Crossing the Line

by OneLoneWolf56

A one chapter story RATED M: I actually wrote this during season 8 and finally decided to publish it. Ty has been struggling with every part of his life since Amy gave back his ring and called off their relationship. When he is finally at rock bottom and ready to give up, a completely unanticipated intervention changes everything, for both of them.

"Crossing the Line"

The days had become unbearably drawn-out for Ty Borden. He muddled through most of them by going through the motions at school or work thinking it had to be later than the time indicated on his watch. Even worse was dreading six o'clock and time to enter the unavoidable emptiness he knew would be waiting for him as it did every day at the sparingly decorated trailer he had occupied for three years.

The walls were stripped of pictures or trinkets on the shelves that might remind him of his frustration and loss which caused a strange echo when anyone spoke, but there was no need to worry about that because there was no one to talk to except for Harley, his horse in the shed across the driveway.

Going home alone to what had recently become more hostile surroundings in the modest living quarters was not the kind of feeling he looked forward to, but staying at his little trailer out in the country near Heartland Ranch was no longer an option. The imminence of the train wreck that used to be an engagement to his longtime cowgirl fiancée who grew up on that ranch suffocated his existence to the point of having thoughts he never believed he would personally experience.

One particularly excruciating episode on a recent stormy evening alone with those shattered memories nearly sent him over the edge, saved at the last possible second by a God sent lightning strike tearing its way through a tall tree only feet away from the little camper trailer and jarring him back from giving away his very existence. The jolt affected him so much that he knew immediately that extreme changes were necessary to maintain any semblance of sanity.

He tried in vain to steer his mind away from the endless loop of images playing over and over of Amy being waited upon hand and foot by royal servants, basking in the glow of never ending gifts and attention from Ahmed al Saeed, the prince of some unfamiliar country on the other side of the world who had managed to wedge himself between him and his betrothed beauty and tear them apart at a strained time in their relationship. He imagined the prince already had a new golden throne sitting beside his own in that goddamn kingdom of his, where ever it was, to show off his new princess to the world.

Muscles in his gut stayed tied up in knots from the absolute devastation he felt. Had every kiss, every promise, every hope he shared with the woman that he had asked to marry him been a lie? How could he have misread the messages she sent with her irresistibly beguiling blue eyes when she looked at him like she did when they were alone? How could he have felt the tenderness in her touch if it wasn't really there? What the hell was he going to do with the rest of his life now that the road to his future had been plowed under?

Three weeks had not diminished the sting of Amy's absolute rejection during his ill-fated trip to Europe. He had gone to reconnect with his fiancée after she had been on tour for two months with the Prince's jumping team during trials for the European Equestrian Games. Her new attitude had been worse than any nightmare he could have imagined and he found the new status of their relationship weighing him down like an anvil tied around his neck. He didn't see it coming and it left him at the end of a dream that should have defined the beginning of a new and exciting stage of his life.

Ty had been very near giving up all hope of his perception of normality as a teenager before his arrival at Heartland, but that blonde-haired, blue-eyed horsey girl had knocked his senses for a loop and brought him back into the game of life. She motivated the seventeen-year-old ward of the juvenile system to try to be a part of something good instead of letting everything he might become go to waste. The beautiful golden haired free-spirit of a girl had changed his way of thinking, totally transforming his self-worth, and because of her, he had learned to be more attentive to others wishes and needs instead of playing the part of the self-serving jerk he had mastered by the time he was thirteen.

He was tired, not just from the lack of sleep, but hopelessness had a way of chewing its way through every ounce of energy his body had in it. Did he only imagine it or had she said that he was the one who made her happy enough to spend the rest of her life with him? He could not get past the present to begin thinking about the future. How could he even pretend that the cared?

This Sunday morning had been a waste of time. It was stormy outside and his plans to take a ride through the foothills on his Norton went down the drain with the torrent coming down from the darkened skies. Ty thought if anything could soothe his mind enough to make it give up and rest the steady patter of rain on the roof would do it, but instead he just lay there, each tick of the clock an overemphasized milestone of nothingness, and the more he tried to capture sleep the farther it eluded him.

Lou finished her Sunday morning once-over of Katie's room and made her way up the steps to see how Georgie had done conforming to the strict orders she had laid down for her to get her room straightened before she and Katie left for a week-long trip to be with Peter. She knew that her estranged husband was going to try his luck selling the idea to his young daughters that living on the west coast beside the bay would be a great idea and had offered to take Georgie and Katie for a drive across the Rockies to his place in Vancouver. Stress between the disenchanted couple had become so unbearable that they could barely be in the same room together without some kind of conflict starting up, but she had agreed to let him have his fair shot at it as her offer to be less regimented in her style of parenting.

After spending twenty minutes furthering Georgie's half-hearted effort to clean her room, Lou went back downstairs into the empty kitchen and decided to have a fresh cup of coffee to celebrate the rare time in utter silence since everyone was out of the house and not expected to return for days.

She sat at the breakfast bar taking slow sips from the steaming cup, letting her eyes absentmindedly roam around the room until they fixed upon a photo of Amy grinning from ear to ear with Ty playfully wrapping his arms around her from behind. It was her favorite picture of them, so young and happy, and so obviously in love.

"What the hell happened over there, Amy?" she said aloud to the silent room, still in disbelief at what Scott had shared with her when she asked about why Ty was back so soon. "I hope you are happy with that decision. I hope you know what you have done to him." The older sister shook her head, resentment festering while studying a happier time the couple had shared. "That was the purest, most honest love I have ever seen, Amy, and you just threw it away…. Over what? What the hell could Ahmed have promised you? Do you really think you are cut out to be somebody's princess?" Lou scoffed at the thought, "I guess we will have to see how that works out for you, won't we, Sis?" raising her half empty cup in a mock salute to the photo of her reimagined sister.

The more she dwelled on the woeful couple the more it worried her that she hadn't seen Ty since his return. She thought it might be too much for him at first and that he would eventually come by the ranch or walk into Maggie's when he felt like he could face her. "My God, what must he be thinking? I wonder how he is coping?" she thought.

After adding the days up in her head, she almost panicked. 'That's too long for him to not come and see either me or Grandpa!'

Before she had time to think about it, Lou had reached for the keys to Jack's truck, grabbed her slicker hanging in the mudroom, and headed out the door.

Ty was becoming frustrated at the ringing in his ears. The constant tone of his silent surroundings was so annoying that he couldn't get his mind off it, fearing the aggravation might drive him insane. Just as he had decided the only thing that could help gain some form of relief would be to take a long nip of the Maker's Mark he had stashed in the cupboard he heard a familiar sound from outside slogging in the driveway from the road, 'That engine, Jack's truck? "What the …? Amy?"

He jolted out of bed and rushed to the window above the sink to peek outside. His heart was pounding out of his chest until he felt both relief and disappointment when he saw the darker haired Fleming sister open the door of the old truck and run toward the covered porch through the driving rain.

Ty opened the door and Lou rushed past him still carrying quite an impressive burst of speed. "Wow, I didn't know you could run like that!"

"Yeah? Well, I still have a few surprises left in me, I guess!" she laughed as she took off the soaking wet slicker and laid it on the past-worn ottoman in the living room.

"This is really a surprise! What are you doing here, Lou?"

"It occurred to me this morning that I hadn't spoken to you since you got back and I thought I would stop by and see how…, well, I just wanted to see you, OK?" she tried to find a graceful way to avoid offending her friend by bringing up the obvious too soon.

"Well, just a second…, here we go…," as he picked up a couple of motorcycle magazines he had left lying in the chair on the far side of the fold out table and offered her a seat.

Lou brushed the wet tangles out of her face and sat in the swivel lounger beginning to covertly assess the young man that she had expected soon to be her brother in law. "Ty, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am to hear about…, everything that happened. Can I ask…, what did she do or say that made you come back home early like that?"

"She hasn't told you herself?" he asked.

"No, Ty. I have barely even spoken to her. I guess she is too busy to call home right now, or to pick up my calls…. I—I don't really understand what is going on."

"If not from her, then how did you find out?"

"Don't be mad, Ty, but Scott was really worried about you when he found out you were home so early and hadn't called any of the rest of us yet. He was only trying to make sure that you were OK. He said you told him you had brought Amy's engagement ring back home with you?"

"Yeah…, well…, I am as OK as I am going to get," he spat it out like a bitter pill, then looked at the tops of his bare feet with no easy way to describe what had happened without further losing his composure.

Lou watched him for a couple of seconds, desperate for something to say that would take at least some of the hurt away, "Ty, I want you to know that no matter what happened between you two that me and Grandpa and the girls, we all love you. You are still family, you always were, and always will be!"

"I know you do, Lou. I never doubted that. I just…, I don't know what I am going to do! Everything is ruined! Shot all to hell! No matter how hard I try to figure it out, I don't have a clue what I am going to do about it!"

"I'll tell you what you are going to do! You are going to get back up off the ground, dust yourself off, and fight back! You didn't get to where you are by being a quitter! And you are not going to quit now!" she commanded, "We won' let you!"

Ty raised his head slowly, speechless and covered with a hollow stare at the only woman who had always taken care of him, always tried to watch his back, and was the only woman in his life that he knew to love him unconditionally and without reserve.

Lou absorbed the soreness in her old friend's penetrating green eyes as he began to break free from the secret place he kept the things that hurt him. It was one of the qualities she had noticed in him from the days after they first met. He was one of those people who expressed his deepest thoughts and revealed his most guarded secrets with his eyes, and if you knew how, everything you ever needed to know was there for you to read out of them. Lou always wondered if Amy realized what she had with Ty, someone who would love her so selflessly and completely, and the thought of her hurting him like this made her even more resentful of her apparently reinvented sister.

Her heart shattered when she saw through his disbelief. It wasn't fair to him, or to her, to have so much love to give and be rejected by the ones that were supposed to accept it from them and give it back in return.

She impulsively stood and walked over to where her broken friend was sitting and knelt to her knees in front of him, placed her hands at either side of his face, and waited patiently to draw his gaze into hers. "You are not the only one going through getting you heart trampled right now, you know? It might help to talk about it with someone who knows how you feel."

He was unsure of what she meant and looked confused at first, but soon realized she was talking about her tense situation with Peter. "Oh, yeah, I'm sorry about that, Lou. I guess we should think about throwing a pity party, just for the two of us!" he tried in vain to lighten the mood.

"No, what we should do is refuse to let all of this crap we are going through to defeat us! You know, if it wasn't for the girls I would have given up a long time ago. I've suspected for a while now that something was keeping Peter away from us…, more than that goddamn job…," taking a deep breath to contain the volatility she was known for when backed in a corner. "I just found out last week that I wasn't wrong about it." Lou paused and took another shakier breath before she continued. "She is young, has long red hair…, she is absolutely gorgeous…, everything that I am not! I can't say I blame him for being attracted to her," she stopped in mid thought, shivering as if freezing from the inside out.

Ty brushed Lou's chin softly with a tip of his index finger and drew her streaked face up to look into his eyes, rejecting her self-doubt, "Lou, don't be silly! You are one of the most amazing, determined, successful, and beautiful women I have ever met! He is lucky to have you! He's an idiot if he doesn't get it!"

The gravity of the confession overcame his visitor who seemed more like a heartbroken little girl now than the dynamic, confident woman he had come to know. Lou wilted into Ty's chest, sobbing as she slipped her arms tightly around his neck, and shook from the release of pent up rejection. The embrace lingered for several minutes, each drawing much needed reassurance from the other, until Lou raised her head and adjusted herself upright on her knees. Her hands moved upward across Ty's chest and her fingers clutched into the hair just above his neck, an intensity in her hazel eyes he had never seen before further penetrating his shroud of defense.

Lou drew his face slowly nearer to hers and when they were only an inch apart, paused to search deeply into those emerald jewels that had made her heart flutter more than once, although she would have never admitted it. Her lips brushed against his and then covered them with the kind of kiss that was sure to singe the paint lose from the walls around them, lingering in a silence disturbed only by the low moan interrupting Lou's heavier breathing. Ty pulled his face far enough away to look the unexpected proposition square in the eyes again and shook his head slowly from side to side as he whispered, "Lou…, we can't do this! We aren't in our right minds…, and this is crossing a line that we can never come back from, if we do this!"

"Maybe, but…, I want to feel loved again…, no, I need to feel loved again!" she whispered. "I have been going crazy from loneliness and I want to feel like I'm with somebody who cares about how I feel! I have been having these ideas go through my mind about how…, about who I could find to help me, and…, if you think about it, you need the same thing too, and…, doesn't it make sense that we are in the same place right now…, and that it would be best to share that need with someone you trust, someone who you honestly care about?"

"I—I guess I can see what you are saying, Lou, but…, geeez, this is so far out there!"

"I know," she said while bringing her lips close enough for her warm breath to flash across his neck as she whispered against his skin. "I know, but, I'm serious! I don't think you understand what kind of situation I am in!" again burying her face against his neck, flicking her tongue beneath his ear and giving the lobe a gentle nibble. "Toys aren't going to cut it anymore. I need a man's love, and I need it now!"

Lou's mind was on nothing else, no one else, and she kept a smoldering glare directed toward him as she raised herself up to her feet. Her fingers dug into both sides of his collar and she began to walk backwards, raising him up to follow along and leading him toward the rear of the trailer. When she had towed him as far as she could go, she spun her prey around and man handled him down on the bed with a thud and swung her left leg over the rail, suggestively slithering up the length of him until she was certain his attention had been fully attained. She paused to slip all the buttons loose on his shirt, taking time to play her soft hand against his skin in slow, teasing circles, and then lightly pinched his left nipple. Ty snapped into an arch as much from surprise as the pain before settling back to the bed and his eyes followed her active hand reaching down to undo the top button of her jeans. She reached for his hand and brought it up to her zipper, positioned his fingers at the tab, and whispered, "Go ahead, touch me!"

Keeping his glazed over stare focused toward hers, Lou could see the battle behind his eyes raging but she could tell from the discomfort sprouting in his jeans that he was almost hers. "Pull- it- down!" she ordered with a deliberate and firmer urgency in her whisper.

Ty fumbled with the tab until he got a good hold of it and moved it slowly to the end of its run. When he started to pull his hand away, the hungry lioness grabbed it, forced it inside the previously forbidden opening, and continued to use breathless whispering to dramatize her instructions, "This is how much I need you!" wiggling on top of his hand to make sure his fingertips could feel the warm, steamy dampness through her panties.

'Ohhhh, shit!' he thought, realizing that she had pulled him past the point of no return. He sat up underneath Lou and grabbed the loose end of her sweater and whisked it over her head, then moved his right hand to find the hook in the back of her bra. With one quick movement, his index finger and thumb flicked the garment free causing it to fall loosely around her waist.

"Nicely done! Where'd you learn how to do that?" she giggled.

He only offered a flash of a knowing smile up to her before burying his face between her small but firm, champagne glass breasts, kissing the silky-smooth flesh one nibble at a time until his cheek bumped into an erect nipple, stiff and resilient against his teasing.

Lou tossed her head back and moaned a provocative growl, "God…, this is…, Ahhhoooooh!"

Her breath caught as his playful lips sucked hard against the sensitive flesh pinched between his teeth. He worked his tongue around the tightened areola and flicked across the lengthening projection of lust, making it even fatter and even more firmly twisted inside his mouth. 'Such big nipples for so small breasts,' he mused, 'but daaaamn!'

The woman above him was squirming so tightly against the bulge in his pants that the pressure was getting to be too much to take. His hands grabbed her waist and he picked her up in one swift motion, twirling her underneath him. Her hands grabbed the zipper of his jeans and jerked it apart affording access to his boxers, reaching hungrily inside the slit in front to search for what she longed to feel.

His incessant tormenting was taking its toll and Lou's impatience steered her to test his manhood. She found him to be rock hard as she encircled his hefty erection mid-shaft and teased the improvised hand noose toward its root. Imagining the pleasure she must be imposing on his privates, she squeezed him tightly and got a surprise of her own when she felt him grow a bit more, throbbing even harder in her grasp. Her hand loosened its grip from the shaft and cupped the dangling sack, curling her fingers underneath and lightly scraping four manicured fingernails from bottom to top along the tender, loose pouch, and then carefully, tortuously circling the nuggets causing them to draw higher to her touch.

The two lovers, each hungry for revenge and a sense of self-worth, drifted farther out into a stormy sea caring nothing about the safety of a calmer shore, their thoughts so intensely entwined that there was no bed, no space around them, or driving thunderstorm outside, only the pounding of two lonely hearts and millions of tiny nerve endings electrified with enough voltage to cause a lightning strike.

"Pleeease!" Lou whispered under her breath, barely audible when she nuzzled her nose against his ear, nipping the end of it in her teeth taken as a threat, he supposed.

Ty adjusted his left elbow to support his weight, and then he cupped her right breast in his palm to give her a firm but gentle squeeze causing her back to arch as she squirmed into his grip.

He maintained the punishing tease until a minute later when she protested again, "Ty, Pleeease!" she whimpered, a little louder this time, tightly closed eyelids unable to conceal the telltale fluttering from underneath.

His fingertips worked another dangerous minute longer tracing lazy but firm circles around her breasts and then tracing electrifying trails up the flushed silkiness of her neck, across the clenching muscles in her jaw, and raking their way to the base of her scalp as she drew in a sharp breath when he clutched a handful of her hair.

"Ohhhaaah, …. Pleeeeease!" she moaned, nearer to a demand than a plea.

The release of her hair freed his fingertips to take another teasing, sensual journey as they retraced their way back down to the left breast this time, cupping it from the top with a firm squeeze in his palm, then pinching the erect nipple between his thumb and finger which caused her to groan with even more urgency. His flattened palm meandered across her ribs and firm, smooth abdomen, pushing harder as he continued to work her onto the edge of control.

Her writhing became more and more desperate under his persuasion and when he slipped a finger into her ticklish belly button she squealed and giggled after jumping off the bed with a hypersensitive jolt. It only took a few seconds for her to recover and she made it known that playtime was over. Her hand latched onto his with surprising force and pulled it directly to her steamy mound, still covered by the soft, damp cotton of her flower printed panties. Ty squeezed her there with a firmness that she apparently approved of from the unhuman like noise that came from deep in her gut, then he firmly smoothed his palm flat against the lowest part of her belly to push her back down to the bed as he rubbed a couple of slow circles, pressing into her a bit harder. A throaty purr came from deep within her gut as his palm forced a provoking resistance to her involuntary thrusts, brushing across the strip of fine hair that Lou kept neatly manicured above her plump, swollen labia.

Ty briefly ran his palm as far as he could reach inside her thigh toward the back of her knee kneading the fleshy erogenous zone with firm strokes between his fingers and palm which caused her to slide her leg wider for better access. A reflex thrust arched her pelvic mound into his elbow as it moved along her softest flesh, inching his hand all the way back up her silky thigh to cover the place that was aching most for his touch.

"Pleeease! Ty…, Ohhh…OOHOOOHHH!.., Pleeease..," and exhaled an untamed groan when he finally hinted at searching her most secret places. He intended to push her past her limits and to expand his own, but his lady was becoming less ladylike by the second. He found it to be fiendishly satisfying to torment her as she began to beg unabashedly for release. He bordered on feeling selfish for his cruel delay so he decided the time had come, working two outer fingers to spread the lips shrouding her womanhood, and a middle one flittering across her engorged clitoris driving her into an unbridled frenzy.

He had her writhing into his pressure as he lowered his hand, pushing the soft, hot flesh aside with his fingers and moving toward the lowest part of her opening to tease their way inside the slippery fold, working deeper and deeper until they found their target. He caressed a curled fingertip across the rippled g-spot with slow, firm strokes and Lou sprang off the mattress letting out an unhuman like moan that escaped from a caged-up place that could no longer hold it in.

He was mesmerized by the feel of her, the way she twitched and ground into every movement of his fingers, how beautiful she was when taken beyond the rapturous place where he held her, and he nearly lost his neck when Lou jerked to reposition herself underneath him and sunk all eight of her manicured nails into both cheeks of his butt to draw him closer.

"Yeeoow…, Lou!"

"If you don't stop teasing me," she panted, "I'm going to sink those nails somewhere a lot more tender than your ass!"

He took the hint, would have gotten a chuckle out of her intensity if he didn't believe she would actually put a death grip around his sack with those nails, and carefully positioned himself until he could feel the tip of his shaft bumping against the engorged lips that beckoned him to push harder.

Ty hesitated for another moment as he teetered over the edge of a line he could never uncross, but when Lou suddenly thrust her hips upward his swollen head had popped inside her soft opening before he realized what had happened. With her arms clenched tightly around his back, Ty eased slowly forward, deepening his penetration a little at a time only from her determined movements, and lowered his weight to rest against her heaving body until she had most of his length swallowed up.

Lou's straining for release caused him considerable effort in holding back. He supposed he did not want to lose his momentum until his lover had reached her climax or else there may be dire consequences to pay.

Slowing his pace, Ty stroked his lover more gently, hoping to calm her enough to sustain the experience to its lustful extent. He used his fingers to brush her flushed cheek and coax her to open her eyes, wanting to deepen the experience they shared by reading the other's emotions from the inside out and not pretend to be with anyone else.

Lou's love was sweet, firm, and hot. Try as she may, she could not accept their slowed pace any longer. Ty had only intensified the fire inside her, his emerald mystery searching hungrily into her eyes, driving her to push her knees wider with each urgent push and hook her heels into the back of his thighs, drawing him deeper with every movement until she felt him brush the fullness of her depth.

"Right..., theeeere!" she huffed, her head flailing from side to side and her body arching into him, desperate and rigid, "Don't…, mooove! RIGHT THERE! YES! YES! OH, GOD, YES!"

A primal instinct unleashed itself inside Lou and she clamped down around him hard with her heels, digging them into the back of his knees and wrapping around her lover in a vice-like grip as she twisted and contorted against him.

Ty met Lou's convulsions with a force of his own, matching her screams and gyrations with deep, rhythmic, belly slapping thrusts that sent his lover beyond the explosive release that shook the bed and put them to thrashing into each other with an intensity that neither of them had ever experienced before.

The waves of release crashed over them, coming with a thunder as spikes of pent up passion exploded deep inside of them and making them both light headed because of forgetting to breathe.

Sweat dripped from the tip of Ty's nose and trickled across Lou's heaving breasts causing them to shimmer in the dim light. As she lay there and tried to come back from wherever her passion had sent her, the fiery brunette forced herself to focus on getting air into her lungs because she thought she might surely pass out if she didn't get a good breath soon.

When she had relaxed enough to function again she regained a bit more clarity, at least enough to be aware of her surroundings.

Ty eased himself onto her body until they were face to face and when he finally opened his eyes he could see the mind-boggling sight of the dark haired beauty looking back at him, flushed with passion and searching to assess whether the effects of their encounter had taken him as far as it had taken her.

'This has got to be a dream!' he thought. 'I am going to wake up in the morning, take a shower, and remember this as the wildest damn wet dream any man ever had!'

Lou watched as her lover tried to revive himself and when he looked like he was going to make it, giggled profusely.

"What?" he asked, thinking maybe she found his lovemaking comical.

She pressed her hand into his chest and said in a breathless laugh, "OH- MY -GOD!"

"WHAT?" He was beginning to feel like the insecure teenager that he had hoped to have long since outgrown.

"If I'd known what you were packing when you first showed up at the ranch, I would have run all over Amy to get to you first!" she said as she giggled some more. "You have made love to her, right?" she asked the personal question, thinking that there could be little hidden between the star-crossed lovers by now.

His brow wrinkled as he answered, "Yes, but only a few times."

"Anything like this?" she queried.

"Well…, it was great…, but I felt like I had to be careful with her since she hadn't done it before, and…,"

"You have got to be kidding me!"

"Hey!" feeling defensive, "Nobody has sex like this and lives to tell about it, not when they aren't ready for it!"

"Let me tell you something, if you had ever done anything like this to her you wouldn't be able to drag her off you unless she has something wrong with her that I don't know about!" she laughed out loud at the thought of her tightly wound little sister being subjected to that kind of marvelous torture.

"Let's not talk about her, OK?" he requested.

"OK, fine! Let's talk about this!" Lou's lips widened into a devilish grin as she reached down and wrapped her probing hand around his recovering manhood. "Whaddaya say let's take out some more of our frustrations on each other until we feel better? I know it seems to be working for me, anyway!"

The End