The Rancher's Wager

by Maisey Yates

  But maybe that was it. The whole thing was so bizarre—how could they come away from it with neutral feelings about each other? Maybe it was impossible. Maybe the only option in a situation like this was to develop some kind of attachment. Maybe it was the only way.

  “I’m pretty sneaky,” Cricket said. “I mean, I’m used to hiding what I feel from people. And you were no exception. I mean, the way that I felt about you. I would just tell my sisters that I thought cowboys were annoying. And that I didn’t want anything to do with any of them. It was a pretty convincing ruse, if I say so myself. Plus, I knew you were way off limits. A thousand years older than me.”

  “Hey. Not a thousand.”

  “Well, it seemed like it at the time. The gap feels a lot smaller now.” She smiled. “Oh, I didn’t like any of the boys at school. None of them. But how could I, when I already liked a man? And a Cooper at that. I knew nobody would understand. But nobody understood me, so that didn’t really bother me. And so I just...kept it a secret. And then I was so mad when Wren hooked up with your brother, because I felt for so long that being attracted to you was this great, impossible thing, another sort of deeply rooted difference in who I was. In my genetic makeup versus the rest of my family. And then she got to Creed before I could get to you. Honestly. It was an insult. But still, when she told me that I would maybe find my own cowboy... I played it off. I told her no. That I didn’t want anything to do with a man like Creed, and I didn’t. I just wanted you. So it feels right, you know? To start this new phase of my life with you... Though I’m not asking you for anything. I promise.”

  “Well, happy to help.”

  Except it made him feel... He didn’t even know. It kind of made him angry, because she was the younger one. She was the one without experience, and she made him feel like he had no idea what he was doing. It didn’t seem right. That was all.

  He should be the one who knew what he was doing. He should be the one who had total confidence in everything taking place between them. But he couldn’t say that he did. He couldn’t give a reason. Couldn’t give a speech about what he was doing here. He had written it off as being male and basic and taking the sex that was on offer, but he knew that wasn’t true. It wasn’t how he did things. It wasn’t how he looked at women. And he had been telling himself a story, all this time. Cricket’s story made a lot more sense, and had a purpose behind it. And he just... He just wanted to touch her. It was a hell of a thing.

  “You know, the way you were talking to your dad that day... Tell me about your mom. I mean, tell me about all that. Because you know about my dad, and you know all about my mom...”

  “They were obligated to be together. And it was primarily because of me,” he said. Because he might as well tell her. She was right. He’d had a front row seat to all of her issues. He’d talked to Creed about it, sure. But Cricket? She could hear it all. Because she didn’t have a connection to the family, so why not? It was a safer place. This moment out here in the meadow.

  “One day when I was sixteen, she was crying. Then I asked her what was wrong. We were the two that got up early. And we used to spend mornings together. I loved that. So I would have all this extra time with her. And one morning, I asked her what was wrong. And it was like everything I ever thought about my life broke to pieces. My father married her because she was pregnant. My father was in love with another woman. He’d told my mother that. Before they got married. He was honest, if nothing else. And she thought that he’d fall in love with her. But instead, it had just become years of the two of them stuck. Because they had a family. Because they had a business. Because they had all these things that were obligated to come before having feelings. Before love.

  “And you know, I’m not over-bothered by my dad anymore. I think that was enough for him. He couldn’t have your mom, so he made himself a life he enjoyed. But I’m not sure my mother ever got to fall in love with anyone. Not for real. Not and have them love her back. She was just stuck. With a partner, sure. And when she was sick... I can’t fault my dad for how he was. He was a partner. He cared for her. And he stayed with her. And you know, plenty of marriages that are founded on love, they don’t end up that way. Somebody gets sick and they go through a years-long battle, and the other person leaps. It’s too much for them. And sometimes I wonder if maybe my dad not being in love with her made him more able to take care of her during that time. It’s complicated as hell. Because there was a very real partnership between the two of them, but sometimes it made my mother feel broken, and I will never not feel responsible for that. Like I should’ve found some way to fix it.”

  “They made their choices,” Cricket said. “That’s what I’m realizing about my mother. For all her own misery, for all that I feel bad for her sometimes, for all that my father was an unforgivable asshole, my mom made her choices. She wanted money. And she thought that would be enough. She wanted to have things, and thought that would transcend love, but it didn’t. And then she didn’t leave. She stayed. Because she was afraid. And all her reasons, they were real enough, but they were still excuses. Even if they were pretty valid ones. My mom stayed with James for us. Because she was afraid that he would find a way to take us from her. But she also could’ve had the fight. She weighed her options. And she chose.”

  “I have some sympathy for that,” he said. “If she thought she couldn’t win...”

  “It was still a choice. Just like your mother had one. It’s not like it was the 1800s. They could’ve gotten a divorce. They could have. Nobody had to be unhappy. They sat there in rules they made for themselves, and lived lives they made for themselves, prison walls they decided were okay. That isn’t your fault, and it isn’t mine.”

  “Yeah, but on the other side, now your mom has a chance to make something new. Mine doesn’t. It’s a hell of a thing.”

  “I know.” She shook her head. “I’m not saying it would’ve been easy. I’m just saying you can’t take their choices and blame yourself for them.”

  “You’re twenty-two years old.”

  “Yeah. And you’re what? Thirty-four? Thirty-five? So what? I’m not stupid. I’ve had a lot of time to think. That’s what comes of being the isolated, odd one out in your family. You have way too much time to think. And believe me, I’ve had tons. I don’t need experience to have figured that out.”

  “So you have the whole world all figured out, do you?”

  “I mean, I’m not gonna say the whole world. But maybe my piece of it.”

  This girl. This woman. She didn’t know when to question or doubt. She dove headlong into everything. Bets at a poker table, wild conclusions and into his bed. And he just...he liked that about her.

  “Bold claim, little Cricket.”

  “I don’t know, things make more sense now than they ever have. I didn’t think that was possible. I just walked through the messiest, weirdest time of my life. And it’s really not so bad. And yeah, I basically do have it all sorted out.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her on top of him, laying them both back on the blanket. He looked into her earnest face, and desire stirred in his body. “You have everything figured out, is that it?”

  “Basically. The mysteries of sex are even solved.”

  “Every last one?” he pressed.

  He didn’t know why he needed this right now, but he did. It was deeper than lust, that was the problem. He couldn’t write it off as simply basic desire. He’d wanted to. He’d tried to. But it was so much more than that. That was the thing. With her, it always would be. And whatever was happening between the two of them, she didn’t have to be here. They didn’t have to be here. They were choosing it, out here under the unending sky. With the land and the ranch in their blood, and his need for her pumping hot and insistent through his body.

  “Bet you can’t teach me anything,” he said, his voice rough.

  And Cricket, true to form, sat u
p, her thighs on either side of him, and stripped her white tank top up over her head without pause. She was wearing a plain, matching bra, her lean, athletic body a sight to behold. “Is that a bet bet, cowboy?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know, historically, you lose bets with me.”

  “Yeah. I feel like a real loser right now.” With her sweet ass perched on top of him, and all her beauty blocking out the sun.

  “Well.”

  “Just remember that there are some bets I lose on purpose.” He gripped her hips, sliding his hands up to her slim waist, then up further still, brushing his thumbs over her breasts. Then he reached around and unhooked her bra, flinging it off somewhere in the grass.

  She made a small sound that might have been indignant, but he didn’t much care. Because she was bare and gorgeous and perfect and he was dying for a taste.

  He pressed his palm firmly against the center of her back and brought her down toward him, toward his mouth. He sucked one perfect, ripe bud between his lips, and the cry that escaped her lips wasn’t indignant this time. Not at all. It was one of pleasure, one of desire, and he reveled in it. She wrenched his shirt over his head, wiggling away from him as she did. And he pinned her down on her back, her arms up over her head, and kissed her deep.

  “Little Crickets with smart mouths get themselves in trouble,” he said.

  A challenge glimmered in her eyes. “Do we? I sure hope so.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. I lack discipline.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I’ve mostly been neglected. I need a firm hand.”

  “I could probably provide you with one.”

  “So many promises. And yet...”

  He growled, unsnapped her jeans, unzipped them and pushed them down her thighs, and she helped eagerly. Then she wiggled downward, kissing his chest, his stomach, still on her back beneath him as she undid his pants and freed him. She peered up at him, squeezing his length and making a sound of purely feminine satisfaction.

  “You’re really kind of a work of art,” she said, leaning forward and rubbing her cheek against him. He could honestly say a woman had never done that. And the look on her face made him so hard he thought he might burst.

  She shoved lightly, and he moved, going onto his back as she bit her lip and looked down at him. Then she knelt over him, taking him slowly into her mouth, the sweet, wet heat an assault on his senses. She tortured him. And she wasn’t practiced or knowing or anything like that. Didn’t have a parade of well coordinated tricks, but she made up for it with enthusiasm. Pure and simple. She was a woman in full enjoyment of his body, and he didn’t think he’d ever experienced anything quite like that. And hell, looking at her, at the elegant line of her spine, her ass up in the air as she pleasured him, was something more powerful than he’d ever experienced.

  This moment was free of obligation. Something in his chest began to unravel, as if each pass of her tongue, each movement of her mouth over his body, was working to loosen something inside him, unraveling something he hadn’t been aware was there.

  Who knew that sandwiches and a blow job out in the middle of a field would be enough to make a man almost believe in romance? He sure as hell hadn’t. But it was something. She was something. Far and away beyond anything he’d ever known or experienced or figured he might want to understand.

  Cricket.

  She pleasured him until he thought he couldn’t take it anymore. Then he reached in his back pocket, grabbed his wallet and took out the condom, tearing it open and guiding her up his body as he sheathed himself with one practiced hand.

  She seated herself on top of him and took him inside of her slowly, achingly so, her mouth dropping open, her head falling back. She flexed her hips, a ragged sound on her lips, and then she began to move, slowly at first. Then more quickly. But it still wasn’t enough for him. He grabbed on to her hips, moved her up and down over his body, driving them both crazy. Pushing them both until she cried out her pleasure. And then he reversed their positions, pounding into her, unable to hold himself back any longer. It was primal and urgent, and exactly what he needed to compound that strange unraveling in his chest. Only then, she opened her eyes and met his.

  And he couldn’t breathe. Not then. Just as his climax took him over, he was lost. In Cricket. In the look of wonder on her face, the absolute trust there. He was her first lover. The only man who had ever touched her like this. He was bound up in all of the strange things she’d been going through for all this time, and he didn’t want to be even more turned on by that, but he was. And he lost himself then, just went over the edge, growling out her name as she cried out his and convulsed around him. As she stared up at him, the look of absolute contentment in her eyes undid him. She didn’t know better. Didn’t know a different man.

  He had taken her crush and used it to his advantage.

  He had taken her inexperience as a rancher, as a poker player, and had used it to his advantage there too.

  He felt... Well, he felt like shit, actually. Because there was something in him that knew instinctively he could never answer the depth of longing in her eyes. There was something in him that knew he had bound her to him. Her childish feelings, her awakening desire—she would feel connected to him in a way she shouldn’t. That was a fact. That was the problem. And he would... He would what? Take her away from this place that she was turning into her own? Away from this life she was making and into his? He would just be another man taking a woman’s dreams and putting them underneath his own.

  They would be done at the end of the month. That was the deal. And whatever possibilities he felt out here in the wilderness... They just weren’t to be.

  That was good. It was right that he knew that, felt that. Everything would go back to the way it had been, when all this was said and done. That was for the best. Because he wouldn’t be able to give Cricket what she wanted. Not really. And when she realized that, then they would both be trapped in the exact same hell their parents had been trapped in.

  And he wouldn’t have that.

  Not ever.

  But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he kissed her forehead, and she snuggled against him. And right out there in the open, completely naked, the two of them fell asleep.

  What happened at the end of the wager was a problem for their future selves. Because right now, they had this.

  And Jackson’s last thought before he drifted out of consciousness was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt quite this content.

  Nine

  It was the thirtieth day.

  Cricket hadn’t had the heart to ask if he would be staying the entire day, or leaving right away, or... She didn’t know. And she was afraid to find out exactly what the answer was.

  She was a coward.

  She desperately wanted this to keep on going. She desperately wanted him to stay with her.

  Right. So you’re going to beg him to stay in your little ranch house? And for what? You’re trying to find your own way...

  No. She couldn’t beg him to stay.

  But they woke up the morning of the thirtieth day in the same bed just as they had every morning since they’d begun sleeping together, and he had gone out to work the same as he had from the beginning.

  And so when he returned that evening, dirty and disheveled, she breathed out a sigh of relief.

  Maybe he wasn’t ready for things to change either. Maybe things wouldn’t change. Maybe it would all stay the same, just for a little while. Maybe they could put off all the hard conversations for another time. They could say goodbye another day. She had cooked. Just in case. And she had been rewarded. It was funny, how much she enjoyed cooking. And she would have been more annoyed about the fact that she liked such a traditionally feminine pursuit, except that he seemed to enjoy it so much, and he appreciated it. She thought ba
ck to the day she’d made bread and brought out ham sandwiches. Oh yes, he’d appreciated that a whole lot. She felt a dreamy smile cross her face when she thought about it. These times with Jackson had been... Well, they’d been everything.

  He’d been everything she’d ever fantasized about.

  She knew this moment was supposed to be about moving on. About moving into the next phase of her life, but...

  No. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

  Except, he was here.

  And she kept thinking that, even as they each built hamburgers out of the ingredients she had laid out.

  “Jackson,” she said softly as they finished eating. “How was your day?”

  “Good. And yours?”

  “Good and—”

  She cut herself off. Because she didn’t care. She didn’t want to have this conversation. She really didn’t. She didn’t want to talk at all. Because her insides were jumbled up and everything hurt. Because this was the last day, and she didn’t know how to ask him if he would stay. She didn’t know how to explain to herself, in a way that made her not feel silly, why she might ask him to stay.

  Because I want to marry him.

  And I want to have his children.

  Because I would be his ranch wife in this house or any house.

  Because he was her dream. And that was the bottom line.

  She was young, and she was supposed to go out and live. She knew that. She wasn’t supposed to want a man she had been completely hopeless over since she was twelve. She was supposed to experience more. Have more lovers. Travel. Something.