“Need you, Dan, now.” And she did. She needed him to remind her that this was all sex, that she couldn’t have the ranch and the horses and the hot baby daddy in her life. Dreams like those put her heart at risk...so she’d just take the sex.
It was simpler that way.
Daniel nudged her legs farther apart with his knee before stroking her secret folds with his fingers. “You’re so wet, Lex.”
“Because I need you, Dan. I need sex.” Alex heard the desperation in her voice and didn’t know whether she was trying to convince herself or him.
He pushed inside her and Alex wrapped her legs around his back, pulling him closer. Heat, warmth, completion. The rest of her life was crazy confusion but, as Daniel started to move, Alex realized that this made sense. It was the only thing that did.
As he pushed her higher and higher, the needs of her body stilled her whirling thoughts and all she wanted was more of him. Her hands skated over his back, his butt, down the backs of his thighs. A strand of hair landed in her mouth and she thrashed her head from side to side as he kissed her neck, pulled her earlobe between his teeth. She was so close, teetering on the edge of pleasure, when she heard Daniel’s demand to let go, his reassurance that he would catch her.
She wanted to stay here, just for another minute, bathed in that silver light of anticipation. “Dammit, Lex, I can’t hold on,” Daniel muttered.
Placing his hand between their bodies, he found her clit and stroked it, just once with his thumb. It was the sexual equivalent of a hard hand shoving her between her shoulders and she plunged over the cliff... Falling, falling, shattering. But he fell with her, his body shaking as he came.
Daniel collapsed on her and Alex didn’t mind that her breath was shallow, that his body weight pushed her into the soft mattress. When they were lying like this, intimately connected, they were at peace. It was only when they started to talk that things went wrong.
Alex pushed her nose into his neck, kissed his skin and ran her hand down his spine. Beautiful but stubborn. Gorgeous but flawed.
Just as she was, contrary and imperfect.
Daniel pulled himself up and gazed down at her, holding his body weight on one hand as he pulled the strand of hair from her mouth and tucked it behind her ear. Alex saw her confusion reflected in his eyes. Then determination replaced confusion and she knew that he was looking for the right words to use to convince her to come around to his way of thinking.
Okay, she might be stubborn but he was relentless. “I’m not marrying or moving in with you, Clayton. No matter how good you are in the sack.”
“Dammit.” Daniel slipped out of her, stood up and stalked to the small bathroom attached to the bedroom. “You are a stubborn pain in the ass!”
Sure she was but that didn’t make her wrong!
Five
The end of January
Gus heard the door to his study open and looked up to see his still-beautiful Rose, and his heart, old and jaded, thumped against his rib cage. He’d waited for fifty-plus years to see that soft smile on her face, for her to walk into the room and into his arms.
Man, he was riding the gravy train with biscuit wheels.
Rose placed her hands on his chest and her mouth drifted across his.
“Mornin’, husband.”
He was her husband. And how freakin’ great was that? He smiled, allowed his hand to drift down over her ass and grinned. “Mornin’, wife.”
After a little canoodling—the best way to start a morning—Rose rested her head on her chest and sighed. “Have you had any more thoughts on what to do about our grandchildren?”
During their wedding reception last night, Rose dropped the bombshell news that Alex was pregnant and that Daniel was the baby’s father. Strangely, instead of feeling angry, he’d felt content. Like this news was right, simply meant to be. He’d initially thought that he was so very relaxed because he’d been floating on a cloud of wedding-induced happiness, but upon waking this morning, it still felt right, like it was preordained.
He wasn’t, however, happy that Alex and Daniel were going to try to raise their great-grandchild separately and not as husband and wife. That wasn’t acceptable. Not because he cared about convention or how it would look, but because, dammit, those two were meant to be together.