by Joss Wood
“Still so sexy, Lexi. Love what you are wearing.”
She couldn’t remember what she’d put on so she glanced down... Right, a loose, off-the-shoulder black top with a full, flower-patterned pale pink skirt.
Alex knew she should push him away, but instead of being sensible, she placed her hand behind her back, her fingers seeking out his erection. There it was, hard and long and thick, and she heard his low, guttural moan as his cock jerked beneath her touch. Then she was making whimpering sounds of her own as his hand pushed aside the fabric of her top so that he could feel her naked flesh and pull her tight nipple between his fingers.
She lifted her head up and to the side, and then his mouth was on hers. Parting her lips to receive his tongue, she moaned her frustration when he smiled against her mouth, silently telling her that he enjoyed teasing her, making her wait. He’d always been more patient, more interested in drawing out every moment of their pleasure.
Daniel’s chaste kisses were in direct contrast to his roaming hands. He bunched the fabric of her skirt and pulled it up her legs, and his fingers trailed up her thighs, played with the tiny V shape of her panties. Alex felt him shudder when he discovered her panties were only comprised of one triangle and a few thin cords.
“Naughty underwear, Miss Slade,” Daniel growled against her mouth.
“Shut up and touch me, Clayton,” Alex demanded, spinning around and slapping her hands on his cotton-covered chest. Ignoring his loose tie and open collar, she gripped his shirt and yanked it from his pants, desperate to find hot, sexy, olive-toned skin. Her fingers danced across a set of impressive washboard abs, and she pushed her fingers between that hard stomach and the band of his pants, seeking and finding the tip of his erection. Daniel released a low hiss, sucked in his stomach and suddenly she had more of him against her fingers, hot and oh-so potent.
“I want you, Lex,” Daniel muttered, smacking her bare butt cheek and pulling her into him, squashing her hand between her body and his erection. Needing more, needing everything—she’d missed him, missed this so much—Alex lifted her thigh and wrapped it over his hip, grateful to yoga for making her supple. Then nothing but fabric separated her core from his shaft, and she rocked her hips and lifted her mouth up to his to be kissed.
This time he didn’t hold back and his tongue swept between her parted lips, branding, rediscovering, wiping away any doubts that reliving the past was foolish and dangerous.
There was only Daniel, his taste and heat and power, the adult version of the boy she’d known so long ago. Standing in his arms, panting and with soaked panties, her only thoughts were of how much she’d missed his touch, missed his kisses. In this moment they didn’t have feuding grandparents, unforgivable betrayals or hurt and pain between them. There was only desire—hot, potent and demanding.
Daniel wrenched his mouth off hers, and in the moonlight his eyes, normally so shuttered, were as deep and dark as a desert night. “Come home with me, Lex.”
She had to be rational...and she couldn’t be, not when she had her hand in his pants. She couldn’t think, breathe. Alex pulled her hand from between their bodies and tried to step back, but Daniel’s hands on her hips kept her up close and very personal. “Dan, don’t ask me that.”
“Why? Because you are scared you’re going to say yes?”
It was a typical no-frills Daniel response. He never beat around the bush, and although he was the strong and silent type, when he did speak, people listened. Her ex just had a way of cutting through BS to get to the heart of the matter, and as per usual, he was right. She was terrified that she was going to say yes, but even more scared that she was going to force herself to say no.
“I’ve been watching you all evening and you’ve been watching me, too,” Daniel murmured, lifting his hand to trace patterns on her jaw. “We’ve both been wondering what it would feel like to be together again. Especially now that we’re older, more experienced...confident in how to satisfy one another in bed.”
She was sexually confident? Oh, she was anything but. She might be older and wiser, but she was still more girl next door than femme fatale.
“Come home with me, Lex. Let me peel that ridiculously sexy dress from your gorgeous body and replace it with my lips and hands. I’ll make it good for you, I promise.”
He’d make it too good, and yeah, that worried her. “Daniel, this is madness.”
“So let’s be mad, just for a night. In the morning we can go back to being a Clayton and a Slade, opposing forces in this long, futile war that we never started.”
Alex closed her eyes and shook her head. She wanted him but she didn’t like wanting him, found herself wishing instead that she could put him in the past, where he belonged. Maybe she did need to sleep with him again to flush him out of her system. After all, reality was never as good as fantasy, and then they could both finally move on.
“So, yes or no?”
Alex thought she saw apprehension in his eyes, the fear that she’d reject him, but the emotions flashed across his features too quickly for her to be sure. “Yeah, I’m coming with you.”
Daniel stared down at her, his handsome face serious. “Your place or mine?”
Alex thought about their options, knowing that the ranch house at the Lone Wolf was out of the question and, as she’d heard, Daniel had converted an old barn on The Silver C. While his house was a better option than Gus’s mansion—Daniel might be met with the working end of her grandpa’s shotgun if they were caught—their chances of discovery were still too high.
Which left only one other place available to them...
“Sarah’s tree house.”
Daniel’s hand tightened on her hip and she knew that he was remembering, just as she was.
A long time ago, the tree house had been a boys’ fort and a girls’ secret club. It had held sleep outs and camping trips and overnight sleepovers. Much later it had been the place where Daniel took her virginity, where they’d spent stolen afternoons and blissful starry nights.
“You remember where it is, right?”
Daniel rubbed his jaw. “Of course I can find it. I just haven’t been there since...”
You left, Alex filled in the words for him. The tree house was deep in Slade land and Daniel had no reason or wish to be on Slade land. Land that had once been part of The Silver C spread.
The river-fronted land was one of the first parcels of land Gus bought from Rose when times had got tough, and Alex knew that Daniel mourned the loss of the property. The Silver C had once been the largest spread in four counties, but it was now on par with the Lone Wolf in acreage, a bit of a comedown for the once-mighty Claytons.
“I’ll meet you at the tree house,” Daniel said, his voice clipped. He lifted his wrist to look at his expensive watch. “In half an hour?” He rubbed his hand over his jaw and shook his head. “I can’t believe that I am risking getting splinters in my butt to have you again. Nobody but you, Alex Slade, would tempt me to do this...”
His words shouldn’t make her smile but they did. She opened her mouth to explain that the tree house wasn’t as bad as it had been... No, she’d let it be a surprise.
“Are you going to walk there?” Daniel asked.
In moonlight or bright sunshine, she always walked to the tree house. “Yes.”
“I’m going to go home, pick up my dirt bike and I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Daniel told her, his eyes steady on her face.
Good, that gave her some time to think about what she was doing, to talk herself out of this madness.
Daniel narrowed his gaze. “Do not stand me up, Alexis.”
Although it unnerved her how he’d been able to read her thoughts, she couldn’t suppress the shiver of excitement that tap-danced up and down her spine. He was gorgeous and determined and he wanted her.
No, she wouldn’t stand him up. She couldn’t; she
wanted this, wanted him. “I’ll be there.”
Daniel nodded, swiped his mouth across hers in a brief but molten-lava-hot kiss. “See that you are.”
One
Mid-November
Daniel Clayton released a low curse and buried his head in the soft pillow, cursing his early-morning alarm. Unfortunately, neither cattle nor his ranch hands cared that he’d spent most of the night making love, that he’d had minimal sleep. The Silver C Ranch and his grandmother demanded a daily pound of flesh and since he didn’t tolerate excuses or less than 100 percent effort, he knew he should haul his ass out of bed and get to it. He rolled over and pressed his chest to Lexi’s back, filling his hand with her perfect, perfect breast. Daniel skimmed his thumb across her nipple and buried his nose in her fragrant hair. Best way to wake up, bar none. His rock-hard erection pushed into her bottom and he skated his hand down her torso, across her stomach, and his fingers flirted with the V shape below. There was nothing like sleepy, lazy sex... His cell phone alarm screeched again.
“Dammit, Clayton,” Lex muttered, reaching across him to grab his phone. Mercifully, the strident alarm ceased, and despite wanting Lexi again, Daniel found himself drifting back to sleep. Then Alex’s sharp elbow dug into his ribs and he rolled over, frowning.
“What was that for?”
“Sun’s up in forty-five minutes, and we both have to leave,” Alex told him, whipping off the covers and exposing his naked body to the chilly morning air.
The tree house was heated by a woodstove, which they didn’t bother to light because a stream of smoke from the chimney would raise questions—questions neither of them wanted to answer. As it was, he’d already endured a few lectures from Rose, demanding to know the status of his love life. He’d blown her off, as usual, but then she’d upped the ante by expressing her fervent hope that he’d meet a lovely girl through the upcoming bachelor auction—as if!—and that she would be bitterly disappointed if she found out that he was carrying on with “that Slade girl.”
Since that Slade girl was currently standing naked by the window, long blond hair tumbling down her oh-so-sexy back, he didn’t give a rat’s ass what his grandmother or anyone else thought. They’d been hooking up for six weeks—maybe a week or so more—and he’d enjoyed every second he’d spent with Alex. But what they shared was sex and desire and heat and want and nothing his grandmother needed to worry about.
He loved his grandmother—he did—but he just wished she’d stay out of his damn business. Alex, what they had together, was separate from The Silver C—one didn’t impact the other. For a decade his entire focus had been on the family spread, trying to restore the somewhat tarnished reputation of the Clayton clan. While Rose held the respect of the residents of the town of Royal and the counties of Maverick and Colonial, his late grandfather, Ed, and his mother, Stephanie, did not. One was a bastard and the other was irresponsible, wild and borderline psycho. Despite his dubious parentage, he’d worked hard to command a little of the respect his grandmother did.
And he thought he was getting there.
While not nearly as big as it had been in its heyday, The Silver C was now regarded as being one of the best-managed spreads in the country, lauded for its breeding program and producing award-winning bulls. He had a waiting list as long as his arm for buyers wanting to purchase his quarter horses, and he ran the entire ranching operation with the utmost professionalism and integrity. And by doing so, he’d recently been inducted as a member of the Texas Cattleman’s Club.
Daniel sat up, rested his forearms on his thighs and shoved his hands through his hair before running his palm over his stubble-covered jaw. He watched as Alex picked up a sweatshirt—one of his—and frowned when the voluminous fabric covered her to midthigh. She then pulled her hair out from under the band of the garment and gathered it into a messy knot on top of her head, and he thought that he’d never seen anyone so naturally beautiful, so effortlessly sexy.
“I’m going to make coffee. Do you have time for a cup?”
Daniel glanced at his watch and nodded. “Yeah, I do. Thanks.”
He watched Alex leave the room, her hips swaying seductively as she did so. She’d been pretty as a teenager but she was spectacular as a grown woman. Blue eyes the color of the summer sky, high cheekbones and that luscious, made-to-kiss mouth. Yards and yards of fragrant, wavy hair. And... God, that body...lean and slender, finely boned but with curves and dips and flares that made his mouth water.
At eighteen he’d thought he’d loved her, but now, ten years later, he knew that he’d been blinded by lust, had confused love with desire. He didn’t believe in romantic love and Daniel sometimes wondered if he ever, deep down, really had. God knew he hadn’t been exposed to any marital, or even family, harmony growing up.
He was the unwanted son of Rose’s daughter, who had also been raised in a tense household. There had been little love between Rose and his maternal grandfather, and his mother, Stephanie, wasn’t able to love anyone but herself. He’d been the unwanted result of one of Stephanie’s many bad decisions when it came to men.
Daniel had no idea who his father was and one of Stephanie’s favorite games had been to play “Who’s Your Daddy?” She’d thrown out names to tease, later telling him that she’d made up names and occupations to amuse herself. It was cold comfort that Stephanie had also played Rose like a fiddle, using him as her bow.
Thanks to his dysfunctional childhood, he was cynical about love. But he did believe in family, in loyalty, in hard work and respect—Rose had shown him the value of those traits, in both word and deed. She’d never lied to him, not even during those worst times, when Stephanie was crazier than a wet hen.
So when his grandmother expressed her reservations about his teenage romance with Alex, calmly pointing out that he’d be throwing away his future at the ranch to follow a girl he thought he might love, he’d eventually listened to her advice. And why wouldn’t he? She was the one stable adult in his life, the only person he’d ever felt was looking after his best interests.
And yeah, after emotionally and physically divorcing himself from his mother, he vowed that he’d never let anyone emotionally blackmail him again.
Shaking off his disturbing thoughts, Daniel stood up, strode to the small bathroom next to the only bedroom and used the facilities. He returned to the master suite, smiling as he remembered how surprised he’d been when he’d first laid eyes on this renovated tree house.
Gone was the rickety structure from before. Now a sleek, beautifully designed house rested in the massive cypress trees overlooking the river that meandered its way through both The Silver C and the Lone Wolf ranches. Instead of a one-room platform, the tree house consisted of a master bedroom, a sleeping loft above the main living space, this tiny bathroom and a small kitchenette. The abundance of windows and a sliding glass wall allowed for amazing views of the river and Lone Wolf land. He wished he could lie on the sprawling deck, beer in his hand, Stetson over his face, soaking up some winter rays. But there was work to do, and the needs of The Silver C Ranch always came first.
Hearing Alex walking up the stairs to the bedroom, he stepped into his jeans and pulled on his shirt, then his fleece-lined leather jacket. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he reached for his socks and boots, lifting his head as Alex appeared in the doorway. He took the cup of coffee she held out—hot and black—and sipped gratefully. Another three of these and he might feel vaguely human.
She sat down on the bed next to him, scooted backward and crossed her legs. “Dan...”
There was something odd in the way she said his name, so he whipped his head around to look at her, his eyes narrowing at the frown pulling her arched eyebrows together. “Yeah?”
Alex cradled her mug in both hands and he saw the tremble in her fingers, the way the rim of the cup vibrated. Oh crap, this wasn’t good. He removed the cup from her fingers, placed it
on the wooden bedside table and turned back to face her. “What’s wrong, Lex?”
“Has Rose been giving you grief about me?”
He really didn’t want to have this conversation now, didn’t have the time for it. “Yeah. She asked me whether we were seeing each other, told me that she wouldn’t be happy if I was.”
Alex sighed. “I got a similar lecture from Gus, telling me how it would break his heart if he found out we were together.” Alex looked miserable and Daniel could relate. Neither of them liked disappointing their grandparents.
“Gus is trying to set me up with guys who are taking part in the bachelor auction.”
“That damned auction,” Daniel growled, the thought of being sold like a steer raising his blood pressure. Then, to add insult to injury, he would have to pay for the date with the woman who’d paid to spend time with him. Why couldn’t he just write a check to cover the costs of the date? Hell, he’d double, even triple, the amount if he could get out of going on a stupid date with someone not of his choosing.
“That damned auction is going to raise an awesome amount of money for the Pancreatic Cancer Foundation.” Daniel saw the blue fire in Alex’s eyes and reminded himself that the charity auction was her pet project. Her beloved grandmother Sarah had died from the disease, and as it was a cause that was near and dear to her heart, Lex had committed herself to raising funds to find a cure.
“I’ll be glad when it’s over,” Alex said. “A few more sleeps and counting. Roll on Saturday and then Gus can stop throwing me into the arms of any man with a pulse.”
The thought of Alexis being in another man’s arms was enough to have him grinding his teeth together. Daniel reminded himself that he had no right to feel jealous, but the enamel still flew off his teeth. Reaching across him to pick up her cup of coffee, her hair brushed his face and he inhaled her lavender-and-wildflower scent. He immediately felt himself grow hard, and as much as it pained him, he told himself to stand down.