Her tits are pressed against the mattress, heavy and soft, spilling out from the side. I can see the curve of one…the round, full underside, the dark edge of her nipple. My cock twitches. Already. I’ve been inside this woman three times in the last eight hours and I’m getting hard again looking at her sleep.Something’s wrong with me. Or everything’s right for the first time.
She smells like my sheets, my soap, and under it all…that sun-warmed sugar scent that’s just her. Just Ina. The scent that hit me at the fair and rearranged my entire brain chemistry. It’s on my pillow. On my skin. I breathe it in, and my chest does something it’s never done before. It aches. Not pain. Fullness. The kind that scares the shit out of you because you know what it means.
It means if this woman gets out of my bed and doesn’t come back, I’m fucked. Permanently.
I’ve never been afraid of shit. Not the dark, not failure, not walking away from Cornell. But lying here with my woman’s bare body warm against mine, her breath on my chest, her scent soaked into everything I own? I’m terrified. Because I can’t out-think my way into her heart. Can’t study her into staying. All I can do is show up. Every day. And prove I’m not the man who broke her.
I slowly ease out of bed, sliding a pillow where my body was, so she doesn’t stir. She murmurs something. Shifts. Buries her face deeper into my side of the bed…into the dip where I was, pressing her nose into the sheets like she’s chasing my scent in her sleep.
My chest cracks open.
I pull on sweats. Nothing else. Start the coffee. Crack eggs. Pull out the bacon. The cast iron’s already seasoned and hot by the time the kitchen smells right.
I’m standing shirtless at the stove, flipping pancakes, when I hear her. Bare feet on hardwood. A pause in the doorway.
I look over my shoulder. And damn near drop the spatula.
My woman is standing in my kitchen wearing my shirt. The black tee from last night. It hangs to mid-thigh on her; the neckline stretched wide from my shoulders, slipping down toexpose her collarbone and the top of one gorgeous tit. The cotton clings to the heavy swell of her breasts…no bra, her dark nipples poking through the fabric. Her hips stretch the sides. And below the hem? Just legs. Miles of thick, smooth, bare thighs. I follow them all the way down to her bare feet on my floor and all the way back up to the curve of her ass barely hidden by the shirt’s edge.
My cock goes from half-hard to steel in about two seconds. I grip the spatula like it’s the only thing keeping me civilized.
Her braids are messy. Her eyes are half-shut and still puffy from sleep. She’s got a hickey on her neck…my hickey, dark against her brown skin…and pillow lines on her cheek. She looks like she got thoroughly fucked and barely slept and doesn’t know where she is.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
I grin. Big. Stupid. Can’t help it.
“Mornin’, cowgirl.”
She blinks at me. Her dark eyes travel down my bare chest…slow, lingering on my stomach, lower, catching on the waistband of my sweats where my cock is making itself very fucking obvious. Her lips part.
“You cook?” she asks, her voice hoarse from sleep and screaming my name all night.
“Baby, I feed livestock every day. You think I’m not feeding my woman?”
Her eyes soften. Then cautious. Then she looks at the coffee maker like it’s the most interesting thing in the room. I watch her throat work on a swallow. Watch her thighs press together under my shirt.
“Your… woman?”
I walk over. Hand her a mug. Our fingers brush and the contact shoots straight to my cock. Her skin is warm from sleep. Soft. I want to put my mouth on every inch of it. Instead, I lean inand press my lips to her forehead. Slow. Breathing her in. Sugar and sleep, and me.
“Sit. Eat.”
She does. Because her legs are still shaky…I can tell by the way she lowers herself onto the stool. Good. She should feel me today. Every time she sits, crosses her legs, takes a step. I want her to ache in places that remind her who put the ache there.
She eats at the island. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast. The whole spread. And my girl eats like she hasn’t been fed in a week. I watch her mouth close around the fork. Watch her tongue catch syrup at the corner of her lip. Watch her throat move when she swallows. Her jaw flexing. Her full lips wrapping around the rim of her coffee mug.
Feed her. Take care of her. Keep her. Knock her up. In that order.
She catches me watching and pauses mid-bite. “You always stare this much?”
“Just at you, sweetheart.”
She shakes her head. But she’s smiling…trying to hide it behind her mug and failing. The smile reaches her eyes and crinkles the corners, lighting up her entire face. I want to make her smile like that every morning for the rest of my life.
We’re halfway through breakfast when her phone buzzes on the counter. She glances at the screen, and her entire body tenses. Her spine straightens. Her smile drops.
“Shit. It’s Lilah.”
