Page 53 of Ransom
He kissed me first, both of us still wet, and it was nothing like the fucking. It was slow, and his mouth was soft, and his thumb stroked the side of my face like he had all the time in the world.
I kissed him back, and I meant it. The mark on his neck was for the ranch. The kiss was for me.
"Winston?"
"Yeah."
I didn't have anything to follow it with.
"It's alright," he said. "You can say it later."
I turned the water off, left him in the bathroom drying off, and stepped into the bedroom to get dressed. The cat was on the bed in Winston's spot. I pulled on jeans and a clean shirt, and did up the buttons. My hands were steady. That surprised me.
I sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on my boots.
The bathroom door opened and Winston came out, pulling up his jeans, no shirt. I pulled one of mine down and handed it to him. He left the top button open on purpose so the bite would show.
"It looks good on you," I said.
"The shirt or the bite?"
"Both."
He grinned, put his hat on, walked to the door, and held it for me.
I put my own hat on slower. Rafe was going to take one look at that bite at the breakfast table and probably form an opinion about which side I was on, and he might not be completely wrong.
The kitchen smelled likecoffee and green chile. I stood in the doorway wearing a borrowed shirt and no earthly idea how to walk through that door after having slept beside Ransom all night.
Sierra stood at the stove with his back to me. Rafe sat at the table, newspaper spread in front of him, reading like it was Sunday morning and not the day after his enforcer had walked into Rex Rawlins' dinner theater and thrown the first punch in what was probably going to be a war.
Ransom appeared at my shoulder in the doorway. He didn't say a word, just stood there, solid and steady, like we were two men walking into breakfast together.
Well, I thought. Here we go.
Sierra turned from the stove with a plate in each hand and stopped. Pearl lay at his feet on a rag rug. She lifted her head when I sat down, took one sniff of me, and put her head back down.
Sierra's eyes dropped to the shirt I was wearing. One eyebrow climbed a degree and stayed there.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning," I said back.
Rafe looked up from his newspaper. He took us in for a long moment without comment. My daddy used to look at men that way right before he made them wish he'd just hit them. Rafe folded the paper and set it aside.
"Sit," Rafe said.
Ransom pulled out a chair, sat down, and grabbed a tortilla from the warmer. I followed because the alternative was standing in the doorway like an idiot. Sierra set plates down in front of us, then went back for coffee. He poured three cups and brought them over, setting mine down with enough care that I knew he was making a point about something, though what point exactly I couldn't say.
He paused on his way back to the stove, tipped his chin at the mark on my neck, and said with a smirk, "You pick a fight with a chupacabra last night or did you try to steal some of Pearl's kibble?"
My hand went to the bruise, and I glanced over at Ransom. "Fell into a scorpion's nest and got stung, more like."
"That'll happen around here." Sierra went back to the stove. "Best check your boots and hat before you put them on. Once they find someone they like, they tend to keep coming back." He winked at Ransom, who refused to acknowledge it.
My face went hot, and I drank my coffee to have something to do with my mouth.
Rafe turned a page of the folded newspaper he'd just set aside, looked at Ransom over the top of it. "Marked you like cattle," he muttered, staring at the bruise. "You intend to eat him, mijo? I thought I taught you better than to play with your food."
