Page 50 of She Autumn Be Mine

Jake stood inside with his coffee, watching them go, my big steady calm of a man, and it all came up at once, winning the dismissal, feeling safe, the two weeks of being loved right by a good man. For a year, I’d waited for bad news the way you wait for weather. Today the news came and it was sunny skies. I was done spending one more minute of this day on anybody named Eaton.

I crossed the cabin, took the coffee cup out of his hand, and set it on the window sill.

“Mrs. McCall has a thought, Mr. McCall,” I said, my arms threaded around him. I pressed forward and backed him toward the bedroom.

“Hm. Paint the bathroom? It really needs it.” He winked.

I cocked my head, and unbuttoned my shirt as I went.

The calm burned off him like fog off a field when the sun heated up over the peaks. His hazel eyes darkened, one eyebrow climbing—and then he lifted me straight up, boots off the floor, my back finding the log wall while his mouth covered mine.

“We won. Time to celebrate,” he stated against my lips.

“We won.” I tore his top snap open, then quit being patient and pulled—the pearl snaps giving way down his chest in one long ripping purr, which was, I’d discovered these past two weeks, the single most satisfying feature of men’s western wear. “So take me to bed, cowboy. Or the wall’s fine. Your choice.”

“Both. Everywhere. All night long.” Jake moved us strategically, ever the tactician in every mission.

There was nothing careful about it, and that was the point—no crying to soothe, no first-time nerves, no clocks running anywhere in the world. No baby to be quiet around. Just my husband laughing into my mouth as we crossed into the bedroom, shedding what clothes were left. He yanked the quilt sideways. I pushed him down and climbed over him and took my time the way he’d once inventoried me while undoing thirty-five buttons, with caresses and slow, open-mouthed kisses. When his breath went ragged and his hands clamped my hips, I leaned down to his ear.

“First time,” I whispered, wickedly, rolling my hips over his hard cock, “that we’ve celebrated a legal victory.”

“Christ, pumpkin—gonna need a lifetime of more first times with you.”

"Mm-hmm. You will," I laughed.

Forget the condoms. I didn't even know where any were in this cabin—or maybe he'd hidden them all, given his penchant for seeing me pregnant. I wanted that, too. The thought of his seed buried deep inside of me got me wet every single time we were together, and today was no different.

His cowboy hat hung from the bedpost. I reached over and put it on.

"Fuck, look at you," Jake breathed, watching me from below, hands flexing on my hips.

I rose up, positioned him at my entrance, and slid down on his cock, arching my back with a long moan—and then remembered there were no little ears around, and let the next moan out at full volume. “Mm. Yes!”

"That's it. Ride me wet and hard, cowgirl." His hands caressed up the front of me, pinching and palming my nipples pink, and then back down. His thumbs found and strummed my clit.

My ride escalated into moans and shouts and burning thighs, at a galloping pace. “I’m almost there, Jake. Almost.”

“Hands on the headboard,” he growled and flipped around behind me, re-entering me slick, capturing a handful of my hair. “Come on this sweet ride of yours like a good girl. Use me to get what you want. And then I’ll reward you with my seed so deep.”

His other hand reached around and applied pressure to my clit right where I needed it.

“Yes! Yes, a baby, yes!” It was the last coherent thing I said for a good long while as my body shook the bed and broke apart for him.

After he followed me over, the promised seed sown, we collapsed, laughter and shallow breaths and all. I sprawled across his chest in the wreck of the quilt, his heartbeat slowing under my ear, his fingers trailing up and down my spine, he pressed a kiss into my hair.

“Autumn McCall, you are an amazing woman,” he said, like a man counting his lucky stars.

“That’s me.” I traced his abs, lazy-like. “You know what’s strange? Everyday gets better and better with you. But I keep waiting, worried that it’s too good.”

“You don’t want things to be too good between us? Just good?” He cocked a bemused eyebrow.

“No case. No trial.” I propped my chin on his chest and studied him, and let myself say the reckless, love-drunk, brand-new thing I’d never once in my life believed: “Happy looks good on us. We’re keeping it."

“Let’s enjoy every moment we have.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, but I saw it—one small seam of watchfulness that never fully closed, the sentry always on the lookout that the SEALs had built into him.

We ordered pizza from the one place in town that delivered this far out, and ate it in bed like heathens, and talked about the house he wanted to build for us at the Meadows, which way the front porch swing should face, and I fell asleep at nine-thirty like a woman with no clocks left at all.

Saturday evening, we were due at the farmhouse for a victory dinner—Dot insisted—and I was pulling on my boots when Jake’s phone buzzed on the counter. Then buzzed again. Then began to buzz without stopping, like the sound of an angry hornet.