The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch

by Maisey Yates

  She gasped.

  He wasn’t tentative. He wasn’t shy.

  He consumed her like a starving man. Pushed her to the brink, then pulled back. Using his lips, his tongue and his fingers to create a symphony of madness that stretched tight through her body. Then he let her fall. Let her go over the edge. But he didn’t stop.

  He kept going. Until tears of pleasure were streaming down her face. Until she couldn’t breathe.

  Until every carefully placed stitch that she had used to sew herself up tight over the years was undone. Unraveled.

  And so was she.

  Completely and utterly unmade on her very neat bedspread.

  And then he was tearing a condom open—she hadn’t even seen him retrieve it from his wallet, but then she had lost her sense of time and space—and rolling it over himself.

  Then he gripped her hips and pulled her toward him as he entered her slowly. His big body over hers like this with the bed soft beneath her was a new experience. She touched his face, watched as pleasure overtook him. As he buried himself in her completely.

  Then he reached up and gently, very gently, slid the rubber band out of her hair.

  Ran his fingers through it.

  And she felt wild.

  She gasped when he pulled out and thrust back in. And he tortured them both. With long, slow strokes that took their time to build, until they got hard and fast. Until he was holding her thighs tight against him as he slammed home.

  And she held on to his shoulders, because she could do nothing else. Could do nothing but surrender to him and to this.

  And then he gritted his teeth and froze above her on a shout, and she could feel him hard and thick pulsing inside of her, and she was pushed over the edge once again.

  Shattered.

  Into a million, brilliant shining pieces of herself.

  And at the center of the rubble was Pansy, wild and free, with her hair blowing in the breeze and her feet bare on the rocky ground.

  West hadn’t created this wild woman. He had simply set her free.

  And it terrified her. But she couldn’t go back either.

  He left her there for a moment as he went to the bathroom to take care of practicalities. And when he returned, he got into bed with her, pulling back the covers and dragging her beneath them, fitting them against his naked body.

  “What about the cake?” she mumbled sleepily.

  It wasn’t that late, but she was exhausted.

  “It’ll keep,” he said, kissing the back of her neck.

  She believed him. And it didn’t take long before she closed her eyes. And right as she drifted off to sleep the last thought in her mind was that someone had finally tucked her in.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHEN WEST WOKE up the next morning, Pansy was curled up against him, her dark hair loose over her face. She looked young just then. And like she might not have a worry in the whole world, which he knew wasn’t true at all, because poor Pansy seemed to have worries worked all the way through her.

  He got out of bed and put on his jeans, not bothering with anything else, and then he went into the kitchen, where he found the cake.

  The piece that they had left out on the counter last night was a little bit dry, but the cake itself had been shut back in the box, and was just fine.

  He started a pot of coffee and cut her a fresh piece of the cake.

  He didn’t know how a rule follower like Pansy would feel about birthday cake for breakfast, but given that he had pushed a lot of her other boundaries, he figured it wasn’t so bad to push this one too.

  When he went back into the bedroom, she had stirred. She was lying on her back, her arm thrown over her face, the sheets low, revealing her breasts.

  “Good morning,” he said, injecting every bit of his appreciation of the view into his tone.

  “Hi,” she croaked, moving her hand and peering at him like she was a mole emerging from the ground, wounded by the sun.

  “How are you doing, sweetheart?” he asked, bringing the mug of coffee and the cake over to the nightstand.

  She blinked. “What’s this?”

  “Breakfast in bed.” Then he kissed her. “Happy birthday.”

  “I...” She stared at him, like she was dazed. Wonder overtaking her features. “It’s not my birthday anymore.”

  “Birthday week,” he said, smiling.

  She blinked three times in rapid succession. “Thank you.”

  He cupped her cheek, dragging his thumb over her skin. He didn’t think anyone had ever looked at him like this. Like she was. Like there was something special in him.

  He had sent money home to his mother every time he’d won an event in the rodeo. He had sent money home after he’d started to do well in his career.

  He had bought his wife the biggest house their money could buy, on a man-made lake in some housing development all full of McMansions plopped down in the middle of two acre lots.

  His wife had never looked at him like this. Neither had his mother.

  No one had.

  No one had ever looked at him like he had given them much of anything, much less looked at him like he’d given them the world because he’d brought them a piece of cake in bed.

  “How come you weren’t with your family on your birthday?” he asked.

  She shrugged one bare shoulder, taking the cake off the nightstand. “We don’t make a big deal out of birthdays.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, we do something for Sammy’s birthday, because she likes it. It’s fun. But...the rest of us aren’t really big on them.”

  “Because you don’t care or because you don’t feel like you should ask for one?”

  “It just didn’t seem like it mattered. After our parents. And you know, for a while it was mostly because we were sad. We didn’t want to get out all the birthday things Mom used to do. We didn’t want to get the banner back down, or the pineapple platter that she got from her grandmother that was used in her family since the nineteen twenties. We didn’t want any of that. Because it just felt sad. And eventually... We just got used to it. When Sammy came... Well, she’d never had a birthday party. And so Ryder decided that she should. And Sammy likes to have a big deal made out of her birthday.”

  “But Sammy does make a big deal out of you?”

  “I’ve asked her not to,” Pansy said.

  “I’m sorry, that seems stupid,” he said. “You make a big deal out of somebody’s birthday whether or not they want you to.”

  “That seems stupid,” Pansy said. “What if someone doesn’t like their birthday?”

  “What if they just haven’t had the right kind? You seem pretty happy to have your cake.”

  She dug another bite out of the piece and chewed thoughtfully. “Well, this feels different. It’s just you and me.” A blush stained her pretty cheeks. “It doesn’t remind me at all of the kind of birthdays I used to have.”

  “No?” he asked, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  “No,” she said. “I can honestly say this is the first birthday I’ve ever had with a naked man.”

  “I’m still a little bit smug about that.”

  “Me too,” Pansy said. “If only because it feels good to have finally handled that.”

  “Is that what this is? You handling something?”

  She shrugged. “What else could it be?”

  But she was sitting there with a birthday cake that he had bought for her. He cared about her birthday.

  And so the question felt like it might have an answer out there that he wasn’t quite ready to find.

  “No clue,” he said.

  She smiled and grabbed hold of her coffee mug. “How did you know how I like my coffee?”

  “I pay attention to what you’re drinking when I see
you in town.”

  It wasn’t actually that hard. Piecing together the details of who Pansy was. He was interested in them.

  He found everything about her pretty fascinating.

  “I didn’t know men like you existed,” she said.

  “I didn’t know I could be so observant,” he said.

  Because he didn’t know what else to say. Which was unusual too. And really, he didn’t know that he possessed the capacity to care quite so damn much about what kind of coffee a woman drank, or what kind of birthday cake she might want.

  Or whether or not her parents had tucked her in at night, or if anyone in her family had done it since they’d died.

  He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him.

  Or what was right with him.

  “I guess I better go check in on Emmett,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Do you work today?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes.”

  “Can I come over later?”

  She looked like she was pondering that. “Yes. I would like that.”

  “Good,” he said.

  Because he might not know a whole lot of things right now, but he knew that he wanted to spend the night with her again.

  He knew that he wanted answers and satisfaction for the desperate need that was coursing beneath his skin.

  That he wanted to find a name for this thing that was shifting things around inside of him.

  Right now, the only name he had was Pansy.

  But that felt good enough for him.

  “Do you know which day you’re going to visit the school?”

  She nodded. “It’ll be tomorrow.”

  “Well then,” he said. “I reckon I’ll come too.”

  He expected her to tell him he didn’t have to.

  But she didn’t.

  “Okay,” she said. “That sounds good.”

  As West collected the rest of his clothes and headed out of the house, he reflected on everything he had now.

  He had expected to come here and forge some relationships with the family he hadn’t known he had.

  He hadn’t expected to end up with Emmett living with him. Hadn’t expected he would have more than just a tenuous bond with his siblings.

  He hadn’t expected to start feeling the roots of his soul growing down deep into the soil of this place.

  Hadn’t expected those same roots to start tangling around a woman.

  But they were.

  And he was actually pretty damn glad about it.

  * * *

  THE DAY THAT Pansy was supposed to talk to the kids at the school she felt strangely nervous. But less so because West was at her house that morning and had gotten dressed with her. She was slightly worried that Emmett would pick up on the fact that West was spending the night with her, but West had pointed out that Emmett never woke up before noon if West didn’t make him. He also asked why she thought it would be a problem.

  “Because,” she’d said. “He should have a decent example.”

  “Is there something indecent about this? Because we are both adults, we’re not dating anyone else. We both want to do this.”

  “My brother never brought women home.”

  “How nice for you,” he said. “Our mom brought men home all the time. I assume she hasn’t changed any over the years. So it’s not like it’s behavior that would shock him. And anyway, considering you’re not hanging around in the house with your shirt off drinking beer out of the fridge, it’s a huge step up from what the guys my mom brings home do.”

  “I just... I don’t want him getting the wrong idea.”

  West had dropped it after that. But he’d still made it clear he was planning on continuing to stay the night.

  She had insisted they drive separately to the school, because she would need her car later. He had pointed out that he could take her to the police station, where she would collect her police car, but, the first class of the day was a huddle in front of the barn, she had learned from West earlier in the week.

  And there they all were, standing there when she arrived.

  Even Emmett.

  The camaraderie among the boys was surprising and touching.

  They seemed to have already accepted him. And she couldn’t help but feel that she was watching Emmett with the first thing he might have ever been able to call family. His uncle. Those kids.

  The Dalton family.

  She parked her car and got out, wearing her uniform.

  When West looked at her, she tried not to blush. But it was hard.

  Because all she could think about was what had gone on between them the night before.

  It had left her scorched.

  But every night with him did.

  She had come to a place of acceptance there.

  Her needs with him. And she felt no guilt about finding pleasure in his arms.

  It was the after part that made her uncomfortable.

  That when he held her close against his body in the warmth of her bed she wanted to weep.

  That she felt small and cherished and protected, not weak and helpless.

  That she felt like she could rest, and it was the wrong time to rest.

  She felt wrong about a whole lot of things.

  It was just that the sex wasn’t one of them.

  “We have something a little different happening today,” Ellie said.

  Pansy vaguely knew the other woman from around town, but she didn’t know if they had ever interacted directly. She was the head teacher at the school, and she was engaged to Caleb.

  “Officer Pansy Daniels from the Gold Valley Police Department is here to talk to you.”

  “Shit! Run!” one of the boys shouted, and the rest of them snickered.

  “That’s exactly why I’m here to talk to you,” Pansy said, bracing her hand on her belt buckle. “Because I know that a lot of you are going to have a negative impression of people like me. And that’s probably fair enough. But I want to talk a little bit about what the day-to-day job of a police officer actually entails, at least in a town like this one. And a little about myself. And what it means to me to be part of this community. None of you have to grow up to be police officers.”

  “I think my criminal record would make that impossible,” a dark-haired boy in the back said.

  “There are always second chances,” she said. “But either way. The point isn’t to talk about that, but how a community functions. And how you can find a place in it. I bet some of you were made to feel like you didn’t have a place. Whether that was in your homes, or in your neighborhoods. In your towns. But you can always make a home.”

  She started to tell her story. Of how her parents died and of how she and her siblings had made a family. About the responsibility she felt to Gold Valley.

  What surprised her was that they paid attention.

  Tragedy respected tragedy, and she could see that. That once they realized she wasn’t just another person lecturing them from her easy, perfect life, they thought she might have something worth listening to.

  And then West stepped forward. “I was in prison for four years,” he said. He didn’t elaborate. “I’m here now. I’m Emmett’s guardian. I’m starting my own ranch. I like to think that I’m going to be part of the community.” He said that last part with a bit of a smirk. “But the point is that it’s never too late. Especially for you. Because you’re young. And starting over is a lot easier now. Don’t wait until you’re my age. It’s a hell of a lot harder.”

  * * *

  THE REST OF the morning was spent on ranch chores and general conversation. West watched as Pansy maneuvered her way around the crowd of boys and talked to each and every one of them.

  She was something, this woman. So strong after everything
she’d been through.

  He had thought that his attraction to her had to do with the fact that he wanted a little bit of carnal revenge on the system, but that just wasn’t true.

  He was drawn to her inner strength.

  That certainty in who she was.

  Because he had spent...he had spent a life holding back parts of himself. He wasn’t enough for his mother, so there was no point giving her everything he had.

  He had brought that into his marriage. He had twisted himself, altered himself to fit the life that he thought he should want. Prison had stripped him of all of that. There had been no pretense, and there had been no status that could make him matter in that environment.

  All he had was himself. Brought right back to basics he had spent a whole life denying.

  And that had led him here. To her.

  Her and Emmett.

  He turned to his half brother, who was busy tacking his horse for the midmorning ride they were going to take.

  “Pretty decent school, right?” he asked.

  Emmett shrugged. “Pretty decent.”

  “I’m glad that you’re here,” he said.

  He looked at him suspiciously. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to go talk to our mom on Saturday. Get some guardianship paperwork signed off on just so it’s all kind of official and whatever. We’ll have to do some court proceedings later I suppose. I had my lawyer draw some stuff up.”

  “You actually want me to stay?”

  “Yes,” West said again.

  And he looked at his brother, that boy he’d been. He had given him lectures. About how he should do better. Because he had been trying to be an older brother.

  But the poor kid needed a parent. He never had one. Not really.

  And West didn’t know why it had taken until this moment to realize it.

  Not only did he need a parent, he needed someone who wasn’t going to hold back parts of himself.

  West couldn’t afford to protect himself. Not now. Not when Emmett needed guidance. Not when Emmett needed somebody who was all in.

  He reached out and pulled his younger brother in for a hug, clapping him on the back. “I want you to stay with me. And that’s going to mean going to school, going to bed on time, getting up when I tell you, watching football with me and doing ranch chores.”