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.

I miss what I know. And I dread what I don’t.

Turns out, women are so much better in real life. I’ve never experienced intimacy before, and I can’t get enough of skin on skin. They’re soft, they’re sweet, and God, do they feel good when they come on my dick. Even that pales in comparison, though, when I figure out they’ll let me put my head between their legs. That’s better than liquor, maybe better than barrel racing.

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

I’m pussy whipped for a girl I’ve never even spoken to.

There’s something so sensual about her. Maybe it’s her dark curls, the color of the woods. Or her velvety skin. Or her big pale blue eyes that remind me of ice on the deep river that runs down the mountain. Or it’s the aura around her that I don’t know how to explain. It’s like she was made for a different world. I don’t know, but I do know that she was made to be mine.

Over the summer, it occurred to me that this is more than attraction. I have an obsession.

I have a problem. But I don’t have a problem with it.

“I will eat your pussy if I have to tie your legs open,” he says, voice harsh. “Not tonight, but I swear, I will.”

She’s worth everything I’m going to do to make her mine.

I’m barely aware of when he comes, but I feel it hit my inner thigh. And I’m faintly disappointed.

My stomach sinks that she thinks I’d ever be angry with her. I’m angry, but never at Freya, never at the woman I’m in love with.

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

A slow realization settles over me. Freya didn’t change me. I got older, a little wiser, and that version of me wants the gentleness of a woman like her. My tires are riding lower than they used to be. I’ve got enough stories to last me. I’m ready to settle down, have been for a while. I just got one more fight to finish.

“You can’t keep me here,” she says. “I can and I will. That harness has a leash clip on it, and if need be, you’ll sleep with it locked on the bed.”

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

My vision blurs. I see a flash of her bent over in front of me. I see myself crouched over her like an animal. This is my wife. The mother of my babies. The other half of my heart.

“Sweetheart, I’ll be eighty and still ready to go the minute I see you naked in my bed.”

The only thing I know for certain is that Deacon Ryder can fight like hell. And not even Aiden is a match for him.

Without her, I’m not a man. I’m a shell, a machine made of nothing but hurt and scars. I can fight, can hit back better than I know how to breathe, but to be whole, I need her. She’s the heart in my chest. She breathed life into my empty body.

“When this is done, you’re going to rehab,” I say. “You’re getting help, getting whatever is fucked up in your lungs taken care of. And if you try to leave wherever the fuck I lock you up before you’re stone cold sober, I’ll put a bullet between your eyes. We clear?”

“Mind if I borrow that pussy for a minute?” he says, kissing up my neck. “It’s all yours, daddy,” I murmur.