Deacon (The Sovereign Mountain, #3)

by Raya Morris Edwards

This book is for everyone who wants a tatted up, unhinged cowboy daddy with a special piercing. Deacon is for you.

Save a 🐎 ride a 🤠

The world has made it clear that sex will change me, but men, they reincarnate themselves before the bed is cold. Sin doesn’t stick to them, somehow.

I’m good at two things: making women come and raising the best barrel racers in the state of Montana.

She could be mine. All I have to do is play my cards right, and I can make it happen. I have a place for her already built. She’s the missing piece, I’m sure of it.

So, I buy it, because I’m pussy whipped for a girl I’ve never even spoken to.

He has a dark magnetic energy, a raw sexuality.

looking at him that he’s a scarred-up, knuckles-in-the-drywall son of a gun.

“Good fucking girl,”

There’s no going back for me. She’s worth everything I’m going to do to make her mine.

He has a powerful, raw sexuality. It doesn’t turn off. It’s not intentional. It’s just there, potent in every move he makes.

That son of a gun took my panties.

But for the first time in my life, something real makes me feel alive. Maybe it’s not forever. But it could be for now.

“I’m gonna fuck you good and hard, sweetheart, so keep your head on straight for it.”

Skin on skin, better than I ever imagined it could be. I close my eyes and, for the first time, I think I see a way forward for us. Darkness and all.

I’m not Freya, scared and unsure. I’m beautiful, desirable, wanted so badly that I bring this man to his knees, all two hundred and fifty plus tattooed pounds of him. That’s powerful.

I do, I see her clearly, and because of that, I can’t let her go.

Give me everything, and I’ll keep you safe.”

Silently, I promise myself this is the last time she leaves.

I ran from Deacon because I was afraid of him, but now, I’m so afraid of being just another turn in a vicious, endless cycle. Now, I need him. I want him not just to save me, but to silence my doubt about him. “Come find me,” I whisper.

I lift my hands. “What do you want me to do?” He stops, giving me a hard stare. “Put your fists away,” he says. “No fighting. No fucking Aiden’s stepdaughter. No antagonizing anybody.” I shake my head. “I can quit fighting. Can’t quit the stepdaughter.” Jay runs a hand over his face. “You’re lucky I don’t fire you. Get out of my office and keep your hands to yourself.”

I’m ready to settle down, have been for a while. I just got one more fight to finish.

But deep down, I know that if I go to Ryder Ranch, I’ll never come home.

Her jaw drops. I swear, I can hear our hearts thump. I see it in the distance—the point of no return where she finds out what kind of man I am. But this time, it’s different. This time, she can’t leave.

“If I have to pick between my land and you…well, I’d rather not,” he says. “I’m taking you out of this, so I can fight dirty.”

I don’t understand how he can be so gentle, so amusing, so kind, but get him jealous, and he’s an animal.

His hands are still on me, hands capable of so much hurt. And yet, hands that have never hurt me.

I know two things for certain now. One—Deacon Ryder is a damn psycho. Two—I’m glad he’s on my side.

“I won’t lie and say I haven’t been around,” he says. “But I want you, bottom line. I have for months, and I’m tired of sitting on my ass about it. You’re it for me, sweetheart.”

If I am the girl who wanted to live in the stars, he’s the mountains down below. Together, we feel like that place where the heavens and the Earth meet.

She’s precious to me. I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure she knows it.

Just like that, the door is shut. We both said our piece and neither of us walked away. Instead, I slip between the sheets with him and we work our pain out without saying a word.

I’m grounded by giving her what she needs, even when she doesn’t understand. It’s my job to know her heart. To keep it, to protect it. My life has been so chaotic. I find so much peace in this exchange of power and care. It’s the same with bondage. It feels like the eye of the hurricane—a place to rest, to breathe, to feel together.

I leave her there, breathless. I think I got my point across.

“Who am I?” he says. My nails dig into his shoulders. “Mine,” I whisper. His chest rumbles. “That’s right. What do you call me?” I press my face into his shoulder. He smells like Deacon—solid, unyielding. My entire world. “Daddy,” I manage.

We’re both broken in two, but together, I think the two halves could make up the whole world.

I need him the way I need the stars, and I believe with every fiber of my body that, like those stars, at the darkest hour, he’ll appear.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not killing me that I’m the executioner in all this, not the savior.

Our pasts are set in stone. I’ll be picking up the pieces of what Aiden did for the rest of my life. I’ll sleep beside it, hold it in my arms, talk around in circles about it past midnight.

I love her enough to hold her pain forever, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get some good, old-fashioned revenge for it.

I’ve walked a hard road, and it made me a rougher man than I set out to be. But if she’s at the end of it, I don’t mind what brought me here.

“All roads lead to Sovereign Mountain.”

I found somebody to love me the way my heart wants to be loved. For the first time, I’m a girl with a future worth living for.

There’s no hoping, no longing anymore. Now, I realize as I sit, miles from the house I built, that home was never a place. It was always this woman. It was the baby she’ll have when summer comes. It’s all the years I get to love her and have her love me back.

He might be a hurricane, but I was always safe in the eye of it.

My wife. My now, my forever.