A surge of hopefulness rose up inside me. My heart filled and I felt a sense of peace settle over me. Finally, I felt ready for the future.
A future with the woman I loved by my side.
Chapter 32
Shannon
Worry and anxiety about Jesse built up as I drove across the ranch. He was in such a bad place that even if he wasn’t going to admit it for himself, I was afraid of what that might lead to. A lot of boys came home suffering from the same demons in his mind now. It tormented them and changed who they were. They all had to find their way to live with it, and it wasn’t always for good. As much as the people around them wanted them to be able to put the horrors they went through behind them and continue on with the life they had ahead, it wasn’t that easy.
Some learned to drown the voices and dull the edges of the awful images they had in their heads with a constant stream of alcohol. Others resorted to self-medicating with whatever they could get their hands on. Others, they tried to do it on their own and ended up retreating into themselves and turning into violent, angry, unreachable empty shells of what they used to be.
The thought of Jesse going through any of that was unbearable. I already lost him so many years ago. Now that I had him back, I couldn’t let him slip through my fingers again. That would be even more painful. It was hard enough not having him in Green Valley, to have to keep going day by day knowing he left and I couldn’t see him. As much as it hurt to be away from him, it was easier to be able to live my life without him when I didn’t have to wonder if I was going to see him when I walked down Main Street or hear his brothers talking about him.
Now that he was back in Green Valley, now that he had come back into my life, the thought of him disappearing without being gone was too much for me to handle. If he couldn’t overcome this, he would be gone again, but I would still see him. I would have to deal with him being here and not, a constant reminder of what could have been. It was horrific both for me and for him. I couldn’t deal with that, and there was no way I was going to let it happen if there was anything I could do about it.
And that started with finding him. Fortunately, I still knew him like nobody else did. He was still Jesse, still the boy I loved and wanted to spend my life with. As soon as Clayton told me he had run off and they didn’t know where he was, I knew where to look for him. It was the place he always went when he needed some time.
I stopped my truck a few yards away from the creek and texted Clayton that I’d found him before I climbed out. Just like I expected, I saw Jesse lying in the grass, his face turned up to the sky. I stood there watching him for a moment, trying to gauge what he might be thinking and feeling. From the distance, he didn’t look upset or angry. There was no tension in his body. Instead, he looked relaxed and peaceful. There was an expression of contentment on his face that I hadn’t seen since he got back. It was different than the happiness he felt when we were out dancing or even the ease and relaxation when we lay in bed together. This was different. In a good way. But I still couldn’t help but be worried about him.
After a few moments, I walked across the grass and lay down beside him. He was close enough for me to feel the heat of his body, and my hand lightly brushed against his when my arm stretched out between us. He glanced my way just slightly, but neither of us said anything for a few minutes. We just lay there and breathed, existing in the same moment and the same space.
“How did you know I’d be here?” he finally asked.
Breath slid out of my lungs and a hint of a smile came to my lips. “I know you better than I know myself,” I told him.
We turned to look at each other.
“Fair,” he said with a smile.
We looked into each other’s eyes for a few seconds before I said anything else.
“Why did you come down here all by yourself? Your brothers are wondering where you are. They’re worried about you. I was worried about you, too.”
“I needed some time,” Jesse admitted. “A lot has been going on and I’m finding out things now that I never knew before. It’s changing how I see my whole life. My past and my future. I needed to take some time to be by myself and think about what I want and what I need. I just needed some space and time and quiet, and that’s what I always get here at the creek.”
“I know,” I told him. “That’s how I knew you’d be here. Anytime you’re going through anything and need to be alone with your own thoughts, this is where you come. I just wish you would let somebody know.”
The words started to form in my mouth, but I chose not to put voice to the exact worries I’d been feeling. Jesse already knew. He could sense the anxiety and tension, and probably had a far better idea what I was worried about than I could ever explain to him on my own.
He stared into my eyes and I could see those thoughts reflected back to me. I didn’t need to say any of them. Just like I said to him, he knew me better than I knew myself.
“I’m going to be okay, Shannon,” he reassured me. “I don’t want you to ever worry about me.”
“You don’t really get much of a choice in that, now do you?” I teased. “I’ve been worried about you since I was a teenager. It just only got worse when you left, and now that you’re back. It’s if I ever stop worrying about you that should be a problem.”
Jesse shook his head a bit. “I’m going to be okay,” he repeated. “I just needed to get my head on straight and force myself to make some fucking decisions for once in my life instead of running away. I’m too damn old to not face up to my life and actually figure out what I want to do and where I want to go in life. Running away isn’t going to work anymore.”
The words were powerful and settled deep into me. I knew how hard it would be for Jesse to admit something like that. He never wanted to actually say he ran away from everything. We’d never talked about it before our night together, but everything he ever said to his brothers and to the few people he talked to the last time he was in Green Valley was very clear on how he saw what he did. It wasn’t running away. He made a choice to leave. He claimed his own life for himself. He rejected what was being forced on him and took a different path. However he decided to word it, he was pushing away the reality of what he did.
Until now. He was finally ready to admit he ran from the life he had here and everything happening around him. It was a major admission, and knowing he was coming to terms with it gave me a boost of optimism. But I was cautious. Just knowing he ran away was only a step. He said he had to make decisions and that could lead to anything. Before I had any hope or felt like anything might be okay, I needed to know what that meant.
“Did you make any final decisions?” I asked. “Do you know what you want?”
“Yes,” he answered simply.
There was absolute confidence in his voice, a steadiness that came from being totally sure of himself and the choices he made. This wasn’t resignation or him accepting something just because he wanted to feel like he was making progress. He was rock steady and sure.
It made me nervous as hell. “And what is it you want?”
I wanted to drag out the moment, but I also needed it to be over. As soon as he told me what he decided, that would be it. And I might not be happy with it. What if it turned out he didn’t want me after all? What if the acceptance of the difficulty he was going through brought him to the conclusion he couldn’t move forward yet? What if he needed to focus on himself before he tried to bring anything or anybody else into it? What if he needed more time and space to sort through the trauma of war?
If that was the case, I would understand the need. The things he faced when he was overseas were unimaginable and I couldn’t expect for him to just be able to move ahead and not let them affect him. He might need the time to work through it and reevaluate everything.
But what if during that reevaluation he realized he was not that same boy who fell in love with a small-town girl all those years ago?
“I want you,” he said simply, m
aking my heart explode. “All I’ve ever wanted is you. If you’ll have me.”
Inching closer to him, I met his eyes. “I never let you go, Jesse.”
Our lips pressed against each other with a kiss of purpose rather than sweetness. I could feel his teeth behind his upper lip, and when his tongue pushed against my lips to part them, the pressure of the kiss only relented a little, and our tongues danced together hungrily, forcefully.
He pulled me to him and cradled me in one arm as he leaned us back. When I was fully on my back, he rolled over on top of me and ground his hips into mine. I could feel the thickness of his hardened cock through his jeans, but Jesse seemed in less of a hurry to get it out. I made a move to unbuckle his jeans and his fingers wrapped around my wrist and pulled them over my head.
“Not yet,” he muttered in a voice that was silky and dark, like chocolate.
I relented as my arms were pulled above me and lay in the grass just beyond the edge of the sand. The thin wisps of green tickled the back of my fingers and the sand of the short beach leading into the water sank its way into my arm. I would be covered by that sand soon enough, but that had never been a problem before. We always returned to the water and washed away the dirt and sand as our bodies wound around each other. The rock near the shoreline was the destination for so many of these moments, and it undoubtedly would be again, but something was different now. Jesse was in no rush to get us there. Instead, his lips trailed over my chin and his tongue slid across my neck to wet it and leave a trail down to my collarbone that he quickly covered with his lips again.
Jesse rocked his hips into me, and my core lit up. A white-hot fire burning for him starting in my center radiated out past my fingertips until I was sure I was melting into the sand.
His lips moved slowly down my neck and onto the bare skin between the buttons at the top of my shirt. His hands were around both my wrists still, pressing them down into the sand, and my bottom half writhed against him. I wanted him inside of me, to fill me and make me whole again, but his lips moved deliberately, purposefully teasing my skin to break into goosebumps and my nipples to harden against the soft cotton shirt.
I glanced down to see him pull at the buttons with his teeth one at a time, opening my shirt slowly. Leaning back to let my head rest on the mound of sand beneath it, I reveled in the touch of his lips to my torso, working their way down to the line of my jeans.
Jesse’s tongue ran a trail across my belly at the line where my jeans hugged my hips. My core cried out for him, and his name rolled off my lips as his hands slid down my arms and reached for the clasp on the front of my bra.
Chapter 33
Jesse
I was enjoying how much she writhed underneath my arms, wiggling as my tongue pleasured and tickled her in her most sensitive areas. I had not begun to pleasure her the way I wanted to yet, though, but that was going to come later. Much later if I had the willpower.
Making Shannon feel the entire weight of my crushing need for her, my devotion to her, and my knowledge of what I wanted from her was far more pressing than a quick fuck in the sand. She deserved to know that this time, I meant it for good. Not that any other time meant nothing, but there was always the knowledge that we were young, impulsive, and the future was well before us. There was so much time for things to change.
But not now.
Shannon needed to know that this time it was forever. Our bodies were meant for one another, and I planned on proving it, inch by inch, kiss by kiss, touch by touch. Until she knew there was no other woman on this planet that I felt this way for, no other woman I could touch as deeply as her.
As her breasts fell out of the bra that held them in, I moved my lips back up her tight stomach to them, burying my face between them and pushing them against me. The smell of the sweat on her skin was intoxicating and I licked her between her pillowy breasts before tracing my tongue along to one nipple.
I took it into my lips hungrily, letting as much of it fill the inside of my mouth as I could, and my tongue flicked around and then over her taut, perky nipple. I clamped one hand over the other and massaged the nipple with my palm while I sucked on the other. A sound somewhere between a deep inhale and a cry escaped her lips and I grinned as I slid my tongue across to the other.
She turned into my mouth, pushing her breasts together, and I eagerly took it into my mouth as well, letting my lips trace over it before wetting it with my tongue. I let my thumb find the now wet other nipple and I played with it, massaging it and pressing it so it rose out into the dark, humid night.
Shannon’s back arched and her hands came down to wrap around my head, pulling me into her breasts. Her fingers filled with my hair, and I nearly yanked her pants off and pounded her into the sand right then, but I held myself back. It would be better to take my time. Instead, I let myself sit back, and a whimpering sound rose up from Shannon. It ended abruptly when I reached down to grab the hem of my shirt and pull it over my head. Years of hard work, both on the ranch and in the desert, had honed my body into a muscular machine, and I knew it had an effect on her. Her fingers immediately reached for me, tracing down the stark ridges of my abdomen and down the trail between my belly and my cock.
Before she could get her hands inside my jeans, I grabbed both her wrists and pulled them back above her again. She giggled and cooed at me as I pressed down into her, letting her feel the thickness of my erection hidden away behind my jeans. When I felt she wouldn’t move her hands again, at least for a few moments, I went back to work kissing down her body. When I reached her belly, one hand slid up to unbutton her jeans, and when they were undone, I pulled them slowly off of her. I could see in her expression she wanted to kick them away, but she didn’t, letting me control our pace and following my silent instructions. When they were tossed away, I leaned back down again, pressing my lips into hers and letting her adjust to the weight of me on top of her.
I rocked into her, noting the thin cotton panties were damp from her excitement and knowing she could feel more of me through them because of their thinness. She moaned loudly, and her legs tensed as her knees clamped around me. I longed to be inside her, to feel her warmth wrapped around my cock, to slide in and out of her, to bring myself to a throbbing climax that would meld our souls together. But first, I wanted to show her how much I exalted her. How much I treasured her body. How much I worshiped her.
Kissing down her neck again, I made my way to her stomach and licked along the line of her panties before peeling them away. The thin, wispy hair of her mound was wet with anticipation, and I breathed in her musk, a sense so familiar and so calming and so pure that it ignited a desire even deeper in my body to bring us both to an orgasm neither of us would forget.
I leaned down as her panties fell away by her hips, and I let my lips gently brush her thigh. She curled into the touch and raised her hips toward me, but her arms stayed on the sand. I smiled.
Flicking my tongue out, I lapped up the juices of her longing, making my way for the pearl in her center, and she cried out loudly. Aside from me, only the bugs, the water, and the sky heard her. I pressed into her with my tongue, and she wiggled under me, enough that I grabbed her by the hips to hold her in place. She picked up her feet and planted them on either side of my head, squeezing her knees together and compressing me between her thighs. I thought to myself briefly that there may not be a better place on earth than there.
My tongue slid through her folds, brushing her clit from every angle and bringing it out from its hood. I pressed my middle finger into her opening and she shouted out in pleasure. I slid the pad to the roof of her pussy and let it linger there, filling her as I increased the speed of my tongue. Shannon bucked against me, but my other arm, now draped over her belly and holding on to her other hip, held her down. It didn’t take long before she was shaking, her body violently pressing against me as she came, a climax completely taking over her body and releasing it from control. In that moment, she was wild, she was free, and she was
uncontained except by me as I held her in place and overwhelmed her with sensation.
As the shakes reached their peak and my name tumbled off her lips, I rose up, unzipping my jeans and shoving them down to my knees. Her legs bounced open and closed and I pulled her by her thighs to me, then folded her up as I leaned over her. I rammed my cock into her tight, wet, pulsing pussy, and her mouth opened as if to scream in ecstasy. But no sound came out, as if her brain disconnected the ability to make it. I held myself there, reveling in her body pulsing around me, the tight walls of her pussy squeezing my cock as I settled deep inside her.
Then I leaned my hips back and pressed forward again, hard. This time, I was even deeper in her than before, and sound returned, a whimpering cry of a woman overwhelmed by sensation. I knew that sound. She had made it before for me, but perhaps not as loudly, not as fully as now. I reached above her and held her wrists down into the sand again, her legs draped over my shoulders and her body curled underneath me. Her eyes, which had been clenched shut, opened and met with mine. There was wonder in that look, a surprise at how different it was this time. Not completely but different enough. It was fuller, as if all the other times were practice for this moment. This was real. Nothing else in the world was as real as this.
With her hands above her, my fingers slipped inside hers and she clenched down into them. I leaned in to press my lips into hers and I rocked into her again. It began a rhythm, and soon, it was constant, slow, methodical, and relaxed. It wasn’t rushed or hurried, but it was forceful and insistent. She needed to know I was in control, not just of her or this act but myself. I was in control of myself now, and it was manifesting in this act.
His Reckless Heart (The Montgomery Boys Book 1) Page 19
