My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Open Door

Tilly starts it: his mouth, his hands and all of him, and at dawn a hand texts that her aunt has locked the ranch gate.

He sat up on the edge of the bed, and I crossed the room and stood between his knees.

Even sitting down, his head came to my chin.

"Tilly," he said, low.

"I walked a half mile barefoot and a hallway in a ruined dress," I said. "Don't ask me that."

I put both hands on his face.

His jaw was rough, and I felt it work under my palms.

I bent and kissed him.

For one second he held perfectly still.

Then his mouth opened under mine, and I felt the whole hungry length of him let go.

He kissed me slowly.

His tongue stroked mine.

One hand slid into my hair and cupped the back of my head, and the other spread flat across my spine.

That hand covered most of my back.

I made a sound into his mouth that I did not recognize.

"Zipper," I said against his lip.

"Where?"

"Behind me."

He found it with his fingertips and drew it down my back, an inch at a time.

I felt the cool air on my skin and his knuckles after it.

My mother's blue dress slid off my shoulders and fell around my feet.

I stood in my slip and bra with the moon on the floorboards behind me.

Cade breathed in.

"Look at you," he said quietly. "I've thought about this since July."

"You never said," I murmured.

"You were engaged," he said.

"I'm not now."

"No," Cade said. "You're not."

He took hold of my waist and stood up with me, and then my feet were off the floor.

He turned and laid me on the bed, across the edge of it, with my legs hanging down.

I stared up at him.

He was so big that the ceiling disappeared behind his shoulders.

He pulled his shirt off over his head and dropped it.

His chest was broad and pale, with gray hair across it and a long white scar over his ribs.

His forearms and neck were brown from the sun.

I put my hand on the scar.

"Mare," he said. "Fifteen years ago."

"Did it hurt?"

"I don't remember. I remember you running across the barn lot in July with your hair in a rope, yelling at a hand."

I laughed, and he bent and kissed my stomach, and the laugh broke into a gasp.

His mouth went down the center of me, across my slip, over the thin cotton of my underwear.

He hooked two fingers in the waistband and looked up.

I lifted my hips.

He drew it off me and set it aside, and then he knelt on the floor between my knees.

His hands spanned my thighs.

They went around each one with room to spare, and he held them open and still.

"Beautiful," he said, and put his mouth on me.

I cried out.

I had forgotten what it was to be wanted by someone who looked first and touched second.

His tongue was slow and flat and sure, and it traced me from the bottom to my clit and stopped there, circling.

"Cade," I said.

"I know."

"Don't stop."

"I'm not going anywhere," he said into me.

I got both hands into his hair.

I held on and rolled my hips up against his mouth, and he let me use him.

He sucked my clit between his lips and flicked it with his tongue.

A sharp bright heat gathered low in my belly and climbed.

His fingers found my entrance, and he slid one inside me, then two, thick and slow.

I was so wet that he groaned against me.

"God, Tilly. Listen to you."

"Harder."

He crooked his fingers and pressed up inside me in the place that made my back leave the bed.

I came with a shout.

It went through my thighs and my stomach in long waves.

His mouth never left me, and he gentled me through every one of them until I lay shaking on his sheets.

He rose up on his knees and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

I had never seen anything so filthy and so kind.

"Come here," I said.

"You first. Take your time."

"Take your pants off."

He stood and unbuckled his belt.

His jeans fell, and I saw how hard he was, and my mouth went dry.

He was long and thick and flushed dark, and the head was wet already.

I sat up and wrapped my hand around him.

My fingers did not close.

He hissed a breath through his teeth.

"I'm going to need you to go slow," I said, "and I'm going to need you to not."

He gave a rough, startled laugh.

"Tell me which one."

"Both."

He pushed me back on the bed with a hand on my breastbone, gently, and climbed over me.

I felt the whole heat of his body come down above me.

He was so much bigger than I was.

When he braced on his forearms I lay inside the cage of him, with his shoulders blocking the light.

I hooked my legs around his hips.

The head of his cock pressed against me, hot and blunt, and I tilted up to meet it.

"Too much?" he asked.

"Not nearly."

He pushed in.

It was slow, and it stretched me wide, and I felt every inch of it arrive.

I gripped his arms and shut my eyes and breathed.

"Look at me," he said.

I looked.

His face was fierce with holding back.

"More," I said, before he could ask. "I can take it. Give me all of it."

He sank the last of himself into me.

I felt him against the end of me, deep and full, and my breath left me in a long shaking sound.

"Oh my God."

"There you go," Cade said hoarsely. "There you are. You took all of it."

He held still, buried in me, and kissed my forehead and then my mouth.

I clenched around him.

His eyes shut.

"Don't do that," he said. "Not yet."

"I'll do whatever I want."

"I know you will."

He drew back and pushed in again, long and easy, and the pleasure of it spread through me from my toes up.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

He moved in me with a steady, rolling rhythm, and with each stroke his weight pressed me into the mattress.

I loved the weight of him.

"Harder," I said into his neck.

"You'll feel it tomorrow."

"I want to feel it tomorrow."

He braced a hand beside my head and gave me harder.

He hooked my knee over his elbow and opened me wider.

The next stroke went so deep that I lost the end of my sentence.

"Tell me," he said.

"There. Right there. Don't..."

He filled me and filled me, and I dug my heels into the backs of his thighs and begged for more.

The headboard thumped softly against the wall.

His cock dragged along the inside of me, and every time he bottomed out his pelvis ground against my clit.

I could feel myself climbing again.

He lifted me without leaving me.

He sat back on his heels with me in his lap, my legs wrapped around his waist and my arms around his neck.

His hands spanned my ass, and he raised me up the length of him and let me down.

"Ride me," he said.

I did.

I rose and fell on him, slowly at first, with my forehead against his and my breasts pressed to his chest.

His mouth found the place under my ear and sucked until it stung.

"Everyone is going to see that," I said.

"Good."

I rode him harder, and his hips met mine, and the old bed rocked under us.

He caught my mouth and kissed me deeply, and I tasted myself on his tongue.

"I want to feel you come first," he said into the kiss. "I want to feel it around me."

"Then hold me up."

He did, with both hands under my thighs.

The angle sent a bolt of pleasure so sharp that I cried out against his shoulder.

"There she is," he said. "Again."

He laid me back down on the sheets without letting go, and I wrapped my legs around him and pulled.

"Tell me," Cade said. "What does it feel like?"

"Full."

"Good."

"Wanted," I said, and my voice broke on it.

He stopped moving.

He looked down at me.

"Nobody has looked at me like that in two months," I said. "Kurt stopped touching me in August."

"I'm looking at you," Cade said. "I've been looking at you since July."

"Keep looking."

"Every day," he said. "Every day I get."

He slid one hand under my hips and tipped them up.

The new angle struck something deep inside me, and my whole body clenched.

"There," I gasped. "Don't change it."

"I won't."

He kept the angle and the rhythm, slow and heavy and sure.

I raked my nails down his back.

He groaned.

The pressure drew tighter and tighter until it was almost unbearable, and I heard myself saying his name over and over.

"Come for me," he said. "Come on my cock, Tilly."

I did.

I came with my head thrown back and my mouth open, pulsing around him, and he swore and followed, driving deep and holding there.

I felt him spill hot inside me, felt his whole big body shudder, and his forehead dropped onto my shoulder.

For a long time neither of us moved.

His weight lay on me, heavy and warm, and I had never felt safer under anything.

He rolled onto his side and pulled me against his chest, and my back fit inside the curve of him.

His arm lay across my ribs.

I could feel his heart slowing down against my spine.

"I should say something," he said into my hair.

"Don't."

"All right."

We slept.

I woke to gray light in the window and his phone buzzing on the nightstand.

Cade was already reaching for it.

He read the screen, and his arm went hard around my waist.

"It's one of your hands," he said. "Not one I know."

"What does he say?" I asked.

He read it aloud. "Doc, Miss Hilde changed the lock on the big house gate last night."

"She says nothing leaves this place without her say-so. Miss Tilly's mare is still in the barn."

I sat up.

My whole body ached in the best way, and it felt like mine again.

"Get the truck," I said.

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