Rode Hard, Put Up Wet: Cowboy Romance (Rebels & Outlaws 2)

Her entire body goes tight, her fingers scrabbling on the counter top. for grip that she can't find. Her body is moving on its own, now, her pussy squeezing to drain out every last drop of his essence.

And when he explodes inside her, the mistakes are complete, and she falls deeper and deeper into the orgasm, down to depths that she didn't know could exist, but now that she's got them, she's not giving them up for anything.

Chapter Thirteen

The weight of his mistakes hits him every time that he blinks. It doesn't take all night for it to start hitting him. It only takes as long as it takes to get some of that now-cold takeout into his belly.

He looks up at Morgan, at how attractive she is. He feels another stirring deep inside himself, even now that she's dressed. The desire that he's already slaked building up again. And he knows he should have told himself 'no,' but he didn't.

It hits him again when she leaves. Every time he closes his eyes, he can see the way her wide hips spread just a little, enough to accommodate him. He can see the way her back arches. He can feel the roundness of her ass in his hand.

It hits him harder in the morning, though. Everything always seems to. As if in the morning your mistakes are multiplied. The headache from dehydration, to little tiny hangover, isn't helping things at all.

But even still, the alarm kicks him awake before the sun rises, and he forces himself out of bed. He pulls on some clothes and an extra flannel shirt for good measure. It'll come off at some point during the day, but right now the outside is too cold to ignore it completely.

Deep breath. He's already had plenty of experience with all this. Already learned how to deal with things that you're absolutely not ready to deal with.

This time isn't any easier than it has been the last thousand times. Something inside him wants it to be harder, wants a hate to build up so big that it will burn forever. A hate for himself, for what he did to Sara, that he'll never feel okay again.

But he can't make himself feel that way. He already hated himself. This is just another in a long line of mistakes he's made, things he's done to embarrass himself. No change there.

And like he has to every morning, he has to force himself out the door. But that's no change, either. It's not any easier than it's ever been, but now he knows what to do. He knows how its supposed to feel. He knows that it's not going to be easy—not ever.

Somehow that makes it easier. It's made it easier every day since he left the hospital with two spaces in the car that should've had someone in them that were empty. Knowing that you'll never be able to fix it. He doesn't have to look forward to the day when it goes away.

He can just keep remembering that all he really has to do is make it through the next five minutes. Just keep going.

Five minutes is really progress, in the end. In the beginning, all he had was telling himself if he just took one more step, it would be fine. He could just put one foot in front of the other, and if that was too much, well, he could wait.

But eventually, he'd have to take one more step. Now, five minutes feels like a luxury. Just have to get to the coffee. Have to get a glass of water. Have to get breakfast started.

It's the routine that keeps him going on days like this. Some are better than others, but they're never good. How could they be? How could he let himself have a good day, when everything good that ever happened to him is gone?

He sits down at the table with his coffee, still steaming from the pot. He sets the water down next to it, and the plate of bacon and eggs down next to that. Deep breaths. It's easy to feel overwhelmed. Avoiding the overwhelming stress, that's the most important part.

He doesn't have to eat them, n

ot if he doesn't want to. He just has to get everything on the table. Then, he has to sit down, and take a bite, and if he's not feeling it, then he won't eat.

But the routine gives him momentum. The momentum that will carry him through the day. He spears a little egg with his fork and puts it in his mouth. He can stomach the idea of eating. So he takes another bite.

He takes a sip of coffee. It's a little burned. He should buy a new coffee maker, but he won't. He takes another sip. Still burned, but he can drink it. If it's unpleasant, then that's just fine. After all, he deserves it for what he did. He's betrayed his wife.

It's not the first time. The latest and worst in a long string of ever-worsening betrayals.

First it was letting her go. If he'd been there, in the room with her, the whole time… they'd told him he had to leave. He should've stayed. In the waiting room, in the chapel, somewhere. He should've been close to her.

She would've been able to take it then. She would've been stronger. He would've been stronger. They were a team. They'd always been a team. And when he'd been sitting there in his truck, fallen asleep out front of the ranch, she'd been fighting without her partner with her, and she'd lost the fight.

Then he'd kept going without her. He should've, you know. To meet her. But someone told him that she would have wanted him to keep going. Maybe they were right, but what she wanted and the right thing to do weren't the same thing.

In his weakness, he'd decided to do what they told him was the right thing. And he couldn't bring himself to regret it, not really, but he could absolutely blame himself for it. It wasn't even hard. Blame came easy and it stung bad enough that he felt like he was really suffering for what he'd done.

Then he'd started to live, a life that didn't have his wife in it. Now this. The latest and greatest in a line of failures. He takes a deep breath and drinks another sip of burned coffee.

It's always burned, though, and he deserves to drink burned coffee. He deserves it because he betrayed her, and now he was just going to hurt some other woman.

He reaches over and grabs the little brown box full of index cards, where he's written down numbers over the past fifteen years. It's not quite a Rolodex, like they used to use, and if the boys saw it then no doubt they'd have a whale of a time giving him shit about it.