The Cowboy's Convenient Wife

by Joanna Bell

  "Are you suggesting I finish my degree and do my work here?" I asked, thinking of the clinic in Peru and all the people I met there, all my friends, all the women and men and babies we saw come through our doors. "In Sweetgrass Ridge?"

  "That's exactly what I'm suggesting. Now don't get me wrong, I don't know anything about what you do. But I know that man in there loves you. Not sure he's said the words yet but it's all over him, a blind man could see it. He loves you and he needs you. And you know what?"

  "What?"

  "I reckon you love him, too. I reckon you need him, too. That right?"

  I swallowed hard, and when I replied my voice was so quiet I could barely hear it myself: "Yes. Yes, I do."

  Chapter 43: Cillian – A Few Months Later...

  I found Hailey in her studio on a snowy day in October, exactly where Jackson said she would be.

  "Hey," she said, looking up from the sink where she was washing her hands. "What's up, Cillian?"

  "You got a minute?" I asked, my body taut with nerves – Jesus, if I was nervous just talking to my sister-in-law about it what the hell was I going to do when the time actually came to do it? Fucking faint? "I just, uh – I just want to run something by you. Thought a woman might know."

  Hailey chuckled as she reached for a towel to dry her hands and turned towards me. "Well I don't know about that, I was never the girliest girl but I can try. Sit down, just let me put this clay away before it dries out."

  I went to sit down and then saw the size of the lump of clay she was about to pick up and sprang back up before my ass even touched the chair. "Jesus!" I exclaimed. "Let me do that!"

  My brother's wife, 5 months pregnant with my newest niece or nephew, rolled her eyes and stepped away from her work table. "Fine," she said. "Go ahead. You're almost as bad as Jackson – he didn't want me lifting a full carton of orange juice the other day."

  "Perfectly understandable," I told her, hoisting the clay into a plastic bucket and securing the lid tightly. "Better safe than sorry."

  My sister-in-law eyed me. "Cillian. It was a carton of juice."

  I shrugged. "Like I said – better safe than sorry."

  Hailey rolled her eyes but she was smiling the whole time. You didn't have to ask if she felt secure in her husband's love, or if she believed her marriage was a good decision. You could see it in her. There was a contentment there, almost a kind of bravery. It was the kind of bravery that comes only from knowing that there is someone who has your back, from knowing that if you screw up or you get sick or you make a mistake, there is a person who is on your side, who will do even more than you yourself would to make things right and good for you. I saw it in my brother too, the fearlessness not of reckless youth but of secure, confident adulthood.

  Astrid was out east on the day I spoke to Hailey. She decided she wanted to finish her Master's degree, and that when she was finished, wherever she – wherever we – ended up, she would put it to use. She flew back to Montana – or Miami to see her parents and friends – once, sometimes twice a month.

  It wasn't enough, but Hailey wasn't wrong when she compared me to Jackson. One of the reasons I knew I truly loved Astrid – rather than just loving how she cared for me, or how she made me feel – was the reflexive, almost compulsive protectiveness that sprang up in my heart when it came to her. She would have flown out to see me every weekend if I let her – but I didn't. We tried it at first, until I saw the dark circles beginning to form under her eyes and took the stressed-out, at-times tearful late night phone calls as she struggled with her overburdened schedule. In the end, I insisted that she cut back on the visits. She argued with me but I wouldn't have it, even though it meant going without her for longer stretches of time than I would have liked.

  It all reminded me of Hailey and Jackson. They cared for each other that way, quietly and without fanfare but also completely and unfailingly. I could feel Astrid and I getting there.

  That's why I went to see Hailey.

  "So what is it?" She asked when all the art supplies had been put away and we were both seated at one of the work tables in her studio. "You've got a weird look in your eye."

  "Do I?"

  Hailey laughed. "Yeah, you do. You got some secret plan or something?"

  "Actually," I replied, "I do. That's why I'm here. I need to ask you about something."

  "Shoot."

  "I need to ask you about rings – about a ring, I mean."

  "About a –" Hailey started, and then broke into a huge grin when she understood what I was asking. "Oh Cillian – really?"

  "Yup," I nodded. "Really. I don't have a goddamned clue about stuff like this – and you know Astrid is from a rich family. She'll know it if I buy her a crappy –"

  But my sister in law was maneuvering her pregnant body out of her chair, coming to hug me and kiss my cheek.

  "Congratulations," she said, grabbing the shoulders of my t-shirt and giving me a little shake. "I mean it. I was just talking to Jackson about this the other day."

  "Oh were you?"

  "Damn straight I was – just wondering when you were going to put a ring on it."

  "Well," I replied. "Soon, I hope. And maybe you should hold your congratulations until I get an actual yes."

  Hailey gave me a look like I was insane to think there could be any outcome other than a yes but I wasn't about to count any chickens. And then we spent at least an hour talking about things I had never thought about – let alone talked about – before. Gemstones and carats and white gold and yellow gold and not-gold and ring sizes and damn.

  "Right," Hailey said at one point when I reminded her again of the kind of serious wealth Astrid came from. "But that's what I'm saying. She's probably the last girl on earth who needs a gigantic rock on her finger – if that's what she wanted she could already have bought herself a million of them."

  "Yeah," I replied, thinking. "Yeah. You're right about that. Good. And now that I think about it, she's not really the type anyway. She's not like Darcy – she's not showy. She doesn't need a big showpiece to impress her friends."

  "Sounds to me like you're pretty free to go in any direction."

  "That doesn't help," I replied, laughing.

  "You don't even have to go with a diamond. Astrid doesn't necessarily seem like a diamond girl to me."

  "She doesn't?"

  "No," Hailey replied, tilting her head to the side as she considered my possible future wife's gemstone-affiliated character traits. "No, she doesn't. You've seen my ring, right?" She held out her left hand, palm down. "The blue stones are Montana sapphires, only mined a few miles from here. Jackson used them specifically, to represent our home."

  "Oh Jesus," I sighed, realizing the task I had ahead of me. "Montana sapphires? Jackson thought of that?"

  "He did. Your brother is more thoughtful than you think – he just doesn't want anyone else to know it."

  It was October. We – Astrid and myself and Hailey and Jackson and Uncle Dave and various friends – had a huge Christmas get-together planned for that year, and I wanted to ask Astrid to marry me sometime around then.

  That gave me just over 2 months to find a ring that was worthy of her. It felt like an impossible task.

  "Don't worry," Hailey reassured me as we walked back to the house. "You'll figure it out."

  ***

  I finally had the ring in my pocket on December 19th, when I went to pick Astrid up at the Billings airport. It was still in my pocket when we got back to my condo. It was still there that evening, when we went to Henrietta's for dinner after spending the afternoon getting our fill of each other. I had to pick the right moment. How would I know the right moment was upon me? I didn't know. I just hoped I would.

  "What's gotten into you?" Astrid asked as we drove home after dinner. "You're acting strange."

  "Am I?" I asked, surprised but also not surprised that she'd noticed – Astrid is better than I am at knowing something is up with me. "Why do you, uh – why do you say that
?"

  She turned to peer at me for a few seconds. "I don't know. There's just some weird energy around you. Or maybe I'm just sleep-deprived?"

  "Yeah," I said, reaching over and squeezing her thigh. "Probably sleep deprivation."

  She put her hand on mine, holding it where it was, and that simple gesture alone was enough to cause a stirring below my belt. All afternoon in bed and I was ready to go again. I don't know how she does it. At a red light I turned to look at her and she gazed right back at me, her dark eyes burning.

  As soon as my apartment door closed behind us I pulled Astrid into my arms, pushing my hand up the back of her neck, cradling her head as I bent down to kiss her mouth.

  "Damn Cillian," she breathed when we paused to catch our breath. "I thought you were going to be out of commission for at least a week after this afternoon."

  Long-distance relationships are mostly bad. But they are not without their compensations, one of which is the kind of sex that occurs when two people who would normally be spending a decent portion of every single day making love are deprived of each other for weeks on end. We got back from the Billings airport just after 11 in the morning. We went to Henrietta's just after 7 in the evening. Every moment in between we spent together, naked and desperate, quelling our thirst.

  And then, after only a couple of hours, our throats were dry again.

  "I missed you," I whispered into Astrid's warm neck. "I missed you, baby."

  She nestled her face into my chest – her whole body into mine, and took in a deep breath, as if trying to breathe me in. "Me too. Me too, me too."

  When she was laid out on her back in front of me and I was standing at the foot of the bed, looking down at her, she reached her arms out.

  "Cillian!"

  "Not yet," I grinned, bending down to pull one of her socks off and then discovering it wasn't a sock and pushing her heavy tweed skirt up.

  No, that was not a sock I tried to pull off. It was a stocking, thin and soft and stopping somewhere in the range of Astrid's creamy upper thigh, where a garter made of black silk held it up.

  "Oh Jesus," I whispered as a pulse of tingling pleasure surged through my cock at the mere sight of those stockings. "Oh Jesus. Did you wear those for me?"

  "Of course I did," my girl replied, reaching down to push her fingers into my hair. "You said you liked stockings so I –"

  I bent down, then, and kissed one of her inner thighs, just above where the stocking ended.

  "So I –" she continued, distracted. "I – I bought them from – um. They're vin–, uh, they're vintage."

  Nothing is better than that girl when she is struggling to maintain control. Nothing makes my balls ache harder than that exquisite note of breathless helplessness in her voice, the way she cannot keep how much she needs me secret.

  "Vintage, huh?" I asked, laying one hand flat on her lower belly so the heel was poised in just the right place. She lifted her hips immediately, reflexively, pushing herself against me. "That means old, right?"

  "Yes!" She squeaked, rolling her torso to one side and back again, pulling my hair and then throwing her hands back on the pillow. "Yes, Cillian, it means – it means old!"

  The panties looked old, too. Or maybe not old, maybe just different. Astrid Walker is a white cotton panties kind of girl. Which means that I – from the very first second I ever laid eyes on her white cotton panties – am a white cotton panties kind of guy. But that night she was wearing something different. The fabric was black like the garter and the cut was different, the waistline much lower than usual – low enough to reveal Astrid's hipbones rising up like gorgeous little mountains on either side of her belly. I lowered my head and kissed her through the smooth fabric, realizing at once that it was soaked through.

  Sometimes I like to make her wait, to torture her, to make her beg. Sometimes not.

  I hooked the forefinger of my right hand under the crotch of those black silk panties and pulled them aside as Astrid squirmed. For a moment I just looked at her, breathed her in. And then I slipped my hands under her ass, lifted her lower body towards me, and buried my face in her sweetness.

  The first time didn't take long. She was ready. Like I said – all afternoon and we were both still so ready. I slid my tongue up and down, over and under and then beside, just beside. She likes it beside. And I kept doing that until she stiffened and gasped and yanked my hair so hard I think I lost a good, solid handful.

  I like being there when Astrid comes. Not just being there but being there, right down there between her trembling thighs so I can feel her every twitch and clench against my tongue.

  "Ohhh," she breathed that time, when the frenzy was passed and she was melting into the bed. "Oh my God. Cillian, oh my –"

  But I wasn't even close to finished with her.

  Astrid Walker changed me, I've established that. She even changed the way I fuck. Fucking used to be nothing but a rush for me, a hurry. I had some idea that it could take women more time than men so I did develop the ability to hold myself off if necessary. But that's all it was – just a holding off, an eating of my broccoli before indulging in my steak. The objective was always the steak.

  With Astrid it all became steak. With her I discovered the indulgent luxury of stretching things out, of waiting not as an exercise in patience but an exercise in exploration, a discovery of all the quirks and fancies and secret places of her body.

  And I knew her body, by the time we spent almost that entire day in bed, like I knew the back of my own hand. I undressed her slowly. I took every last scrap of clothing off her body – because it was in my way – and tossed it aside. And then I dipped my head once more, before the aftershocks from her first orgasm were entirely out her.

  I knew not to go right back to where I had been. She would be too sensitive for a few minutes, I had to wait.

  So I went lower. I slid my tongue right into her snug folds, closing my eyes and setting my jaw at the thought of how it was going to feel to slide into her there.

  I followed my tongue with a finger, and then a second, and then she was ready again, reaching down, trying to pull me up so I could give her what she really wanted. I dragged my lips up once more, up to her clit, and gently lowered them over it, flicking my tongue back and forth, just barely making contact.

  "Mmm," Astrid moaned, thrusting her hips up. "Mmmm... MMM..."

  After she came the second time I sat up to admire the results of my work. Her cheeks were flushed pink, her forehead shiny, her eyes glazed and unfocused. Yes. Yes. Just seeing her like that, so sweetly, completely outside of herself, made my cock throb.

  I bent down again, holding her soft thighs against my cheeks, kissing her everywhere, teasing her every wet, swollen fold with the tip of my tongue.

  "Cillian," she sighed, when I started to bring her up again. "Cillian. Please... Cillian... I need –"

  I ignored her pleas, using my thumbs to spread her sex open and slide my tongue up against her sensitive nub once, and then – slowly – twice and then three times and so on until she was almost convulsing, crying my name out loud with no thought to the neighbors, jerking her hips up over and over in a frantic rhythm.

  After the third orgasm, Astrid Walker was completely undone. Her breath came in deep, quick gasps and she didn't even have the wherewithal to lift her hand up to brush the strands of sweat-soaked hair off her forehead. I reached down and did it for her.

  "You're beautiful," I told her, adjusting my by-then painfully engorged cock in my jeans. "Jesus, you are so beautiful."

  She was. Also damp and out of breath and torn off her own moorings, floating but safe – because I was with her – in a deep, dark ocean.

  Our eyes met as I knelt between her thighs and we stared at each other as the seconds ticked past.

  "What's going to happen now?" She asked, nestling her cheek into my palm as I reached down to caress her face.

  But I didn't have to tell Astrid what was going to happen then, because she alread
y knew. We both knew. I think even the mountains in the distance knew. Her legs fell open again – her whole body fell open – as I pulled off my t-shirt and then unbuckled my belt and yanked it out of the loops in one smooth motion. Her back arched up off the bed as I unzipped my jeans.

  "Oh God," she murmured when I pulled my entire length out. "Oh my God, Cillian."

  My eyelids fluttered shut and a low groan escaped my throat when I nudged just the tip of myself between her lips. There's something that happens when Astrid is very, very ready for me. It's even more pronounced when she's ready and I've already made her come 3 times. Her entire sex becomes as swollen as a flower in full bloom, tight and slick and perfect. I held myself against the entrance to that heaven for a few seconds, kissing her, slipping my tongue into her mouth, compelled to fill every part of her with myself.

  And then I thrust down, sinking in inch by inch as the air came out of my lungs in a series of strangled moans and the pleasure built up at the very base of my cock, ready to explode at the slightest twitch.

  Astrid wrapped her arms around my neck and held me against her so her breasts and her stiff nipples slid against my bare chest.

  "Is this what you want?" I asked, trailing my kisses across her cheek and down her neck, pushing a thumb into her mouth. "Is this what you –"

  "Yes," she whispered, spreading her legs even wider as my thrusts got harder and more frenzied. "Yes, Cillian. Yes. Yessss –"

  I got her there again – not that it took too much, as high and open as she was that night. I got her right to the edge and then I let go, too. It didn't happen right away, I held back so hard and so long that the pleasure just kept building for a few seconds as I plunged into her slippery warmth again and again. It was there, though, searing its way up my cock to the head, sending my eyes rolling back in my head as the dam finally, blissfully began to break.

  Astrid drew it out of me. Her sex did to me what I had just done to her, lifting me up into a place where there was no room for anything – no thought, no consciousness – nothing but the pure physical gratification of overflowing, of pulsing inside her, spilling myself into her.