Redeeming the Rancher Read online

  Ticklish. Livie filed that away for future benefit.

  After a few more minutes acquainting herself with how the musculature of his legs packed the fabric surrounding them, Wes made a request.

  “All the blood is rushing to one place.”

  She backtracked in her mind. How long had it been? “Oh, God. I got carried away. Your brain must be throbbing.”

  “That’s not the head that’s throbbing.”

  Again with the honesty. At his admission, her breasts ached, and she became acutely aware that the ends of her hair infiltrated her tiny shirt and bra and grazed her hardened nipples.

  She nudged his arms down. They encircled her, pulled her close.

  “We should get you out of those clothes,” she suggested.

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  In silence, she undressed him, careful to lay his cover atop the strict folds of his shirt. And when the hay bale she had used as a folding surface left fragments of hay at the base of the uniform, she brushed it clean an inordinate number of times.

  Wes reached for her hand to stop it. “It’s seen worse.”

  She had wanted to be respectful. Now she was scared about what came next. Despite him still wearing pants, the need to reset consumed her. Olive smiled at him and fled.

  11

  The entirety of the distance back to his side of the barn, to the box that had triggered all of this, to return his clothes to where Olive found them and return his past to the past, was paved with noble intentions. Arousal baked her insides like clay fired in a kiln. She wanted him more than anything she had ever wanted, but this moment, as if the entire universe were in front of her, ripe for cultivating memories to hold onto in the dark times, made her feel out-of-body.

  Happiness didn’t last. For the sake of her creative space, her art, the euphoria of making love to Wes couldn’t last. But just because she didn’t trust it didn’t mean she should deny herself. Light existed because darkness permitted it. Someday, that fire in the distance of her life’s canvas would be him.

  Livie turned to tell him as much, but he was already there. When he slid the locking board in place on the barn door and shook out two saddle blankets inside the truck bed, the moment became real, intentioned, entirely present. He returned to her and tugged her into the fold of his arms.

  “I can see you carving entire worlds, in here.” His lips caressed her temple. “I want to be part of them, but not if you’re not ready.”

  Even if she couldn’t be honest about the sculpture, she could be honest about this. “I don’t want to be part of your past that you regret.”

  “My only regret is that it took me this long to get here.”

  He kissed her. This time his lips were diligent, hyper-focused, exact. She attributed it to him donning the uniform again, putting him in the take-charge headspace that had kept him and his men alive all those years. Just before she folded her defenses and packed them away as she had his uniform, she said, “I don’t have protection.”

  Wes smiled against her mouth. He broke free long enough to fetch an old saddlebag hanging on a nail and returned to her, two foil packages in hand.

  “You’re in a barn on a ranch where three boys grew into men. Let me amend that—where Chase Meier grew into a man worthy of his name. He’s single-handedly given the elderly Christian ladies in Close Call enough material to pray for his soul for years to come.”

  “He is a charmer, that one.”

  “What does that make me?” asked Wes.

  The hero.

  Saying it gave too much away, so she replaced words with actions and led him by the hand to the back bumper of the truck.

  With the tailgate propped up against the barn wall, Wes sat on the bed’s clean edge. Tires replaced the hay bales that had held up the frame when she first entered the barn. The vehicle settled from the weight of his six-foot-tall stature. In the space between his thighs, she became his willing captive.

  He stripped off his undershirt and pitched it over his shoulder. Naked to the waist, he was the most extreme model with whom she had ever entered this fertile, inspirational space. Stacked muscles told the story of his life—protector, fighter, laborer. Rigid, yet unbelievably soft. Across the defined crests and valleys of his shoulders, taut, sun-kissed skin stretched and moved as he reached for her hair. He twisted it, as he must have a thousand lassos in his time, for better grip, but with a gentleness that burned low in her belly. He placed the collected strands gently behind one shoulder then turned his gaze to everything her hair had concealed.

  Livie had sculpted plenty of breasts in her time as an artist. She had a healthy appreciation for their varying and absolute perfection—stirring impressions of age or maternity or eroticism—sometimes all at once. The way Wes devoured hers with his eyes made her feel the epitome of desired. She peeled the camisole from her body and tossed it behind him. The lacy garment landed on the flared rear fender.

  “Best rebuild to the truck yet,” he growled low, desire squeezing his vocal chords.

  From then on, Livie made it her mission to do her part to restore the truck—her way. Not to leave it unbalanced—symmetry was, after all, so much a part of what she did—she reached behind her, unclasped her bra, and tossed it over the truck’s other fender.

  Wes hissed his arousal. His gaze flared with want. He pressed against his awakening erection with the side of his hand, adjusted himself, taming the powerful bulk.

  For now.

  She anticipated the impressive study in human anatomy that awaited her. Second lie of the night: the mere sight of a penis usually brought her to orgasm. All those trips to museums weren’t just for study. She’d often return to her apartment, dripping wet, slip into a bath, and go for two.

  Not wanting to rush things, Livie decided she should be the first to unclothe.

  She hiked her foot up to rest against the truck bed between his thighs. The moment her boot heel landed in proximity to his cock, the already-expanded material jerked greedily.

  He set about untying the black and white ribbons on both boots and removing her socks, which she promptly decided should be looped around the pipe-shaped back bumper.

  The game gave a fetching jauntiness to his lips.

  She unfastened the top button of her jeans and slid one finger beyond its open V. Way beyond. Beyond the waistband to her underwear, beyond her mound of trimmed hair to her folds, already swollen and damp. Her touch often took the same route on days her isolation drove her to remote landscapes where she would press herself into some of her most liberating fantasies.

  Wes took her boldness as the invitation she intended. He slid the zipper of her jeans down, taking extra time to caress her through the rough denim. She spread her legs wider to accommodate his wide hands, but his caresses did not linger. He shoved his hands past her back waistband, gripped the silky material covering her cheeks, and relieved her of her jeans to the knees. Wasting no time, he tugged the crotch of her panties aside and parted her doused seam with a successive number of fingers until coils of lust sprang from her core and left her incapable of standing.

  While she removed her jeans the rest of the way, he brought his fingers to his lips and sampled her juices. The action, so simple, so curious, magnified the heavy ache at her clit. And as if he hadn’t yet relished enough, he smiled and wiggled his tongue. His dark brows, impressive and expressive, wiggled as well.

  A laugh tickled her belly and escaped, effervescent and free. He inspired her to make her grandest renovation to the truck yet. She climbed into the truck bed, stood, and spread her jeans on the back of the cab, ass-out, as wide as the pantlegs would stretch.

  “Looks like a great idea. What d’ya say, Amsterdam?”

  His drawl became more pronounced the further they spiraled down into a most primitive mating dance. She removed her panties, reached through the open space where the back window should be, and hung them from the funny looking rear-view mirror.

  This elicited a hear
ty laugh and had Wes scrambling for prime space beneath her. He positioned her bare feet at the outermost points of the truck bed and sat between her legs, holding her to his mouth with hands splayed firmly on her naked ass.

  He sampled her juices again, this time with a dizzying flick of his tongue and a simultaneous moan that vibrated her folds.

  Livie nearly vaulted over the cab.

  “Like sweet cream.” He licked his lips, hungry for another sample.

  She opened to him, ravenous for every ministration of his tongue. When he started French kissing her thighs in a measured and agonizing march toward her sex, muscles surrounding her opening screamed for an ambush. He teased kisses around her saturated curls, her outer folds, even the rise of her ass cheeks before taking command of the offering between her thighs.

  Leaning forward to keep her balance grazed her nipples against the back of the truck cab over and over. The abrasion was like hard, metal tongues working her sensitive peaks until a frenzied bolt of desire crashed through her. His unrelenting pursuit of her ecstasy did not end with simply covering her and sucking her folds into the oven of his mouth as if she were a delectable peach plucked from a roadside stand, meant to be baked; his tongue and fingers speared and lapped in tandem through the deep recesses of her channel until she gasped and bucked and clawed for mercy.

  She crouched down, her feet planted at his outer thighs, mercilessly spread-eagle, and kissed him. On his saliva, she tasted herself. Their savory union was incomplete; she had yet to add the salty flavor of his heated skin, his sweat, his pre-cum glaze.

  And it was beyond time.

  Livie tugged at his stretchy waistband, a nearly unmanageable task for the hold his rigid shaft had on the material. She braced herself for what she knew was ahead—an orgasm at the sight of his manhood already long overdue from the live wire he had worked her into. Prolonging her peak by taking him in hand through the slinky fabric of his boxers brought a fresh rope of lust sizzling through her core. In one motion, she scooped her hands inside both waistbands and freed every bit of him. His hot scrotum melted against her palms, but that wasn’t what sent her over the edge.

  His penis was a spire, a marvel of male architecture. Divested of its constraints, the thick pink length strained toward the rafters. As she freed him completely of his boots and socks and pants and lowered her belly down on the blanket, his column’s smooth, spade-shaped head bruised plum-colored in anticipation.

  At the sight, a quake originated deep within her, sending subtle but fierce aftershocks ricocheting from the swollen flesh low in her abdomen to just behind her nipples and back again, barely detectable to the outer world, but to the rich world of her inner sanctum, the visual trigger to surpass all others.

  That included Michelangelo’s David.

  She exhaled through the sweet, unrelenting sensation and rested her cheek alongside his searing shaft until recovery came and the rippling spasm that racked her clit tapered.

  “Are you okay?”

  From the alarm in his voice, she probably looked as if she had come down with the flu. She had no choice but to come clean.

  About how she came often.

  The Sistine Chapel being the most embarrassing.

  Through panting breaths, she divulged her secret.

  The harsh lines of his brow eased. A devilish smile stretched ear to ear, ratcheted up her craving, and told her he would never, ever let her live this down.

  But first, he intended to reap the benefits of a captive fandom. He leaned back on his elbows, sending his cock into sharp relief from the angled planes of his body, like a missile on a launch pad. Delighted, her hands went to work on it as if he were clay to be molded into the precise shape that pleased her.

  “The artist blushes,” he teased.

  She teased him back. Mercilessly. With the tip of her tongue, she traced the bulging veins that ran his length then tugged him along the roof of her mouth until his flared tip kissed the back of her throat. At his groans, she repeated the demanding motion until his legs shook and he pleaded with her through his drawl and bliss-filled curses. He pulsed, thick and heavy against her tongue, and just when she had summoned his first drop of milky moisture, he gritted his teeth and groveled for her to stop.

  When she paused, he slid off the truck bed as if he had done two straight days of physical training. She half-expected him to belt out an ooh-rah and drop and give her fifty. Through ragged inhales, he said, “No way I’m finishing like that. Too many years finished like that, alone, not to feel every part of you around every inch of me.”

  He pulled her into a kiss that soothed and tempted then eased her back on the blankets. Kisses along her arms and neck became a precursor to his dedication to his mission: kneading and sucking and pinching the pebbled nubs of her breasts until she was near-frantic with need. He contrasted his torture with a tender kiss at her navel.

  She shivered.

  “You will always be the most beautiful sculpture I’ve ever seen. Artist as art.”

  His voice was sandpaper; his gaze seared hers.

  Livie believed him. She did not question if he saw anyone but her. No family resemblance, no others who had come before, nothing but the moments they alone shared and this one: her fire to hold back future darkness, her infinite now.

  He bit open the condom packet and rolled the protection in place. Watching his hand sheathe himself singed the raw nerve endings already begging for his invading presence.

  When she looped her legs around his hips, he entered her inside a strong embrace. And when her internal muscles stretched and gripped and clamped him such that every glide presented another test of control, a monumental test she was swiftly failing, he alternated excruciatingly decadent grinding strokes with rapid-fire piston-like thrusts until they transcended together. Bathed in the soft glow that twinkle lights cast over a barrier that was no longer there, her ecstasy chased a notion that the moment might replace her long-ago happiness and ruin her chance at greatness. She pushed the belief aside and allowed herself to climb past mind-bending joy to a place where she would always have his light in darkness.

  * * *

  For three consecutive days after Christmas, Wes and Olive largely lived in the barn. He woke beside her on the bed of Clem’s truck before sun-up and snuck out to start chores. By mid-morning, he brought Olive coffee and breakfast, and they’d make love and sleep again until afternoon. After that, it was all about her art. She toiled away, without much sound, just the clay and her hands, and he finished the truck’s final installs of reupholstered seats and interior trim. They established an easy rhythm that neither really believed could last, but that didn’t stop them from trying to make the now infinite.

  Not once had he awoken with muddy feet, smelling like the land. Peace, he supposed.

  The family knew what was happening, even teased Wes about it when Livie wasn’t around. Chase had moved on to Kansas City for another rodeo, and Nat shuffled his chores to accommodate what he called “the gettin’ hour,” which was a helluva lot less embarrassing than Mona’s favorite southernisms of the week: “squattin’ in the cucumber patch” and “prayin’ with the knees up.” They meant well—hell, he had done the same to Nat when January came back—but that didn’t stop the feeling that his family was all up in his grill.

  On day four, Wes awoke to a loud clank from Olive’s side of the barn. Clay and Randy had both warned about possums getting into the feed and digging at building corners to find cold-weather shelter. Wes lay in a toasty cocoon beside a naked Olive. The longer he remained, the more he entertained the idea of an animal sneaking in to ruin all of her hard work with a swipe or two of monstrous claws. He slid from her touch, pulled on a pair of loose pants, and snagged his cell phone for just enough light to not wake her.

  His feet crunched their way through the dusting of dry hay, around the bales, to her workspace. The giant statue lay under several strategically-draped cloths, untouched from what he could see. After a body-shivering
yawn and a thorough search of the possible entry points for critters, he discovered the source of the noise that had woke him: a metal carving tool that had fallen from the line and struck the edge of her worktable. He set the tool back in place.

  The statue mocked him. One colossal temptation.

  How would she know?

  In the dead of night, ideas took on a life of their own. Wes had found this to be true during his many exploits in town, both as a teenager and an adult. One minute you’re bored, and the next you’re convincing your friend to tip a cow or mount up some married woman who taught you arithmetic in grade school. But this—goddamned but he was proud of her, and he had no idea why. Righteously, he believed first peek should come to those who posed for, and fucked, the artist.

  He sneaked over to the tallest part, likely what came from their uniform-as-foreplay encounter, and lifted the drop cloth from the ground up. Cell phone as a flashlight, he angled the blue glow at strategic angles, working his way up the piece.

  The boots alone were incredible. Unlaced, as in many of Wes’s battles when a mortar fucked you out of sleep and you had less than two seconds to clear the area before you met your maker. That she knew that subtlety made him wonder if she inferred it or if Daniel had told her.

  Daniel.

  Wes waited for the familiar, crippling sting to wrap his chest and squeeze the breath from him that his friend could no longer take, but the moment came and went, and Wes found that he could stay in the moment, even smile at the story of Daniel pissing in his own boots during the Crucible, the final test to become a Marine.

  Peace, he supposed.

  All Olive.

  He lifted the cloth higher, past intricate bunches of pant legs, to the hem of the top and beyond. With every inch revealed, it became real, this thing discussed but never seen, up and up and up, until he realized the extent of it—other legs and arms and people, the bigger picture so much more than he imagined but still concealed enough to be lost to him. He swung the light back to the bronze Marine, eye to eye with the name patch.