by Carly Keene
I hung up, and then I stood up to face this in-between time, when I would walk around my city and see if I could say goodbye to it, before I opened my arms to fly.
TEN
Wyatt
She’s been gone twelve days.
I’m trying not to mope. I’ve been working hard in my workshop, and out in the yard, and I’ve even taken Maybelline and Jerry out coonhunting a couple of nights. Went over to Weston and Cassie’s for dinner once, had Sunday supper at Aunt Lacey’s last week. Now I’m meeting Wilder Stone, my friend who’s an engineer over at the Observatory, for a drink and a game of pool at the Dew Drop Inn in town.
I take the first game of nine-ball, and Wilder takes the second. He and I are commiserating about the dearth of the Right Women in the area. “Plenty of nice ladies working at the Observatory,” Wilder says morosely, and racks us up for the last game. He’s a good guy, even if he does talk like a Yankee. “They’re smart, pretty . . . Just none of them are The One.”
“I know.” I sigh. “I think Weston lucked out and got the last good one.” Cassie was a guest at the resort, and got lost on a day hike, winding up at Wes’s place in the middle of a snowstorm. Talk about luck—if his dog Max hadn’t found her, she’d probably have frozen to death.
“I think we have to keep believing, though,” Wilder says. He orders us a round of Wild Turkey, and we sip while we trade shots. Neither one of us is on our game tonight. “Here’s to the Right One. May she show up for each of us.”
“To the Right One.” We both drink to that. “Wilder, you wanna go out coonhunting with me next week maybe?”
He frowns. “Don’t you go out all night to do that? Isn’t it getting late in the year for it?”
“Not quite all night. And yeah, it’s late. Fall and winter’s the time for it, really. But Maybelline, she loves it, and she’s got a little age on her. I don’t want to keep her penned up all the time. Don’t want to just keep her in the house, either. She’s not a pet.”
Wilder raises his eyebrows at me.
“Well, she ain’t a lapdog. Even if I let her and Jerry sleep in the house when it gets cold. They’re workin’ dogs.”
He laughs. “Don’t give up hope, Wyatt. Your events girl might come back and take the job.”
“Yeah, but I thought she woulda called by now.”
He smacks me on the shoulder, and calls the side pocket for the eight ball, then sinks it. “That’s game. Better luck next time, Wy. Tell you what, I’ll cover the bar bill tonight.”
Told you, he’s a good guy.
When I get back to my place, it’s late. And dark, with just the kitchen light shining out through the windows where I left it on earlier. But there’s a little blue Honda sitting in my gravel driveway, and it looks like it’s packed to the gills.
Illinois plates.
Tia.
My heart gives an irrational leap of joy, and I can’t get out of my truck fast enough, hurrying to peer in the driver’s side window of the car—but nobody’s in there.
I hurry faster up to the porch. I never lock the door; I figure if you can find my house (and the dogs don’t eat you), you’re a friend.
She’s not in the den, or the kitchen. Or the bathroom.
“Tia?” I call. No answer. Then I see the light blinking on my answering machine, and I press Play.
“Wyatt, it’s me. Tia. I’m taking the job.” Small pause. When she starts talking again, I can hear a smile in her voice. “I should have called you earlier, but I think I just got so overwhelmed . . . Anyway. I’m driving down today and I thought I could maybe stay with you.”
I laugh out loud. I’ll have to tell Wilder he was right not to give up hope.
“I hope that’s okay. If it’s not, please call me. I’ll stay at the resort.”
I hear a sound behind me, and I turn around. It’s my Tia blinking sleep out of her eyes and yawning , her dark waterfall of hair in a messy ponytail, wearing leggings and a sweatshirt so disreputable it’s practically rags. She’s got mascara smeared down her face. I’ve never seen anybody more beautiful.
I grab her up in my arms and spin her around, and she yelps a little, same as she did the first time I picked her up. “You should have called earlier! I’d have been home! I’d have made you dinner!”
“I know,” she says, and puts her hands on my face. “I think I was scared to call. I was afraid you’d tell me to forget it.”
“Never,” I say. “You’re mine. I’m yours. It’s very simple.”
“Take me to bed?” she says, through a yawn.
“I’ll make sure you stay awake for a while.” And then I kiss her, and she’s awake enough to kiss back, all that heat and softness in the kiss, and then we’re in my room. Clothes go flying. I kiss her for a long time, stroking her beautiful body. “Statuesque,” I say.
“That’s just a fancy way to say ‘big boobs,’” she says, and laughs.
“You’re not wrong. I’m just appreciative.” So I take the time to appreciate her soft globes, playing with them, stroking them, kissing them and licking her nipples. When she’s lying with her head back, sighing, then I move my way down her body, kissing down to the small trimmed triangle of dark hair at her groin. “Spread your legs for me, woman. I didn’t get dessert.”
She makes a humming noise and reaches down with her fingers to spread her pink folds, and she’s already so wet for me. I finger her gently, then harder as her hips move, and I lick her clit until she’s panting and begging, and then I waste no time. I rise up over her and sheathe my penis in her welcoming pussy. I start slow. I say “mine” a lot to her, and “I love you” a lot more. When she says it back, I can’t help myself. I start pounding a little harder, a little faster, until finally we’re fucking like crazed animals, making lots of noise, and my dogs start howling in the kennel again.
“I love you, Wyatt!” Tia says again, between moans, and then she says she’s gonna come, and I give her a little more. She screams my name, her body clutching at my cock, and then I reach my own pinnacle, pouring myself into her. Giving her all of me.
Afterward, I collapse onto the bed next to her, panting. “Fuck. I feel like I could grow roots into this bed and never move again.”
“Oh, I’m gonna need you to move from time to time,” she says, her gorgeous crystal blue eyes glowing. “Exactly the way you just did.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She smiles at me, and leans over to kiss me. “Because to me, that felt like flying.”
I smile back. “Stay.”
“I’ll stay.”
EPILOGUE
Tia, three months later
A little after six when my work day ends, I open the door of my office at Moonlight Ridge Resort and find Wyatt on the other side of it, grinning. He’s dressed nicely, in a button-down shirt and khakis, with his beard neatly groomed. And cowboy boots. Always the cowboy boots.
“Hi, you,” I say, and stretch up on tiptoe to kiss my mountain man. “You look great! What’s the special occasion?”
“Us,” he says, and grins wider. “Fancy a steak in the hotel restaurant? I got Mindy to save us a table by the window.”
The window tables get booked up early, so Wyatt had to have planned for this. “That sounds really wonderful, thanks! So this is a dinner date?”
“It’s a fancy dinner date,” he says definitely, and the glint in his eyes is more pronounced.
This is really thoughtful, and I suddenly wonder if my clothes are good enough.
“You look fine,” he says. “More than fine.” His eyes go from my workday bun down to my sensible low-heeled shoes, lingering over my full breasts and hips. “You’re beautiful.”
I feel myself blushing. “Thank you.”
He offers me his arm and escorts me to the restaurant, where it seems all the staff are smiling at us.
I love staying at his cabin, where most often Wyatt cooks for us on weekdays and I cook on the weekends, but it’s nice to have a night out. It�
��s nice to not have to do the dishes.
We eat Mindy’s special shrimp appetizers, and Wyatt tells me what new movies are playing in town at the duplex, and I tell him about the bridezilla I’m having to talk out of having six dozen doves released at her Christmas wedding. I eat filet mignon, and he eats a T-bone, and we talk about his latest set of furniture and then about my cousin’s latest pregnancy.
We decide to share a slice of Mindy’s hazelnut-chocolate truffle pie: one plate, two forks.
All through dinner, he’s gotten more and more jumpy. Fiddling with utensils, buttoning and unbuttoning his top button. I don’t know why.
I change the subject. “How are you getting along with Little Fires Everywhere?” I ask him, and he shrugs.
“Good story. I think the gal’s nuts.”
“Which one?”
“Not the artist one, the other mom one. But, you know, family. Family can make people nuts, so I kinda understand her anyway.”
I nod. “Yeah, family.” I think of my own family. Roots and wings.
“You ever think about family of your own?” he asks, playing with his fork. Looking at the table. He doesn’t look up at me.
“Yes.” I take a deep breath. My heart has started to pound very strangely, deep slow thuds in my chest. My toes tingle. “I want the roots and the wings. I want a family. Yes.”
And he finally looks up, his dark eyes warm and intense on mine. “I love you. Will you marry me, Tia? Will you make a family with me?”
The tingle goes up my spine. “Yes, Wyatt. Yes!”
“Good,” he says, and then he smiles like the sun coming up, and he opens the ring box he’s just pulled out of his pocket.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, awed. He puts it on my finger, then leans across the table to kiss me, and the entire restaurant erupts in cheers. Mindy comes out of the kitchen and whistles around her fingers, and Jeff comes by and throws rose petals over both of us, Wyatt shaking his head in laughter.
And then he stands up, pulling me to my feet. “Excuse us, folks.” He picks me up and carries me out of the restaurant to the lobby. “Want to get a room? I thought about just getting one, but . . .”
“No,” I say, definitely, wiping tears of laughter and joy from my eyes. “No, I want to be at the cabin. I want to make love with you under the moon.”
In the moonlight, his eyes are like stars. We lie on a blanket spread on the hill outside the cabin, bare to the night and the night world of the mountains. Our naked skin is painted with silver light, and the stars in the skies shine down at me like Wyatt’s eyes, as he caresses my full breasts, fingers lingering to tease the tight buds of my nipples. Then he leans down to lick each nipple, his hands moving down my body to delve between my thighs, inside my secret folds, spread me open and slick me with my own dripping juices.
“I want you so much,” I tell him, letting my hands move over his strong shoulders, his sculpted abs.
“My wife,” he says, and then cups my buttocks in his hands, raising me like a cup to his mouth. “You’re going to be my wife.”
“Yes.”
Yes is all I manage to say for quite a while, as his tongue laves my tender pussy lips and clit until I cry out in orgasm.
“Ride me,” he says, pulling me over on top of him.
I straddle his lean hips, and stroke his cock, so eager for me that a simple touch has it jumping in my hand. “Giddyup,” I say, and laugh. And then we reach down to position him at the entrance to my cunt, and I’m so eager that I sink down on his huge shaft with a groan of pleasure, already very close to a second climax. I hold back as much as I can, but he feels so good that I can’t stop. I ride him until my pussy clamps down on him, inner muscles pulsing with joy.
“Fuck, Tia,” Wyatt says between clenched teeth. “Feels so good when you come on my cock . . . I can’t last long this time, baby. I love you. Love you so much.”
“I love you too, Wyatt!” I keep moving my hips on him, clutching him with my vagina, rocking both of us toward that place where there is no barrier between us. He feels suddenly bigger, harder, and he moans out loud with no words. He’s close. “Come for me, baby, yes, that’s it,” I say as I feel him finally let go inside me, hot juices bathing my inner walls. “You’re mine, Wyatt.”
“I’m yours,” he says, and then his auburn beard splits open as he grins wide. “And you’re mine.”
Roots and wings. I have it all now.
About the Author
Carly Keene writes short steamy romance packed full of hot instalove between sexy, assertive men and the fantastic women they fall in love with. A lot of sweetness, plus a lot of steam! If you’ve ever wished that Hallmark™ movies showed what happens in the bedroom, Carly’s books are for you. No cheating or cliffhangers, just guaranteed happily-ever-afters.
She’s a small-town girl who lives in Virginia with the love of her life and a crazy goofball dog.
You can connect with Carly on social media at the links below, and at carlykeene.com.
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Carly writes: Person who read this book, you have my deepest appreciation. You make everything worthwhile, and I throw you a thousand kisses, plus virtual puppies (who will never pee in your house). I'd love a review, if you can spare two minutes of your valuable time. It will mean more to me than I could ever express. Thank you again. I'd love to connect with you!
Also by Carly Keene
Christmas Lumberjacks Series:
1 Holly Dreams
2 Christmas Presents
3 Christmas Angel Wishes
Christmas Lumberjacks Box Set (Collection)
Heart Doctors Series:
1 Noah
2 Deena
3 Maddox
4 Finlay
5 Alison
Heart Doctors Box Set (Collection)
Found My Valentine
Shenanigans & Malarkey Series:
1 Prone to Shenanigans
2 Prone to Malarkey
Shenanigans & Malarkey Collection
Moonlight Ridge Mountain Men Series:
1 Captured by Moonlight
2 Taken by Moonlight
3 Held by Moonlight
COMING SOON
Taken by Moonlight
Moonlight Ridge Mountain Men 3
Anna
I’m tired of trying to make it as an artist in gritty Pittsburgh, and when I heard about a company hiring for graphic designer jobs in Atlanta, I packed up my belongings and headed south. But in the wild mountains, my ancient car conks out—and not only are there no service stations, there’s no cell phone service, either.
The gorgeous, rugged guy in the massive truck who pulls me out of the ditch makes me rethink continuing my journey. Could it end right here in this beautiful place, with this beautiful, kind man?
Wilder
I love working as an engineer at the Green Bank Radio Telescope in the backwoods of West Virginia, but I’m lonely. My female colleagues are nice enough, but none of them could be The One.
And then I meet Anna, whose piece-of-crap car has broken down in the mountains. She’s on her way to looking for a job in Atlanta, but I know right away she is the woman I’ve been waiting for all my life. How can I convince her she’s mine?
Releases May 2, 2020
