“Well…yeah.” She stared at his profile. His straight nose was something she’d want to pass on to a son, if she ever had one.
Wait—she’d agreed to find his siblings with him, not bear his children.
Although that unprotected sex against the wall might take care of your personal wants.
They hadn’t spoken about that instance even once. She suspected he’d be knocking his spurs together with happiness if she ended up pregnant.
A warm coal slid into her stomach at the thought too.
“I don’t spend money on things like computer tablets.” He gestured to her bag nestled on the floor by her feet.
“Or electricity?” Rumors had it that he lived a real primitive life—in all ways.
“That’s true. Where I live, no electric lines exist. But I do run lights and such off propane I haul in. I only use lights when it gets dark, though. I’m outside most of the day.”
“Even in winter?”
He nodded. “Even then. I’m out checking trap lines and hunting.” He patted the dash. “The money I just spent to fill up the truck came from last winter’s fur haul.”
She assessed him. While she was a country girl at heart, she’d spent a lot of time in the city. If she told her coworkers that her lover was a fur trapper, they’d tar and feather her. But to her it was a trade—an honest one for a hardworking man, and she didn’t care what people thought.
She wanted to tell him she had a bank account full of money but refrained. His pride would take a hit, and she had no desire to throw punches.
The whir of the tires against pavement lulled her. As night closed in around them, the day’s events weighed on her. She felt as if she’d lived a lifetime since Utah’s return. Last night they’d barely slept. She had no idea how his internal engine was still running.
Her head bounced on her neck, and she opened her eyes. Utah’s laugh greeted her ears. “You fell asleep, baby.”
She blinked and tried to focus on her location. They were stopped in what appeared to be a field. Tall grasses surrounded the truck. The headlights illuminated the pale brown stems.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
His eyes glowed in the dash lights. “For hours, you’ve been tormenting me with those shorty shorts. And your calves in those cowgirl boots? Mmmm.”
His hum inflamed her. Bolts of need struck her pussy. She squirmed on the seat.
He offered her a crooked grin and a fleeting glimpse of his chin dimple before popping the door open. She watched him stride through the beams of the headlights as he circled to the passenger door.
When he opened it, she slipped into his arms. He didn’t even pause—he just kissed her. The strong aroma of mint clung to him. She parted her lips, and he shoved the peppermint he was sucking into her mouth. She moaned around it and shifted it to her cheek.
The action caused bittersweet memories to jump into her mind. This was something they’d done while dating, shared mints and gum between classes. He’d trap her against a locker and use his tongue to poke a mint into her mouth—part of him to take to the next class.
He curled his hands into her hips and hauled her into his steely body. Arousal flooded her panties. Her breasts ached for his touch.
Swooping an arm behind her legs, he yanked her off her feet. She threw her head back and stared at the stars witnessing this interlude. Every nerve in her body was alive in a way she hadn’t known for too many years.
When he lay her down in the tall grasses, she let all the love she felt for him surge into her veins.
The headlights had gone out automatically, but the moonlight shed enough to see the glimmer in his eyes.
He braced himself on his forearms to gaze down at her. “I can’t believe you’re with me again, Caroline. God.” His voice broke, and he buried his face against her throat. She felt him swallow his emotion and gripped his face in both hands.
“I know, Utah.”
He raised his head. “Do you? God, you do. I can see it in your eyes.” He dropped his mouth to her throat, murmuring, “Let me love you here under our stars.”
A quiet noise broke from her, and she wrapped her arms around him. He slanted his mouth over her skin, kissing a trail of fire down to her breasts. He exposed her bit by bit and kissed the flesh he bared.
The universe swirled above as they stripped each other with lingering slowness. When he laid nude with her, his rubber-covered cock a hard ridge against her thigh, he finally said it.
“I’ve never stopped lovin’ you, baby.”
Throat closing, she shook her head, unable to return his words. The feelings in her were too fierce for conversation.
She threw herself into the kiss. Chasing his tongue around his mouth made him groan for more. Need escalated in her, and her pussy wept the juices that would guide him in.
Reaching around him, she set her nails against his ass and dug them in. He thrust into her. His eyes flared at the depth, and she clenched him with her inner walls, holding him in place.
This was good and right. Being loved by Utah in a bed, on a table, or against a wall was amazing. But they’d taken their first sips of each other in a field, and this was where they belonged.
The fragrant grasses tickled her skin as she moved with him. His rough breath on her nipple sent flames dancing through her belly. He sucked the bud in and laved it with his tongue. Lipping, swirling, lapping, nipping, and biting. By the time he moved to the other nipple, she thought she’d die from the pressure.
He withdrew his cock almost to the tip before plunging sharply back into her. She cried out, as free with her screams as she’d been at the ranch. He responded by churning his hips faster.
Gaze boring into hers, he didn’t allow her to look away. To her, nothing else in the world existed. His veined length glided in and out of her body, and she gripped him with every stroke.
Heat coiled.
“Come for me, baby. I feel you right there on the edge.”
Fuck, she was. And he knew how to hit all the right spots. He reached under her to lift her ass to the perfect angle.
A single thrust sent her over the edge. She wrapped herself around him and stared into his eyes as she came apart, as she’d done that first time so many years ago. The moment had linked them for eternity.
Now it sucked her deeper under his spell.
His eyelids flickered. Groaning, he pistoned his hips as his liquid heat pooled inside her. “Oh fuck. Damn. Hell. Baby.”
She laughed against his shoulder and bit into his salty skin. He captured her gaze for a split second before crushing his mouth against hers. For long minutes they let the kiss ease them from their high. When she grew boneless in his hold, he rolled to the side and tucked her against his chest.
“I fancy a nice long rest,” he said quietly, eyes already shut.
“Me too.” His warmth and the soft grasses were all she needed for a bed.
The clouds scudded over the moon, casting them in complete darkness. Just before she dropped off, she giggled.
Utah jerked, his grip convulsing on her. “What’s up?”
“I just saw a headline flash through my mind.
Journalist found in farmer’s field. Arrested for public nudity.”
His laugh vibrated her. “Tomorrow when the cops arrive on the scene, we’ll give ’em a show.”
“Do you want to stop at a hotel to clean up?” Utah asked as they bounced out of the field and turned onto the highway, leaving behind two flattened tire tracks and a spot where they’d lain all night.
She scrubbed a hand through her hair, loosening a few seed pods left from the high grasses. They fell to her lap. “What for? We’ve gotten our rest. Is there a truck stop with a sink? I can make do.”
He quirked a smile at her. She was as low maintenance as she’d been a decade ago. “I’ll find one.”
“How do you know which way to go? Did you plot the route?”
“No. Guess I just know.” The thought struck that he might have an inherent sense of where his siblings lived, like a father goose finding his goslings so easily after they’d been scattered by a fox.
Hell, he was getting all benevolent already. One peek at the faces of his sisters had turned him to mush.
Caroline pulled out her cell phone and started flipping through screens. At one, she stopped and groaned.
“What is it?”
“E-mail from my editor. I have this story due by the end of the month, and she’s riding me for rough drafts already.”
He didn’t exactly know what she meant but nodded. She flipped through a few more e-mails and then turned to him. “I need to make a call.”
“Do you need me to stop?”
“No, as long as I have cell service, I’m good.” Her voice sounded cooler, more distant. Not at all like the little hellcat he’d held hours ago. And certainly not the soft, sweet woman who melted when she looked into his eyes.
He placed a hand on her thigh to keep her from going too far away from him—both in the cab and in her mind.
“Katherine. Yeah, it’s Caroline.” She listened for a moment. “No, I’m not at home. I’m on the road. A last-minute trip, but I think I have some good ideas brewing.” Suddenly, she switched the cell to her other ear, agitation rolling off her. She started spouting off a list of ideas. A few more minutes of talk about arcs and hooks followed.
Utah listened to her voice and drove. Her rapid speech spoke of her excitement—and a new side to her. His Caroline ran on a slower, more even keel.
She flipped the phone to her other ear again and crossed her legs. One booted foot bounced. “No, Katherine. I won’t be late. When have I ever handed an assignment in late? Just because I’m travelling doesn’t mean I’m not writing. Yeah, okay. I’ll talk to you at the end of the week.”
After Caroline stabbed the off button on the phone, she dropped her head back against the seat and stared at the truck ceiling.
“You need to talk about it?”
She blew out a breath but didn’t look at him. “No. She gets antsy when I don’t have work on her screen within a week of the assignment.”
“How long has it been?” He glided a hand down to her knee.
When she met his gaze, he saw some panic there. Immediately his mind started working through ways to calm her. Distractions.
“It’s been three weeks.” Worry roughened her voice.
“It’s unusual for you to take so long?”
“Yeah. I’ve had ideas—plenty of them. But I can’t seem to start on any of them. I have notes…”
He squeezed her knee. “You’ll get it, baby. I have total confidence in you.”
She snorted. “Glad someone does. Right now, I need coffee. Find that truck stop, Utah, and fast.”
He twitched the brim of his cowboy hat. “Yes’m.” A grin spread across his face, still foreign to him. As a loner, he rarely smiled. The few times a year he went into town, he offered only polite smiles. Even with the ladies he’d slept with, he just needed a wink and a hand on her elbow to get her to take him home.
Those ladies hadn’t really deserved his smiles. They scratched an itch. He respected them, yes, but he hadn’t given any one of them even a fragment of his soul.
“Do you miss football?”
His eyebrows shot up at Caroline’s sudden question.
“Not really. I found other pursuits I love.”
“Like what?” She angled her knees toward him, her gaze unwavering.
“Fishin’ in an ice cold mountain stream. Pulling out trout after trout, knowing my belly will be full for a week.”
She made a quiet noise in her throat. “Your life has been much different from mine.”
“Tell me about yours.” He wanted her to open up about her life with Jeremy Robinson. It was obviously a painful
chapter, but Utah needed to know what was written on those pages. They lay between his and Caroline’s beginning and their happily ever after.
“No need for me to fish for my supper. I worked at the grocery store for many years. If I was hungry, I took a can off a shelf, paid for it, and heated it up.” Her faded blue eyes held more secrets than the mysteries of heating pork and beans.
“Did you like working there?”
She shrugged. “It was a job. The owner was good to me and gave me double shifts. That money helped me save enough to start on my own and to take college classes.”
“I’m so glad you got to college, Caroline. You were the smartest in our high school class.”
Even before she’d agreed to marry Utah, she hadn’t really talked about her dreams for the future. It seemed then she didn’t have any, but then again, she was young. It just took her longer to figure out what she wanted from life.
The townsfolk were wrong—she wasn’t only living for me.
Yet the thought had always unsettled him. After she’d left him waiting on the county line, those words helped him to stay away.
As he drove, he spent a long minute thinking about what he was—a mountain bum. He might have been a pro ball player had he given a shit after losing Caroline.
And returning from college with the intention to work on the ranch backfired big time. Pa’s treachery had driven him away.
“What do you think we’ll find in Colorado? How do you think Bennett and Aurora will react to us?” Somehow Caroline had followed a similar path of thought and arrived at the same questions forming in his mind.
He shook his head. “Wish I knew. Frankly, I’m worried. If Bennett’s anything like my other brothers…I’m probably in for more split knuckles.”
“Ohhh,” she said softly, grabbing up his hand. She unfolded his fingers and drew each cut knuckle to her mouth. Her soft lips moving over the skin made his cock jerk.
“I hope these siblings already know about us. I hate the idea of stomping on fourteen people’s good memory of Hollis Davies.”
Caroline turned his hand over, kissed his palm, and then folded his fingers around the caress. He held it there, his heart warm. “My guess is it’s going to be rough for all parties. But I’m here for you.”
Their gazes connected for a heartbeat. He returned his attention to the road in time to see a sign for a rest stop. “And for that, you’ll be rewarded with coffee, breakfast, and soap and water.”
“And hopefully Wi-Fi. I need to dig a little more to find these Colorado siblings.”
Colorado siblings.
He was no longer just one of the Davies boys. Now there were four sisters as well, and if he and Caroline were correct, they were all split up by state.