Page 48 of She Autumn Be Mine

“Yeah. I do. We took vows today. We said this would be forever. I’ll work hard. We’ll raise a little family. We can start tonight or next year. Your choice.” I hissed and jerked, close to entering her. I buried my face in her neck, licking and sucking there. “Condom or not, because I’m about to bust, you got me so excited for my first time inside of you.”

“Ooh, Jake. No. No condom.”

“No condom?”

She grinned herself. “People will think we’re crazy, but I don’t care anymore. I want Stetson to have a sibling.”

“Just one? Twins run in my family, sweetheart. Every generation.”

“Oh, my God. Last week I thought I could lose Stetson. Now you’re ready to give me more children?”

I could come any second just talking about this. “No condom?” I confirmed it again.

She wrapped her legs around my middle. “Then ride, cowboy.”

“Fuck, yes, baby. Get ready for our first. First of many.”

I reached down between us and notched at her entrance. My hard cock like steel, I entered her heat slowly, savoring every inch. After a year of goodnights on the wrong side of her door, all of it arrived at once, and I had to grit my teeth against the sweet, tight clench of her just to last.

“Oh, make it fit, Jake,” she relaxed into it even more, letting me fully in. I covered her mouth with mine, our moans swallowed up as I began to move. In and out, claiming the woman who’d gone from friend to wife to lover at last. Her gasp broke against my lips, her body rising to meet mine like she’d been made to match me.

I set a pace I couldn’t keep for long, every first time with her tonight my undoing—knowing there wouldn’t ever be any last times. Just my wife, unafraid, wanting something good and taking it from me, her heels locked at my waist, and her nails scraping my back, and her voice cracking apart on my name as she came undone beneath me. The sight of Autumn McCall letting go at last, finished me too, my face buried in her neck, her name the only word I had left in the world, her body milking every drop of my seed from me.

“My wife,” I moaned. We collapsed as one. After that there were no more words for a while. Just candlelight. A year of patience paid off with interest.

Later, she lay sprawled across my chest, tracing lazy circles through the hair there, both of us wrecked and glowing like the survivors of a storm.

“I liked our firsts,” she said, drowsy and smug in a way I planned to spend my life encouraging. “We’re doing all of that again.”

“Seconds. Thirds. Plenty of time yet before pancakes.” I reminded her, and felt her laugh against my ribs.

I pulled the quilt over my wife and held her while she went boneless into sleep, her ring hand splayed over my heart, right where her son’s little fist used to land back when a couch and a photograph were all I got of this. The candles burned down. The cabin ticked and settled around us.

First night of the rest of our lives. I pressed my lips to her hair.

Turned out we’d been telling Stetson the truth all along. You keep trying—tomorrow, and the day after—until the walking works.

Then one day you stop holding the rail, and you’re home.

FIFTEEN

Dismissed

AUTUMN

Married life came with two clocks. The first one ran on baby time. Stetson hollered “Dada! Mama! UP!”—his new favorite sentence. My kind husband got up, and retrieved our son from the crib, and dumped him giggling into the bed between us. For ten minutes the whole world was warm skin and snuggles and baby feet and nowhere to be just yet.

Then Jake’s alarm went off. He made coffee, and got Stetson fed. I smiled to myself under the blankets, their voices carrying throughout the cozy cabin. Eventually, he delivered a cup of coffee and kissed my bare shoulder.

“I gotta get to work, pumpkin.” Lately, Ash had him and Cash clearing more forest, creating wood to build more structures on the ranch. In their spare time, they also cleared land at the Double M for our own custom build someday.

“Have a nice day.”

“You, too. Any plans today?”

“Helping your mother at the Double M.” With my new life, came a new job, leaving the Sapphire Saloon behind. Most of my days were spent learning about goats and honey and soap-making, always with Stetson in tow. He loved the McCall place where he could chase chickens and goats and help Mimi—as Dot liked to be called instead of Grandma—in the garden or the kitchen.

Jake chewed his bottom lip and eagerly watched as I got up and pulled my favorite flannel shirt of his over my body.