Stan reached for the stereo and pulled out onto the highway, blasting Elvis Presley. Turned out, Elvis sang a song about shrimp. And it was cheesy as hell. January knew every word.
Nat decided their story was already the stuff of a Texas tall tale: riding in a big plastic shrimp, going to Nepal without so much as a coat, heading into tomorrow without a thought past today.
All for the love of a woman.
Epilogue
January stirred awake beneath the downy comforter. Apart from the sounds of nature—mourning doves, leaves rearranging themselves on the breeze—the cabin was quiet but for the faint scratching of pen on paper.
For as long as she lived, she would never tire of that sound.
A fresh fire lit the stove. The curtain lifted then brushed the sill again. Morning rays stretched across the shelf above Nat’s desk, filled with front-facing hardcopies of his first three books. And within, the new and captivating sensation of movement, much like wings beating a hello, stirred her womb.
She slid from the bed and padded to a shirtless Nat on soft feet, so as not to disrupt him but to so totally disrupt him. His pen tip devoured entire lines; his brow furrowed. At he
r gentle kneading of his shoulders, he moaned and relaxed and said, “One more page…” with the strength of a man intoxicated by deep, creative thoughts.
January kissed his neck.
Pen paused, ever so slightly, and he cocked his head. His eyelids drooped heavily.
A warm sensation danced from her bare feet to her crown. Breasts, heavy with the changes in her body, grazed the inside of Nat’s T-shirt she had worn to bed, the soft cotton inciting a riot behind her nipples.
“Paragraph?” Nat suggested rather weakly. He gave that new goal a valiant effort, even getting so far as a sentence on before stopping completely when his crumpled shirt landed in his lap.
She pressed her bare chest to his back, and her hands roamed down his sides, across his abdominal ridges, straight to his recent erection, which she then coaxed until there was absolutely no doubt he wouldn’t get another sentence written for at least the next hour. The price to pay was hefty—a few hours of Nat’s self-indulgent moodiness when a deadline loomed so close—but the glazed look in his eyes when she straddled him told her all would be forgiven.
He gave her breasts his full attention, no hesitation, no editing. When his hands roamed lower, near her belly, they took on a reverent attitude.
“I was thinking Don if it’s a boy or Donna if it’s a girl.”
“After the cow you won’t let me sell?”
“After the cow that brought us together.”
“She’s still causing trouble, you know. Always wandering off. Getting the others in the herd to do the same. Not unlike someone else I know.”
“Trouble is where all the fun is.” January hiked up her right foot and rested it against the denim riding low on his hip. She drew a lazy pattern of curls and eddies around the recent tattoos there that circumnavigated her ankle: Route 66, beginning to end; Patagonia; The Great Barrier Reef; Antarctica—not surprisingly the inspiration for Nat’s latest other-worldly novel—and, of course, a shrimp. “You wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The unapologetic spread of her legs invited him. She wiggled against his hardness and marveled at his handsomeness. He entered her in all the ways imaginable, propping her on his desk and making a long story of pleasing her—a beginning, middle, and rather earth-shattering end. And this time, after she had seen his work break to its fitting and most worthwhile conclusion, when Nat drifted off to sleep curled against her backside, January stayed put.
She had nowhere else to be but right here.
Dear Agnes, You’re sexy. Signed, Meier for life (or until you sell MooDonna, whichever comes first).
End of Tempting the Rancher