Page 95 of Love Wells Kept

Kate

A deafening sound shoves me headfirst out of a dream, and I splat onto our bed with a muffled groan. I reflexively grab either end of my pillow and press it against my ears, mumbling something incoherent about annoying alarms though my throat’s so dry it comes out as a croak.

I clear my throat, licking my lips to wet them, and try again. “What the fuck is that?”

Jackson makes the racket stop and cuddles in next to me, rubbing his broad, warm palm over my bare back. “Time for our date.”

How is it morning already?

With a groggy brain and bleary eyes, I pry myself from the pillow and come face-to-face with my enthusiastic husband grinning at me. The room’s pitch-black, and the fire we fucked in front of before bed still has the orange glow of embers.

“What?” It’s the first of a long list of questions I have for him, and the only one I’m awake enough to enunciate right now.

“Two a.m. date,” he answers as if I’d previously agreed upon this date. I didn’t even have a drink with dinner, so unless he asked while I was preoccupied with lava cake, this is a surprise.

I burrow myself deeper into the blankets in protest.

“Come on, Kit. I think you’ll like this one.” He gently brushes hair away from my face and kisses my forehead.

As a testament to my love for this man, I groan and peel back the sheets. I’d follow him anywhere, even into a surprise date in the middle of the night on my first child-free weekend ever.

From my reluctant perch on the edge of the bed, body swaying from exhaustion, I yawn loudly in protest. “I hope you know this is the first time I’ve been able to sleep without the threat of small children waking me up. And now I have you…and you’re looking at me the same way Rhett does when he bursts into the room with a ridiculous dream he’s itching to share.”

“Promise when we go home, I’ll leave you be for an entire night and stand guard outside the door in the morning to keep the kids away.”

His arms stretch overhead, pulling the skin taut across his muscles. He’s all abs and meaty ribs and broad shoulders. It makes me a little wet between my thighs. I quickly reach for my duffel bag, wanting to slip into some underwear before I leave a wet patch on the bed.

“Put on your bathing suit,” Jackson says.

I spin to face him, confused. He’s sliding a pair of black swim trunks over his powerful thighs, tucking his dick into the pouch sewn inside. He looks up at me as he ties the waistband string tight. His eyes locked on mine, he shakes his head. “Trust me, Kate.”

Without a doubt, my cute floral bikini—high cut and cheeky—is still damp. And the only thing that’ll make this middle-of-the-night wake-up call any more miserable is being forced to squeeze into a wet, cold bathing suit. So I pluck my spare bikini from the bag. I’ve had it for years and it does nothing flattering for my boobs, but the hot springs are closed and it’s two a.m. so, realistically, nobody is going to see me.

I clothe my naked, tired body in that red bathing suit, then try to massage out the weird patterns on my stomach from the rumpled sheets. Knowing it’s likely to be brisk outside, given we’re in the mountains on a spring night, I grab a sweatshirt and sweatpants to wear over it.

All the while, Jackson waits patiently with one hand on the door handle, two towels draped over his bare shoulder, eyes trailing up and down my body.

“You’re going to be cold,” I say, eyeing his torso.

He winks. “Not for long. Let’s go.”

I was right. The night air is frigid and the grass outside our cabin has sparkles of frost clinging to it. Pale moonlight brushes over the narrow pathway, and up ahead there’s fog lying low over where the hot spring pools are.

I shiver immediately, freezing and silently wishing Jackson would change his mind and take me back to bed. But he grabs my hand, and between that firm touch and his coffee-brown eyes, he’s the warmest thing in the world.

“Aren’t the pools closed at night?” I ask quietly.

Wind rustles through the tree canopy overhead, and I step a little faster. It’s eerily quiet around here. I’m used to being on a cattle ranch, where even in the dead of night, the animals are never entirely silent.

“They are.” Jackson looks over his shoulder with a mischievous smile. “Which means we’ll have it all to ourselves.”

I whisper-yell, “We can’t break into the hot springs.”

Around the next bend in the path, we come face-to-face with a rustic metal gate. Jackson wiggles the latch in his fingers, bending down to get a better look at it, and it pops open a second later. The air’s filled with the piercing sound of metal on metal, squealing so sharply I grit my teeth reflexively.

“If the gate’s unlocked, does it really count as breaking in?”

Eyebrow raised, I jab a finger at the sign indicating they close at ten p.m. “Yes, it does.”