A Broken Cowboy (BWWM Interracial Romance) (6 page)

He leaned back slightly and looked into her dark brown eyes, seeing his own reflection in their surface. It relaxed him, and for the first time since Mimi had arrived the solid gaze of his protective shell eased and erased a little. He even smiled, a sight that caught Mimi so unaware that she almost dropped her arms. As he started to lean closer, Mimi nodded slightly, urging him forward to meet her mouth with his own.

The feeling of his lips on hers should have been powerful, aggressive, but instead Gabriel’s kiss was tentative, and almost fearful, like he knew he could hurt her with one wrong move. Everything about Gabriel touching her was delicate and hesitant, leaving Mimi to take the reins.

She moved alongside him until she faced him, straddling his lap and running her hands up his strong arms until they came together behind his neck. She pulled him closer and deepened their kiss, thrilling when his lips parted and his tongue thrust against her own. Mimi felt his hands reach for her, wrapping around the small of her back and holding her against him. It wasn’t long before she could feel his excitement and knew that he wanted her too.

She pushed him backwards until he was lying on the grass, the last light of dusk falling down around them and the light from the glowing fire throwing shadows on the wall of her cabin. As she stretched out on top of Gabriel and kissed him, her curly shoulder-length hair falling around both of them, he pressed her hips into his. Soon, his hands found the hem of her shirt and he slid his fingers underneath the soft fabric, trailing them lightly on the soft skin of her back.

Mimi’s mind went in a million directions, even as she tried in vain to hold onto a single thought. Thinking was nearly impossible with the feeling of Gabriel’s lips pressed against hers, but her brain became completely incoherent when he moved to kiss her neck, supporting her cheek softly in one hand and pulling her hair to the side with the other. The light raking of his teeth against her neck drove her wild, to the point that she moved her hands to the edge of Gabriel’s t-shirt and began to slide it upward, craving the feeling of his heated skin.

Sensing what she wanted, Gabriel rolled over, cradling her against him as he did. He sat up and shed his shirt before carefully unworking the buttons on her top, opening the layers of fabric delicately. His eyes lit up with a flash of excitement when he saw that she wasn’t wearing a bra, and his breath caught as he took in the sight of her full, round breasts. He leaned forward, closing the distance between them as his mouth found her breast, causing her to arch against him from the pleasure of his wet mouth sucking longingly on her nipple and drawing it into a taut point. He assaulted its peaks with his tongue while his hand slid easily beneath her back, holding her close to him.

Mimi knew she needed to take some measure of control before she came completely undone. She reached for the top button of Gabriel’s jeans, opening it and sliding down the zipper as he leaned sideways to accommodate. She slid closer to him as he kneeled, utter joy sparking across his face as he realized what she intended to do. She propped herself on her elbow as she freed his pulsing erection with her other hand, wrapping his shaft tightly in her fist and lapping at the head of his cock until he nearly begged for her to take him in. She slid her tight lips down his full length slowly, looking up at him and loving the look of rapture on his face. He guided her up and down his length with one hand softly holding her hair, making small thrusts with his hips to meet her halfway. As she stroked her hand along his length, she heard his breaths coming harder and harder, until he finally pulled away.

Without a word, he moved beside Mimi and slowly, tantalizingly finished removing her shirt, helping her out of her own jeans next. Then he took off his pants, stopping to look down on Mimi and take in the full sight of her lying beside the barely flickering fire, the light shimmering against her dark skin. He smiled at her once again, a look that was so rare and so raw that it left her speechless each time she saw it.

Bending over her, Gabriel kissed her warmly, his mouth stirring in her a kind of desire she’d never felt before. She pulled him closer to her, wordlessly begging him to join her, to be inside her. She opened her legs to him and he pressed against her, his cock seeking the warmth there. Mimi held her breath as he moved his hips, pushing into her, his length reaching all the way to her center. The anticipation he caused by going so slowly was both thrilling and tormenting, making her almost cry out for him to fill her.

He continued to kiss her as he moved in and out, sliding against her growing wetness, until he pulled back and watched the expression on her face, clearly loving the look of absolute elation on her face. Gabriel began to roll his hips with each thrust, making her moan from the sensations running through her.

Without pulling out of her, Gabriel rolled onto his back and sat up, pulling Mimi with him and placing her on top of his lap so she could ride him. He kissed one breast and then the other as she moved, her motions growing even more frenzied as he took one of her dark nipples in his mouth again, massaging her other breast with his strong but gentle hand. He stealthily slid one hand between them until he found her magic spot, pressing his thumb against her button and rubbing in teasingly small circles, causing her to shriek from the sheer ecstasy of it.

As she ground against him, riding the full length of his hard cock as fast as she could, Mimi called out her enjoyment, screaming as her orgasm flooded her body with wave after wave of intense pleasure. Gabriel guided her hips with his hands, lifting her up and down against him, moving her faster and faster as his own orgasm built up inside him. She felt him erupt inside her, his own tremors of excitement mingling with hers as they struggled to catch their breaths.

Without a word passing between them, Gabriel and Mimi each got dressed and gathered their things. He put a hand on Mimi’s arm to stop her as she began to button her shirt, smiling again as he took another long, lingering look at her body, still glistening slightly with sweat. She grinned and posed slightly, then finished getting dressed. Gabriel held her close and nuzzled her.

“You smell like wildflowers,” he whispered shyly against her neck.

He walked her to the steps of her cabin, his arm around her waist as they moved in the dark. At the steps, Mimi stepped up on one board and turned to face Gabriel, eye-level with him.

“You’re welcome to come in, but I know it’s hard. Please don’t feel like you have to, you’re not going to hurt my feelings,” she said quietly, jerking her head slightly towards the door of her cabin. Gabriel looked achingly at the door and leaned forward slightly to take a step up onto the porch, but suddenly he leaned away and took a step back, shaking his head slightly as his gaze dropped to the ground. He turned away instead and picked up his bag, then kissed Mimi one more time, a long kiss that went on for ages, before walking off into the dark. Mimi stared after him for a few minutes, watching the way he moved effortlessly across the uneven terrain, waiting until she couldn’t see him anymore before going inside and closing the door behind her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In the morning, Mimi woke up feeling like she couldn’t tell where real life dropped off and her dream began. Had that been real? Had she actually enjoyed incredible sex with a guy she only barely knew, who haunted her ranch like a ghost and appeared out of nowhere when the occasion suited him? Was she that stupid, and yet still that romantic?

There would be time to think about those things later. Right now, Mimi had laundry to wash and bed linens to clean, now that she had fully functional running water. It wasn’t hot water, thanks to the lack of a water heater, but at least it was water. She went out to the back porch where a variety of pots and washtubs hung on hooks from the wall of the house. One tub, leaned against the side of the house, was so large that it could only have served as a semi bathtub, so Mimi dragged it up onto the smaller back porch and began filling it with buckets of water from her tap.

After a solid thirty minutes of filling, Mimi began gathering up her clothes, worn from the vacation and the days out here with little to no water. She began pushing them piece by piece under the water, adding generous sprinkles of soap powder and stirring the whole thing with a large wooden paddle leaned against that same wall. There was still room enough and no need to waste water, so Mimi added the blankets and sheets from the bed, and throwing in the few towels from the shelf in the curtained alcove that served as a closet.

When every stitch of clothing or linen was in the tub, Mimi began to stir feverishly, reaching in from time to time to scrub at a stain she remembered on a certain article of clothing. Rather than go through the hassle of this lengthy chore again anytime soon, she added the last articles of clothing that needed a good washing, shimmying out of her jeans and stripping down to nothing in order to throw in her shirt, pants, and panties.

Nobody’s here, and the only other person who is around has already seen this,
she thought to herself as she worked.
Of course, with my luck, the mail man would come out this way today.

After soaking all of the items under the water, Mimi went inside to place the order for the roofing materials while the soapy water worked its magic. After a lengthy discussion of materials, dimensions of the house, even the direction the roof faces and the amount of full sun it got each day, the supplier provided a confirmation number and delivery date, then said goodbye. Mimi recorded all of those details in her household account software, then went out back to drain and rinse her laundry before hanging it up to dry on the clothes line that stretched from the cabin to the corner of the outhouse.

As she wrung out each piece one-by-one, she carried each item inside for a good rinse under the tap then carried it directly outside again to the clothesline. The drips of water splattering her floor would actually be helpful later, as her next chore was going to be to scrub the floors with a healthy dose of soap and elbow grease. When everything except the heavy bed quilt was finally fluttering on the clothesline in the breeze that had picked up, Mimi drained the water and set about rinsing the quilt, a chore that she knew would be done once a year at best, given the amount of water and time she used up trying to get the water to run clear of bubbles. When she finally felt like it was as soap-free as possible, she spread it out in the front yard across the stumps from the porch, hoping the sun would do its job in record time.

Her eyes traveled to the spot near the ring of stones where her fire had been, a place where the grass was broken down and crushed from the night before. There hadn’t actually been a doubt in her mind that she and Gabriel had made love, but seeing the flattened spot in the grass both amused her and made her feel a twinge of guilt. She shook off the feeling as she spread her quilt out to dry, the two stumps they’d used as their tables lifting up the quilt in the middle to let the air circulate.

Back in the cabin, Mimi got to work on the dirty floors, not wasting any of the soapy water that had sloshed during her laundry chore. She worked on all fours, laughing at the mental image of a naked black woman on her hands and knees and grateful that she didn’t have this kind of wild streak back when she lived in the city. But the more she scrubbed, the more water droplets she seemed to find. Sitting up on her knees in frustration, Mimi jerked when a drop of water landed on the back of her neck and rolled quickly down her spine. She looked around in confusion, then looked up just as another drop came from above, splashing right on her forehead. All around her, drops of water fell from the ceiling.

She sighed as she realized that another rain storm was almost overhead. She got up and began pulling out the pots and pans she’d used for the last cloud burst, placing them as best she could under the holes and trying to line up the containers with the splashing water. When she went out to retrieve one of the larger tubs to dump the collected water in, her eyes went immediately to her laundry, still hanging on the clothesline.

Oh! No!

She started to step off the porch to retrieve them
.
When she realized they were still so wet that the rain wouldn’t make them any wetter, she let it go, watching all of her clothes hang limply in the increasingly heavy rain. The bed quilt in the front yard was not only soaked, but getting muddy too. That she could remedy, and she ran out front and retrieved the quilt, flipping it over and tossing it over the burnt-out tree that still stood in the front yard, letting the rain wash the spots of rust-colored mud and remaining soap out of the blanket.

Dejected, she went back in the house to dry off but realized she didn’t have so much as a dish towel to dry off with. All of her clothes and every bit of linen was outside in the rain. She swore not to let something as silly as screwing up her laundry get her down.

Instead, she pulled the giant tub that she’d washed the clothes in into the house, positioning it near enough to the sink and stove to fill it with heated water. She grabbed the remaining tubs off the back porch and filled them, setting them on the stove to heat.

It took long enough, but Mimi finally had enough boiling water and enough tap water combined in the large tub to take a decent bath. She lowered herself into the tub and immediately felt herself relax. She soaped herself in slow, smooth circles, letting her mind wander to the way Gabriel had touched her last night, remembering the delicious way he had connected with her.

With the hot water moving around her skin and the rain drumming against the roof, Mimi drifted off to sleep only to wake some time later with a painful crick in her neck from leaning against the metal edge of the tub, her knees painfully sore from staying bent for too long. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but the water had turned terrifyingly cold, as had the rest of her cabin.