Chapter 16: Autumn

I shuffled around and stretched. When my arm came down something behind me groaned. I felt a tightening in my abdomen before something pushed into the crook of my neck. Dallas’s lips puckered against my skin, and I couldn’t help but smile. Every morning I woke up in his arms, I woke up with a smile on my face. He was strong and somehow pliable against my skin, and every time he smiled into my shoulder, goosebumps rose all along the small of my back.

I shifted in his arms, and he groaned his disapproval, making me giggle when I shifted around to face him.

“Don’t go,” he croaked.

I kissed the tip of his nose and let the words fall from my lips just before the tug of guilt settled onto my morning-hazed mind.

“Never,” I whispered.

Dallas nuzzled into me and wrapped his arms back around my body, but it was the way he started trailing his fingertips along my back that made me grind into his thick morning wood.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he murmured.

“I do, actually,” I said with a smirk, laughing.

He rolled me over onto my back and fell between my legs, and my morning scent covered his pelvis before he slowly slid into me. He brushed my hair from my eyes and looked at me deeply when he slowly began to roll his hips into my body. The electricity that puckered my nipples against his strong chest caused my body to shiver. I rose my hips to meet his, my hands clung to his back, and our lips messily danced on one another’s while the sun slowly streamed through the curtains of my room.

His breath was hot on my skin, and his dick was thick in my body. I felt myself quickly approaching my peak, causing me to wrap my legs around his waist. His morning musk peppered my body and his cock massaged all the right parts of me. I could feel my essence slowly dripping down the balls that were lightly smacking against my skin. His rippling muscles pulsated and contracted underneath my movements, and his grunts covered my skin in a warmth I’d never found with anyone else. My toes began to curl, letting me know exactly why I’d knocked on his trailer when I saw his name on that poster board.

I knew exactly why I had sought him out.

“Please, Dallas,” I breathed.

“Anything for you,” he murmured into my skin.

Faster and faster he went, and soon our skin was slapping against one another’s. He cradled my head and looked deep into my eyes, a somewhat wild stare entering his pupils. As his hips began to stutter against mine, I nibbled at his shoulder and nestled my nose into the crook of his neck.

“Oh god, yes,” I whispered.

His body tensed with heat, his hips sunk deep into mine, and my pussy fluttered around him, pulling him as deep as he could possibly go before he spilled wholly into my entrance. The way his body writhed against mine and the way his skin felt—sweaty and stained from the love we had just made—sent words tumbling from his lips didn’t shock nor scare me.

“I love you, Autumn.”

I panted as his body collapsed onto mine, and he stayed sheathed inside of my wet heat while his morning wood sat and pulsed with its desire for a second round. I wrapped my arms tightly around him and closed my eyes, parting my lips and letting the same words tumbled from them just as naturally as they had years ago in college.

“I love you too, Dallas.”

He raised up and looked me in the eyes. The smile that crossed his face stirred something deep in the pit of my soul. I had always loved Dallas, and I knew I always would. I knew, in college, that he was the only man for me, and all the men I had ever come across in Paris didn’t hold a candle to the strong, rugged, strapping, gentle human I’d fallen in love with.

Fallen in love with and left.

“I’ve always loved you, Autumn,” he said earnestly. “From the moment I laid eyes on you, until the moment you appeared at my trailer, until now. Jesus, when your mother called and said-”

He slid off my body and out from between my legs, and I shifted, feeling him spill out of me. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I was lying in a mess and hadn’t brushed my teeth, and I didn’t even care that we still hadn’t addressed why I had left in the first place, much less the fact that I was leaving again next week.

All I cared about was what he was about to say and how deeply affected he obviously was by it.

To anyone else, Dallas was a stubborn ass. He listened to no one, took no advice, and always took the long way ‘round when it came to his goals. He shrugged off opinions and sometimes even told others to flat out shut their mouths. And most of the time, he kept to himself at all costs when he could. He would always say that people exhausted him and that if they were exhausting, they were stupid, and he didn’t want to waste his time with them anyway.

But with me, he always relented. With me, he always yielded.

Why the hell did I ever think he would stop me from going to Paris?

“I thought I’d lost you, Autumn,” he said.

“I’m right here,” I whispered, brushing his matted nighttime hair back from his face. I studied his features, committing them to memory just in case this never happened again. Just in case I never got to lay with him naked and vulnerable.

We still needed to talk, but for now, this was enough.

For the first time in three weeks, I hadn’t woken up with a headache. My body didn’t hurt and my stomach didn’t churn. When I went downstairs to Dallas making pancakes, my mouth salivated out of a hungry need rather than from the deprecating nausea that I couldn’t shake for some reason. After getting a plate full of pancakes, I slathered homemade molasses onto them, and Dallas challenged me to an eating contest. Laughing, I watched him shovel down ten pancakes to my four, while we covered ourselves in sweet sticky goodness.

“I gotta get back to the ranch today,” Dallas mentioned.

I smirked. “I was wondering when you were gonna resume your life.”

“Not until I knew you were all right. And obviously, by the way you wolfed down your breakfast, you’re doin’ just fine.”

“You’re such a jerk. You know I’ve always had an appetite.”

“Still, that was some decent eatin’ though. I’m lookin’ forward to watchin’ you slosh lunch all over your shirt.”

I slapped him playfully on the chest and he grasped my hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing it. My breath caught in my throat before he tilted my chin up towards him and captured my lips in a sweet resounding kiss.

“I’ll be in just before lunch to make us somethin’,” he said.

“I could make us something if you’d like.”

“Don’t bother yourself with it. It’ll probably just be sandwiches and chips.”

“Let me do something for you, Dallas,” I protested.

“What makes you think you don’t already?”

He kissed my forehead as a blush crept down my neck, and I watched him go out to his farm as he began tending to his animals. He groomed and fed his horses before moving to check the bulls, letting them all out to pasture. Then he disappeared into the heifer den, probably to milk them down and check on the ones carrying calves.

Knowing he would be there for a while, I went back upstairs to take a shower, which was when my mind began to race. I thought about the conversation ahead of us and all the questions he would ask, and tears crested my eyes at the idea of accusing him of holding me back.

My common sense told me he never would have, but my fears told me to not take the chance.

I had no idea how I was going to broach the conversation, but I knew for certain that he deserved the answers I’d been holding on to for so many years. I also knew that I’d fallen right back in love with him and that not a night had gone by where I hadn’t yearned for him to stay with me. The few nights he did retreat back to his room were there nights I’d struggled to sleep and woke up feeling cold. I knew that once I returned to Paris, it would take me weeks, if not longer, to reorient myself.

Just like it had when I’d left him five years ago.

But I simply had to go back to Paris; my entire life and career were there. Still it made me so sick to think about leaving him. Literally.

Tumbling out of the shower, I threw myself at the toilet. The breakfast I had indeed wolfed down came barking back up the tree. When I was done heaving, I wiped my mouth, sat down, and cried.

I had to tell him. I had to sit him down today and tell him everything. I didn’t know how I was going to start the conversation or whether he would let me stay the last week or throw me out on my ass, but I couldn’t keep doing this to him, and I sure as hell couldn't keep doing this to us. As easy as it was for me to just run from my problems, I was tired of running.

I loved him with everything I had, and I’m not sure I had ever stopped. And because of that, he deserved better.

He shouldn’t have to dig for the answers I owed him. Hence, I just needed to swallow my pride and bring it up, and once I started talking, I would force myself to continue until everything that needed to be said had been vocalized and put out in the open. I wouldn’t stop until he understood what had happened and that none of it was really his fault.

I pulled myself off the bathroom floor and eventually got dressed. The clock was blaring a few minutes past noon, and my hands suddenly began to tremble. I felt short of breath and tears rose in my eyes again. Before I managed to settle myself down, I heard Dallas’s voice drift up the stairs and ricochet down the hallway.

“Autumn, lunch will be ready in about fifteen minutes!”