The Cowboy's Convenient Wife

by Joanna Bell

  Astrid looked doubtful. "Am I? Because I left? How does that work?"

  "Not because you left," I told her. "Because I knew you at all. Even when I thought you were gone I think I just wanted to be the man you wanted me to be – or the man you once thought I was. There was no plan to win you back or impress you or anything like that. I just wanted to like myself the way you liked me. I wanted to be that guy, you know? Wanted to be the guy Astrid Walker could love – even if I never saw you again."

  "Oh my God, Cillian. Oh my God."

  "What?"

  Astrid shook her head, laughing. "Please stop saying things like that. Please. Please stop being so perfect. I have plans, you know. Real plans – for my life. I even went back to school!"

  "Did you?"

  "Yes! I did! And I can't just drop it all to move back to Sweetgrass Ridge and spent the rest of my life swooning at your feet!"

  "I don't know," I grinned. "That sounds like a decent plan to me."

  She turned her face up to me and for a few seconds we just gazed at each other. I ran the backs of my fingers over her warm, soft cheek, still only half convinced she was real.

  I felt as if I wanted to speak. As if I was full of things I still wanted to say. She looked the same way. But the time for words was past, suddenly, and we both knew it. She tilted her face up to me when I bent down to kiss her mouth. And then I did kiss her mouth and we fell into each other with all the force of fate itself.

  Chapter 41: Astrid

  Wrapping my body around Cillian's always feels so natural. Like my arms and legs were built for that one very specific action and no others. Like my neck was made to tilt to the side at the exact angle necessary to allow my face to rest in the crook of his shoulder. Like my mouth was crafted for his kisses alone.

  I meant what I said to him about plans. I had them. And I didn't have any intention of dropping them. But there's no turning away from that man. Not then and – for me? Not ever again. I belong to Cillian Devlin, and there is exactly nothing I can do about it.

  He picked me up and carried me silently into the guest bedroom. The satisfaction – the pure relief of feeling his warm, solid body between my legs as I straddled him – was so intense it was almost tangible. He reached down, pushing his hands under the hem of my skirt, running them up over my calves and then my thighs, all the way up to my ass as I drew in a deep, open-mouthed breath at the feeling of his obvious arousal between my legs.

  We were both fully clothed. Not for long. I've never been one for strip-teases (too embarrassing) or making a display of my body. But something about being with Cillian, something about the way he looks at me when he wants me is freeing. I slipped my cardigan off my shoulders and tossed it onto the floor as he ran his hands all over my body, everywhere. After the cardigan, I started unbuttoning my blouse, one button at a time, working my way down as the sweet tension between us built.

  "You're beautiful," he breathed, reaching up and laying one hand flat against my upper chest, curling his fingers up around my neck. "Jesus, you are so beautiful."

  I felt beautiful with Cillian. His desire made me beautiful. When he pulled my bra down over my breasts and took them in his hands I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, luxuriating in how cool and rough his skin felt against my warm, bare flesh.

  "No," I said, smiling, pulling him against me even as I protested his sitting up. "No, lie down. You're hurt. You shouldn't be –"

  My voice broke off there, though, dissolving into a small, desperate cry as he opened his mouth and pushed his tongue over one of my nipples.

  The bloom of warmth between my thighs grew and intensified as Cillian paid his careful, thorough attentions to my breasts, gently circling the other nipple with his fingertip until I was aching, arching my body forward, rocking my hips down against him.

  "You like that, huh?" He asked, gazing up at me as he kissed his way from one breast to the other, finally sucking the nipple that was burning for a harder touch into his mouth.

  "Yeah," I whispered, cradling his head against me. "Yeah. Yeah..."

  The photos of Cillian with the other women were old. They depicted interactions that happened before he even met me. I was wrong – and I was relieved to be wrong. And out of that relief came an urge only Cillian has ever been able to draw out of me before. That night, it came over me with the force of a riptide, dragging me into the depths I'd always naturally avoided. It was the weakness that comes into my limbs whenever I'm next to him. It was the breathless feeling in my chest, the way I enjoy him looking at my bare breasts. It's not just wanting to indulge him – although it is that – it's wanting to be consumed by him.

  I was topless, but I still had my skirt and my panties on. Cillian drew the skirt up around my waist, bunching the heavy fabric behind me to get it out of the way and grasping my hips, helping me move against him. We kissed as we rocked our bodies together. Deep, hungry kisses, the kind that open me more thoroughly than a key opens a lock.

  "Jesus, you're fucking soaking," he whispered, pushing his hands down over the bulge in his jeans. "You're getting my jeans wet."

  He tried to lift me off him then. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to flip me over on my back, yank those soaking panties off me and fuck me until I couldn't breathe. I wanted that, too. But I wanted it a little differently. Like I said, I wanted to indulge him. And I didn't want to cause his bruised, battered body any more pain.

  "Wait," I panted, as his fingers dug into my hips. "Cillian – wait."

  I moved back a little so I could get to his belt, which I began to undo. I should have taken more time to admire his cock in all its rigid, generous glory. I should have spent more time staring at it, taking it in. But I couldn't do any of those things because all I could think when I finally pulled it free, was that I had to have it inside me – all the way inside me – as soon as possible.

  I didn't even take off my panties. There was no time. I was so ready, so absolutely primed to take him that all I did was reach down between my legs, pull my panties aside, and hold him against me.

  I forced myself to keep my eyes open, to look at him as he lifted his hips up off the bed and opened me up, sliding in, grabbing my ass and pulling me down the rest of the way until he was as far inside me as he could go. His mouth fell open as he groaned my name through tightly-clenched teeth.

  The plan was to watch Cillian. To study his pleasure, to drink it in until I was drunk, incoherent. The plan didn't last long. He was too much. He felt too good inside me, almost making me shudder each time he pulled out, and then sigh from pure bliss as he thrust back in. And oh God the feeling of being filled by him, of being full of him, opened as far as it's possible to be opened, given everything I needed, everything I missed.

  There was a sheen of sweat on my forehead almost right away as I moved my hips with his, a little faster than I wanted to – because what I wanted was to take it slower, to draw it out, to enjoy it for a little longer.

  "Oh..." I moaned as the feeling of him at the deepest point inside me started to become, at the same time as it made me feel like a glutton gorging on him, somehow not quite enough. I needed more. More of him – and faster than I was getting it.

  I leaned forward, then, and put my palms flat on the bed on either side of his shoulders.

  "Yeah," he said, kissing my mouth as he spoke. "Yes, Astrid. Make yourself come, baby. I want to feel you come. I want to feel your little pussy coming around me."

  Cillian played with my nipples as I worked my hips quicker, teasing them with the tips of his fingers as the muscles in my thighs tightened.

  "Fuck, Astrid. Fuuuck."

  I straightened up again when I came, the way someone might brace for the impact of a wave. I straightened up and leaned my head back and let it wash over me. I knew there were people sleeping not far from the room where we were, so I bit my lip – hard enough to make the bottom one bleed a little – and just tried to keep my cries in my throat:

  "Mmm! Mm! Mmm!"


  "Oh God..."

  Cillian was there, too. His breath ragged, his voice strangled.

  "Oh God, Astrid..."

  "Shhh," I whispered, smiling, leaning back down so I could kiss him while he came. "Shhh –"

  "Oh Jesus," he moaned, his forehead creased with the effort it was taking to keep quiet. "Oh fuck, Astrid. Oh FUCK."

  I put my hands over his hands where they were grasping my hips as he came. I felt that last desperate, exquisite thrust before he let go and then settled my hips down, taking him, taking every last drop of him until his fingers loosened and his forehead relaxed and I knew he was completely satisfied.

  ***

  He fell asleep almost immediately. I could have done the same but instead I stayed awake, lying on my side next to Cillian, studying him. The bruises on his forearms were beginning to fade, the skin mottled with pale purple splotches. The wound on the side of his face was healing too, the swelling barely noticeable by then. But he was still bloodied and beaten.

  I thought then, lying next to his sleeping son, that I hated Jack Devlin. Really hated him, with an intensity that almost scared me. I don't think I ever hated anybody until I met him, until I understood what he was capable of. His actions went against everything I thought I knew about family, and about parents and children. I felt very protective of Cillian that night, as he slept next to me. He was at the peak of his youthful vitality, well over 6 feet of muscled limbs and brute strength, but somehow he seemed almost fragile, weirdly innocent. He trusted his dad. Even after everything Jack Devlin did to Jackson, Cillian still trusted him enough not to do the same to him.

  Because that's how it is with parents and children, isn't it? Children are born trusting and it takes so much more to break that trust than anyone thinks.

  It was broken by then, though, and I found myself filled with a fierce protective spirit, a cold determination to make sure Jack Devlin never got another chance to inflict any more pain on his second son.

  I knew what that determination meant, too.

  How can you protect someone if you're not with them?

  I meant what I said about having plans. I still had them. But, lying next to Cillian in that bed, I knew I couldn't leave. Not that I had the choice and chose to stay but that I couldn't leave him. Not after everything he'd gone through. Not after all the work he'd done.

  And ultimately, of course, the reason I couldn't leave Cillian Devlin again was because I couldn't live without him.

  So what the hell was I going to do?

  Chapter 42: Astrid

  There was a feeling in Jackson and Hailey's house in those days after Cillian was hurt. It was an unspoken coming-together, an act of loving solidarity, a manifestation of forgiveness. I felt it. I know Cillian did, too. The tension was gone from his shoulders as he relaxed into the bosom of his family – and back into me. He was a man who spent his whole life facing the world as if for a fight: squared up, eyes-narrowed, just waiting for the inevitable blows.

  "He's different," I said one evening, sitting out on the patio with Uncle Dave while Cillian slept and Jackson and Hailey and Brody ran errands in town. "I think he was already different when I saw him in LA. But I can see it now. I mean I can physically see it, even in the way he stands."

  "Uh-huh," Dave replied, nodding. "I reckon you're right. All the bullshit's draining out of him. That's you, you know. That's you that did that."

  "I don't know. Maybe I helped. But no one can force anyone to change. If he's different it's ultimately because he chose it."

  "You're a smart one, aren't ya?" Cillian's uncle said, and I wasn't sure if it was more of a question or more of an observation.

  "I don't know about that," I replied. "Maybe in some ways – but only some!"

  "Cillian reckons you're a goddamned genius," he continued. "Says you're working on your Masters degree and everything. Says you're gonna save the world."

  "Yeah, I definitely don't know about that. I don't – I mean the truth is I don't even know if I'm going to finish. I want to, though. I really want to."

  "What's keepin' you? You worried about that man of yours?"

  I liked the way Uncle Dave referred to Cillian as "that man of yours." It probably hadn't gone unnoticed that I'd spent the last few nights at Jackson and Hailey's, but sometimes it's just nice to have things openly acknowledged by other people. To know that they see the truth the same way you see it.

  "Yeah," I replied, turning to look at him. "Yeah I guess I am."

  "You don't have to worry about him, little lady."

  Little lady. If anyone in Miami ever called me 'little lady' they would have found themselves on the receiving end of the biggest side-eye in history. But Uncle Dave? It was fine. It was more than fine. It just meant I was already starting to become one of them, already shifting into place as the latest member of the patch-worked little family they were all building for themselves in the pine-dotted foothills outside Sweetgrass Ridge, Montana.

  "If you need to finish your studies, you should go right ahead and do that. We got Cillian's back. Ain't no harm gonna come to him with all of us here."

  "You're Jack's brother, right?" I asked. "His younger brother?"

  "Sure am."

  "You don't seem like him at all."

  "That's only through trying," came the reply. "I used to be just like Cillian. Just another angry second son with a chip on his shoulder."

  "What happened?" I asked.

  Uncle Dave drew in a slow, deep breath and looked out towards the mountains. "A woman," he replied quietly. "A good woman, a lot of hard work, a lot of failure, and then a lot of straight refusin' to let life beat me down. Same stuff that got Jackson's head on straight. Same stuff that's getting Cillian's head on straight."

  "It's so crazy," I said, going with the flow of the contemplative, meandering conversation. "What Jack – what Cillian's dad – did. Why did he even have those photos taken – did Cillian tell you about them?"

  "He did."

  "Some of them are 5 years old!" I exclaimed. "Why would anyone do that – I don't mean like why would someone blackmail another person, I get that – I just mean why would he have them taken in the first place?"

  "Five years ago was just after he lost Jackson," Dave replied. "And old Jack is a control freak. He lost his first son and he probably went a little batshit crazy trying to make sure he held onto the second one. I reckon those photos were an insurance policy of sorts. Something he could file away in case he ever needed to make sure his second son didn't leave him just like the first one did."

  "And it almost worked," I said, shaking my head. "If I hadn't looked at those photos again it would have worked. I never would have seen Cillian again!"

  Cillian's uncle reached for the beer sitting on the table in front of him and took a small sip. "But you did look again," he said gently. "And here you are with Cillian again. No use torturing yourself over the what-ifs, girl. What you gotta do now is deal with what is – not what could have been."

  "But even if I do go back," I replied, taking his comment to heart. "What would be the point? If I can't use my degree why would I even –"

  "Who says you can't use it?"

  "Uh –" I started, surprised to be asked such a direct question – and then equally surprised by my own lack of a ready answer. "I, um – well I don't know, exactly."

  "Cillian says you want to help people. Says you spent months in South America building a clinic for pregnant women. That true?"

  "Yes. I mean, I helped other people build the clinic. I was part of a team."

  "And you liked that, did you?"

  I turned to face Dave Devlin. "Yes," I said plainly. "I did. It was the first time I ever did anything that mattered – to others, I mean. The first time I ever did anything important."

  The conversation briefly died away as we took in the view. I wondered if Cillian was awake inside the house, if he was hungry. Jackson and Hailey were picking up groceries in town, but I thought maybe I co
uld whip up some sandwiches or something before they got back. I also had to call my advisor, to let her know I wouldn't be back when I said I would, that I was staying in Montana for a few more days than initially planned.

  "I reckon there's people that need help everywhere."

  "Hmm?" I asked, distracted.

  "I reckon there's people that need help everywhere," Dave repeated. "If what you want to do is help people, that sounds to me like just about the most universal work there is.

  I opened my mouth to speak. To tell him about my mother's organization and specifically about the clinic in Peru and what was being done there and the ways in which I thought I could streamline the operation, make sure more of the money from donors got put towards the actual on-the-ground projects rather than the various marketing and promotional activities I was beginning to think could partly be done without.

  But I realized, in the second before I launched into that particular speech, that it didn't make anything Dave was saying wrong. Because he wasn't wrong. He was in fact 100% right. There are people who need help everywhere.

  "You're saying I could use my degree anywhere?" I asked.

  "That's exactly what I'm saying," he replied. "Cillian says you're studying charity work, charity management, is that right? How to run them better, how to organize them so more people get helped?"

  "Uh-huh, that's pretty much it."

  "Well then it's like I said – there's people that need help everywhere. And there's organizations trying to help them everywhere. Even here in Sweetgrass Ridge, we got lots of good people here working to help the less fortunate. Some of them even helped me when I went through some rough times."

  I'm not sure why Cillian insists on telling everyone what a genius I am. I'm an idiot. Why didn't I think of what Uncle Dave was telling me? I knew it was true. I knew that even in small towns in rich countries it was true. No matter where you are there are always people who need help and support.