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She loves this land as much as I do. She loves me. And this is our night.
Our clan of four shares an extraordinary closeness, an inseparable bond that stems from childhood.
She’s my past, my present, and my future. I’m everything when I’m with her and nothing without her.
I’ve waited years, fantasizing, wanting. I wanted her when her kisses made me stutter. I wanted her when my dick started hardening in my hand. I wanted her when her boobs grew, and dark hair appeared under my arms. I really wanted her when I discovered porn and watched all the licking, sucking, pounding, filthy ways I could want her.
My girl is sunshine, rawhide, and pure fight.
She’s going to wait, because that’s what I want. To be in control, push her limits, and bend her to my will—it’s what I crave. But tonight, I’ll disguise my darker desires as sweet, playful teasing.
She’s my home, and I’ll never let her go. It’s not even in the scope of possibilities.
“I failed her again.”
928 miles. Two years. It’s not so far, even though it seems like it.
I leave the girl who loved a boy with her whole heart. I abandon her there on the side of the road. Let her rot in post mortem.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that would’ve kept her from returning home. Not her father. Not the threat against her life. Not the trails of sin and corruption running beneath the ranch.
I’ll bleed for her, because I love her.
I’m not an artisan. Just a girl who misses her cowboy with every stitch and solder, every hour and mile, every inhale and exhale. I made this with all that I am for the one I’ll never stop loving. C
I said I could and I would, and I’m doing it. I moved on, earned a bachelor’s degree in animal science, and I’m flying through veterinary college. If I keep up this pace, I’ll be a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in two years. That’s faster than anyone expected.
Freeze. Restart. Stop the pain. Restart it. Stop it. Start it.
“I’m so fucking lucky to be the one you want. I wouldn’t throw that away.”
Jake Holsten is the real deal, and my body recognizes every strapping inch of him.
Her return to Sandbank is a risk, but my patience has run out.
“I’m not broken,” she whispers. “You don’t need me to fix you. You need me to sit with you in the sadness.”
Impatience is my enemy. Insatiable desire is my weakness.
He has the strength, endurance, and ferocity of a stallion, and I’m the mare within smelling range.
She’s a vision of windblown red hair, picturesque tattoos, and rugged denim.
The room echoes back the whispers of our movements. The stroke of hands, shortening breaths, shifting legs, rustling sheets, vibrating moans—the sounds of two souls stitching back together.
“You’re mine, Conor Cassidy.”
“You make a mess of my insides, Jake Holsten.”
“When you protect those you love, you do it with every breath in your body.”
Not everything’s meant to be, but Jake and I are inevitable. We’re knotted together, and damn if he doesn’t know how to tie a knot that withstands the test of time.
“Don’t judge me because I have a thing for naked cowboys with killer abs and endless stamina.”
“Come home to me.” “Always.”
My girl is sunshine, rawhide, and pure fight.
This is us, wild and incendiary, dancing in the open air like a campfire. Galloping through the pasture against the wind. Soaring over the ridge with falcon wings and marveling at the glory of our life together.
She’s the best parts of my past come to life. Like a phantom dream. Except I know this is real. Because I’m more in love with the woman in my arms than my memories of her.
