by Brooke May
“Are you okay?” he whispers, kissing me briefly before I am able to reply.
But I can only nod my head, lolling it up and down, my eyes wide; my breath struggling to stay even as I push away from the impending panic attack and give in to the love Duke is so willing to give to me.
My lower body arches off the floor as he wraps his fingers into the waist of both my pants and panties and starts to pull them down. There isn’t a chill in the air as my core is exposed, but instead, I start to quake with anticipation.
“My God, you are perfect.” My skin heats and lust pumps through my veins as Duke stealthily removes his pants and boxers before lying his body over mine.
“Are you sure you are okay?” The look in his eyes is reining in his desire for me, but I can feel his erection nestled between my thighs as he waits for my answer.
My core clenches for him to fill me in a way no one else would ever come close to. Slowly, steadily, and with complete confidence, I nod my head.
“But …” My breath hitches as his erection jumps and rubs against me. I nearly lose what I need to say. I have to say it because I don’t know …
“But what?” He nudged my chin, and I move my head to allow him access to my neck once more.
“I’m not on the pill,” I rush out on a pant. His tongue does nothing to cool my external body temperature, only makes me wriggle under him; my lower lips brush against the tip of his erection, causing me to clench even more in need.
He falters for the briefest of seconds, and in that time, I feel like my heart is going to break under the pressure.
“I’m clean, Patience. I made sure to get a whole array of tests done when I came back from overseas. I haven’t been with many women. I don’t want to have a barrier between us, but I will if that will put your mind at ease.”
I release the breath I was holding. After I accepted the truth behind Greg’s infidelities, I had myself tested. Sex was sparse, and that is putting it nicely, but I was still concerned with my own health.
“Please.” Bringing up my own past isn’t what I want right now.
I want him.
He leaves me briefly to encase himself in a condom before he comes back down to kiss me hard. His kiss consumes me. I feel every ounce of love he has for me, and I give it back to him in turn.
My eyes fly open as he starts to enter me, taking his time. I relax as much as I can to allow him to fill me completely.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you, Patience,” he murmurs to me. Once he’s settled all the way in me, he keeps us locked together before he sees I’m ready for him to move.
My hands stay locked onto his forearms, refusing to let go to keep this from feeling real. This is real, and this is finally happening for me.
Like the first time we made love in the hayloft in Chase’s barn, Duke slowly starts to pull out of me and tenderly sinks back in. We move as one, his strong thrusts meeting mine. Touching one another, hands fondling, lips caressing, never once do we break our connection, bodily or with our eyes.
My body starts to grow higher and tighter with tension as it builds. His erection rubs in the most perfect, delicious way against my clit and against my walls. This is the slow love making I have longed for—the connection with another person, the man I love, with Duke—and something I never thought I would have again.
Steadily, my body builds to my climax, something that has been completely alien to me.
“Duke,” I plead, needing him more and more with each thrust.
“I know, Patience,” he moans, his pants matching his thrusts as they become quicker, harder, and wilder until it becomes too much, and I detonate around him.
“Oh!” I cry, my core tightening with my orgasm, gripping him so tightly his thrusts become almost nonexistent until his own release surges through him.
We are suspended in the euphoria that comes with us, but I can’t take my eyes away from him. The veins in his neck throb just like his erection inside me, his head thrown back as he howls out his release.
My body hums from being with Duke once more. I am lax and ready to fall asleep in the safety of his arms as he pulls out of me and makes quick work of the condom.
“Did I make you legless?”
“In the best way possible.” I smile dreamily up at him. Shaking his head, he bends to lift me and cradles me to his chest as I am carried over to the bed and fold myself against him.
“I love you, Patience.”
“I love you, too, Duke,” I murmur back to him before I cuddle up and fall asleep. There is no denying it; I had loved him even when I believed he broke me.
It feels as if I have only just begun to drift off into the sea of dreams when I wake with a start. I’m slightly disoriented about the bed I am in and the cabin surrounding me. It is a cute, quaint cabin. One large open room dominated by a bed, fireplace, a table, and the kitchen.
Well, good morning.
The sheet I have clutched around me drops to pool around my naked waist as my head tilts, and I watch as Duke attempts to flip a pancake.
This is completely different from the last time.
He’s still here.
My dreams were plagued with my insecurities of him leaving me here alone. But he didn’t.
He’s here.
When he turns to me, I’m greeted with a smirk and a full plate of pancakes.
“Good morning, snowflake.”
“Yes, it is.” I nod, feeling a slight chill in the air. I reach down and blindly grab for something to throw on.
“Here.” With effortless ease, Duke picks up his shirt from last night with one hand and continues to carry the pancakes over to me with the other. “Put this on.”
“I need my bra.”
“No, you don’t.” Handing me the shirt, he takes a seat at the end of the bed. I only give him a look after I pull the shirt on and grab the extra plate under the stacked one as well as the offered fork and pancake.
“Thank you.” I take a bite and try to swallow it down. A cook, this handsome man is not.
“I stayed up last night watching you.”
“That’s not creepy,” I tease, wishing for a glass of milk. He added far too much salt to the batter.
“Ha-ha.” He laughs before taking another bite. The poor man doesn’t know what normal food should taste like anymore as he inhales the bite. “I was wondering if you would be okay with me moving in with you? I know you just finalized your divorce, and I’m going to be getting a dog …”
He continues to talk, but I get lost in my own head. He wants to move in with me this soon after he just came home? After all these years apart? I am barely ready to have a boyfriend, so could I even live with another man again, this soon after the asshole? I’m working on finding who I am again; I don’t want to lose myself to yet another man, even if that man is Duke.
But then again, I was me when I was with him. Duke could help me get back to that person.
“Patience?” Fingers snap in front of me, and I’m brought back to him. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I wheeze, nodding. “It’s just—”
“Patience, we’ve spent far too much time apart. Staying with you now feels right, perfectly actually.”
I don’t know if I can do it just yet, but he is right about all of it. Everything feels perfect when I’m with him. It broke my heart when he left. I don’t want to feel that way again, and I won’t let go now.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
“If I get in your hair, you can always kick my ass to the basement.”
“That sounds dirty,” I tease, lightly biting down on my fork.
Joy, lust, and love flash in his heated gaze. “For you, I’ll do anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Duke
I DIDN’T WANT TO leave the little haven we had on the mountain. I was happy, overjoyed really, by having Patience all to myself. Aside from the random room service calls and housekeeping stopping by to see if anything needed to be clea
ned, we were completely alone for the remainder of the weekend.
We spent the entire day before we had to check out, getting to know one another all over again. The lives we have lived, and the things I saw that don’t haunt me and wouldn’t bother her. She told me about the last couple of years with her grandma and what led her to open her café.
The air around her felt lighter, freer than it had before we came up here. Nearly everything is out there now; every painful event she has lived through is off her chest, and I know all of it.
It kills me.
Because everything she has been through has been my fault.
If I had never left her the way I did, if I would have just waited until that morning and begged her to come with me, we would have figured it out. I wouldn’t have stayed gone for as long as I did. I would have married her, been there when our son was born, and done everything in my power to make sure he would have been with us for as long as our lives would have allowed.
I am a fuckup, and I’m continuing to fuck up because, here, she has told me everything and I’ve yet to tell her the whole truth about myself; my nightmares, medicating myself, and being medically discharged. I have—no, need—to tell her everything about me.
Nothing will be perfect until I do.
If it doesn’t scare her away.
It can’t. I don’t know how I will live without her if she leaves me. I’ve finally had her again, and I’m not about to let something I do, say, or can’t help take her from me.
I won’t let it.
I didn’t stay the night with her last night after I dropped her off. I did have dinner with her before I headed back to my parents’ house to unload the sleds and start to pack up my sparse valuables to move into town.
I was hoping to move into her house today when I woke up, but it isn’t what happened. I had walked over to the main house to give the news to my parents before my dad took off for the day since I didn’t get a chance to talk to them last night.
Both took the news almost too happily. Dad doesn’t want me hanging around anymore than I want to, not until I need to take over.
Mom was ecstatic with me. It was time for me to finally go after who would truly make me happy in life. The woman shouldn’t surprise me, but she does. She confessed to having a wager going with Patience’s mom and aunt to see how long it would take for Patience and me to get together.
Apparently, she thought it would take more time because she cussed up a storm when I told her it wasn’t me who booked the cabin.
Laughing at my mom’s misfortune, I tried to head back over to the barn to start loading my truck when my dad intercepted me.
If I was hoping to catch Patience before she left for work, I was dead wrong. Trotting up with a spare horse, Dad tosses me the reins and tells me to get some warmer shit on because I would be helping him all day.
Being the dutiful son I am, I went inside, put on some layers, hopped on the horse, and set about working alongside my dad.
“I don’t remember the cold getting to me like it does now.” My body trembles from my seat in the saddle, my breath pooling in front of my face as if I was smoking.
Dad’s weathered face cracks into his typical half grin, and his own breath forms in front of him, quickly vanishing into the clear pale blue sky.
“That’s because you’ve spent too much time away from home running around in that sandbox.”
“Dad.” Hanging my head, I don’t feel the need to get into it right now with him. It has been an issue of constant strain between us. Don’t take it the wrong way, he has always been proud of me. He’s just upset I didn’t come home sooner.
“I’m here now,” I supply a generic answer, and I hope it pacifies him.
“Yes, you are, and I plan on getting you back to working all this when you aren’t on duty.” He lifts his heavily covered arms as if he is putting the whole land he and my mom own on display.
And with the view before me, I don’t blame him for the flair for the dramatic.
“It’s kind of hard to forget what to do.” I nod out to the last of the cattle that we will be moving to a different pasture.
“And you want to move away from all of it again.” Shaking his head, Dad taps his heels into the sides of his horse and starts to move closer to the cattle. I knew he would give me his real opinion when we got alone.
“I’m just moving into town. I’ll come out whenever I’m off work and you need me.” Doing the same with my horse, I follow him. “Dad!”
None of the cattle lift their heads as we draw closer. They are used to us, especially my dad.
“Do you truly love her?”
“What?” Pulling back on the reins, I stop next to him. He leans forward in the saddle, keeping his pinched eyes on the horizon.
“Patience, Duke, do you love her?”
My eyes burn from the glare of the sun as they widen.
Are we having his brand of a heart-to-heart right now?
Is this why he wanted me to come with him when he didn’t really need me?
My jaw flexes as I swallow hard and try to loosen my mouth up enough to answer him.
“Well? Are you going to answer me or continue looking at me like that?” He hasn’t even turned his head to look at me. How the hell has he always had the ability to do that?
“I do.” Clearing my throat, I repeat myself. “I do love her, Dad. I’ve loved her since the second I knew what love really was and what she meant to me. I messed up by leaving, and I’m glad she is letting me make up for lost time now.”
“That’s all I needed to hear.” Finally, he turns in his saddle to face me, and there is a near full smile on his face, his laugh lines far more prominent than the last time he smiled at me at my boot camp graduation. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. Your mom and I want you to be happy, and Patience has always made you happy.”
“She has.” As I nod along with him, my chest aches for the times she didn’t make me happy because it was my fault for those. She tried to move on with her life while she thought I did the same, and all those years, it hurt because I selfishly wanted her happiness to be with me.
“Now that we have that settled, I have something else to ask you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“When were you planning on telling us about your meds?”
Ice-cold horror shoots through me far more than the cold air around us.
“H-How did you k-know?”
“You may be able to hide things pretty damn well from your mother, but you should know better when it comes to me.” He shakes his head.
Hanging my head, I don’t know what to say to him.
“I’m handling it; I haven’t had any issues since I started taking the meds.”
“That’s good, but I still would have liked to known when you first got home.”
“I’m sorry.” Shame washes over me. “I know I should have—”
“You haven’t had any … episodes?”
“You know what my meds are for, right?”
“I looked them up after I found them.” He confirms. “I don’t pretend to understand any of it, but you are my son, and I just need to know you are okay.”
“I’m doing well, Dad.”
“I’ve heard your screams from the house. That’s the only other way I knew.”
“Mom doesn’t—”
“Know? No, she doesn’t. I’ve kept it to myself and was waiting for you to tell us. That’s why I wanted to have you come with me today. You know, away from her meddling ears.”
We both laugh at that because it is the truth. Mom puts her nose into everything and worries too much. It made it hell being overseas.
“I swear to you, Dad, I’m good. And being with Patience makes it better. When I fall asleep with her next to me, I don’t have nightmares, and I feel a part of my soul finally returning to me.”
“That’s true love for you, son.” He smiles again and then tips his head to the cattle. “Now let’s get them mov
ed before we freeze our asses off.”
Digging into my horse’s sides, I help him round up the cattle and push them to the next pasture.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Duke
MY CONVERSATION WITH MY dad earlier today is on a constant replay in my mind as I lie here with Patience cuddled against my side. It felt liberating to talk to him about my medical concerns. He is the first one to know outside of my medical professionals.
I can’t keep hiding this for long.
Soon, I’m going to have to go check in at the VA with how I’m doing and to renew my prescription. I can’t keep that from Patience or my mom. Patience’s small body moves closer to me, and the guilt fills my chest cavity that much more. It nearly counteracts the settled feeling I have with being with her. My things are going to meld with hers; my clothing sharing space in her dresser and closet, and my truck will be parked right next to the vehicle she’s borrowing from her mom.
I need to fix that.
That’s something I can do for her that the fucking moron never did. I can supply her with a reliable, running vehicle.
She needs a truck.
She had one when we were teens, and I know she loved that truck. Why she got rid of it is something I want to know, but I need to be delicate when I ask her. If she had another truck, I would never worry about her being on the road in any condition.
My free hand runs up and down the gentle curve of her side while my other is held up between hers, and her fingers glide over the lines of my palm. This is what home is supposed to feel like.
“Why did you join?”
Her question fills the comfortable silence. It makes me stiffen, but I have no reason to. I knew this question has been on the tip of her tongue for a while now.
Opening my mouth, I prepare my answer but snap it closed to focus on putting the words together. Her head moves, bringing her eyes up to me. The amber orbs are clear, bright, and wide with wonder as they shine up at me.
Trying not to swallow my tongue, I start again, and this time, the answer she needs comes to me.
“I really didn’t have any plans to go to school after we graduated. You know me, it wasn’t my strong suit. One night when you were closing up the store with your folks, the guys and I were talking. I was asking them what drove them to make their choice to join the military, and it got me going down the path of joining the Marines. I wanted to be a part of something bigger and make something of myself, I guess, but mostly, I wanted to be worthy of …”
