10. Carrie

10

CARRIE

W atching Cole’s muscles ripple under his tight shirt as he masterfully maneuvers the horse along the trail almost makes up for the chaffing thighs. Almost.

“Are my thighs meant to be this sore?”

I adjust my position in the saddle, but there’s no relief.

When Cole knocked on my cabin door this morning and told me he was taking me horse riding, I thought he was joking. But here we are. You can’t come to Montana without getting on a horse, he told me.

I didn’t know he had horses. They’re in a field at the bottom of Joyce’s cabin.

So not everything is the same on this mountain as Wild Heart Mountain. We don’t ride horses and wear wide-rimmed cowboy hats, which is what Cole has on today, and it makes him even sexier somehow.

My thoughts drift to last night and what we did under the stars. My body heats thinking about it. It’s the furthest I’ve ever been with a man. Strange how it’s Cole I trust with my body, the internet stranger who wasn’t real.

But the way he strummed my most sensitive parts had me purring like a kitten, and I liked it. It makes me wonder what else he could do to my body. I came here looking for an adventure, and losing my virginity to Cole could be it.

The thought makes my aching thighs tingle, and for a moment it lessens the pain. Then the horse sidesteps along the path and I’m jolted in the saddle.

The trail opens up to a wide valley with long grass on either side of the trail and the mountains looming all around us. Cole turns his horse off the trail and heads toward a copse of trees. As we get closer, the sound of running water reaches my ears.

He pulls up next to a river where a stoney bank meets the long grass.

“This is a good spot for lunch.”

He slides off the horse with competence and grace, and I try to follow his example but end up with one leg caught in the stirrup.

Cole unhooks my leg and helps me down, and heat skitters up my body as he lifts me to the ground.

“Thank you,” I murmur as his hands slide to my waist. We haven’t spoken about last night, but from the look he gives me now, his eyes blazing, I know he enjoyed it as much as I did.

My horse, Pinky, named by Olivia, snorts and stamps its foot, and I move away instinctively. I’ve never been around large animals much, and they frighten me a bit.

Cole catches her reins and leads her to a tree. He ties the reins over the branch next to Stomper, his horse, and they bow their heads to munch on the grass.

“How are your thighs?” Cole asks with a smirk on his face.

“Fine,” I lie. I take a step toward the river, and the stiffness makes me bow-legged. Cole chuckles as I bend double to rub the stiffness out. “Not fine.”

“Walk around for bit while I get lunch set up. It’ll help.”

I limp along the riverbank, and he’s not wrong. Within a few strides I’m able to stand upright, and the soreness lessens.

By the time I come back, Cole’s laid out a picnic blanket on a grassy patch by the riverbank and has the lunch set out on it.

Cole hands me a tub of chicken salad and a bamboo fork. We talk as we eat, the conversation flowing easier than it has in the last few days. No longer treating me as a stranger he opens up, telling me about his life on the mountain. He smiles when he mentions the girls and his gran.

We finish the chicken salad, and Cole hands me another container that has some of the sugar-free slice I made yesterday.

“Can I ask why you don’t eat sugar?”

Cole chews his mouthful for a long time, and I don’t think he’s going to answer. When he does, he’s looking at the river and far away in a memory.

“My wife, Mel, died of ovarian cancer. She didn’t catch it until it was too late to do anything about it. All I could do was nurse her through the final weeks.

“It can be hereditary; the girls might have the genes for it. It doesn’t mean they will get it, but it does mean they might. They have to be vigilant.”

“And sugar can cause ovarian cancer?” It doesn’t seem right to me that one thing can cause a disease. But it’s not my specialty.

“An unhealthy diet can cause it. Sugar is a part of that. So we don’t eat it. “

I try to see his logic. Too much sugar is bad for you, we all know that, but does it mean you have to give it up completely? It sounds like he’s been overprotective, trying to protect his girls from any bad outcome. Having the cancer gene is something he can’t control, but their diet is.

“Surely a little bit of sugar every now and then wouldn’t hurt? Otherwise they might binge on it when they’re older. Same with nail polish. If you don’t let them try it as kids, they might go nuts as adults when you have no control over what they do.”

He frowns at me. “Are you questioning my parenting?”

I hold my hands up. “I wouldn’t dare. Just offering a different perspective.”

“Perspective noted. ”

He takes another bite of slice and eats it in silence. By the thin set of his mouth, I take it the topic is closed.

I wonder what else haunts Cole. He doesn’t seem to still be grieving for his late wife. But I get the feeling there’s something else he’s not telling me.

But why would he? I’m a stranger after all. Although the more time we spend together, the more we’re learning about each other.

“Where are your parents?” I ask tentatively, not wanting to bring up old pains, but my curiosity gets the better of me.

“I never knew my dad.”

He says it matter-of-factly, and I know what that’s like. “Me neither, not really. He left when I was three.”

“Mom bought me up on her own with the help of Gran. She was a single parent. It’s all I’ve known, so it doesn’t seem odd to me to do the same.”

I pop the final piece of slice in my mouth and look out at the stream. I wonder if that’s another dig, reminding me he’s not looking for a wife.

“Mom passed away ten years ago. It was a car accident.”

“I’m so sorry.” I turn back to Cole and resist the urge to take his hand. I want to comfort him, but I don’t want him to think I’m getting clingy.

“She never got to meet the girls.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” Instinctively I reach a hand across to cover his. He can think what he wants, but I can’t stand seeing someone in pain and not doing anything about it .

He squeezes my hand in his. “Thank you. You lost your mom too?”

I tell him all about Mom, how I nursed her through the chemo, and then when she relapsed, how I nursed her through the last days of her life. I tell him about Suzie leaving her studies and coming back from England not yet knowing she was pregnant. I tell her about my nephew and how I helped Suzie out because she was a single mom without a mother.

Cole grasps my hand in his, spreading warmth down my arm. “It seems to me you’ve spent your life looking after people, Carrie. But who’s looking after you?”

He draws me to him, and I climb onto his lap. I’m wearing jeans today, and I straddle him as his hands slide over my waist.

“There’s only one way I need looking after.”

His lips crash onto mine and I shudder at the heat and the pressure and how damn good it feels. My body responds to him and I tilt my hips, pressing myself to him, needing to be closer.

“Can you do something for me, Cole?”

My voice sounds breathy, and he gazes at me with lazy hooded eyes. “Depends on what you’re asking.”

I bite my bottom lip, not sure what he’s going to think of my request.

“My coming here was a chance to do something for myself. For the first time since I was eighteen, no one needs me. I want to do something that’s just for me.”

I lean forward to whisper in his ear, too embarrassed to show my face as I request the one thing I want from him. “Can you take my virginity?”

Cole gasps at my suggestion and I squeeze my eyes shut in embarrassment. It’s a brazen request. But this guy is a stranger from another state. He’s the perfect candidate. Then at least my trip out here won’t be wasted.

“You deserve better than a quick fumble on the side of a riverbank.”

I roll my hips against him, because he didn’t say no, which means it might be a yes. “Then don’t make it quick.”

My lips move down his throat, and he tastes of sweat and horse, and it’s surprising how nice that combination tastes.

I stick my chest forward so it brushes against his and am rewarded with a low groan.

“Please, Cole. I won’t ask anything else from you. Just make love to me, just one time.”

His fingers dig into my hips, and his breathing is ragged.

“Are you sure it’s what you want?” His voice rasps out, and he pulls me back to look me in the eye.

They’re blazing with desire, but there’s something else there. Uncertainty.

“It’s just one time,” I reassure him. “So my trip out here isn’t entirely wasted.”

Something flashes across his face that I can’t identify. But I don’t give him time to hesitate. My fingers slide down his shirt, and I ping one of the buttons open .

“If it’s what you want. But you can change your mind anytime, okay?”

A thrill runs through me at what I’m about to do. “Okay.”

Cole brushes his thumb over my cheek, his hard callus grazing my skin. “But I might be rough, Carrie. I’ll try to go slow, but you’re driving me crazy.”

His words send hot shivers to my lower belly. My core pulls in tight, and I press my sex against him. Annoyingly it comes up against my jeans. I need to feel him. I need his touch, his skin on mine.

Cole puts his hand behind my back, and in one quick move he flips me around so I’m lying on the picnic blanket and he’s kneeling before me.

His fingers tug at my jeans, and he pulls them off and discards them next to us.

“Will anyone come by?” From where I’m lying all I see is long grass and the river, but the horses give away our position.

“Maybe.” He speaks the words against my skin as he kisses my thighs. But all thoughts of being discovered by a stranger flee my mind as his mouth moves up my inner thigh.

Heat skitters across my skin, and I grab hold of the picnic blanket as Cole kisses the indentation between my thigh and the top of my leg. His mouth encloses over my panties, and I gasp as warm heat filters through to my pussy.

Then he’s pulling my panties aside, and there’s nothing between me and his mouth. The sensation has me grasping the picnic blanket in my fists. My back arches as his mouth crashes against my sex.

“Cole...” I squeak out, and he pauses to look up at me. “Don’t stop.”

He gives me a wicked grin as he slides my panties down my legs and off my ankles. Then his head dips and I’m lost in pure sensation.

Cole’s tongue explores my most intimate places while his hands roam over my hips, my ass, and then, gently like the breeze rippling through the grass, he strokes my most intimate place.

My back arches in pleasure, and I moan his name. My body responds to his touch, writhing under his warm mouth as he licks and sucks and enters me with his fingers.

A breeze tickles my bare legs, and the rush of the river is like the gushing sensations building inside me. He takes me higher with every lick, with every thrust of his palm until I peak like a waterfall, crashing over the edge and falling, falling until my body becomes one with the water, flowing and fluid.

I gasp for air as my body returns to me. But Cole isn’t done yet. His mouth presses against my trembling nub, and instant sensation sparks though me. I peak again, and this time it’s so intense I grab his head in my hands and pull him onto me. My legs stick straight up in the air, and my cries echo across the valley.

When I crash back this time, Cole sits up. He’s got a hungry look in his eye and it sends a new delicious shiver through me .

I sit up on my elbows as he pulls his belt open and slips his jeans off. His package strains at the fabric of his boxers, and there’s a wet mark where his tip has leaked.

I sit up on my knees and pull my t-shirt over my head. Cole loves my breasts, and I want to feel his hands on them. I take one of his meaty palms and place it over my breast. He pulls the fabric of my bra down and strums the nipple.

My fingers unbutton his shirt, taking my time to run my hands over his tight muscles.

Soon we’re both naked, kneeling before each other as we explore each other’s bodies, his tight and lean, mine soft and squishy. But he doesn’t seem to mind. He touches every part of me like a tender lover rather than a man I’ll only spend one time with.

The thought that this is it makes my chest tight. But I push that aside and focus on his hands and what they’re doing. Soon I’m lost in the sensation of my body pressing against him as we move together. His lips lock on mine and the kiss is hungry and urgent.

I pause to fish a condom out of my jeans pocket, and Cole raises his eyebrows.

“You came prepared?”

“I came hopeful.”

He grins, and I love too much the way it lights up his face and makes me grin back goofily.

I slide the condom on, fumbling at my first attempt. Then we tumble to the ground together in a tangle of limbs. My leg wraps around him, and he grabs my hip and positions my leg so I’m wide open for him .

Nervousness bubbles up inside me as his hardness bumps up against my entrance.

Sensing my hesitation, Cole smooths my hair back and his gaze meets mine. “Just relax, Carrie. I got you.”

I bite my lower lip and breathe deeply as he slides into me. I gasp, and my eyes squeeze shut.

“Keep your eyes on me,” Cole instructs. They fly open, and he’s staring at me intensely. “It might hurt for a bit, but we’re in this together. You look at me and you’ll be okay.”

I nod quickly, and he eases in a bit more. A hot pain makes me gasp. I’m being stretched like I never thought possible. I stay focused on Cole and his calm reassuring gaze.

“Breathe with me, Carrie.”

His chest rises in and out and I copy him, never taking my gaze of his. Cole pushes forward, and this time there’s no pain. Only an incredible feeling of being stretched to my limit, of being full up with this man.

Instead of a gasp, I whimper as all my pleasure centers open.

Cole lets out a long ragged breath. “You feel incredible.’

He kisses me slowly, and the movement of his body on mine slides him deeper still. But this time I welcome the sensation. My hips rise to meet his and he groans as I wrap my legs around him, pulling him tighter to me.

As I lose myself in Cole, I wonder why the hell I waited so long to try this, and I also wonder if it would feel the same with anyone other than Cole.