Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Wren

I pressthe button beside the tray that carries a round, silver object, and the lid lowers over it, spinning a glowing blur behind the small window. Seconds later, music drifts across the pole barn, and I twist to find Six frowning, like he’s concentrating on the sound as if he can reach out and snatch it from the air in front of him.

“It’s called a CD player. Otis Redding. I didn’t know what to think of it, at first, either.” The slow and soulful tempo of These Arms of Mine has me reaching out to Six. “Come dance with me.”

He pushes up off the makeshift bed and reaches for my hand, allowing me to pull him to a stand beside the window. His body is a wall of muscle that my gaze climbs, to see him staring down at me, and hands linked, we sway back and forth with the song.

Settling into his rhythm, Six pulls me closer and tightens his hold, until he lifts me up off the floor, and I wrap my legs around his waist, arms around his neck. In a moment of sweetness, he closes his eyes and rests his forehead against mine.

He slants his lips across mine in a seizing kiss—the kind that, if not for him holding me up off the floor, would have me falling into a pile of soft bones.

Lost to his kiss, I don’t even sense that we’ve moved, until the wall collides with my back and he holds me there. His breaths turn fervent, hot across my skin, as he moves to my throat, devouring the base of my neck.

“Slowly, Six.” The words feel like a sin coming out of my mouth, as much as I want him right now.

That masculine growl rumbles in his throat, vibrating beneath my flesh, while his face remains buried in the crook of my neck. The sluggish and steady roll of his hips rock into me, like calm waves beating against my core.

“Do you want me?”

As he nods, his fingers drift up and down, across the cotton panties that are wet with my arousal, and he slides them aside.

“I’m yours, Six. I’ll always be yours,” I whisper in his ear.

His body shudders as his fingers stroke my libido, his lips clamped to my throat, and with the music droning in the background, keeping a steady rhythm, he drives them into me. Slowly. So agonizingly slow, I think I might combust from the craving I have for him.

I tip my head forward to see him staring at me so intensely, concentrated, lips parted. Scarred and hungry, he is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

***

I lie beside Six on his bed of sheets, my arm draped across his chest, breasts smashed against him as he holds me close. The heady scent of sex lingers on the air, reminding me of the moments of earlier. Through the window above us, the night sky is dazzling, with the bright stars that shine beside the crescent moon.

“Come with me,” I push off him to a stand and tug his arm to follow me, which he does without hesitation, or question.

This is what I love most about Six.

Completely naked, I nab one of the blankets from his bed, and we sneak out of the pole barn, across the yard, to a patchy yellow ground cover of Lasthenia. Six helps me spread the blanket out, and we lie down beneath the full cover of night. Pulled in by him, just as before, I lay draped across his chest again.

“This is a better view. There’s nowhere else in the world you can lie in the desert like this.” I trace the ruined skin of a scar over his heart, staring up at the stars. “I’ve always thought the stars were people we love. It’s weird, but I feel connected to them, somehow. Papa says, a long time ago, a star exploded in a supernova, and the pieces came together to form earth. Which means we’re all made of stardust. Born from the same star.”

Lifting my head from his chest, I stare down at Six, as he tilts his head back, looking toward the sky. His eyes find me again, and I smile, leaning forward to kiss the scar at his heart.

“Sometimes, I wish you could talk, Six. I wish you would say one word to me, just so I could hear your voice. But then you look at me, and I realize, I don’t need you to say anything, at all.” I run the pad of my thumb gently over his eyelid. “Your eyes tell me what I need to know.”

Gripping either side of my face, he drags me to his lips and rolls over top of me, and the stars above us bear witness as he makes love to me again.