“So good,” I growled. “Come on, beautiful, you’re almost there.”
It didn’t take long. Another minute and she was crying out, her voice hoarse and her cunt pulsing around my fingers. When she finished, I withdrew, then reached down and pulled her panties back up.
“You’re going to walk around like that for the rest of the day,” I said, stroking her ass through the fabric. “Every time you move, you’ll feel me, and remember that you’re mine.”
Claire shivered, and I hauled her against me, her back to my chest. I put my arms around her and pressed gentle kisses against her neck, letting her recover. She relaxed, covering my hands with hers.
“Was that good?” I murmured. “I wasn’t too rough?”
“No,” she sighed. “You were just rough enough. I liked it.”
“Good.”
I kissed her once she was facing me again, cradling her head in my hands.
“So,” she said after a moment, “what are we going to tell Kimmy that you taught me?”
I grinned and kissed her again. “Discipline.”
After we got back from our ‘walk’, Kimmy teased me and Claire mercilessly as we had dinner around the campfire.
“What did John teach you?” she asked, grinning at Claire’s beet red face. “I’m guessing, with how long you were gone, it was prettyhands-on.”
Claire cringed, and I laughed. I was used to Kimmy, and after eighteen months of travelling together, she couldn’t have embarrassed me if she tried. Claire’s shyness was cute, though, so I joined in.
“There were hands involved,” I said, and Claire shot me a glare. I chuckled. “More than that, I can’t say, on pain of death.”
“That’s right,” Claire said, crossing her arms. “So quit while you’re ahead.”
Figuring we’d embarrassed her enough, I wrapped a blanket around Claire and me and moved in close to her.
“Tell me something about the Valley,” she said as she took her sketchbook out of her pack.
I thought for a moment, trying to think of what else I could tell her. Claire never seemed to get tired of hearing about our home, and I’d answered this question a hundred different times.
“Summerhurst is a bit off by itself, because the east side of the valley used to be all farm and pasture. Closest to us is Brookside, which is the Harding homestead; Dreamspring, which is the Armstrongs’; and Greystone, which is a horse ranch owned by the McNeils. Over on the west side, there are maybe 30 families, and to the north, another 20. The south end, with the glacier lake, has the most people…I'd guess around 60 families live around the lake.”
“Wow,” Claire said as she flipped through the pages. “It’ll be interesting to interact with people again.”
“What are me and Kimmy then, chopped liver?” I asked, chuckling.
She grinned and snuggled close. “You know what I mean.”
I watched as she started shading a sketch of a horse she’d started the day before. When she finished, she confided in me that she’d never seen one—only pictures or in old movies.
“We left our two with the Armstrongs,” I told her. “I’ll teach you to ride.”
She smiled and kissed me. “I’d love that—you being the expert and all.”
“Don’t know about that,” I said. “Even after all the training I did, they didn’t give me the outrider job.”
That was still a thorn in my side. Outriders were the protectors of the Valley. They guarded our borders, responded to emergencies, and enforced our laws. My grandfather had been one of them, and for a long time, I’d wanted to follow in his footsteps. So much of my survival training, along with endless drills on horseback, had been focused on that goal. But it didn’t matter in the end.
I’d told Claire about that forgotten dream this past week. I mostly kept it to myself, but she’d been sweet and encouraging, wanting me to try again once we got home.I can’t think of a better protector than you,she’d said, with a smile that made me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.
Love really does make you into a hopeless dumbass. I’d never thought that would be me until I met her. And worse, I somehow didn’t even care. I just wanted her to smile at me like that all the time.
“That’s because you left though, right?” Claire asked, returning to her drawing.
