that, trembling, breathing ragged, until the aftershocks finally ebbed. I eased out, dealt with the condom, then pulled her back under the spray and held her.
I’d been telling myself that whatever was happening between us was temporary. A detour. A story I’d tell later about a ranch in Colorado and a woman who’d taken me apart and put me back together differently.
Standing there with the water going lukewarm and Rose’s cheek against my shoulder, I stopped telling myself that.
I held her tighter.
Rose’s kitchenwas small and functional. No decorative touches, no Pinterest boards brought to life. A coffee maker that had seen better years, mismatched mugs, a window above the sink that looked out over the east paddock.
I made coffee while she dried her hair. She emerged in jeans and a flannel, toweling the ends, and stopped when she saw the two mugs on the counter.
“You found the good beans,” she said.
“Behind the oatmeal. Third shelf.” I handed her a mug. “You hide them like a squirrel.”
“I hide them from Kaya. She’d go through a bag a day.”
We stood in her kitchen and drank coffee and looked at each other, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like we’d been doing it for years instead of minutes.
“Everything okay?” I asked, because a thought had crossed her face, quick, gone before she could catch it.
Rose sipped her coffee. Weighed whether to let me in.
“Vendor invoice from Ridgeline Supply came in higher than the quote,” she said. “Fencing materials. Denise is handling it, but...” She shrugged like it was nothing, but her grip on the mug said otherwise. “Running a ranch is basically just watching money leave your account and hoping the horses don’t notice.”
“How much over?”
“Twelve thousand for a job quoted at eighty-five hundred. Denise thinks it’s a rush surcharge and extra hardware. She’s calling them today.” Rose set down her mug. “It’s fine. It’s always fine. That’s what I tell myself, and eventually the math cooperates or it doesn’t.”
Ridgeline Supply. I filed the name away. Not because I suspected anything, not yet. Just because the numbers didn’t sit right.
I leftRose’s cabin around nine, feeling lighter than I had in years.
The feeling didn’t last long.
I was crossing the yard toward my cabin when the memory hit. Denise’s voice in the dark, words I’d been pushing to the back ofmy mind because they didn’t fit into the world I’d been building with Rose.
She doesn’t suspect anything.
It’s actually working in our favor.
By the time Rose figures out what’s happening, it’ll be too late.
I stopped walking.
