Chapter 13: Back to the room.
The late afternoon sun cut through the slats of the blinds, painting warm bars of gold across Brandon’s back and the rumpled hotel quilt. Alysha moved above him, a slow, deliberate rhythm that was its own form of conversation. Each measured rise and fall was a word, a sigh, a question. He was impossibly hard inside her, buried to the hilt, a firm, thick presence that made her breath catch on every downward stroke.
She braced her hands on his chest, her braids brushing his skin. “I can feel you,” she whispered, her voice husky. “Right here.” She guided his palm from her hip to the soft plane of her lower belly, pressing it firmly. “In my stomach.”
He groaned, his thumb stroking the sensitive skin, his other hand coming up to cradle the weight of her breast. His touch was reverence and possession combined, calloused and gentle. She rode him slow, letting the sensation build like a distant storm, letting him watch every flicker of pleasure on her face.
“So what are we doing, Brandon?” The question left her lips, soft but stark in the quiet room. She didn’t stop moving. “We have the next couple weeks. What then?”
His bright blue eyes, hazy with pleasure, focused on hers. He didn’t look away. “What do you want to do?”
A breathless laugh escaped her. “That is not fair to ask a woman when she is about to…” The sentence shattered as the first wave hit her, unexpected and electric. Her head fell back, a sharp cry tearing from her throat as her body clenched around him, the slow, deep friction tipping her into a sudden, blinding release. She rode it out, trembling, the pulses seeming to pull him even deeper.
When she could breathe again, she found his gaze still locked on her, intense and waiting.
“I respect you,” he said, his voice rough. His hands settled on her hips, stilling her gently. “Your life, your job. All of it. But if I’m being honest…” He exhaled, the words raw. “I’d have you with me. On the ranch. In my bed. Waking up like this.”
The honesty was a physical blow. She began to move again, a little faster now, the need for the conversation to end warring with the need for it to finally be had. “I’m afraid,” she admitted, the confession dragged from her. “Because I want the same thing. And even worse, I think it would be easy. Leaving, going with you. That’s what scares me most.”
“I don’t want you to give your life up,” he said, his jaw tight, his own control visibly fraying as her pace quickened.
“The girls at work,” she gasped, her rhythm becoming less measured, more urgent. “They’re telling me to go. And I haven’t felt this alive. Ever.” The second climax seized her with violent suddenness, a deep, internal detonation that ripped a sob from her chest. Her muscles turned to liquid, her body giving out, collapsing forward.
He caught her, rolled her beneath him in one fluid motion. He drove into her, through the shuddering aftershocks of her pleasure, his own rhythm frantic and focused. He buried his face in the curve of her neck.
“I love you,” he said, the words muffled against her skin, then clearer as he pulled back to look at her. “Alysha. I love you.”
He came with a ragged shout, his body bowing over hers. She felt the hot, sudden gush inside her and moaned, loud and unselfconscious, at the visceral, claiming sensation. He pulsed, emptying himself, until he was spent, collapsing onto his forearms, his breath heaving against her ear.
When he finished, she was wrecked. Out of breath. Overwhelmed physically, emotionally, every thread of her unraveled. He didn’t pull away. He gathered her, wrapped his arms around her naked, quivering body and held her tightly against him. She shook in the silence, her fingers clutching at his shoulders.
He had told her he loved her before. The memory surfaced through the haze. A sticky-fingered boy with skinned knees, looking up at her after she’d fixed his hair. I love you, Miss Alysha. Because she was kind to him. Now here he was, a man still damp with her sweat and his release, telling her while his heart hammered against hers.
Slowly, the ability to form thought, to speak, returned. She turned her head on the pillow. “Brandon.”
“Hmm?”
“Look at me.”
He did. His face was open, unguarded, younger somehow in the fading light.
She looked into his vibrant blue eyes, unblinking, letting him see every doubt, every fear, every terrifying hope. “I love you, too.”
For a long moment, he just stared, as if deciphering a miracle. Then he kissed her, soft and deep, a seal on the words. He settled beside her, pulling the quilt over them, his arm a heavy, welcome anchor across her waist. The trophies on the wall gleamed dully in the twilight. The future, vast and uncharted, hovered just outside the quiet circle of their warmth. But here, now, with his scent on her skin and his confession in the air between them, the only thing that mattered was the steady, slowing beat of his heart against her back.