World Enough and Time

by Lauren Gallagher

  “I’ve never had that, no,” I said.

  “Well, we’ll have to change that, won’t we?” He smiled.

  “Yes, we—” My cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my purse and Susan’s name came up on the caller ID. “It’s Susan, so it might be about work. Do you mind if I take it?”

  “Not at all.”

  I put the phone to my ear and kept my voice extra low to keep from bothering anyone else. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Hey,” she said. “Listen, I hate to do this, but could I ask a huge favor?”

  “That depends, what do you need?”

  “I had to take off from the barn early to take care of some things down in Tacoma with my mom, and I got hung up,” she said. “There’s no way I’m getting back before midnight, but Mouse still needs his meds.”

  I suppressed a groan. “Need me to swing by and take care of it?”

  “Could you?”

  I sighed. Convenient or not, Mouse needed his medication, and Leslie and Gavin certainly couldn’t be trusted to do it properly. That, and Susan would do it for me if one of my horses ever needed it.

  “Hold on a sec.” Putting my hand over the phone, I looked at Connor. “I need to run by work tonight. Do you mind if we stop there after we’re done here?”

  “Sure, no problem,” he said.

  I smiled. “Thanks.” To Susan, I said, “Sure, I’ll head over there in a little while.”

  “I owe you big time,” she said. “His medicine’s in my locker in the tack room. Key is in my saddlebag. You know the drill.”

  After I hung up, I sighed. “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Besides, now I get to see where you work.”

  “A barn, some horses, and a bunch of fences,” I said. “Terribly exciting.”

  “Beats the hell out of a desk surrounded by cubicle walls and even more desks under the luxurious glow of fluorescent lights.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Good point.”

  After we’d finished our Phở, we headed out to the barn. I would have preferred to go straight back to my apartment, which was much closer than the barn, but duty called. And I couldn’t complain about an extra half hour each way in the car with Connor. I enjoyed his company, and we’d make up for lost time when we got home, I was sure.

  When we got to the barn, I flipped the switch beside the door. The lights down the center of the aisle came to life, and a few horses nickered and murmured, looking over their stall doors to see who was there.

  “So, this is it.” I made a sweeping gesture around the barn. “This is where I work.”

  He looked around. “I still say it beats the hell out of working in an office.”

  “I’ll give you that,” I said. “I did my time behind a desk. This is my dream job. Anyway, let me take care of Susan’s horse and we’ll get out of here.”

  I went into the tack room and fished Susan’s locker key out of her saddlebag. As she’d indicated, Mouse’s medicine was just inside her locker. I took it all out into the aisle and set it beside the cross ties. Then I went into Mouse’s stall and brought him out.

  “Need a hand?” Connor asked.

  “Nah, I’ve got it.” After I’d clipped the cross ties to Mouse’s halter, I picked up Mouse’s foot and knelt, resting his leg across my thigh. I took off the protective rubber boot and set it aside, then cleaned around the wounded area with a gauze pad before putting the antiseptic on it and cleaning it again. Fortunately, he was fairly docile when it came to things like this, so aside from trying to chew my belt, he didn’t put up much of a fuss. Occasionally, he flinched or tried to pull away, but he could have been a lot worse.

  Connor leaned against the wall and watched me. “So what’s wrong with his foot?”

  “He stepped on a nail.” I slid the boot back on and buckled it in place. “Got a nasty abscess, so it needs an antiseptic twice a day.”

  “An abscess in his foot?” he said. “That sounds pleasant.”

  “You should have seen it the first day.” I screwed the cap on the antiseptic and stood. “It was a mess.” To Mouse, I said, “Wasn’t it, baby?” He nuzzled me, then tried to eat the antiseptic bottle. I held it out of his reach. “No, sweetheart, that’s not for you to eat. You know that.”

  Connor chuckled.

  Smiling self-consciously, I said, “Sorry, I always talk to them.”

  He shrugged, stepping aside so I could lead Mouse back to his stall. “It’s just cute to see the softer side of Dani Blake.”

  I winked at him over my shoulder as I took the horse’s halter off. “You’ve seen my softer side.”

  “You’re right, I have, and I like seeing it.” He put an arm around my waist and kissed my cheek. “I think I’d like to see it again soon.”

  “You will.” I stepped out of the stall, latched the door, and turned around to kiss him. “And as soon as I care of a few more things, we can get the hell out of here.”

  “Can’t wait,” he murmured against my lips.

  I picked up all of Mouse’s supplies and took them back to the tack room, locking them securely away before depositing the key in Susan’s saddlebag. Then I ducked into the wash rack and washed my hands. When I came out, Connor looked at the various horses watching us over their stall doors.

  “So are any of them yours?”

  “Two.” I gestured with my chin to two stalls a few doors down from the tack room. “Calypso and Jester.” Apparently they heard their names, because both of their heads appeared over their stall doors. Jester nickered at me and Calypso eyed Connor with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.

  “These are my babies.” Beaming, I gestured at them. “This is Jester. That’s Calypso.” Connor smiled, but he seemed unsure about approaching them.

  I nodded toward the tack room. “There’s a coffee can just inside the door. Grab a few peppermints out of it and come over here.”

  He cocked his head. “Peppermints?”

  “Trust me.”

  He found them and approached warily with the candies in his hand. I took one, unwrapped it, and offered it to Jester, who quickly snatched it out of my hand. Connor’s eyebrows jumped, an unmistakable look of “you expect me to do that too?” etched across his face.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Give one to each of them and they’ll love you forever.”

  He hesitated, then unwrapped a mint. Both horses pricked up their ears, nickering and leaning against their doors when the cellophane crinkled between Connor’s fingers.

  I took his hand. “Here, hold it like this. Palm up, completely flat.” I gently held his wrist and guided his hand close enough for Jester to sniff it. Connor tensed a little, but didn’t make much of an effort to pull away even as the horse picked up the mint.

  “They don’t bite?” he asked, watching Jester crunch contentedly on his candy.

  “These two? God no.” I nodded at Calypso, who was bobbing his head and pushing against his stall door, waiting for his own treat. “But you might want to give him that other mint before he has a conniption.”

  Connor put the second mint on his hand and held it out to Calypso. “So, some of them do bite?”

  “Some. There’s one a few stalls down that’ll take your arm off if you don’t watch yourself.”

  “Duly note—” Calypso suddenly licked his hand and Connor jerked it back. The horse raised his head, eyeing Connor as if he’d lost his mind.

  I laughed. “Oh, and they do lick once in a while.”

  Connor wiped his hand on his jeans. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Sorry, I guess I’m used to it.”

  He chuckled. “Par for the course, I assume?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Anyway. Now you’ve met them.” I stroked Jester’s face, rubbing the center of his forehead with the heel of my hand. “These brats are pretty much the reason I’m still in Seattle. Otherwise I would have gone back to Cheyenne after Matt and I split.”

  “Really?”

/>   I nodded. “I wanted to go back, but moving them is just too expensive. About the only way I could come up with the money is to sell one of them, and that’s not going to happen. They’re as close to kids as I’ll ever have, so…” I trailed off, smiling and ruffling Jester’s forelock.

  “They’re as—” Connor paused.

  I looked at him. “What?”

  He cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by ‘as close to kids as you’ll ever have?’”

  I shrugged. “They’re all I want. Kids just aren’t in the cards for me.”

  He blinked. “Are you serious?”

  Inwardly I cringed. “Never wanted them,” I said, trying not to get defensive. “I’m perfectly happy with my animals.”

  Eyes wide and lips apart, Connor looked utterly stunned. Annoyance rose in my chest. Please tell me you’re not going to go there, I thought. Don’t start giving me all the lectures that everyone and their mother has already given me about this subject.

  Then he laughed and shook his head. “Wow…”

  “What?” I wasn’t sure if I should be irritated, but the feeling simmered just below the surface, ready to come out if he stepped into that territory. Not you, Connor. Please, not you. You’re the one person who—

  “You don’t know how refreshing that is,” he said.

  “It—” My jaw dropped. “Huh?”

  Smiling, he rested a hand on the small of my back. “I don’t meet many women who are happy without kids and are content to stay that way.”

  “You mean—” I stared at him. “You don’t want them either?”

  He shook his head. “No, never have.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all. I don’t dislike kids, just don’t want any of my own.” He paused, biting his lip and avoiding my eyes for a second. When he met them again, he lowered his voice slightly. “And I’ve taken precautions to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

  Disbelief kept my brain from making the connection right away, but after a moment, it finally did. “You’ve had a vasectomy?”

  He nodded. “Had it done a few years ago.”

  “You don’t say.” Something uncomfortable settled in my gut. In the back of my mind, I secretly wished he had tried to give me the “you’ll change your mind” lecture I’d heard from so many others. Why did he have to be childfree too?

  Damn you, Connor. Why do you have to be everything I want in a man except staying?

  “Wait, that means that first night, when we didn’t have condoms,” I said, “we still could have had sex?”

  He laughed. “Technically, yeah. But you’d only known me a few hours. Seemed like a bit much to ask you to trust me enough to go bareback, you know?”

  “Fair enough.”

  He kissed me and whispered, “Though I have to admit, I would have loved to have felt you that way that night.”

  Wrapping my arms around him, I said, “It’s not too much to ask now, is it?”

  A grin played at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  I kissed him. “Maybe we should get out of here.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  In my bedroom, we undressed each other slowly, pausing again and again for a long, drawn out kiss. Even after we’d gotten into bed, we abandoned our usual hungry desperation for this slow, languid touching and tasting. Though I knew he was turned on, that he wanted this as much as I did, he held back and so did I. Unlike our first night together, when we took our time in spite of our desperation, it wasn’t the novelty of a new lover that slowed us down this time. There was too much familiarity for that.

  His mouth spent an absolute age on each nipple, teasing with teeth and tongue to create that perfect balance between pleasure and pain. More than once I wondered if he was going to bring me to orgasm that way. Then he trailed kisses down my side and over my thigh. He made lazy circles around my clit with his tongue, the kind of touch meant to arouse, but not send me over the edge. No, he was in no hurry at all tonight. He was perfectly content driving me insane before he fucked me.

  All the while, I tried to ignore the nervousness fluttering in my stomach. I trusted him, I wanted this, but still I wondered if it would change something between us. Or if it already had. We hadn’t gone through the motions, but the conversation had been and gone. Did casual lovers have any business trusting each other this much?

  It didn’t matter. I did, he did, we would.

  Connor kissed his way up from my hipbone to my side to my chest. He teased one nipple with his mouth, then moved to the other. All the while, his body slowly shifted position, changing from beside me to over me. As his lips moved up to my collarbone, my legs parted for him, and my heart raced with desire and a hint of apprehension.

  I forced my nervousness back. Yes, I want this. I want you like this.

  He slid his hands under my back and kissed my neck as his hips settled against mine. With every touch, though, something changed in the way his lips moved. Hungry kisses became lighter, gentler, almost— yes, that was it: tentative. Hesitant.

  So he wasn’t just drawing this out to savor the moment, he was hesitating. It was one thing to discuss it in the aisle of the barn, safely separated by clothing while we consented to a hypothetical. But now the clothing was gone and the hypothetical was real. No matter how unshakably confident we both were in bed or how much we trusted each other, this was untrodden ground.

  And so we drew this out—touching, tasting, teasing—making each other want more, but not giving more. Quietly challenging each other to make that move, to take that step. While I was on top of him, a roll of my hips would have ended this stalemate. When he lay behind me, kissing my neck and shoulders, a single thrust would have finished this. Finished me. I wanted him so bad, I was sure I’d come the second he was inside me.

  We changed position again, shifting onto our sides and shying away from another opportunity.

  There was nothing left between us and no need to put anything between us. We were two adults who’d had sex time and time again, so why were we suddenly as shy and hesitant as a couple of teenaged virgins? Maybe we weren’t used to skipping the steps of reaching for the nightstand, tearing the foil, and putting the condom on.

  We kept turning each other on, kept teasing each other, kept moving toward what we both wanted even while we held back. The temperature rose, but the water refused to boil.

  When arousal became frustration, it crossed my mind to reach for the nightstand and put us back on familiar ground.

  But I didn’t. We’d get there.

  I nudged him onto his back and lay on my side next to him. Kissing him deeply, I let my fingers trace a gentle path down his chest, pausing when his abs quivered at my touch. When I wrapped my fingers around his erection, the resulting gasp was as much mine as his. With every stroke of my hand on his hard cock, I wanted him even more.

  I found that perfect combination of almost too hard and almost too fast, just the way I knew he liked it. Whispered curses escaped his lips along with short, shallow breaths. His eyes screwed shut while his hips moved with my hand, and I brought him within a gasp of an orgasm before he stopped me with a gentle hand on my wrist.

  “Not yet,” he breathed. I want to come inside you, his eyes added just before he drew me down to kiss him.

  Yes, my lips refused to say. I want you to.

  And still we didn’t cross that line. Connor’s hand snaked around my neck, cradling it gently as he eased me onto my back. He continued kissing me, moving slowly from my lips to my jaw to my neck. When he started down my chest, I had to bite back a whimper, and I wasn’t sure if it was impatience or anticipation.

  He kissed my inner thigh, letting his stubble brush my skin just enough to make me shiver. Before the goose bumps had gone away, his lips were around my clit.

  Some part of my mind wanted to be frustrated that we were still drawing this out, that we were avoiding something so simple, but I wasn’t about to stop h
im from doing this. I wanted him to fuck me, I wanted to cross this line, but what he was doing felt too damned good to stop.

  “That’s perfect,” I slurred, gently grasping his hair. “Just like that.”

  He wasn’t drawing it out now; every circle and flutter of his tongue was fast, precise, and deliberate. When two fingers slipped inside me, there was no holding back the orgasm he beckoned into being.

  “Just like that… just like that…” I moaned, the words rolling off my tongue over and over again. My back arched and my fingers tightened in his hair, and just before the darkness turned white, my slurred mantra became a single breathless whisper: “Connor.”

  As my vision cleared, so too did my mind. I knew I wanted him, but still had just enough rational thought to be apprehensive, so I swallowed the plea that wanted to come out. Even while he kissed me, his tongue sweet with the taste of me, I hesitated. Begging him to fuck me wasn’t so simple now. We’d removed the steps of nightstand, foil, and rolling on. Three steps simpler and one leap more complicated.

  Words eluded me. Maybe they did the same to him.

  Our bodies knew, though.

  His hand slid under my back, hooking over my shoulder to give him leverage oh God yes, yes, I know what you’re doing, Connor. His hips warmed my inner thighs. Please, yes, please. With an unsteady hand, he guided his cock to me.

  I bit my lip to suppress a whimper.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he whispered, almost panting against my lips.

  I nodded. For a moment, he paused, just looking at me. I held my breath, sure he was having second thoughts. That he was going to retreat again. I hooked my leg around his and gently pulled him toward me.

  He dipped his head and kissed me. Then his breath caught, his body tensed, and his shoulders trembled as they rose above me.

  He slid into me slowly, and a shudder ran up his spine. “Oh God,” he said. “Fuck, Dani, you feel so— ” A tremor reduced his voice to a groan. “You feel so good. So fucking good.” He raised himself up on his arms and looked down, watching himself take long, slow strokes in and out of my pussy. When our eyes met again, the lust in his sent electricity rippling straight through me.