by Joanna Bell
"I want you to do it, Jackson. I – I can't."
It was happening. That sweet, wet warmth was about to be wrapped around me. I reached down between our bodies and took myself in my hand, holding her panties aside.
Her body tensed up as I dragged myself up between her lips.
"If you want me to stop," I panted, "tell me now, Hailey. You have to tell me –"
"No," she shook her head and put her palm on the window, bracing herself. "No. I don't want you to stop."
I held myself against her opening for another second before letting go, lifting my hips up off the driver's seat and sinking into her warm, slippery depths.
She cried out as I slid inside, digging her fingernails into my shoulder. It was a cry of pain, not pleasure. But she didn't pull back as I filled her with my full, rigid length.
Was it wrong to feel a jolt of desire when I saw that even through her own pain, all she really wanted was to please me? I don't know. All I know is that she bit her lip so hard it bled a little as I pulled myself out and then sank back into her again, no more able to hold myself back than an inrushing tide can hold itself off a beach. She kissed me, her lips trembling, and even though it had only been seconds I knew I was almost there.
She cried out again when the last thread of my control snapped and I held her down against me as my cock began to pulse. Bliss wiped my mind blank and there was only the feeling of release, of overflowing, spilling into her again and again and again until my breath was ragged.
***
"Jackson."
"Huh? What is it?"
I followed Hailey's gaze downwards and only then, in the post-orgasmic fog, did I notice that my fingers were still clamped – hard – to her hip.
"Oh shit!" I exclaimed, letting go at once and rubbing the red spots I'd left on her skin. "I didn't realize – I didn't –"
"It's OK," she whispered, kissing my sweaty cheek. "I know."
We stayed where we were for a long time, sweaty and satisfied and wrapped around each other.
"This is perfect," I said, after 10 minutes or an hour or a year or however long it was. "There's nothing I want right now that I don't have."
I felt her smile against my neck. "Nothing? Not even a sandwich?"
But I wasn't joking around. "No," I told her. "I mean it. There's nothing."
She pulled away far enough to look me in the eyes and I saw that her cheeks were still flushed pink and her hair tangled.
I thought I knew what it felt like to be a man before that evening in my truck with Hailey Nickerson – but I didn't. In an instant, just looking at her I understood that sex had never been about anything more than scratching an itch to me. I'd heard friends bragging about giving this girl or that girl a thousand orgasms in a row. Sometimes I even joined in, because it seemed like the thing to do. But I never truly understood the raw, dick-swinging, caveman satisfaction of making a girl come until I saw Hailey's face that day.
"What?" She asked, smiling an exhausted smile. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I was just thinking."
"What about?"
I pulled her down and kissed her lips slowly before answering. "About how sad I am that Chief Executive Officer of Making You Come isn't an official job title. Because I would quit my entire life right now if it was."
She giggled and kissed me back and there it was again, that first lick of flame in a pile of dry tinder.
"That can be your job," she replied, holding my gaze with her own. "It doesn't pay very well, but I could probably make it worth your while in other ways."
"Oh yeah?"
I was hard again. Hard and ready against her thigh as she straddled me. She reached down and took me in one hand, still gentle and tentative with her touch.
"I'm sore, Jackson. But I want to do it again."
"Are you?" I asked, feeling an odd, paradoxical pang of guilt even as my cock throbbed at the thought of being buried in her slick warmth once more. "We don't have to do it like that again, you know. We can do –"
"But I want to."
Jesus, the look in her eyes when she said that. The dark, naked lust that even she, less than a few minutes out from losing her virginity, understood for what it was.
"Even if it hurts, I still – I still want to."
I was inside her again before she even finished the sentence. I was inside her and her whole body was suddenly stiff, her fingers clutching my shoulders.
"Fuck," I breathed. "Hailey, if you want me to stop –"
"I don't. I don't. I don't."
I thought I was more in control that time. But something about the way her hunger outweighed her pain, about the way her brow furrowed every time I pushed into her, took away my certainty.
"I don't want to hurt you," I said when a strangled little cry escaped her throat. Things were heightening again, my cock growing and stiffening even further inside the exquisite confines of her pussy. "I'll stop," I panted, holding back. "Hailey, I'll stop if you –"
"No!" She cried, throwing her head back suddenly, arching her back and moaning as I pushed up unto her.
I couldn't take it. Like a teenager under the bleachers I couldn't take the sound of that moan, or the sight of those perfect breasts bouncing in my face.
"Fuck!" I growled as my hips jerked up off the seat and I emptied myself into her again. "Fuck, Hailey. Fuuuuuuck."
Before she could say anything, before she could tell me it was OK or that she didn't mind or whatever she'd been about to say, I pulled out and flipped her around on my lap so she was facing away from me. And then I slipped one finger down over the left side of her clit like I had the first time.
At once, her legs fell open and she lay her head back against my shoulder, sighing my name. And I swear to God, by the time she was squirming and panting and begging me not to stop I was hard again. I didn't stop, though. I loved being able to make her lose it like that, with nothing more than the tip of one finger. I loved the pleading note in her voice when she was close, and then the way her eyes rolled back in her head and she stopped breathing as the first waves of pleasure crashed over her.
"Oh my God," she whispered, after taking a few minutes to come back to herself. "I don't think I can move."
"You don't have to," I replied, kissing her damp temple. "You don't have to do anything, baby."
I sat in my truck afterwards, blissfully happy and utterly exhausted, and held my sleeping girl in my arms. And as feelings of perfect satisfaction are prone to do, mine soon dissipated. It was spring. Soon, it would be summer. Hailey would graduate from Sweetgrass Ridge Senior High and then, if she couldn't be induced via the sheer power of my dick to stay in our little nowhere town, she would leave.
And even if my dick did turn out to have magical powers, did I want her to let her talent go to waste? Did I want to be responsible for that? I looked down at her in my arms, so young and beautiful and free to take the entire world by the balls and make it hers.
Did I even want her to stay?
Yes. There was no other answer in my heart. There was also no compromise, no concern given to what I should want. Only to what I did. I wanted her to stay. I didn't want Hailey Nickerson to be anything other than mine. I didn't want her in any bed but my own. I didn't want her in any house but the one I would build for her. I didn't want her to be mother to any children but those I would give her.
And I knew, as young and dumb as I was, that I didn't actually have the power to make her do anything. Hailey had plans for her life, and as far as I knew they didn't necessarily involve a small town at the edge of the Rockies, or the wealthy rancher's son who was hopelessly in love with her.
Chapter 14: Hailey
"And you're being careful, right?"
I suppressed the eye-roll my mom's question almost made mandatory in any self-respecting teenager and nodded. It was April and we were eating dinner together, an activity that was already starting to feel like something from a different era. Most nights I grabbed something with Jac
kson before work, or we ate canned chili in his trailer – which I had finally been allowed to regularly visit after he was sure he'd dickmatized me so thoroughly I wouldn't run screaming into the foothills at the state of it.
"Yes Mom, we're being careful. How many times are you going to ask me that question?"
"As many as I feel is necessary," she replied, pointing at me with her fork. "I remember what it was like being 18 and in love."
I wasn't lying to my mother – we were being careful. After that afternoon at the canyon, when passion had so thoroughly outpaced practicality, Jackson Devlin and I made sure we were never alone together without a decent supply of condoms on hand.
"I'm seeing Dr. Ansell in June," I added, intending to reassure my mom. "About getting on the pill."
"In June?!"
I shoveled a mouthful of rice into my mouth. "Condoms exist, you know."
My mother had me when she was 17, and not once had she ever made me feel like I was a mistake or a regret. But she also never sugarcoated what it meant to have a baby at that age, and I spent most of my childhood more aware than most kids of how such a thing could change your life.
"I know they do, Hailey. I don't mean to nag, but you know why I feel so strongly about this. I was just so naive at your age. You're naive too, even if you don't see it. But you've got something I didn't have. You've got your drawing, your art. It makes me feel sick to think of your talent going to waste."
I looked across the table at her – so eerily similar to me in her facial features and body language, and still only 35.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Didn't you have anything? You always said you wanted to go to college and study anthropology."
"Yeah," she replied, rubbing her index finger back and forth across her chin like she always did when she was thinking. "I did. But I didn't have any particular talent for it – or I guess I don't know if I did or not. But you do, Hailey – and you were born with it. No one taught you how to draw like that – not any of your teachers and certainly not me. Most people aren't lucky enough to come into the world with that kind of gift. You shouldn't waste it."
"I don't plan to."
'I don't plan to.' It was such an easy thing to say. It even had the benefit of being true. I knew I was talented. And as I said, I didn't plan to waste it.
I also didn't plan to fall in love with Jackson Devlin, who couldn't leave Sweetgrass Ridge or the Devlin Ranch without risking his inheritance – and his inheritance was nothing to sniff at. Land and assets worth many millions of dollars, enough money to pay for generations of descendants to get the best educations, to travel the world – to make the most of their lives.
"He's not going to leave this place, you know."
My mom was reading my mind again.
"I know," I said quietly, stabbing a floret of broccoli with my fork. "I mean, it's not like he's not allowed to leave. He could. But I know –"
"He won't."
I looked up, annoyed by the certainty in her voice. "How do you know what he would do? You don't even like him."
She sighed heavily. "I know that's what you think, but –"
"But what?" I cut in. "You're so cold around him. You never invite him over for dinner, you always get that look on your face – that one, the one you've got right now – whenever I talk about him. What am I supposed to think? What is he supposed to think? It's embarrassing."
My mother reached across the table and grabbed my hand hard enough to get my attention. And then she looked me right in the eye. "What Jackson Devlin thinks is none of my concern," she replied. "And whether or not I like him doesn't even come into it. I don't even know him."
"I know! So why do you always act the way you do when he's around? He notices, you know. And when he asks me why I never know what to say."
"I act that way because I see him for what he is, Hailey. You're not a mother so maybe you won't understand this until you are, but my concern is you – not Jackson. And if –"
"And what is he?!" I shouted, immediately feeling guilty for losing my temper but also genuinely defensive about Jackson. How did my mom think it was fair to judge people without even knowing them – which she had just admitted she didn't? "What do you think you see in him that I don't?"
For a second, I didn't think she was going to reply. But then she put her glass of water down and sighed. "Do you want me to answer that question? Because if you do, I will."
She waited for a moment to see if I was going to change my mind about wanting to hear the answer, only continuing when I raised my eyebrows at her to do so.
"What I see in that boy is trouble. Trouble for you, Hailey. Trouble for me, trouble for us. I know you're in love with him – and hell, I know he's in love with you. It's all over the both of you, everyone can see it. So don't think I'm saying he doesn't love you. But here's the thing I know you don't understand – because no one your age understands and I certainly didn't either – Jackson loving you doesn't mean he's not trouble. It doesn't mean his family isn't going to have something to say about all this if things get more serious. And it doesn't mean you throwing away your future to be with him wouldn't be the biggest mistake of your life."
I thought she was finished. She seemed finished. I was opening my mouth to reply when she threw in a final, brutal sentence:
"You know he'll never marry you, don't you?"
Why did I cry? Why did tears instantly spring to my eyes when my mother said Jackson would never marry me? All these years later and I still don't know. I was 18. I hadn't thought about marrying anyone, let alone Jackson Devlin. And yet her words cut so deep she might as well have shoved a dagger into my heart.
"Oh Hailey," she said, standing up when I pushed my chair back and got to my feet. "Hailey, sweetheart. I didn't mean to upset you. I only meant to warn you. I thought you knew –"
"I don't know anything!" I yelled back, furiously swiping tears off my cheeks. "I haven't even thought about getting married! Why would you – why would you even say that?"
Part of me wanted to push her away when she put her arms around me, but I didn't. Maybe that's why her words hurt so much? Because I knew what she said about her only concern being me was true. I knew she wouldn't have said any of it if she didn't actually believe it.
"The Devlins aren't like us," my mom said gently, leading me to the sofa and fishing a tissue out of her purse so I could wipe my eyes. "And you're not dating one of Jackson's brothers, you're dating Jackson. He's Jack Devlin's legacy, his heir. Everything they have, all of their money and ambition and power is invested in him. They'll never let him marry you. And if he tries, they'll cut him out with nothing."
"But how do you know that?" I asked, desperate for some reason to think she was mistaken, because even at the time part of me was terrified by how true it all sounded.
"Because I'm older than you," she replied. "Because I know more about the world than you do. And because there's nothing I care about more than your happiness, my lovely girl. It's going to be hard to leave him next fall, if you go away to art school. It might be the hardest thing you ever do. But there's no future for you with Jackson Devlin."
***
An hour later I was naked in his arms, clinging to him like a drowning woman clings to a life-preserver. My mother was wrong. She had to be wrong. It was a free country. Jackson could do whatever he wanted. And oh, how easy it was to believe all that as he buried his face in my neck and told me how much he loved me.
Chapter 15: Jackson
Finally, at the ripe old age of barely 23, I knew what it was to be in love. Before Hailey I thought it just meant a strong sexual connection. Wanting to fuck someone so much it made you want to be around them a lot.
I was wrong about that. I was wrong about a lot of things, but at least I was happy to be wrong about love. And that's not to say the physical pull I felt whenever I was close to her wasn't the most intense I'd ever experienced, because it was. It was just so much more than that, and so different to an
ything that came before it. Before I met her, wanting to be around this girl or that girl was only ever about getting my rocks off. I tolerated girls before Hailey. She was the one who taught me what it was to be truly interested in another person. Even when we weren't together, she was constantly on my mind. Not a moment went by that I didn't wonder what she would think or say if she was with me.
Darcy and my dad didn't approve, but I didn't care. What were they going to do? Banish me to a trailer away from the main house and make me work my ass off all day every day for almost no pay?
Joke's on you assholes, you already did that!
When he would catch me on my way to the barn or riding out into the foothills I would shut down all attempts by my father to extract information about my relationship with Hailey. As far as he was concerned we were a couple of stupid kids in the midst of an infatuation that would naturally burn out in due course. He was right about part of it – we were infatuated with each other. But he was very wrong in thinking that's all it was.
Some nights, if she wasn't working at the Super Mart, she would use the key I had cut in town to let herself into the trailer and fix dinner for the both of us. What can I say about the difference between coming back to a cold, empty trailer to eat chili out of a can in the dark and coming back to the smell of a home-cooked meal, to the warmth of a glowing woodstove and to Hailey herself, her sweet face breaking into a grin as soon as she saw me?
She made that crappy old trailer into a home for me. She gave me something to look forward to every single day as I rode out into the biting winds coming down off the Rockies. And I loved her for it. I loved her for all of it. For what she did for me, yes. But also just for being her – for being Hailey. I loved her simply and completely.
I can still remember one particular day as if it was yesterday. It was late spring but Old Man Winter was refusing to relinquish his grip on western Montana. I was up at dawn and out all day, alone and freezing, guiding my herd back to the pastures with heated water troughs and feed they didn't have to dig through a layer of thick ice and snow to get to. And all day as I worked – and just about froze – my balls off, the only thing on my mind was Hailey. She didn't even have to physically be there. Just the thought of her made even the hardest day easy.
