Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(82)

But this...this was just sex.

He turned the shower on and finished stripping them bare. Then he pulled her in after him, sliding the water over her bare skin. Drawing her close to him and kissing her, deep and long.

He knew the steps to this dance. Well practiced. Well rehearsed.

But then she wrapped her arms around him, fierce and tight, and not the way a woman caressed a lover she simply had for the night. It was like a hug, her breasts pressed flat against his body, one hand on the back of his neck, the other pressed between his shoulder blades. And she whimpered when they kissed, opening her mouth wide and invading him. She wasn’t shy or teasing. She wasn’t coy in any way. She wasn’t practiced or expert, either. She was just enthusiastic.

And just like he’d been on the couch with her, he suddenly got lost in it. There was nothing that he could refer back to, no map that he could follow. Nothing in his extensive personal backlog of experience could give him a blueprint for the way that she clung to him. For the eager boldness that seemed to guide her as her water-slicked body rubbed all up against his. He couldn’t pretend that she was someone else.

And he couldn’t pretend that this was anything like what he’d done before.

Except with her.

But even then, it was different than that first time. Different than that second time. Like he was being drawn deeper and deeper down an endless well that he had tried to avoid his entire adult life.

Because everything she did screamed Cal.

It couldn’t have been anyone else.

Her body was slim and firm, shaped by the hard work that she did. Soft, as well, her skin like silk against his.

He knew that body.

From years of being near her, around her. Trying not to look at her. He knew her voice. And every sound of pleasure only reminded him who she was.

He lifted her up off the ground, pressing her against the back wall, burying his face in her neck and kissing her. She was open to him, and he slid his slick cock through her folds, groaning at how good it felt. How good she felt. He looked up at her, and her grin was impish, and so decidedly her.

Callie.

His Callie.

And it was all he could see. All he could feel.

Like a horrible bright joy, which was a terror he had tried to stay away from for so long.

He couldn’t make her a stranger. He couldn’t do that to her, couldn’t do that to them. Because of all the dark, terrible things that he had in this world, she’d never been one of them.

She had been the sunny spot. His hope, when he’d felt none of his own at all.

That’s what had brought him to her in the first place.

This woman who was all fire and optimism and everything he couldn’t find inside of himself.

She had given him purpose. He could remember meeting her, and seeing that drive in her. That passion. And it had been almost an obsession to pour what he couldn’t give himself into her. He treated bull riding like a gamble. Like some kind of a game to tempt fate. But that wasn’t how he saw her dreams. On her behalf, he could want something bigger. Could want something better.

Things that he couldn’t want for himself. Things that he wasn’t allowed to.

But how had he ever tricked himself into thinking that it wouldn’t all lead here?

Yeah, they were friends, and it wasn’t that men and women couldn’t be friends. So he told himself. Over and over again.

It wasn’t that.

It was that Callie had always been somewhere underneath his skin, from the moment they first met. It was that she had hooks in him, that one particularly deep, and he never had an explanation as to why.

It didn’t matter now.

It didn’t.

They were here.

The future didn’t matter.

The future was... The future was maybe nothing. There were no guarantees in life. There was no amount of happiness that could insulate you. No amount of good deeds you could fling yourself into that couldn’t end up as a pile of shit. There was nothing.

And the only thing that felt real was her. Everything else felt bleak and terrible or wrong. Everything else felt hopeless, and she was like a beam of light that he could hold in his arms. That he could test himself against, more dangerous and harder than any bull could ever be.

He thrust against her and she shuddered, and he knew that she’d come, just from that slick friction against her delicate body.

She moved her legs, unwinding herself from him, putting her feet back on the shower floor. Then she slid down his body, pressing a kiss to his erection, before taking him into her mouth.

He braced himself against the shower wall, water and pleasure washing over him in a wave.

“Callie,” he said, his voice rough.

“Hush,” she said.

And he was lost. There was nothing to say, nothing that he could do. He wanted to tell her to stop. He wanted to tell her that it didn’t need to end this way. He wanted to tell her not to give so much to him. Because she’d made him dinner. And she’d made him those cookies. And now she was giving him mind-blowing pleasure with her mouth on his body, and he didn’t deserve any of it.

He had been her mentor, her helper, her husband when she demanded it. He had been happy to stand in the gap between herself and her family. Had been happy to give her all those things, but when she turned around and tried to give anything back to him he wanted to push her away.

That had been the point of this, but now she was on her knees in front of him, and he couldn’t push her away.