Keegan
I’m on my knees, my arms wrapped tightly around Blue, my cheek pressed against his back and my eyes closed.
He’s squatting in front of the wood stove, trying to get a fire started.
“Damn, it’s cold as hell in here,” he says, rubbing his chafed palms against each other and flexing his stiff fingers.
I feel his shoulder blades pushing into my face as he moves, but I don’t open my eyes. I want to stay right here, inhaling the horse and hay scents coming off the oilskin jacket Blue is wearing.
He borrowed it from Buick this morning when we asked to take Okie for a ride to the cabin. My brother reluctantly agreed but threatened to make us shovel horse shit for a week if we wore out his prize gelding.
So we’d walked the horse most of the way, Blue holding the reins and me in the saddle in front of him, resting my head on his chest and loving the feel of his cradling arms.
The air still swirled with stray flakes from the fast-moving snowstorm that left a few inches of white powder on the ground, and the wind cut right through our clothing. But neither of us minded the long ride.
It was glorious to be out there together. It was glorious to not think about anything other than our immediate surroundings.
“How far do you think we could get if we just kept going?” Blue whispered plaintively in my ear as we reached the bluff overlooking the cabin.
I didn’t answer. I just let his question hang there between us.
Now, we’re crouched in the cabin—Okie protected from the wind in the corral my great-grandfather long ago built into the side of the bluff.
We promised Buick we’d have the horse back before sunset.
“And be sure you give him a good rub down when you get back and feed him the carrots he likes,” Buick grumbled, fixing me and Blue with a gimlet eye.
Buick is protective of his horse. Of all the horses on the ranch.
It was obvious my brother was curious about the strangers who showed up unexpectedly at the ranch and about the long meeting we had with them yesterday.
I have no idea how much my grandmother has told him. I feel bad about keeping him in the dark, but I can barely wrap my own head around all of it, and I don’t really feel like explaining it to anyone else right now.
I guess I’ll need to fill Buick in soon, though.
He and I are feeling our way through what’s hopefully going to be a better relationship. I’m used to fighting with my brother most of the time.
Or not seeing him at all. But I want something better than that.
The kindling starts to crackle; the stove door clicks as Blue closes it. I still have my eyes shut, and I can hear a vibration coming from his back.
“Are you humming?” I ask, raising my head and reluctantly opening my eyes.
The side of his face creases up in a smile, and his hand slides up to cover mine. He nods and starts humming a little louder.
“What song is that? I don’t recognize it.”
He turns to face me and tilts his head, looking surprised. “You don’t? You didn’t listen to the songs on the flash drive Bryson gave you?”
I shake my head, noticing the way his eyes drop away from mine for a second. He’s disappointed.
“I couldn’t listen, Blue,” I try to explain. “I didn’t want to, not without you there with me. It just wouldn’t have been the same.”
“Then I’ll sing it to you myself when we get back,” he says, giving me a sad smile. “It’s the title song. I can’t wait for you to hear it.”
Blue had been surprised last night to find his guitar propped in the living room at the ranch, brought there by his mother. He’d slowly stretched his hand out, resting it on the instrument as if greeting an old friend.
We didn’t make love that first night back together. I held tight to him, though, all night long. I let him talk.
He was still tense from our meeting with Holmlund and Virginia, still struggling with the agreement we’d come to, still agonizing over the fear and grief etched into his mother’s face.
And he kept talking about the families of Cunny, Monti, and Hud.
“They must hate me now,” he kept saying, “God, Keegan, they must hate my guts.”
I stayed awake long after Blue finally fell asleep, listening to him occasionally cry out in his dreams.
Now, kneeling in front of the wood stove, his eyes caressing my face and holding my gaze with a forlorn expression that sets off alarm bells in my head, I’m convinced yet again that he knows what I’m thinking.
And I don’t want him to know what I’m thinking.
I curl my hands into the front of his jacket and pull him to me. “Kiss me, you fool,” I say, forcing a distracting playfulness into my voice.
When he does kiss me, I add, “Your lips are cold.”
“Then warm them up,” he growls.
I do my best, planting my mouth on his as we fall back on the colorful Navajo rug my great-great-great grandfather bought in Arizona in 1863.
Blue kisses me urgently, his hands raking my hair. “I know it hasn’t been that long,” he whispers, “but it felt like forever when I was on that base, missing you, not being able to touch you. Not being able to make love to you.”
“It felt like forever to me, too.” I yank the jacket off his shoulders, spooked by the lingering sorrow on his face.
I am suddenly desperate to replace sorrow with lust or passion. Or anger, even. Anything would be better than the expression Blue is wearing, the tortured look that makes me shiver with a fear I don’t really understand.
“Fuck me, Blue,” I whisper, pulling his face toward me and biting his lip. “Just shut up and fuck me.”
I want to be crude and coarse. I don’t want to make love, not right now. I want to fuck, savagely, thoughtlessly, without any emotion except raw hunger. I want both of us to feel nothing but a pure, strengthening rage.
I want him to tear my clothes off and pound me into the floor. I want him to take me, brutally lay claim to me. I want him to do something, anything, to obliterate the terrifying softness that I’m afraid is weakening us both.
Blue does his best to oblige. He rips away my long brown coat and tugs off my red scarf, then pulls my sweatshirt off and unclasps my bra in one fluid movement.
His lips and tongue find my breasts, licking and sucking, gently and then not so gently. It’s like he knows how badly I need him to just be a cave man.
His fingertips dig into my arms with bruising force. His teeth nip at my neck, and then he falls to his knees and starts on my stomach, going a little further down with each bite.
All the while, he’s frantically unzipping my jeans and dragging them down my legs until I just as frantically kick them away. The thong goes next, sliding toward my feet with the guidance of Blue’s teeth.
My fingers move to the spot that aches for Blue’s tongue, and I gasp at how good it feels to press hard, there, and then keep pressing as my fingers draw a tight, stimulating circle around it.
Blue, still kneeling, watches my fingers, his lips slightly apart. He raises his gaze to mine and curls his fingers around my free hand.
“Blue,” I breathe, the word an invitation and a plea. But he just keeps watching me, his eyes blazing.
“Blue.” I’m begging now.
He squeezes my hand. Then his lips zero in as his other hand pulls my fingers away. I moan, closing my eyes and calling out his name again as his tongue finally sends a tremor through me and my fists clutch his hair.
But then I open my eyes and find myself staring at Virginia. The little-girl version of her, anyway, in the picture on the wall across from me.
My eyes slide over to the picture of my parents when they were younger; my mother’s expression, I’m suddenly sure, is horrified at what I am doing.
Blue slides his hands along my arms and tries to draw me down to the rug.
But I’m now staring at the picture of my great-grandparents, with their stern expressions and dark, forbidding clothing covering almost every inch of skin.
“Wait.” I step back, away from Blue. “Wait. I can’t do this here.”
I point at the pictures, feeling like an idiot. “Not in front of them. Not with all my family members watching.”
He gives me a What-the-hell-are-you-talking-about? look but doesn’t say a word. Instead, he jumps to his feet and pulls me up the log steps toward the loft so fast I’d have fallen if he wasn’t gripping my arm.
We fall on the bed together, Blue shucking off his jeans as if his life depended on it. Then I hear him curse under his breath.
“What?” I pant.
He grits his teeth and shakes his head. “I don’t have a condom. I…oh fuck, I didn’t think about it, I’m sorry, I—”
That’s where Cautious Keegan, perched in her angel’s robe on my shoulder, issues a stop-and-desist order.
Don’t be stupid, she says in my ear. Don’t you dare do something so utterly idiotic. It would be a huge, huge, stupid mistake.
But Cautious Keegan isn’t running the show now.
I roll on my side and push Blue back on the bed, covering him with my body and kissing him hard.
“I don’t care,” I say. “I don’t fucking care right now. Just do it. I want you. I want you to fuck me. Right now.”
My words wipe the hesitation off his face. He grabs my shoulders and flips me over, pushing me into the bed and lifting my knees toward my shoulders.
Then he drives into me, hard, and I claw his back, remembering his scars a moment too late.
But it doesn’t seem to bother him this time. His eyes are hooded and wild, his expression unreadable. I run my hands over his butt, feel it pumping back and forth.
Blue is inside me, moving in and out, his sculpted arms planted on either side of me, making my whole body shudder.
And yet, it’s still not enough.
I dig my nails into his back again and lift my head to tug at his ear with my teeth. “Harder, Blue,” I whisper. “Harder.”
That seems to unleash something in him. He kisses me ferociously and then, before I even have time to react, he pulls out and flips me over so I’m on my hands and knees.
And then he rocks into me, and I cry out at the sharp flood of pleasure surging through me. I arch backward as Blue brushes my hair aside and wraps one hand around the back of my neck.
“God, Keegan, this feels so good,” he whispers, curling his fingers into my scalp. “It feels so good to be inside you, to be part of you.”
His voice gets a little higher as his cries get more intense. He’s close to the edge, and that pushes me closer too.
I’m finally there, in that place I was trying to reach, and I want to linger.
“Keegan! Oh God, this feels so good!”
His hand falls away from my head, and his body shakes against me as his fingers dig into my hips. He stiffens and arches back, and his orgasm pushes me over the edge.
Mine slams across my body more intensely than ever before.
We ride the wave together.
And then we collapse on the bed, curling up together as our breathing gradually slows.
“Wow,” I finally say, wishing I could say more.
“Wow,” Blue responds. “That was hot.”
And then we don’t say anything else for a while.
We’d made love after all. It was urgent and fervent, even harsh. But it was still love. With Blue and me, that’s the only thing it can be.
~~
Thanks for reading Tangled Up in Blue! More coming up soon. Be sure to follow me for the latest updates.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
