“Your skin,” he murmurs against my flesh. “God, I love your skin.” His lips keep moving lower, brushing the insides of my thighs, and when he presses his lips over my pussy, he breathes me in, and a shudder wracks through his whole body.
He kisses me there again.
It’s not filthy.
It’s devotion.
It’s ownership.
It’s my cowboy marking his home.
I thread my fingers through his hair, coaxing his head back, and the look in his eyes nearly breaks me.
“Your scent is everything. I love you. I love everything about you, and I need it all. Do you understand that? I can’t… Christ, darlin’, I can’t ever be without you. I won’t.” The way he says it, the way he rips his own heart open and lays it bloody and beating in my hands, fucking ruins me.
“I’m yours, Christian.” My words are a promise against his lips.
He grips my hips, pulling me down to straddle him as he pushes back on the bed. We’re chest-to-chest, heart-to-heart, and as close as two people can get when I slowly sink down on his cock. His eyes hold mine as every thick inch of him fills me, and his hands slide up my back, drawing my mouth to his. He kisses me slowly, so deeply and thoroughly that it feels beautifully endless.
I start to move, rolling my hips, and we don’t break the kiss until I feel that familiar tension coiling in my belly, that need for more burning through my veins. I lean back, bracing my hands on his thighs, and pick up the pace. My breath comes in gasps as moans spill from my lips, and I grind my clit against him. The moment his mouth latches onto my nipple, I nearly lose it. My hands twist in his hair, gripping tight while his fingers dig bruises into my hips, driving my body faster.
“I love you, Christian,” I pant out, the words spilling between desperate breaths. “I love you.” He kisses me again as we move together, clinging like lifelines as my entire body tenses.
“Fuck, Piper, don’t let me go. Jesus, I can feel you everywhere.” He bucks up hard, hitting that spot that makes stars explode behind my eyes.
I shatter around him, coming so hard I can barely breathe, and he groans into my mouth as he follows me over the edge, his grip brutal on my hips as he starts to pulse.
We’re both panting, aftershocks still rippling through me as he trails lazy kisses up my throat. He takes my hand, pressing it against his chest where his heart thunders beneath my palm.
“This is yours. Only ever gonna be yours.”
“Promise?” I whisper.
His fingers tighten around mine, grounding me to him. “Forever, darlin’.”
Chapter 27
Christian
I can’t waitfor the season to be over.
Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I love what it means to be up on this farm this time of year, with the smell of pine sharp in the air and the ground frozen solid beneath my boots.
I love watching families pile out of their cars, some of them driving hours just to wander through rows of perfectly imperfect trees. Kids dart ahead, little hands stuffed into mittens, while parents follow behind with thermoses of coffee and that slightly frazzled look that comes with the holiday season. They’re all searching for that one special tree—the one that’ll sit in the corner of their living room, lit up and loved, for a few precious weeks.
But managing a Christmas tree farm alongside a working cattle ranch means juggling two completely different rhythms, and it’s harder to keep the animals in check when you’re selling Christmas trees by the hundreds. If I didn’t have the help I’ve got up here—people who understand both sides of this operation—it’d be damn near impossible to pull off season after season.
Standing at the edge of the pasture with my hands wrapped around a steaming mug of black coffee, I stare out over the cattle as thefirst light of sunrise spills over the mountain ridge, stretching long shadows across the fields.
I hear Preston’s voice break through the morning quiet beside me. “What are you thinking about out here, son?”
I keep my gaze fixed on the horizon, watching the sky slowly transform from deep indigo to streaks of pink and gold that paint the mountain peaks like watercolors.
Morning, Mama,I think, the way I always do when the sun rises over our land.
“What do you think my old man would say about all this?” I ask, gesturing with my mug toward the sprawling ranch that stretches out before us. “This place and the way I’m running things.”
Preston shifts beside me, his hands gripping the fence rail tighter. The old wood groans under his weight as he hooks his boot on the bottom rail, settling in like he’s got all the time in the world to listen.
