IT HAD BEEN THREE WEEKS since Maggie attacked me on the front porch of the farmhouse. She had been charged with second-degree kidnapping, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and eventually felony hit and run. Maggie’s father’s truck’s tires were a perfect match for the skid marks left in the roadway by my house. The forensic technician also found traces of blood on the passenger side of the front bumper. DNA had yet to confirm it was my blood, but when faced with the mounting evidence, Maggie confessed.
A few nights after I was released from the hospital, I finally worked up the nerve to ask about the conversation I overheard in the barn. Cooper told me about two months after he returned from deployment they found out Maggie was pregnant. Elated, they went to the first appointment where the doctor told them she was eleven weeks along. He got up and walked out, never looking back. Sometime later in her pregnancy, she miscarried.
While I knew she cheated on him, it hurt my heart to hear about his discovery of her betrayal. Cooper had been completely honest with me about how it hurt him, but he told me how he now felt grateful it happened when it did. He told me it was part of the reason we were finally together. If Maggie hadn’t been unfaithful, then he could have still been married to her, because the O’Loughlin men were nothing if not loyal.
Things around the farm were finally starting to get back to normal. Maria and Ash were teaching lessons while I worked on a business plan, website, and ideas for ways to expand the schooling program. I promised Scott I’d help take care of the farm and I had every intention of fulfilling that promise.
Ashton and Anna had been stuck to each other’s side until last week, when she returned to Charlotte. Her father called her every other day, insisting she had to come home before classes resumed. She finally relented last week.
Ash moved back into his room the same day she left, since I had been sleeping in Cooper’s room for a month. He had been moping around like a love-sick teenager. They agreed to make the drive to each other once a month and on holidays. Ashton offered to drive back with her, but Anna refused, insisting he stay at the farm.
Anna had always tried to keep her family and friends separate. I didn’t understand it and she refused to explain. The admission in the kitchen to Maria was more than I could ever pull out of her. I wasn’t naïve. I knew that most parents did not behave like mine or Maria and Scott did.
I had a thin scar on my cheek that was still pretty red and tender, but the plastic surgeon insisted when healed completely I wouldn’t notice it. I will always notice it. The bruises from my ribs had finally faded and the other injuries from Maggie’s ambush had left no lasting effects.
I still had to used crutches for walking far and wear the brace, but my side had healed nicely, mostly because everyone treated me like a china doll. Cooper wouldn’t so much as kiss me roughly and I was over it. I had replaced the satin corset they cut off me in the ambulance.
It all would end that night, even if I had to tie his ass down to the bed.
* * *
That night I found myself back in Cooper’s bed, wearing black lingerie similar to what I had worn the last time I tried to surprise him. I knew he would be home on time tonight and Maria and Ashton both had lessons until seven-thirty. We would have an hour and a half of uninterrupted, quiet time that I planned on filling with my moans and his name on my lips.
I heard his boots on the hardwood floors as he called for me, coming down the hall. “Kins? Where are you, babe?”
The door opened and on the other side was my sexy man dressed in camouflage fatigues. My core wept in delight and I may have even drooled a little.
“Holy fuck,” Cooper cursed, slamming the door behind him. He came around the bed like a man on fire.
“Get naked and get in this bed because I swear to God, Cooper, if you don’t fuck me, you’ll have to watch as I get myself off.”
Before I could complete my plan to seduce him, he was ripping off his jacket followed by his shirt. Those abs, mmm. “I’m not gonna last but a minute, but I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”
A quiet chuckle escaped my lips before I slapped my hand over my mouth. I laid back in bed and watched the man I loved rip his clothes off like his life might have actually depended on it. The boots weren’t as quick, but eventually they flew off, one by one and one knocked over the lamp on his side of the bed.
He jumped into bed, situated himself between my legs and claimed my lips roughly. His kiss was white-hot and demanding. He seized my wrists and pinned them over my head. “I’m gonna fuck you hard and fast. If your hands so much as move, I stop. Got it?”
I loved when he was aggressive in bed. My body tingled with anticipation. “I got it, but-,”
“No buts.” His fingers wrapped around the thin sides of my thong and yanked the fabric until it ripped. “I’ll buy more.”
“Condom,” I reminded him before he sank into me.
“Fuck,” he grumbled, rolling off me to his bedside table, pulling out the drawer and locating some protection. “We really gotta get you on birth control.”
My head tilted slightly. “I am. I get the shot.”
His movements stilled, condom between his fingers, and he narrowed his eyes. “So, explain to me why we need this if you get the shot. He ripped the wrapper open.
“Shut up and get over here,” I demanded, damn-near salivating as he rolled the condom down his hard cock.
Kneeling on the bed, he reclaimed his position between my legs, lined himself up to my slick, awaiting core and sank balls deep in one fell swoop.
“Oh God,” I cried out, keeping my hands above my head because if he stopped I would die. I needed that release more than I needed my next breath.
“Fuck, yeah, baby.” He thrust into me unrelentingly, never slowing down. “How bad do you wanna come?”
“Cooper,” I cried out. “Please.” I was not above begging.
“Beg me, baby,” he panted, keeping his bewildering pace.
“Fuck. Please, baby. Make me come,” I pleaded with him.
“God, there’s nothing sexier than my cock buried deep in your pussy while you beg me for more. Nothing.”
Cooper shifted his weight to one hand, freeing the other to slide down to where our bodies connected in unfathomable bliss. Finding my clit, it only took a few slips and slides around before I was thrusting my hips to meet his.
He lasted for a lot longer than a minute, but it was every bit the hard and fast he promised. In fact, I was pretty sure everyone in the barn could hear the headboard as it slammed into the wall.
* * *
The saying everything happens for a reason never really made sense to me until everything happened. Sometimes good things come from bad, even awful situations. Six months ago, I was attacked and had to defend myself which resulted in someone almost dying. The emotional trauma I endured lasted longer than the physical, but Cooper helped me to heal. He didn’t have to do anything other than just listen or hold me when I woke up from nightmares. There was no magic pill or quick fix, it just took time.
The three months I couldn’t teach gave me the opportunity to develop plans and find funding for the new expansion that should be breaking ground next week if the late fall weather cooperated. The O’Loughlin Farm had become the O’Loughlin Boarding and Training Center. There would be a new twenty stall barn built onto the current one. Sixty acres in the back would be cleared for more paddocks and an indoor arena.
Expanding was a slow process. The more investors I was able to secure, the more Scott’s dream came to life. He loved the farm and wanted it to stay in the family for as many generations as possible. Growing would ensure that legacy.
In his will, Scott left the farm to the three boys with the provision that Maria would stay in the house and do as much or as little as she wanted in the day to day operations of the farm and riding school. He left his half-a-million-dollar life insurance policy to be divided equally between Maria and the boys.
Cooper and Ash decided they wanted to build houses on opposite corners of the property, closer to the road. They didn’t want to leave the farm, but needed their own place. Coop and I really needed a home of our own.
My little loft worked for the time being, but we wanted space. Working from the couch while Cooper watched Game of Thrones was impossible. The tings of swords or moans from naked women was distracting to say the least. I needed an office with a proper desk and door.
I haven’t been on the back of a horse since Cooper’s crazy ex-wife ran me down with her father’s truck, but that would soon change. It took a lot of physical therapy, but I almost felt back to normal.
Cooper surprised me that morning by packing a picnic, tacking up Peaches and Ford, and getting Ash to cover my beginner’s class at eleven. We had three hours to relax and ride together.
“Did your mom tell you if your grandparents weren’t gonna make it for Thanksgiving?” Cooper asked, steering Ford around a deep mud puddle. Thanksgiving was only two days away.
“Yeah, they aren’t going to make it down from New Jersey, so Mom and Dad are going to go there,” I told him, sighing. “Mom asked that we try to come up there for dessert. Nan promised to make your favorite,” I said in a sadly veiled attempt to entice him.
“Mmm, who can say no to Nan’s cheesecake. If you wanna go, then we’ll go.” Cooper smiled, taking a deep breath of the fresh, cool air.
“Good, I wanna go.”
We continued on, crunching through the fallen red and yellow leaves that hid the worn-down path. The sun shone through the naked trees as we reached our destination an hour after we set out.
I swung my right leg over, laid my stomach on the saddle, then slid down Peaches’ side slowly, trying to land with most of my weight on my right leg.
“Is it bothering you?” Cooper asked, dismounting Ford then unclipping his saddle bag.
“Nah, I didn’t wanna push it though. You wanna finally tell me what’s in the saddle bags?” I took the lead clipped to my saddle off and attached it to the underside of Peaches’ noseband, the looped it over a nearby tree branch. Neither horse were runners, we probably didn’t even need the leads, but it was the smart thing to do.
“I have sandwiches, a bag of chips, and a bottle of wine,” Cooper said, rubbing his brow.
“What?”
“I remembered the corkscrew but no cups.” He threw the saddle bag over his shoulder and tied Ford to the same tree I parked Peaches under. Her nose snorted the dead leaves away, probably looking for grass to nibble on.
Beaming, I walked over and wrapped my arms around Cooper’s trim waist. “I don’t need a cup, babe. I’m just happy to have some quiet time with you out here.” I leaned up on my tip-toes and kissed his full lips.
“I love you,” he told me. “I know I don’t say it enough, but I do.”
“I know you do.” I waggled my head a little and laughed when he rolled his eyes at me.
The weather was warm for mid-November but still a little chilly when a gust of wind found us. A shiver escaped my bones as I sat down on the two-foot-wide pine tree that had fallen several years before. Most of the trunk was bare of bark from us picking at it each time we stopped here for a break from the saddle.
Cooper and I sat there eating, enjoying the peace and quiet, until he pulled out a pocket knife.
“What are you doing?” I asked, watching him scraping the knife blade along the dead wood.
“Putting our initials in the tree,” he told me without looking up, focused on the C then the O.
“Aww, babe.” My hand found my chest, right above my heart. He was my heart.
When he was finished it said CO + KA 11–21–16. I would never forget that day because he memorialized it in what I would forever remember as our tree.