can hit your bed, or my bed and do all the things we talked about. But not here.”
“So why would you say all those . . .” Lightbulb moment. Duh. “You were distracting me.”
“Yep.”
Tanna fought back tears. For Fletch’s thoughtfulness and that she’d become such a basket case that she needed soothing in the way he knew would be effective on her. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He brushed his mouth across her forehead. “This is about you. Sex is about us. In this moment we’re gonna talk. Really talk about where you think you can go from here. No holds barred, beautiful.”
She really loved this man. “Okay.”
Fletch led her to the picnic table. They sat side by side, her small hand engulfed in his bigger one, her head resting against his bicep. She took a deep breath. “I was so fucking scared when you told me I was getting on a horse today that I considered faking a recurrence of my knee injury so you’d change your mind.”
He laughed. “Clever. But wasn’t happening. Go on.”
Baring her body was a lot easier than baring her soul. But she did it.
Fletch didn’t run. He didn’t pass judgment. He just listened. Then he kissed away her tears.
He’d helped her take the first step. The rest was up to her. And for the first time in months, she had a feeling of hope.
The first thing Tanna did when they got back to the Split Rock was call Eli and ask if he had a gentle mount she could ride first thing tomorrow.
The next thing she did was convince Fletch she needed lots of help on reclaiming her riding skills as she led him to bed.
Chapter Twenty-seven
With the warm breeze drifting through the open windows in the cab of his truck and his sense of anticipation, Fletch could almost imagine this was the beginning of his vacation instead of the end of it.
Where in the hell had six weeks gone? Six weeks ago he’d wondered how he’d fill his time. Now he made a mental list of all the things he hadn’t done.
It’d been a week and a half since the horse incident, which Tanna referred to as “the day the horseshit hit the fan” and things had never been better between them. Even when he’d known it was the beginning of the end.
He’d convinced her to spend the last two days of his sabbatical with him at the lake.
“We’re not sleeping in a tipi, are we?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Fletch sighed. “You really went there, Tanna?”
She laughed. “Kidding. I just wanted to hear that exasperated sigh. It’s sexy as hell.”
“I oughta turn you over my knee and paddle your ass. Those yelps you make are sexy as hell.”
“I’m on board—but only if you pull my hair too,” she cooed. “I love it when you go all he-man large and in charge on me.”
“Remember you said that.” Fletch brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “This cabin is rustic. But it does have running water. And a decent dock.”
“A boat?”
“An old fishing canoe.”
“So no waterskiing? Damn.”
“You water-ski?”
Tanna shook her head. “I’ve always wanted to try, but it’d just be my luck if I wiped out and tore the crap out of my knee again.”
“Motorized watercraft aren’t allowed anyway.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You’ll just have to lay on the dock in a bikini.”
“While I’m holding a fishing pole. Because I’m a damn good fisherwoman.”
“Glad someone is,” he muttered. “I brought steaks just in case.”
“Buffalo steaks?” she snickered.
“Y’all are fixin’ for me to open a can of whoop ass for them Indian comments, ain’t ya?” he shot back, imitating her twang.
She laughed. “I deserved that.”
With no beach or motorized boats, the small lake didn’t attract many people, so the area had remained unchanged since Fletch’s childhood. They turned off the main road onto a bumpy, overgrown path one step below a fire trail. The pine trees were sparse. Not much green grew on the forest floor. The road took a sharp curve and they reached the back side of the cabin.
“Here we are.”
Tanna bent forward and squinted through the front window. “Where’s the outhouse?”
“No outhouse. It has a septic system.”
“Whoo-ee Jim-Bob! Then this here is right uptown.”
If Fletch had his way, he would’ve carried in everything. But Little Miss I Can Do It insisted on helping. He kept an eye on her to see if she favored her knee after her recent return to riding.
She set the sleeping bags on the floor and looked up at him, smiling. “This oughta be cozy.”
“Let’s test it.” Fletch pulled Tanna against his chest and landed on the mattress on his back. He took her mouth in a ravenous kiss, keeping her arms trapped between them so he could tease and coax—devour her however he pleased and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. By the time he slowed the kiss, his dick was hard.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “We’ll fit, but one of us will have to be on top. All night.”
Tanna angled her head to bury her face in his neck. “Sounds like something fun to try.”
He loosened his hold on her, but she remained curled into him. He trailed his fingers up and down her back, more than content to just lie with her like this.
“Fletch?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks.”
“For?”
“Bringing me here. For wanting to spend time with me.”
There’s no place I’d rather be. No one I’d rather be with.
“My pleasure. I hate that my vacation’s about over.” He twisted the ends of her ponytail around his finger. “I wish this was longer than two days.”
Tanna kissed the pulse point in his neck. The corner of his jaw. The tip of his chin. “Me too. So we’d better make the most of the time we have.” She pushed up and stood beside the bed, offering him a hand to help him up. “Let’s go explore.”
“You go ahead. I’m right behind you.”
Her white cover-up blouse fluttered to the floor. She kicked off her flip-flops and grabbed a beach towel.
Fletch stopped at the cooler and snagged two beers.
Barefoot, Tanna wandered to the end of the dock, looking delectable in cutoff jean shorts and a bright yellow bikini top. She sat and dangled her legs over the side. Resting back on her elbows, she aimed her face toward the sun and closed her eyes.
He nearly stumbled over his own feet; the woman was such a vision. He just stared at her while drool formed in his mouth and icy water dripped off the bottom of the cans.
She cracked an eye open. “Why you standing there, breathing hard, blocking my sun?”
Because I love you.
His little Texas cowgirl would run if he confessed that, so he plopped down beside her and said, “Just admiring the view, sugar twang.”
“Of the lake?”
“Nope. I’ve seen that dozens of times.”
Her lips curled into a smirk. “You were looking down my top, huh?”
“Yep. Don’t suppose I could convince you to sunbathe topless since no one’s around today?”
“But what if I burn my nipples?”
“I’ll kiss them and make them better.”
She laughed. “We’ll see.”
“Want a beer?”
“Always.”
He sat beside her, close enough to touch but not too close to crowd her, and cracked open both beers, sliding one to her.
“So, how often did you come here growing up?” she asked.
“Once a year. Twice if we were lucky.”
“Does your dad still come here?”
“Not as far as I know. The older we get, the more we want creature comforts. Dad is in great shape for his age, but he’s got a bad back and prefers to sleep in his adjustable bed.” He sucked down a mouthful of his beer. “Makes me wonder how he’s faring on the
overseas trip.”
“Haven’t you heard from him?”
“Briefly to tell me the schedule was crazy busy and he’d fill me in after he returned home.”
Tanna cocked her head. “You miss him.”
“Yeah. Probably sounds stupid.”
“I think it sounds wonderful.” She sipped her beer. “I don’t miss my dad and I try not to think about him at all.”
“You don’t have any happy memories?”
“A few. But now, even those are tainted. Makes me wonder what I hadn’t seen as a kid. If he was just goin’ through the motions because he didn’t have a choice.”
“You are a glass-half-empty type.”
“In this case it’s beyond empty. The glass is cracked and put aside to see if it’ll shatter on its own. Anyway, I had my mom and she more than made up for it. Why don’t you ever talk about your mom?”
He immediately stiffened up. “Probably because I feel the same way about her that you do about your dad. Except I’ve felt that way since I was a boy. I didn’t know her well enough to be sad at her passing. And I never understood why it’d upset my dad so much.”
“He must’ve loved something about her.” She shot him a look. “Even if it was only that she gave him you.”
Fletch smiled at her and ran his knuckles down her jawline. “Thanks. My dad never married. I never thought he dated either, so the thing between him and Cora seriously blew my mind.”
“I, for one, am happy the old-timers are getting some. I never wanna be that woman who’d rather do ten household things than do my man. I hope to still be bangin’ the hell outta the headboard when I’m in my seventies.”
“Me too. Though I hope to Christ I’m not single living in some old folks home.”
“So you want the wife-and-kids life?”
He kept it light, but honest—besides confessing he wanted that wife and kid life with her. “I do. I’ve been a little envious, watching my friends settle down. But with the demands of my job, I fear Miss Ellie isn’t far off in asking me to wait until she grows up. Maybe things will have stabilized by then.”
Tanna rested her head on his shoulder. “Your fears aren’t justified, Doc. There are probably dozens of women who’d snap you up as a husband. But I have to ask if this break from your practice has changed anything.”
Meeting her had changed everything. “It’s reminded me why I don’t take time off. You can’t miss what you don’t have; know what I mean? When I get back into the groove on Monday, my mind will be on sitting in the sunshine drinking beer with a hot cowgirl.”
“Aw. So you’ll be thinkin’ of little ol’ me?”
Always. “I’ll also be remembering all the mornings, afternoons and nights we spent in bed.”
“Sex is one of our stronger points as a couple.”
“Relationships have been built on far less.” He drank half his beer, grimacing because it’d already gotten warm. “What about you? Ever been in love?”
“Dozens of times. Mostly in my late teens and early twenties. Every guy I dated became the one. Funny how I thought that about all of them and none of them thought that about me. At some point—and I can’t even tell you exactly when—I stopped looking for a guy to make me complete.”
“I’ll bet that’s when you really started winning on the circuit.”
“I’m not surprised you figured that out.” She sighed. “What about you? Ever been in love?”
Since the moment I saw you. “Thought I was once. Since then it’s been easier to—”
“Compartmentalize,” they finished simultaneously and laughed.
“As I was saying, it’s been easier to separate the need for sex from the need for a relationship.”
“We really are so much alike,” Tanna said softly.
“Well, there are a few obvious differences.”
“Such as?”
“Such as your accent.”
“Please. You Northerners are the ones who talk funny.”
“Okay. What about how you phrase stuff. Like . . . I’m fixin’ to . . . what does that even mean?”
Tanna laughed. He loved that she laughed so much around him.
“Then there’s your blind adoration of any and all Texas sports teams, regardless of how bad they suck.”
“The Dallas Cowboys are America’s team. No, the Dallas Cowboys are God’s team. God said so. It’s in the Bible and everything. You can check for yourself.”
Fletch snorted. “You Texans are so—”
“Uh-uh, cowboy, I’m fixin’ to go all wild-ass Southern woman on you if you slander the greatest state in the Union.”
“When did we start talking about Wyoming again?” he said slyly.
She shoved him. “Smart-ass Yankee.”
He brushed a hank of hair from her cheek. “In all seriousness, do you miss Texas?”
“Even if I never live there again and I’m a ninety-year-old lady, I’ll always miss Texas. I’ll always consider Texas home.”
Fletch wasn’t surprised by her answer, just disappointed.
“How did we get on this subject anyway?”
“Just making conversation.”
Tanna swung her leg over his. “Maybe we should be doin’ something else with our mouths instead of talking. Make love while the sun shines and all that jazz . . . or should I say all that jizz.”
He burst out laughing. “Goddamn, I love your total lack of a filter.”
“You bring out my raunchy side. So whatdya say?”
“What if get slivers in my ass?”
“I’ll kiss it and make it better.” She placed a kiss on his neck. “Please say yes. I just have this . . . need to feel you wrapped around me.”
Sometimes this woman undid him completely. Fletch stood and helped her to her feet. Somehow between the long, slow kisses and the tender caresses, they managed to get their clothes off and he remembered the condom he’d stashed in his pocket, just in case.
He herded her to the end of the dock where he spread out the towel. He sat on it, with his legs hanging over the edge of the dock, and patted his lap.
Tanna bit her lip. “You promise in a moment of abandon we won’t plunge into the water?”
“I promise. But that means you’ll be doin’ all the work.”
She perched on her knees over his crotch and slowly lowered onto him. Her breasts were cool against his sun-warmed chest. Her mouth avid against his.
Fletch leaned back on his elbows, entirely focused on the sexy way she moved. Rolling her hips. Tightening her cunt around the tip of his cock before sliding the shaft inside her wet channel.
The sun beat down but a light breeze blew off the lake. It was a surreal experience, making love outside in the middle of the day. But it was damn close to perfect too.
When her movements picked up speed, he sat up and gripped her ass, helping her ride him.
Tanna broke the kiss and started to arch back, but he caught her before she tipped them too far forward.
He planted kisses on the curve of her throat and pumped his pelvis up. “Go over. Go over and take me with you.”
She cried out and her pussy clamped around his cock. The contractions