After the Sunset Read online

  “Thank you for staying,” he said after another minute, turning me suddenly, spinning me around and giving me a full body hug, all of him pressed to all of me.

  When we got back to the ranch after lunch, he walked me a different way to the creek than he normally did, along some railroad tracks. He made me wear my cowboy boots like he always did when we walked through grass or over dirt. It turned out that boots were not just decorative; they saved you from things like rocks and snake bites and a myriad of hidden dangers. The walk took longer than I thought it would, and after a while, because it was hot, I decided to go barefoot.

  Rand was concerned.

  “You’re gonna get splinters.”

  What was funny was that of all the things in the world—spiders, snakes, acts of God—he was worried about splinters. It was stupid until I got one.

  “Shit.”

  “Told you.”

  He bent and then flipped out the knife he carried all the time, and went down to one knee.

  I moved back. “It’s a splinter. You don’t need to cut off my foot or something.”

  “Don’t be a damn baby. I know what I’m doing.”

  I was amazed that the tip of the knife could be wielded so deftly. When he turned his back to me, offering, I climbed on. I had not had a piggyback ride since I was five, and it was kind of fun. I really enjoyed pressing my groin to the small of Rand’s back.

  “Stop,” he ordered me. “Or you’re gonna get put on your hands and knees right here, and once a day without lube is probably more than enough.”

  I was a little sore, but not enough to say no to Rand being back inside me. “Rand—”

  “Wait,” he interrupted me. “Just… I need to say something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “About earlier, I want you to know that between the deal with Powell and now this contract with Grillmaster, my ranch, our ranch, is good. I mean if I get caught in a stampede tomorrow, you and my mother and Char are all well provided for and—”

  “For fuck’s sake, Rand,” I barked at him, pinching one of his nipples before I pushed off his back, dropping to the ground. “Why would you even say something like—”

  “So you’ll believe me when I say that all you were doin’ when you were workin’ that job was annoying the shit outta me.” He growled as he turned around to face me. “I need you here, Stef. I need you to take care of my home and me and my life so I don’t just become this goddamn ranch!”

  “But you already are the ranch,” I reminded him.

  “No, Stefan,” he said as he grabbed hold of the back of my neck and yanked me forward, forcing me to look him in the eye. “You are my life. Nothing else means anything if you’re not here.”

  The way he was looking at me was almost scary. I had no right to be the man’s everything when I was still so messed up, worrying about being able to support myself and save while working at a much diminished salary. I needed to have a safety net, but Rand was telling me it was unnecessary. “I don’t think you have any idea what you’re saying.”

  “I’m speaking clear as anything. You’re just bein’ ornery.”

  “Ornery?” I laughed at him. “Who uses that word?”

  “Listen to me,” he began, ignoring my amusement. “We have us a joint checking account that you never touch. We have a savings account that you don’t touch either. I’m telling you right here and now that I want you to close your account from Chicago and start using the one we share. If you end up not liking the teaching, you can open your own business, do whatever the hell you want, but I need to see your face every night.”

  I reached up and put my hand on his cheek. “You really didn’t like it when I had to stay overnight in the city, huh?”

  He turned his head, kissing my palm, before he stepped forward into me, face down in my shoulder as his hands slid up under my shirt and touched my skin. I trembled in his arms, the feel of his callused palms on my body making my pulse jump.

  “Rand!” I was surprised when he bent and threw me over his shoulder, carried me to a nearby tree, dropped me on my feet, spun me around, and shoved me up against it.

  “No, I didn’t like it at all. You should be home when I’m home, period.”

  I didn’t have time to speak, to argue with him, to tell him that his ideas about a mate were antiquated, before he reached down and dragged the T-shirt up over my head. I tried to turn, but he held me still, his mouth between my shoulder blades, kissing, licking, sucking on my skin. I got hard with the feel of his hands working open my buckle and belt, freeing my cock but nothing else, making no move to get me naked.

  “Your skin makes me fuckin’ crazy,” he confessed, his voice low and husky, so sexy.

  He kissed his way down to the small of my back and then turned me around in his arms, kneeling, hands fisted in my jeans as he licked the engorged head of my cock.

  “Oh God, Rand,” I whispered hoarsely, my hands clutching his shoulders as I pushed into his mouth, watching his lips slide over my swollen shaft, taking me in until his nose was buried in my groin.

  I pulled back, and shoved back in hard, fucking his mouth, feeling his hands gripping my ass now through the denim, savoring his hot, wet mouth and his tongue swirling around my cock.

  “Rand,” I rasped out. “Gonna come.”

  He tightened his grip on my ass, forcing me down his throat harder, faster, and I came undone under his hands, in his mouth. He swallowed everything, sucked me clean, and then rose and kissed me ravenously.

  Tasting myself on him was so hot, I moaned loudly, sucking on his lips, biting gently but firmly, letting him know he was not getting away.

  He smiled as he deepened the kiss, making it slower, deeper, ravaging my mouth.

  The moan became a whimper, and when I was breathless and shaking, he shoved me back, unbuckled and unfastened himself and shoved his jeans down to his ankles. I was about to drop to my knees in the cool grass in the shade of the tree, but he told me to take off my jeans and ride him.

  I smiled when I saw the butter packet from the diner where we’d had lunch. “That is not lube,” I chuckled, watching as he squirted the imitation butter spread onto the palm of his hand and slathered it over his cock. “It’s gonna get everywhere, and it won’t come off after.”

  “Like I give a fuck about after,” he told me, and I saw the heat and need in his steady gaze.

  He watched me with hungry eyes as I peeled out of my jeans and stepped over him.

  “You’re gonna have grass plastered to your ass.”

  “I only care about your ass, Stef,” he said, his voice a deep rumble in his chest. “Now ride your cowboy.”

  I shook my head. “That’s so cheesy.” I smiled, my breath shaky as I got down on my knees, straddling his thighs before taking hold of his throbbing cock and lining it up with my suddenly fluttering hole.

  “I’m gonna come just lookin’ at ya,” he croaked out, and I saw the desperation and his desire.

  “Come inside me,” I exhaled, lowering myself over him slowly, letting him feel my channel ripple around him, the muscles tightening and relaxing, swallowing him, until I was completely impaled.

  His hands gripped my thighs tight, and when I lifted up only to plunge back down, he yelled my name.

  “Tell me, Rand.”

  “Don’t pull away. Just lemme feel you.”

  When I was on top, Rand liked it when I pressed down into him and pushed. He loved my inner walls holding him, liked to have me wrapped around him, squeezing. When he was on top, he liked driving into me, thrusting deep, but our present position was his favorite.

  “You’re mine.”

  And there could never be any doubt of the ownership he demanded and which I blissfully gave.

  After we swam naked in the creek, we had climbed out, changed back into our jeans, shoved our underwear into my boots—they needed to be washed—and were lying there together on the end of the tiny dock, feet dangling in the water, baking under the l
ate August sun. I could hear the lazy buzz of insects, a splash now and then as a fish hit the surface of the water, and the sound of the leaves on the trees as the breeze blew through them.

  “Best day ever,” I told him, turning my head so I could look at him, his fingers laced behind his head, eyes closed.

  His short, wavy, black hair was curling around his ears and sticking to the back of his neck, and his long eyelashes looked dark even against the tan of his face. The man spent his whole life outside in the sun, and only I had made him wear sunscreen and slathered his face at night with moisturizer. He thought it was stupid. I didn’t want him to get skin cancer and leave me. Leaving me was a big deal; he wasn’t going to let any other man have me. He carried sunscreen in his truck now.

  Looking at him, I couldn’t help reaching out and running my hand over the wide, muscular chest and down the deep groove in his abdomen to the hard, flat stomach. Rand Holloway did not have gym muscles like I did. I was toned and defined, my own physique reminiscent of the guys in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, purposely acquired, whereas Rand actually used his body every single day. He lifted and pulled and dragged things heavier than him. He wrestled animals to the ground, carried fence posts, and swung a hammer. There was a great physicality to his everyday life, and it showed in every carved, hard inch of his massive frame.

  “Come closer,” he drawled out, ending with a yawn.

  But I was engrossed with looking at him.

  The glossy black hair that fell into his bright turquoise-blue eyes, the thick eyebrows that arched dangerously, and his sinful lips that twisted into half a smile whenever he saw me turned me inside out on a regular basis. The man was strength and heat and sex wrapped up in thick muscles and warm sleek skin. I watched women, and a few men, respond to the raw physical presence of Rand Holloway and always understood their trembling reaction. He was powerful and sensual, and when he smiled, which he hardly did around anyone other than his family, his men, and me, it became suddenly hard to breathe.

  Everyone who had ever seen Rand Holloway smile wanted to see it again. They enjoyed watching the Technicolor-blue eyes glint, and witness the lines in the corner of those magnificent eyes crinkle in half. But if, by some miracle, he laughed with you, was comfortable enough to let down that barrier and just be himself, treated you like family, Christ, you were hooked for life. The deep rumbling laughter was a sound you never forgot, and he became a drug you had to have. Not that he ever noticed anyone’s reaction to him because he didn’t care if people liked him or not. The only things he cared about were his family, his ranch, the people who lived on it and called it home, and me. There was no way not to love a man like that, heart and soul.

  “Stef.”

  I lifted my eyes, and he caught me in his blue gaze.

  “Put your head down.”

  I stretched out, laid my head on his bicep, and slid my denim clad leg over his thigh.

  He grunted. “You know, I know why you don’t wanna use the joint checking account.”

  And just like that, we were back to our earlier discussion.

  I was quiet because I didn’t want to fight. I had worked all my life, depended on no one but myself for anything. My stepfather had thrown me out when I was fourteen. My mother had stood there and watched, slamming the door in my face. When I had pounded on the door to be let back in, it was thrown open and the beating had commenced. And while I had no worry that Rand would ever physically hurt me, there was still the possibility that if he ever got tired of me, learned to hate me, that I could be put out of my home. I could never allow that to happen to me again. Money was my security net, money I made myself.

  “Hello?”

  “Rand, I don’t wanna talk about—”

  “I won’t ever tell you to pack your things and go, Stef.”

  He knew me so well, knew all the fears that rode me.

  “I swear it.”

  “Rand—”

  “I won’t.”

  “Just—”

  “Believe me. Believe in me. Stefan… please.”

  God, the man knew I doubted him, doubted his love, the depth of it, the forever of it, and still he loved me.

  “I know you love me, and I know you wanna be here, and I know you still worry.”

  Shit.

  “Look at me.”

  I rolled my head sideways, and we were eye to eye, only inches separating us. It was very intimate; there was no hiding that close.

  “If you want, I can take my name off the joint account, and it can just be yours, and that way you’ll know it can never be taken from you. I’ll still put money in it, but I won’t touch it at all. Would that be better?”

  “That’s what’s called being kept, Rand, and no… that would not be better in the least.”

  “Fuck,” he grumbled. “I don’t mean it like—”

  “I know how you meant it,” I assured him. “It’s a very generous offer.”

  “Christ, now you’re making it sound dirty,” he groaned, and I sat up as he moved his hands, raking them through his thick hair.

  “Very generous for a guy like me.” I smiled, turning to look down at him, waggling my eyebrows. “A man with my background.”

  “Stefan.” He warned me.

  “A guy from the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “It ain’t funny.”

  “It’s a little funny,” I chuckled.

  “You don’t… you ain’t hearin’ me,” he said, and my laughter died in my throat when his voice cracked. He sat up beside me, crossing his legs so his left knee bumped me. “For a long time, all the guys would go home at night to their wives and their children and lit-up houses that smelled like food and got to hear all the good and all the bad that happened that day. I used to go home, and there weren’t none of that.”

  “Rand,” I began, putting my hand on his knee.

  “Lemme finish,” he said gently, taking my hand, sliding his fingers between mine, pressing my palm against him. “After you came, though, suddenly I’m just as excited to go home as everybody else. I open my front door and the music is on, and the lights are on, and the place smells amazing, and goddamn, Stef, even when I was married before, it wasn’t like that. Even if you’re runnin’ late and I get in first, just you walkin’ in the house makes it feel different. And I get it, ya know? You’re it, you’re my home.”

  I looked away because I was nothing. I was an orphan, and he had a home and a family and a ranch and everyone counting on him, and I was just… how could Rand want to build on me? How was I a foundation for anything?

  “Hey.”

  I turned back, slowly, taking a breath.

  His hand went to my cheek, his thumb sliding over my bottom lip, and I saw the warmth infuse his eyes, saw them darken, soften, because he was looking at me.

  “You don’t really know what you did today, so I’m gonna tell you.”

  I nodded because my voice was gone.

  “When you told me that you weren’t gonna look for a job in Dallas, I knew for sure you wanted to stay with me and have a home.”

  My focus became breathing.

  “I mean, before that, when you were runnin’ back and forth, doin’ all that driving, well, maybe you were tryin’ to keep one foot in your old life and one in your new one, ya know?”

  I did know and that was exactly what I had been doing.

  “I saw you needin’ air. Saw you gettin’ all panicky ’cause your life was fallin’ into place around you. The happier you got, the more you started fittin’ in and gettin’ comfortable, the more you started pacin’ like an animal that was caged up. You were snappin’ at everyone, ready to bite and scratch to get away, and sick that you had to. I ain’t never seen a man who so wanted to belong and who was scared to, all at the same time. It makes me tired just watchin’ you wrestle with yourself.”

  I cleared my throat. “So I’m a crazy person who—”

  “Just… hush. You showed me how it was gonna be ’cause when it was
time to decide, you chose me and the ranch and your life here.”

  He narrowed his eyes, and as he squinted, I saw how red-rimmed they were. I had no idea that anything I could ever do would touch him so deeply.

  “It’s why I can barely keep my hands off you. That’s why I attacked you in your office today, ’cause it’s your office. It’s where you’re fixin’ to be because of me.”

  I finally understood. To Rand, until he physically saw the reality of my new job, he had not let himself believe it. To me, the space, my cubicle at the community college, was a dump. To Rand, it represented me putting down roots.

  “You told me that you wanted to belong to me, and today I believe it.”

  I looked away from him because my eyes filled and my vision blurred with hot tears.

  “Along with workin’ there at the college, I still want you to oversee the Grillmaster account, you hear?”

  I nodded.

  “And if it don’t work out for you at the school, you can just do that, all right?”

  But how would that work?

  “Are you afraid of how it will look to everyone if you work at the ranch?”

  That was some of it, I would admit to that. “People will think I’m sponging off you,” I said to the creek instead of Rand.

  “But you’ll know different.”

  “I just can’t be a—”

  “Soon no one will wonder why you’re on the ranch, once we have kids.”

  Wait. Kids?

  What? “What?” I asked breathlessly, my head swiveling around to look at him. God, when had I missed him planning his whole life with me in it?

  “You’ll have to stay home and take care of them.”

  Even though he had said kids before, in the past, all I had ever heard was child. But I processed the word that time. Kids. As in plural. As in more than one. As in them.

  When had he decided that he wanted to have children with me? “I have no idea what you’re even talking about right now. You—”

  “I wanted you to practice takin’ care of me so you’ll be ready to take care of your children, and I was so scared that you wouldn’t. I was thinkin’ just maybe you were ready to leave me, but then you took this job so you could keep on seein’ me and cookin’ for me and—”