Page 49 of Sunrise Arrows

It’s only when his fingers fall free from my drowsy mouth does Archer look up. Kissing the rest of the way up my body, he hooks his arms under mine and lifts me. With my legs wrapped around him, he carries me to the couch, gently laying me down before stripping and molding himself along my back. And in the dawn’s rays, we drift off to sleep.

CHAPTER16

Archer

“‘If involved in a reportable accident,the operator of the vehicle must file an accident to the Department of Safety within: A, 15 days; B, 96 hours; or C, 20 days?’” I ask, exiting the freeway and making the sharp left for the DMV.

“Twenty?” Tinsley answers hesitantly, applying another layer of her strawberry lip balm onto her already coated lips.

“Are you askin’ or tellin’ me, baby?”

She takes a deep breath as I back my truck into a spot in the almost empty parking lot and repeats her answer more definitively. Shutting the engine off, I tug on my seatbelt and turn to face her. “You got this, Shortcake. You’ve been driving the truck every day around the ranch getting the feel of things again and have aced these questions numerous times. You know it all forward and backward. You’ve got this.”

“What if I fail? I’ll have wasted these people’s time and generosity and dragged you halfway across the state for nothing,” she worries, uncapping the lip balm she just sealed.

I reach across the console and pluck it from her hands. With the cap pushed back on, I drop it in the cup holder and take her face between my palms. “You won’t fail.”

“But—”

“You’re not gonna fail, Tinsley. I promise. And if you do, we’ll come back and try again in seven days.

“As for draggin’ me across the state, baby, I would have taken you all the way to Memphis if I had to so you could do this without an audience. Going to Nashville is nothin’.

“Now come on,” I encourage, unbuckling her seatbelt as well as mine and snatching her lip balm before she can apply any more layers to her glistening lips and stuffing into my pocket.

Once I help her out of the truck and close the door, I crowd her into it, a hand at her hip and one threading into her hair just beneath the braid that’s like a crown around her head. My fingers twine into the silken, wavy strands and with a soft tug, I guide her to look up at me. Her small hands come up to fist my t-shirt and I bend down to cover the distance between us as she rises up on the tips of her toes inside the little white canvas sneakers she’s wearing with her jean shorts and a black t-shirt with Ames’s Dark Horse logo on it.

My lips softly brush against hers, my tongue parting the seam of her mouth open. Her sweet strawberry taste explodes across my taste buds, making my fingers sink deeper into her hip until I’m dimpling her flesh beneath her clothes. She groans into my mouth, going slack in my arms as she gives herself over to me, her small body pressing into mine and nearly crawling up me as she searches for more.

It’s been almost two weeks since the night she officially became mine again, and I can’t get enough of her. I find myself choosing to work from home so I can soak in every minute of having my girl in my space, where she’s been making my house into our home. When I do have to go into the converted stables that serve as our offices or help on the ranch, I try to convince her to come with me, not wanting to miss a single second of her time while she remains in town.

On the days that I’m successful, she goes out with her boy, Rowdy, riding through the acres of the ranch, or is down at the track helping Ryder and telling him the same thing I’ve been saying about Dolley Maddison’s chances of being a racer. I’ve noticed she doesn’t go to see Hunter and the foals too often, which is odd because that used to be her favorite place to disappear to on the ranch while I worked. But when I asked, she brushed it off and the next thing I knew, she was bent over my saddle, shorts around her knees with my cock inside her and I forgot all about it.

When I’m not successful, Tinsley spends her mornings with Briar, going over her rehearsals for when her tour resumes and doing whatever it is she needs to do to addSummer Hazeto the setlist and keep everyone in L.A. happy now that she’s extended her trip to be here with me for as long as possible. Then in the afternoons, after I’ve gotten Ellie from school, I find her in the basement she had finished thanks to a team out of Nashville with her producer, Ty, on video call. The two of them have been working obsessively, planning and recording vocals for the deluxe edition ofSummer Haze.Oftentimes, his boyfriend—who I found out is Landon—and I have to drag them away in order to do frivolous things like eat and sleep.

The early mornings and our evenings are my favorite though. Nothing beats the feeling of falling asleep with my naked body wrapped around hers after we’ve exhausted ourselves on the other’s taste and feel of being connected. Except maybe waking up with her still wrapped up in me and us greeting the predawn with slow, easy movements of me inside her and our tongues tangled together as our hands lazily chart old courses down each other’s bodies made new again with how long we’ve been apart.

However, just having her back in my life and getting to see more and more of my Tinsley come to the surface is enough for me. It’s more than I thought I’d ever have again, and now that I do, I can’t keep myself away for even a second more than I have to because I know how quickly it can all end. How quickly this will end. Because like it or not, I know—or at least I fear—that it will.

It doesn’t matter what we’ve said, what promises have been made. How we ended lives within me like a flashbulb memory, that morning I woke up without her more clear and vivid than any other in my crowded mind. It’s there in the back of my head, haunting me every second of the day, looming like a glaring red clock counting down to the inevitable moment when she leaves again. And try as I might, I can’t banish it. So for now, and for as long as I have her, I hold Tinsley whenever I can, as close as I can. I steal every kiss, soak in every touch, savor every moment of loving her and being loved by her. Because when that clock runs out, I very well could find myself stripped of her vibrant love once more and be plummeted back into the gray monotony of simply surviving.

Reluctantly, I start to cool our heated kiss as Tinsley’s hands drift down my abdomen and begin to sneak up my shirt. Her resulting whine has me coming back for more, my resolve crumbling under the needy sound—special accommodations and tentative surprises be damned. I can’t resist when she sounds as if parting from me causes her physical pain.

Eventually, we successfully separate. Her lips are plush and beestung, her eyes bright and dreamy, and her cheeks flushed with a rosy hue that creeps down her neck into the collar of her t-shirt. I love that after all these years I still manage to put that look on her face. I love it even more knowing I’m the only one who has ever put that look on her face. That it’s a side of her no one has had but me when so much of her belongs to the world.

I take her hand and walk her across the parking lot, a DMV employee already waiting to unlock the door and let us in.

Inside, I drop her hand and instead wrap my arm around her, kissing the crown of her head. Against her hair, I murmur, “You’re gonna do great, Shortcake.”

Then letting her go, I take a seat in the waiting area while they take her back to do the written exam.

* * *

Tinsley smilesup at me as she proudly holds the temporary license in front of her chest.

“Do you feel better now, Superman?” she teases.

I do. Even if she never uses it, I feel better knowing she has it and that the mechanics behind driving are fresh in her mind again. I understand why she’s driven everywhere in California, but the idea of her not being able to do it for herself should she want to, or God forbid she need to, stresses me out. Her dependance on someone should never be out of necessity but rather desire.

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