“Are you alright?” Raylan asks me, his blue eyes full of tenderness.

“Yes!” I cry.

He nuzzles his face against the side of my neck, inhaling my scent. He lets go too, cumming inside of me with a long groan that thrills me from my head down to my toes.

When we’re finished, we lay there a long time, with Raylan still inside of me, and my arms still wrapped tight around his neck. I’m smelling the warm, clean scent of his skin, which is endlessly enticing to me. I can’t seem to stop pressing my face against his chest, inhaling slowly and deeply.

At last we can hear the noise of breakfast below.

Raylan says, “I guess we better get up before they start shouting for us. That’s the downside of ranch life—nobody can stand to see anybody sleep in.”

“That’s alright,” I say. “I hate sleeping. It’s a waste of time.”

But for the first time, that’s not actually true. I had the best sleep of my life last night. Not a waste of time at all.

Raylan and I pad over to the shower.

This is something else I’d usually avoid—cramming two full-size adults into one tiny shower. I’ve always viewed that as a ridiculous inconvenience.

But today, I want to be close to Raylan. I want to be right next to him for as long as I can. I don’t care that it takes longer to shower, or that sometimes we have to trade spots under the warm spray, and for a moment I’m shivering until he pulls me back under again and helps me rinse out my hair.

It feels lovely, having his thick, strong fingers massaging my scalp, feeling our bodies pressed together all slippery and wet and clean.

When we get out to towel off, the foot or two of space between us seems like too much. Having fallen into this unprecedented intimacy, I’m afraid to let us drift apart again, in case it never rematerializes.

“Are you hungry?” Raylan asks, toweling off his thick, dark hair.

“Starving,” I admit.

I feel like I could eat an entire outrageously-sized Raylan breakfast, down to the last bite of toast.

As we thump down the creaking stairs, a cornucopia of delectable scents hit my nostrils. The Boones never disappoint when it comes to food. The table is piled high with plate-sized pancakes, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, biscuits and gravy, and bizarrely, what looks like freshly sliced papaya.

Tucker and Lawson are each attacking a stack of syrup-drenched pancakes that would stymie grown men. Or at least, grown men who aren’t Boones.

Grady and Shelby are sitting next to their sons. Grady has a black eye as dark as a ring of boot polish. He looks like he’s wearing a giant monocle.

Celia is eating poached egg on toast. She looks up as her eldest son comes into the room.

“You were fighting, too!” she says accusingly, spotting Raylan’s split lip.

“Ah, it was nothing,” Raylan says dismissively. “Just a little dust-up. Nobody got stabbed or shot. Sheriff Dawes was pulling in as we left—I’m sure he cleared out anybody who hadn’t had enough already.”