The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch

by Maisey Yates

  But now it was about bodies. About the way his sigh sounded deep and heavy when she pushed her hands up underneath his shirt.

  The way he went tense and hard when she licked his lips.

  The way he got hard between his legs.

  About the square cut of his jaw and the feel of his whiskers under her palm.

  About how strength could be overwhelming and controlled at the same time. How she could feel with his every touch that he could easily overwhelm her, and also feel that he was choosing not to.

  With that strength, he moved his hands down to her hips and maneuvered her up against the wall, her shoulder blades pressing against that hard surface.

  She didn’t want to think.

  She didn’t want to do the right thing.

  She didn’t want to be responsible.

  Life had taken so many things from her.

  Why couldn’t she have this? This moment of insanity.

  This moment that was almost certainly against the law.

  For some reason that thought only spurred her on. Made her more excited. When West pushed his hand up her shirt, underneath her sports bra and cupped her bare breasts, so that she could feel his rough fingertips moving over her nipple, she gasped, her internal muscles clenching. She was so close to the edge. Just with that.

  He teased her for a moment, but didn’t strip her clothes off her. Then he undid the button on her jeans and pressed his hand down beneath the fabric, beneath her panties. And he found her, wet and slick and ready for him.

  She might have been embarrassed another time. To let him know how much she wanted him.

  But this was about her.

  Her gift from the universe after she had received blessed little for all these years.

  Her due.

  West Caldwell and his magic hands were compensation for a life spent lonely.

  And she was going to revel in it.

  His fingers were magic, and he brought her to the edge, and then tipped her over. She was shocked how easily.

  It was never this easy at home alone with her own hands, though heaven knew she was experienced enough with it. You didn’t get to be a twenty-seven-year-old virgin without figuring out how to deal with yourself.

  But with his hands, she didn’t have control. With his hands, she didn’t get to choose when.

  And that made it feel exhilarating. Exciting.

  And then, he was pushing her jeans and panties down, midway down her thighs, and he had opened the front of his own jeans, taking his wallet out of his back pocket and quickly sliding a condom over himself.

  And then, with West, hot and hard in front of her and the wall uncompromising and cold behind her, he pushed himself in deep.

  This felt different than when she had been on top of him on the couch.

  It took her breath away.

  It didn’t hurt like it had done the first time, but she still felt full. Stretched. Like she couldn’t breathe for how deeply he had buried himself inside of her.

  This time, it was his ride. His rhythm.

  Hard and magical and filthy. Dirty.

  Bad.

  Everything she had not to be for so long. But she gave it all up. Her perfection. Her ideas of what she had to do and who she had to be.

  She surrendered it all to West.

  He grabbed her wrists and pinned them up against the wall, and rode her hard, his mouth firm against hers, then skimming over her jaw, her neck. And impossibly she felt her orgasm begin to build inside of her again.

  She clung to him, to his shoulders, as ripples of pleasure moved through her body. She buried her head in his chest and cried out, and then he followed, and she could feel him, pulsing inside of her as he found his own release. His heart hammered hard beneath her forehead.

  His breathing uneven.

  It was the same.

  It was the same for him. This magic explosion of color and sensation was something that he felt too. But as soon as it was finished, as soon as the pleasure started to recede, she felt lost.

  And that was terrifying.

  “I...”

  She pushed him away. She started to straighten her clothes desperately. “I have to go,” she said.

  “Do you?” he responded, straightening his own self and hunting around for a trash can.

  She put her hands over her face. “You can’t get rid of that here.”

  “Where else am I going to get rid of it?”

  He discarded the protection then. In that wastebasket and she felt...panicked.

  “We went down here.”

  “And if someone hunts through the trash can and they figure it out that’s their problem.”

  She did not feel that sanguine about it.

  She felt exposed.

  Like her weakness was just out there for everyone to see. For him to see.

  It had been all fine and good to think that was okay while she had been mindless with pleasure.

  But her mind had been returned to her.

  She sort of wish it hadn’t been.

  “Well, you didn’t think you needed my help to move any of this anyway. So I’m going to go.”

  She ran. It was even worse than the first time. She was such...she was such a baby. And she didn’t know how to handle any of this. She didn’t know what to do with herself.

  She walked blindly to her car, trying to hold back tears, because the last thing she needed was for people to say that they saw Officer Pansy Daniels weeping openly on the streets of Gold Valley.

  That would do wonders for rumors about her mental stability. And...and...everything else.

  When she got in her car, to keep from crying, she called Sammy.

  “Are you guys around?”

  “Yes. Iris and I are making cookies.”

  “What about Rose?”

  “She’s working. But...she should be in for lunch soon.”

  “Are Ryder and Logan there?” Anywhere near Hope Springs, that’s what she should have made clear. Not just in the house. She didn’t want them anywhere near when she arrived. She didn’t even want to see them. Couldn’t stand looking them in the face.

  “No. They’re off getting a new load of cattle.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Maybe she would regret it. But she regretted a whole lot of things that she had just done, and she needed to sort it all out.

  Clearly, she couldn’t trust herself to sort through anything.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Pansy arrived at Hope Springs Ranch Iris, Rose and Sammy were all waiting for her, along with a plate of cookies, a tall pitcher of lemonade and an unidentified cake.

  “I didn’t know there was cake,” Pansy said.

  “It sounded like it might be a cake situation,” Sammy said, pushing it in Pansy’s direction.

  “Well, cake is always appreciated.” Food was a way Iris and Sammy showed they cared, and Pansy was very into that sort of caring.

  “I know,” Sammy said. “But to be clear, you sounded like you really needed cake.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” she said.

  “You had that sound in your voice. Like you were in the middle of a crisis that can only be solved by buttercream.”

  “That’s any number of crises,” Iris said, “in fairness.”

  “Sure. But I’m wondering if this particular crisis wears a Stetson and saunters around broad shouldered and in possession of large hands,” Sammy said.

  Rose’s eyes went wide. “Does it?” she asked, her voice going almost supersonic.

  “Yes,” Pansy said, keeping her voice sure and solid.

  Like a criminal bent on confessing.

  Because again, she was the one that had come here. She was the one that was submitting herself to this tortur
e, and she couldn’t really figure out why. Most of her wanted to run and hide from it. Most of her wanted to pretend that none of this was happening. But... It was. It was, and she wasn’t handling it well on her own. Not at all. She had now had sex with the man in two very unconventional places. And she didn’t know what to make of that. What to make of herself. What to do with herself.

  “It’s okay,” Sammy said, keeping her voice knowing and authoritative.

  “You don’t know it’s okay,” Iris said.

  Sometimes Pansy thought that Iris might find Sammy’s intrusiveness a little bit irritating. They weren’t far apart in age, but because Sammy had imprinted on Ryder, Sammy identified more with the way he treated all of them. But Iris was the older sister to Pansy and Rose. And sometimes Sammy took that spot.

  “It... I don’t know,” Pansy said.

  Rose was looking at her beseechingly, and she had a feeling that what Rose was beseeching for was physical details and not any kind of emotional update. Iris, she knew, would be concerned with her emotional state.

  “I... I had sex with him,” Pansy said.

  A whole lot of movement happened at once. Rose slammed her hands down on the table, Iris seemed to shrink in on herself. And Sammy wrapped her soft arms around Pansy, bringing her fragrant scent into Pansy’s orbit.

  “That’s good,” Sammy said at the same time Iris said, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Pansy said. “But I’m not exactly ready to wave a flag or celebrate it.”

  “Why not?” Sammy asked. “You lost your virginity. Which, frankly is a social construct, and not something that you should be worried about anyway.”

  “It felt like a construct of my hymen at the time,” Pansy said, her tone dry.

  Iris winced. Rose looked wide-eyed and bemused.

  “You know what I mean,” Sammy said. “You don’t need to be ashamed of your sexuality just because you’re a woman. Do you think any of the guys in this house swan around feeling concerned about how many women they’ve slept with? About where it might be going when they do? No,” she continued. “They don’t, because they are blessedly free of those kinds of societal expectations.”

  “The thing about societal expectations,” Iris said, her tone stern, “is that when you violate them it does tend to be noticed. Because they are societal expectations.”

  “Who cares?” Sammy asked, lifting her hands and turning back toward the oven in a swirl of skirts and blond hair.

  “Says the woman who lives in a caravan.”

  “Yes,” Sammy said, turning and glaring pointedly at Iris. “I do. I gaily choose to defy social norms. It makes me happy. And ultimately, that is the point. You should make yourself happy. Because there’s no guarantee that there’s going to be a future. You of all people should know that.”

  Rose scowled. “Don’t talk about the life lessons we should have learned from our parents dying. Your parents are across the field and you don’t know how to have a conversation with them.”

  Pansy’s stomach tightened. She didn’t know the whole story about Sammy and her parents, but she never would have gone there.

  “Some things are more complicated than you might think, Rose,” Sammy said.

  Pansy looked from Iris to Rose to Sammy. She would have expected an explosion somewhere along the chain except... Sammy just would never let it get there.

  Iris would probably gladly duke it out. Rose would happily start or finish any fight. But Sammy never would. She would contort and twist and dance around the expected fight.

  It was just who she was. She liked things soft and easy. Diffused. It was nice to have her here as a counterbalance to Iris, who was far too practical.

  But who also probably had a better grasp on how Pansy actually felt.

  And essentially, Pansy wanted both reactions. She wanted Iris to slap her upside the head and tell her to quit being stupid. And she wanted Sammy to tell her that she wasn’t being all that stupid after all. And she wanted Rose to be in awe of her, because somebody should be. Because she’d had sex in a barn, and then again in the basement of the museum. A public building. And that was a whole lot more daring than she had ever imagined she might be.

  “How do you feel about it?” Sammy asked, clearly deciding to take a different tack.

  “I’ve lost my mind,” Pansy said. “That’s how I feel. I’m always controlled. Always. And suddenly, there’s West Caldwell, and I do really ridiculous things. Stupid things. Incredibly stupid things. Like suddenly attacking him physically in his barn and losing my virginity to him. Like...like meeting with him in town and going down into the basement of the old museum together.”

  “Are you sleeping with him or are you on an episode of Scooby-Doo with him?” Rose asked.

  Pansy glared at Rose. “Can you not mock my nervous breakdown?”

  “I’m your little sister. I feel like mocking your nervous breakdown is basically my function.”

  “This isn’t like me,” Pansy said. “You should all yell at me and tell me that it’s out of character. Check my pupils. See if I’m on drugs.”

  “Are you on drugs?” Iris asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you that there’s anything wrong with what you’ve done,” Sammy said, resolute. “It might be good for you to do something out of character. Because it might be good for you to experience this, and experiment in this way. Because who am I to tell you that your choices are wrong? Anyway. It doesn’t much matter. If it doesn’t work out, you move on. And you chalk it up to experience.”

  She had no idea how she was supposed to chalk up something so intimate as having another human being inside of her body to experience.

  She had no idea how she was ever going to erase the memory of West’s hands burning over her skin. Of how vulnerable it made her feel to know that she had come apart in his arms like that. That he had seen her that way. Sammy didn’t understand. She didn’t understand how exposed she felt. How utterly and completely raw.

  The first time the newness of it all had protected her in a way. She’d been able to let herself be consumed by how foreign it was to be intimate in that way physically.

  This time, it had been...different. That she’d wanted it again knowing how it was, how intense, how all consuming, made it different. And rather than being able to shield herself even more, she’d been less able to do so.

  West had reached down into parts of herself that she hadn’t even known existed. And while she had been gasping and panting against him, he had been witnessing a moment of self-discovery that she was almost embarrassed to have witnessed herself.

  How was she supposed to go on with her life knowing that that man was wandering around the earth knowing those things about her? How was she supposed to erase what it looked like when he lost his own control from her head? That moment when his face contorted with pleasure and he... How?

  “Look, it always feels like a big deal at first,” Sammy said. “And I know that I said it wasn’t a big deal. It isn’t. I think someone needs to say that to you. Because it really doesn’t have to be. So whatever it is in you that’s telling you that you need to make it a big deal because you’re trying to be a good girl, or whatever, banish that. But whatever emotions are telling you it feels like a big deal, you can embrace those.”

  Iris snorted. “You don’t make any sense. She feels bad, it was a big deal for her. End of story. Her feelings don’t have anything to do with it really. Which ones you trust and which ones you discard. What’s society, what’s her. What does it matter? She feels like crap.”

  “I don’t know,” Pansy said. And suddenly, a realization washed over her, all warm and perfect. “I don’t feel bad,” she continued. “And that’s part of what confuses me. I really quite enjoyed myself. I really did. I liked being with him. And... Today I put myself in his
path in hopes that it would happen again. I can’t deny it. As much as I would like to. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do from here.”

  “Have sex with him again?” Sammy asked.

  “If she feels bad how’s that going to help?” Iris rounded on Sammy.

  “I don’t know,” Sammy said. “In my experience sex can make you feel a whole lot better.”

  “And then it makes you confused,” Pansy said. “And makes you feel like you’re a stranger unto yourself.”

  “Does it?” Rose asked, round eyed.

  “I had sex with him in the museum.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Iris said. “You didn’t. I bet that’s against the law.”

  “I know,” Pansy said. “I’m sure we violated laws. Decency laws. I am always decent, I am never in violation of laws. Never. And yet... I am. And I kind of didn’t hate it. I think what scares me most isn’t that I did it with him, it’s that I liked it. It’s not even that I’m acting out of character, it’s that I want to embrace the fact that I’m out of character. I don’t know who I am. I’m not sure I care.”

  “Good,” Sammy said. “Have an affair with him. Have a wild, amazing physical only affair with him. Have sex with him in strange places, break rules.”

  “I am trying to get a job as police chief. I have a ton of things on my plate. It is the worst time in the world for me to try to have...a life. I can have a life later. I can have a life when everything is settled. But I can’t have a life now.”

  “No, the reason you’re having a mental breakdown is because you left having a life for way too long. The first hot cowboy you see, and you jump on him.”

  “That isn’t true,” Pansy said. “There are hot cowboys around here all the time.”

  Sammy laughed. “Well, Ryder is your brother.”

  “And he’s your best friend,” Pansy said.

  “But I’m not blind,” Sammy said.

  “He has some pretty hot friends, too,” Pansy said.

  Sammy waved a hand. “Whatever. My point is, the reason that you’re losing it and having sex with him in semipublic places is because you never lost it on a milder scale. Give in to this. Give in to this for your health. If you don’t, I fear that it’s going to turn you into a full-scale nymphomaniac and you’re going to start jumping every rodeo guy that comes through town. Maybe on Main Street.”