Page 47 of Outlaw Ridge: Jesse
All that heat. All that pleasure. It slammed right through him, and his dick—and every other part of him—was prime and ready to do a lot more giving and a lot more taking.
He tried to stay gentle. Just in case she was more fragile than he thought. But he soon learned that Lauren certainly wasn’t fragile. Or timid when it came to sex. She hooked her legs around his waist and shoved up her body to meet his.
And the battle raged on.
The dick wanted what the dick wanted. Ditto for the rest of his body. But Lauren was on that quest for pleasure, too. She was frantic and hurrying to keep up with the pleasure that was building, building, building inside them.
Of course, they wanted to hang onto that. To ride that sharp edge of the need for as long as they could. To tap it for everything it was worth.
And it was worth a hell of a lot.
So, they moved together. Harder, faster, deeper. Until he felt her body surrender. Until he felt the climax race through her. Jesse saw the pleasure spread across her face, watched her as she gave into him.
Until she gave into him.
Then, Jesse did the only thing his body would allow. He let himself go.
Chapter Eighteen
----- ? ----
Lauren lay in bed. Her body still humming from the great sex. And her mind at peace. In fact, there were a lot of things at peace. It felt as if her body and everything in her world had finally released a breath it’d been holding for a very long time.
The sun had just dipped below the horizon, casting streaks of orange and pink across the sky. The soft glow filtered through the window, painting Jesse’s bedroom in warm, fading light. From where Lauren lay, tangled in the sheets, she could see the pasture outside, Jesse’s two horses grazing lazily in the distance, their dark silhouettes framed against the last sliver of daylight.
Jesse was beside her, his arm draped across her bare stomach, his skin warm and solid. The room still carried the heat of what had just happened between them, the kind of intimacy that left her feeling both sated and vulnerable. She stared at the ceiling for a moment, her thoughts drifting, before she turned her head slightly to look at him.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked softly, her voice a low murmur in the quiet room.
Jesse glanced at her, a small, lazy grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Our first date,” he said, his tone light. “And, you know… more sex with you.”
Lauren let out a laugh, shaking her head as she nudged him playfully with her shoulder. But the laughter faded quickly, and that hard fought peace slipped away for a moment.
She stared at the ceiling again, her voice quieter this time. “I’m glad Reggie’s dead,” she admitted, the words heavier than she expected. “I’m glad Reardon took that shot and made it.”
Jesse didn’t say anything, just traced slow, absent circles on her skin with his fingertips. “But?” he questioned. “I hear a but in there.”
“But,” she continued, her throat tightening, “I keep thinking… why did Reardon take it? Why risk that shot when Elsie was right there? What if it wasn’t just about stopping Reggie? What if—” she hesitated, then forced the words out, “—what if he shot him because Reggie was about to say something? Something that could have incriminated Reardon?”
“Yes,” Jesse said so quickly that it confirmed that the possibility had already crossed his mind.
Of course, it had. He was a good cop, and veteran cops like Reardon wouldn’t have normally taken a shot that risky.
Lauren felt the weight of her thoughts pressing down harder than the warm comfort of Jesse’s arm around her. The quiet stretched between them, filled only by the faint white noise of the A/C and the soft rhythm of their breathing. But it wasn’t enough to drown out the voice in her head, the questions she couldn’t shake.
“There’s something else,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. It wasn’t easy to say this aloud.
It made it more…real.
Jesse shifted slightly, propping himself up on his elbow to look at her, his brow furrowed now.
“Reggie never admitted to taking Abilene and Nicky,” she continued, her gaze still locked on the ceiling as if the answer might be written there. “He was bragging about other things,taunting me, acting like a cocky asshole.” She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “So why wouldn’t he brag about his latest conquests? Why not take credit for what he did to them?”
Jesse didn’t respond right away, but she could feel the tension in him, the shift in his breathing, the way his fingers stilled against her skin. She finally turned her head to look at Jesse, her eyes searching his face for something she couldn’t quite define.
“What if Reggie didn’t take them?” Lauren asked, voicing the words that would make this all too real. “What if someone else did?”
The sound shot through the room, causing her to gasp, and she was so on edge that at first, Lauren thought it was Reggie coming back to haunt her. But it was only Jesse’s phone. He’d obviously put it on vibrate, and it was now skittering on the top of the nightstand.
