Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(83)

It wasn’t that he thought a blow job was innately deep or service-oriented, and she’d put her mouth on him before. But there was something about this. About the way she looked up at him...

He had to close his eyes. Had to turn his head away. Had to try and keep his grip on that dark, rocky version of reality that he had spent so many years clinging to. But it was slipping. He was slipping. All because of that slick slide of her lips over his skin.

All because of her.

Callie.

He said her name. He said it out loud, and it reverberated off the tile walls.

And he shoved his hips forward, not meaning to, but not able to restrain himself. She braced her hands on his thighs, taking everything that he gave. And he was lost. Past restraint. Past control.

It was never supposed to be like this. Not with her, not with anyone.

Especially not with her.

She made a sound in the back of her throat, and his eyes opened. His gaze met hers.

And his orgasm ripped through him like a freight train. He lost it. Completely. Didn’t have a chance to warn her, nothing.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but she moved away from him, a satisfied smile on her lips.

And he felt... Unmanned in a way he hadn’t, not even when they’d made love those first two times. He felt exposed. Robbed. Like she could see the innermost parts of him, and he didn’t like it. Because he didn’t like those things. How could he ever expose her to them? How?

He shut the water off, and all he could hear was the sound of his own jagged breathing, and he liked that even less.

He hauled her up off the floor, and kissed her. Kissed her deep and hard, because at least it blotted out that raggedness in his breath. At least it swallowed up the sound of his beating heart.

Covered up those jagged pieces in him that were starting to show no matter how hard he tried.

Was this it in the end?

Did you break?

No matter how hard you worked to keep yourself together?

Could you only go through so much of life being made of fragments so loosely pressed together?

And he had lost.

Lost the reason why he’d started any of this. Lost his defenses. And what he wanted to do was surrender, because he didn’t feel like he had the strength to keep on pushing her away.

He took them both out of the shower, and wrapped her in a towel, drying her off.

By the time they were in his bedroom, by the time they were back to the bed, he was hard again. He opened up his bedside drawer and got out a box of condoms. And she took one out, her face filled with near-comical concentration as she tore the packet open and rolled the protection over him. And then, with the same look of fixed determination, she put her hand against the center of his chest and shoved him back on the bed.

“It’s about you tonight,” she said.

And she mounted him like he was a bucking bronco, that same fixed expression there, all stubborn and uniquely her, as she lowered herself down onto his erection.

Then her mouth fell open, soft and feminine, her head dropping back, her hair a wet cascade down her back, over her breasts. “Jake,” she whispered.

Like a prayer.

His name.

Because she wasn’t just any woman, and he wasn’t just any man.

She was Callie.

Strong and fierce and the person he cared about most in the world.

Giving him the greatest pleasure he’d ever experienced.

She flexed her hips, all those well-developed muscles in her thighs taking them both on a race to the finish that took his breath away.

His heart was thundering fast, his every muscle tense. And when he exploded, he dug his fingers into her hips, hard, his orgasm like a raging fire that seemed to ignite hers. He pulsed inside her, and her slick body squeezed around him like a fist.

And for a moment, everything was blank. Black. Void of anything and everything except for feeling. He was bleeding with it.

Hemorrhaging.

This bright white sensation of heat and fire and flame. This overwhelming blanket of need.

It was suffocating. Then somehow... Also the first real breath of air he’d taken in more years than he could count.

And when it was over, she collapsed against him, curled herself firmly around him. And everything in her body language told him something he didn’t even need to ask.

She wasn’t going to leave him. If he wanted her out of his room, he was out of luck. He would have to leave.

But he felt exhausted. Undone.

And it was easier... So much easier to just lie there with her. To let her curve her soft, warm body around his. To feel that warm weight of her against his chest.

And for the first time in his life, Jake Daniels shared a bed with a woman all night.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


THE NEXT MORNING, Callie woke up sore but happy.

What had happened between her and Jake last night had been a revelation. A new step, just like she’d hoped.

He had stayed with her. In bed. All night.

She grinned when she woke up, looked across his broad chest at his profile. And then she kissed him. On the cheek.

He stirred slightly, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “Good morning,” she said.

“Morning,” he mumbled.

“See how much more convenient it is when we share a bed?”

She proceeded to show him all the perks involved with the arrangement.