So he was saying them not because he thought it was what was right to say, but because it was what he genuinely felt, because he wanted to share that with me, wanted me to know what he was feeling toward me.
“Alright,” he declared a moment later after finishing the dishes, making me turn to find him standing there drying his hands. “So how the fuck are we doing this?”
“Doing what?” I asked, brows knitting.
“Bed,” he clarified. “With the dog and the goat,” he added.
I admit it, I had given it thought. While I had been cooking. About what would happen after we were done eating, if we would simply go our separate ways – him in his room, me on the couch. Like roommates.
I had come to the conclusion that if maybe we got close again, things started getting intense, that we would simply wind up there. No fuss. No conversation about it.
I hadn’t imagined we would have an actual conversation about bed. Like the two adults we were.
“Well, Captain sleeps at the foot. Which is nice. My feet get cold at night,” I informed him. “And Gadget just likes to sleep close. He will be happy wherever so long as he is sharing someone’s warmth. Unless you think you might roll over on him. I know some people are really deep…”
“I’m not a deep sleeper. Haven’t shared a bed with someone in a long time, but in the past, just someone else shifting would be enough to half wake me up. I wouldn’t roll over and crush an animal.”
“Okay good,” I said, giving him a small smile, the flood of relief almost comically strong.
I knew, eventually, that Gadget would have to go move in with his goat friends, live his goat life, climbing onto play structures, jumping off, hopping onto his friends’ backs, having a good old time.
I also knew that it would be almost pathetically hard for me to watch him go, even if I knew I was going to be seeing him every day, interacting with him, enjoying him for many years to come.
But until that day, he was like my little baby. And the idea of anything bad happening to him filled me with a crippling amount of dread.
“You go get in bed. I’m gonna toss some treats at the dogs, then I will meet you in there.”
I got myself ready for bed, slipped into one of his oversized tees and fresh panties, then climbed into the sheets that smelled so much like him, calling Captain up by the foot, tucking Gadget to my side, and waiting.
Ranger came in a few minutes later, stripping out of his clothes, slipping on a pair of lightweight pajama pants, then climbing in, snorting when Captain grumbled when he inched him back off his side of the bed and onto mine.
“Come here,” he demanded a moment later, tapping his chest, curling his arm under and around me as I did so, resting on his solid chest, feeling his warmth envelop me as his fingers stroked absentmindedly through my hair, down my back.
And I realized as we both slowly drifted off to sleep that this was it.
This was the most peace I had ever known in my life.
It was right.
So right.
And I decided that if every night could just be like this from now until forever, well, I would be the happiest woman in the world.
I didn’t know at the time, of course, that he wasn’t offering me forever.
In fact, he barely gave me a week.
NINE
Meadow
If you could bottle happiness and sell it to those in desperate need of it, you could find an endless source of it emanating from me that week following getting physical with Ranger.
The following morning after that first night, I woke up warm. Which wasn’t expected in the little cottage.
But I had Captain at my feet, Gadget at my back, and Ranger underneath me. Because I had, apparently, managed to cock up my leg over him, letting it settle at his other side on the mattress. And with how oversized Ranger was in general, that meant that I was sprawled over him – head tucked into his neck, breasts crushed to his chest, hips lined up with his.
And, ah, Ranger was awake and aware.
His hands were stroking down my back under my shirt, and his cock was pressing into my belly.
“Morning,” he rumbled sound sleep-rough.
It might have been the sexiest voice I had ever heard.
“Morning,” I told his neck, pressing my lips to the skin there.
“Go stick Gadget in his tank, then get your ass back here,” he demanded, giving said ass a squeeze, encouraging me up, wanting me to rush back.
And, well, I knew what he was promising, could feel the anticipation of it low in my belly, so I hopped up, grabbed a still-sleepy Gadget, and rushed out of the room, dropping him in his tank, then making a quick trip to the bathroom, wanting to get rid of morning breath, then darting back into the room, finding Ranger sitting up against the headboard, sheets down around his waist, the sun from the side window outlining every perfect inch of his body.