Page 16 of A Mustang River Christmas

“The only thing that I could find and hold onto when I was at my lowest was the mountains. You look out there, and there they are. They don’t move. They’re not going to crumble. They’re older than me, they were here before I was ever a thought, they’ll be here long after I’m gone. It’s a reminder that I’m small. And that my pain is so very manageable in the grand scheme of things.”

“That’s kind of beautiful and kind of awful,” she said.

“I find insignificance comforting. Because I used to be the center of my own world. My ambition was the only thing that mattered. I was the thing that mattered most, what I wanted, what I was going to get, and then what I couldn’t have. And that made my pain feel unmanageable. But once I recognized that I actually don’t matter all that much, and the world isn’t going to fall apart if I never win all the awards I wanted. If my career doesn’t go the way that I planned. All that stuff can crumble and fall away, the only thing you’re left with are your family connections. The people that love you. It’s the thing that lasts.”

“Well, I have my career. So I’m not sure that I want to delve too deeply into that.”

“I’m not saying you have to adopt my philosophy. But it keeps me on the straight and narrow. And you asked what the tattoo meant.”

“I did,” she said, leaning in and kissing him just there, right on the peak of that mountain. Then she kissed up his neck, her hands moving to the front of his jeans, working his belt, undoing it, undoing the button on his jeans and drawing down the zipper. She got him naked quickly, and he wrapped his arm around her, squeezing her ass as he drew her up against his body.

“I got tested,” she said. “You know, after the breakup. Because I didn’t trust anything. And I have an IUD.”

He nodded slowly. It was a trust thing. And he wasn’t sure they knew each other well enough to play those kinds of games, but he was horny enough that he was going to do it anyway.

He hadn’t been with anybody in years, and after the bullshit that he had gotten up to, he had gotten every test imaginable for a couple years after, just to make sure that he hadn’t done any irreversible damage to his body.

“I’m good,” he said. “I swear.”

“I trust you,” she said. “I’m not really sure why. I couldn’t trust the man that I was with for five years. But I trust you. Maybe because you didn’t have to tell me all that, but you did.”

Something twisted hard inside his gut, and he laid her down on the bed then, groaning as he settled between her thighs, but he couldn’t take her just yet. He couldn’t...

She wiggled out from underneath him, and he sat up. Then she shoved his shoulder down, moving him onto his back, kissing her way down his body and right to his–.

“Shit,” he said, grabbing her hair as she sucked him in deep.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, moaning as she tasted him.

Pleasure like fire worked its way through his body, and he really thought he was going to die.

“Laney,” he gasped. “I need... Laney, I don’t want to finish like this.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “But you’re not the only one who knows how to ride the edge.”

She licked him then, traced the head of his cock with her tongue before taking him in again, and he gripped the blankets, praying that he didn’t end this too quickly.

She kept on going until he was shaking.

And then she kissed her way back up his body, straddled him, and took him inside her, slowly.

He cursed as he sank into her, inch by inch.

As she began to flex her body forward, riding him like she was an expert cowgirl.

He gripped her hips, fingers digging into her flesh, and he was grateful that she had mounted him, because if it was the other way around, he would have lost it. Would have taken her so hard and fast. It would have been over in an instant, but it was better that she get to set the tempo. Better that she get to make it what she wanted.

When he looked up, he felt like he had been slugged in the gut. The view of her, riding him like that, her gorgeous body above him, was enough to send him into orbit. But he did his best to hold on.

Ten years.

Ten years since he had been inside of a woman. And he couldn’t even remember it.

Not really.

This was like something new. In that sense, maybe he was a born-again virgin.

Doing this sober, because he wanted to, not just because he wanted oblivion, not just because he wanted sex, but because he wanted her.