Rancher's Wild Secret

He looked at her, his dark eyes moving over her body, and she knew he was deliberately taking his time examining her curves. Knew that his gaze was deliberately sexual.

And she didn’t feel like she could be trusted with that kind of knowledge, because something deep inside her was dancing around the edge of being bold. That one little piece of her that felt repressed, that had felt bored at the party last night…

That one little piece of her wanted this.

“A few things,” he said slowly. And his words were deliberate too.

Without thinking, she sucked her lip between her teeth and bit down on it, then swiped her tongue over the stinging surface to soothe it.

And the intensity in his eyes leaped higher.

She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what she’d done. She’d deliberately drawn his focus to her mouth.

Now, she might have done it deliberately, but she didn’t know what she wanted out of it.

Well, she did. But she couldn’t want that. She couldn’t. Not when…

Suddenly, he reached out, grabbing her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know how the boys who run around in your world play, Emerson. But I’m not a man who scrolls through photos and wishes he could touch something. If I want something, I take it. So if I were you…I wouldn’t go around teasing.”

She stuttered, “I… I… I…” and stumbled backward. She nearly tripped down onto the grass, onto her butt, but he reached out, looping his strong arm around her waist and pulling her upright. The breath whooshed from her lungs, and she found herself pressed hard against his solid body. She put her hand gingerly on his chest. Yeah. He was a little bit sweaty.

And damned if it wasn’t sexy.

She racked her brain, trying to come up with something witty to say, something to defuse the situation, but she couldn’t think. Her heart was thundering fast, and there was an echoing pulse down in the center of her thighs making it impossible for her to breathe. Impossible for her to think. She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience, or a wild fantasy that was surely happening in her head only, and not in reality.

But his body was hot and hard underneath her hand, and there was a point at which she really couldn’t pretend she wasn’t touching an actual man.

Because her fingers burned. Because her body burned. Because everything burned.

And she couldn’t think of a single word to say, which wasn’t like her, but usually she wasn’t affected by men.

They liked her. They liked to flirt and talk with her, and since becoming engaged, they’d only liked it even more. Seeing her as a bit of a challenge, and it didn’t cost her anything to play into that a little bit. Because she was never tempted to do anything. Because she was never affected. Because it was only ever a conversation and nothing more.

But this felt like more.

The air was thick with more, and she couldn’t figure out why him, why now.

His lips curved up into a half smile, and suddenly, in a brief flash, she saw it.

Sure, his sculpted face and body were part of it. But he was…an outlaw.

Everything she wasn’t.

He was a man who didn’t care at all what anyone thought. It was visible in every part of him. In the laconic grace with which he moved, the easy way he smiled, the slow honeyed timbre of his voice.

Yes.

He was a man without a cell phone.

A man who wasn’t tied or tethered to anything. Who didn’t have comments to respond to at two in the morning that kept him up at night, as he worried about not doing it fast enough, about doing something to damage the very public image she had cultivated—not just for herself—but for her father’s entire industry.

A man who didn’t care if he fell short of the expectations of a parent, at least he didn’t seem like he would.

Looking at him in all his rough glory, the way that he blended into the terrain, she felt like a smooth shiny shell with nothing but a sad, listless urchin curled up inside, who was nothing like the facade that she presented.

He was the real deal.

He was like that mountain behind him. Strong and firm and steady. Unmovable.

It made her want a taste.

A taste of him.

A taste of freedom.

She found herself moving forward, but he took a step back.

“Come on now, princess,” he said, grabbing hold of her left hand and raising it up, so that her ring caught the sunlight. “You don’t want to be doing that.”

Horror rolled over her and she stepped away.

“I don’t… Nothing.”

He chuckled. “Something.”

“I… My fiancé and I have an understanding,” she said. And she made a mental note to actually check with Donovan to see if they did. Because she suspected they might, given that they had never touched each other. And she could hardly imagine that Donovan had been celibate for the past two years.

You have been.

Yeah, she needed to check on the Donovan thing.

“Do you now?”

“Yes,” she lied.

“Well, I have an understanding with your father that I’m in his employment. And I would sure hate to take advantage of that.”

“I’m a grown woman,” she said.

“Yeah, what do you suppose your daddy would think if he found that you were fucking the help?”

Heat washed over her, her scalp prickling.

“I don’t keep my father much informed about my sex life,” she said.

“The problem is, you and me would be his business. I try to make my sex life no one’s business but mine and the lady I’m naked with.”

“Me nearly kissing you is not the same as me offering you sex. Your ego betrays you.”