Ashley had laughed. “I didn’t get his number and he definitely did not ask for mine.” He’d point blank ignored Ashley after she’d rubbed herself up against him like a cat in heat. She didn’t blame him, and could only accept the flush of embarrassment every time she thought about how she had thrown herself at him—even if it was because she had slipped in the mud.
Janice had pressed the condom into her hand anyway. To make her happy, Ashley had tucked it into her back pocket. She knew she’d likely never see Darius again and that was just as well.
She didn’t need a man to distract her right now, not with everything finally changing in her life. Maybe Janice was right, maybe it was worth taking a chance again—later. In the meantime, she could still fantasize about that later with someone like Darius.
She picked her way down the hillside from the dairy shop, picnic blanket in hand, choosing her steps carefully in the deepening twilight. After taking care of the night’s chores, she wanted to sit outside for a while under the starlight, next to her sheep and dream a bit more. The air smelled grassy and fresh. Early spring was one of the most beautiful times, with rolling hillsides almost blindingly green, the orange poppies beginning to bloom, oak trees swinging their mossy branches in the mild breezes. She couldn’t imagine doing anything else, anywhere else, and felt lucky to be alive in this place and time.
With a calm joy filling Ashley, she headed for the feed buckets.
It took many seconds to realize she wasn’t alone.
At first it was an extra shadow near the paddock, but then it moved and took human shape. She thought maybe Janice hadn’t left yet after all, but when she looked back up the hillside, her house was dark and the shades pulled down over her windows.
Ashley looked around for a weapon and saw her trusty broom stick and trash can lid on the ground where she had tossed them earlier. Silently picking up her familiar tools, she edged over to the tall shadow headed for the gate that led to King and Gandalf. For all she knew a neighbor had come on over to check out her new stock, but normally a heads up would have been given.
All the cash was locked up in the store. The only things of value down here were the animals, and they really only had value to her.
A bleating noise echoed through the air. The shadow stilled. She could tell the shadow was a man, muscled and toned and looking like he belonged in this muck somehow.
But this was her muck and her ram.
Still, there was something familiar—
“Darius,” Ashley called out before she could stop herself. She hadn’t said his name out loud before and the way the syllables rolled off her tongue felt delicious. But she also felt stupid. She’d just given herself away to this stranger. No matter how much she wanted it to be Darius, it wasn’t going to be and she had just given away her advantage—
“Ashley?” Darius voice boomed low and soft in the growing darkness. There was a hesitation, and then he pivoted on one booted heel, slow and natural, to face her, acting like he wasn’t at all surprised to see her.
Suspicion immediately flaring, Ashley brandished her broom stick in the air. “What are you doing here?”
Even though the darkness prevented her from seeing Darius clearly, somehow she felt the hot gaze of his blue eyes drink in her body. King and Gandalf approached the fence, bleating for food and attention, telling her they had not actually learned their lesson of respect earlier that day.
“You know I know how to use this thing,” Ashley said, motioning again to the stick.
“Oh, I know it,” Darius said.
“Why are you down here?” Ashley said, getting upset. She wanted to fantasize about Darius, but if he turned out to be some sort of bad guy, her little bit of thrill was going to vanish for good.
“Looking for you,” Darius said, his voice holding back a great deal of emotion. “I couldn’t stay away…and I thought this was the most likely spot to find you again.”
Ashley faltered as her insides melted like butter at his words. The logical part of her brain knew she shouldn’t trust him after spending all of five minutes in his presence earlier. But she believed him, even though a small voice in her brain told her there was no reason why she should.
“I always respect a woman who knows how to take care of herself,” Darius said.
Ashley raised an eyebrow at that statement and then realized he was referring to her makeshift shield and sword. She lowered both, finally tossing them aside to the ground with a small clunking noise—a show of trust without actually speaking the words aloud.
“So you were looking for me, but you came down here to my new ram?”
Darius hesitated again, just for a second, and Ashley wished she hadn’t been so quick to let down her guard.
“What would a soon-to-be world famous cheesemonger be doing on the evening before one of the biggest events of her career?” Darius stepped closer to her, though he kept his hands behind his back, like he knew he could be intimidating and was holding himself back. He smelled like trees and grass and good earth and she wanted him to reach out and grab her around the waist again, soft and gentle and strong all at the same time.
“You’ve worked on a farm before,” Ashley said as more of a statement than a question.
“I grew up on a dairy ranch in Vermont.”
It made sense—the way he carried himself on the uneven ground, the way he seemed comfortable around the animals and the muck. It all spoke of experience and competence.
There was a long pause and then the expression changed on his face. Something subtle, barely discernible in the growing darkness, a raw, vulnerability that startled her.
“Ashley, I can’t stop thinking about you—”
She didn’t think. It was like with King and Gandalf when she had opened the crate. She just acted because it was the only thing she could do.
She stepped over, dropping the blanket, stood on her toes inside her boots, upturned her face, and kissed him.
She could feel the surprise through his lips, but then the electricity sparked and took over. He smelled musky and like good earth, like a man who enjoyed working outside. His heady scent enveloped her, making her crave more. She pressed herself up, deepening the kiss until she felt the kiss down to her toes. Her body felt like it might float out of her boots. She lost herself in the sensation of the two of them there in the dark, a cool breeze wrapping between them, a hot kiss sealing them together.
Suddenly his hands were cupping her cheeks and he flicked his tongue into her mouth. A wild, frenzied feeling rose up inside her. She tasted salt and felt the scruff of his facial hair against her skin. His rough hands gently cupped her face before moving to entangle in her hair. She released an involuntary moan against his mouth. He doubled down, his hands roving now, through her hair, along her neck and shoulders, across her back, and around her waist and back up again.
She moved against him and felt the lengths of their bodies against one another in the darkness as the sheep bleated for attention.
Chapter 5
It was Darius who finally broke the kiss, though it felt like someone was ripping him apart to do it. Not because he wanted the kiss to end, not because he had planned to end it, but because—even though the whole world had vanished for those seconds while he drank in her sweet, animal smell, as they pressed their beating hearts together while he explored her mouth, her face, her loose hair, her back, her hips, and their bodies responded with all the fierce desire of two animals in heat—Darius heard a disturbing noise that broke the spell.
Ashley stood there and, even in the darkness, Darius could tell she was panting from the passion of their kiss.
All he wanted was more.
He’d come to take care of the ram. Silent, with a knife to slit his throat. Quick and as painless as he could make it. He’d had the time to do it, to come and go, but he had waited, hoping maybe for a sign from the universe.
Hoping for something to change where this all had been headed.
A
nd then Ashley had shown up and everything had changed.
He had come back to the farm not just for the ram, but for her too.
Though none of it changed the consequences waiting for him, and his parents, if he didn’t follow through.
He couldn’t stay away but he had to kill her ram. It was all mixed up now.
“Darius,” Ashley said.
His erection stood taller at the sound of his name on her lips. He wanted her moaning his name over and over again as he drove the length of himself into her soft, deep folds.
A flicker of light from the barn snapped him back to attention. “Is there anybody who should be on this ranch right now besides you and Janice?”
“No,” Ashley said, still panting. “And Janice is gone for the night.”
Darius could tell exactly when Ashley caught the barn light too.
He body stilled, no longer dreamy. Her extinguished attention left him aching. There was so much of her to get to know and he wanted to explore every inch—slowly, and with his tongue.
But Ashley was reaching for her trash can shield and broom stick sword. “Did you bring anyone with you?”
“I was only looking for you.” Darius cringed at the lie that still had truth shot all the way through it. “I came alone.”
Ashley marched a few steps toward the barn. Darius had a half second thought to call out and stop her, but knew enough about her at this point to know it would do no good. He could let her go by herself or he could go with her, but there would be no stopping her.
He crouched to the ground, cursing himself now for dropping the knife in the heat of their kiss. He felt for it carefully through the grass, but came up empty. Ashley was fast becoming a small shadow under the pale half moon light and he couldn’t find the one damn weapon he had brought with him. It was meant to take care of the ram.
He had purposefully brought no gun with him because nobody was supposed to get hurt except for the ram, and that needed to be done silently.
Finally, he gave up his search to catch up to Ashley. What waited for them in that barn was likely to be a whole lot of trouble. The reality of the situation began to sink in and his lust plummeted into an adrenaline rush of battle-fear. They were alone on a ranch far away from towns and cell phone reception. The darkness was deepening. The thought of Ashley in danger increased his heartbeat until he thought he might choke.
He would not let any harm come to her, not to a wonder of a person like her.
“Ashley, let’s go up to the house and call the police,” Darius said, hoping to convince her to keep herself out of danger.
She didn’t pause in her stalk to the barn. He decided he couldn’t chance calling out again for fear of alerting whoever waited inside.
He came alongside Ashley as she sidled up against the barn door entrance. He put his hand out, letting it drop to the small of her back—just the slightest touch to get her attention. She stilled, distracted by his warmth as much as he was by the intimacy of that small thing—touching her lower back.
He got close to her ear, her hair tickling his mouth. “I’m going first.”
She blinked, looking at him with shining eyes from the barn lanterns, and then peered through the crack in the door. He edged her out of the way so he could survey the situation and decide what kind of confrontation would be best.
He’d take her stick. It was as good a weapon as any—
“Hey!” Ashley shouted. She rammed open the barn door with her blue striped boot and rushed inside. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Darius groaned, admiring her courage and cursing it at the same time.
Chapter 6
She instantly recognized the two men from earlier in the tour. They had given her that odd, disturbed feeling, and been the only ones to denigrate her cheese.
They were poisoning her feed.
They were trying to kill Janice’s farm and all of Ashley’s dreams.
Those were the thoughts that rushed through her head as she rushed into the barn. The big bucket of arsenic poison they were dumping into the feed trough and water supply was no joke.
The men turned at once. Upon seeing Ashley, they dropped the bottle of poison.
She raised her stick, elated to have stopped them.
They both drew guns.
She froze and felt an emptiness behind her.
Darius had not followed her into the barn.
She didn’t know what that made him. A coward? Smart?
She looked down the barrels of both guns.
Definitely smart.
“Throw down your weapons,” the taller one said. He was the talker, she guessed. She hadn’t heard the other one speak even once.
Ashley scrunched up her face. “What?” But then she realized they meant her lid and stick. “This?” She smirked, unbelieving.
The taller one cocked his handgun.
She didn’t need to be asked twice, especially with that look of malicious pleasure on his face.
She set her ‘weapons’ down on the bare dirt of the barn floor. Wool smells mixed with wet barn wood from recent rains. She shucked the stalls daily, but the wet spring weather still made the inside smell like musty hay. The barn was empty, all the animals still out on pasture so at least none of them had fed off the poison yet. Her brain catalogued all this even as the men stalked toward her.
She wondered again if Darius had just up and abandoned her. She thought he wouldn’t be that sort of guy, but then again, she didn’t know what kind of guy he really was other than one she wanted to rub up against like a cat curling along its master’s legs.
“This would have been easier if you had stayed away,” the taller one said.
“I’m a night owl,” Ashley said, fear making her flippant. “Burn the midnight oil, you know. Early bird catches the—”
He moved as if to strike her face with the butt of his gun. “Shut up.”
Ashley shut her mouth like someone had sprung a trap.
“We’re here for the ram,” the taller one said. “Stay silent and you get out of this alive.”
King? But Ashley knew better than to ask why.
“No. It’s more than that now,” the shorter guy said, finally speaking. He scanned the barn as if searching for a companion that didn’t exist, except she knew he did.
Where was Darius?
“No witnesses,” the shorter guy said.
It took long seconds to process what his words meant. She began to shake from fear. Her hands turned clammy. Oh shit. She wished the shorter one had kept silent after all.
“Hey,” Ashley said, figuring it didn’t matter whether she stayed quiet with the short one’s announcement. Her heart felt like it was beating in her throat. It made it difficult to speak, but she forced the words out anyway. “I won’t say a word to anyone. Take the ram. He’s yours. But there’s no reason to poison the herd. Take any of them you want.”
The short one shook his head and approached, gun pointed at her forehead, right between the eyes. “You Americans must be taught a lesson. No meddling. No stealing. You think you can take what you want? Not unless you are willing to face the consequences. And these are the consequences.”
He pulled back on the safety and his finger pressed down on the trigger.
Chapter 7
Darius worked his way around the back entrance and waited for the right moment to ambush the two men.
That moment came when they pointed a gun at Ashley’s forehead. He’d flash-backed to his mother in the living room, her flower-patterned couch sagging in the middle where she sat on the cushion, while a gun was pressed to her forehead.
There had been no time to think through any other step except to get to Ashley in time. Darius swooped in silent and fast. But he wasn’t going to make it in time. So he left silent behind and roared for their attention.
They turned and the guns wavered—away from Ashley’s forehead. The looks on their faces satisfied him that he had, at least, kept the e
lement of surprise until the last possible moment. Brave woman that she was, Ashley dived out of the way. The taller one let off a shot, but Darius didn’t even flinch, it was easy to see the shot would go wide.
Darius barreled into the shorter one who had held the gun to Ashley’s precious forehead like a football linebacker. He’d played as a freshmen for a season and then given it up because it took too much time away from the farm.
Ashley shouldn’t have been here this night. He should have taken care of the ram before she’d even had a chance to find him. Maybe if he had, she would never have ventured toward the barn. Maybe if he had done his job in the first place and stayed on the ranch to help his parents make a living his father wouldn’t have resorted to sperm smuggling.
Maybe this was his life—one fuck up after another.
But what these guys didn’t know was he’d gotten into plenty of other messes in his life and had fought his way out of every one.
Every single one.
He wasn’t about to ruin that record now.
He tumbled to the ground and searched for the gun, but it was still in the hands of the dazed attacker. He considered wrestling him for it for half a second, but decided to go after the second guy instead.
Ashley had snatched up her stick and was beating the taller one back, but it wouldn’t last long.
Neither of them would last long against two guns.
He cursed himself again for losing the knife and not bringing along a gun. He went for Ashley while the short one lay dazed on the ground. She eyed him and he held his hand out, making it clear he wanted the stick.
She tossed the stick to him and he walloped the guy’s gun hand. “Run!”
He feared she wouldn’t run, but stay and fight like she had with her stupid ram.
“Goddamn it,” he roared. “Get out of here.”
He gave the guy another whack, but the guy was bringing his gun arm around, blocking the blows with his other arm, and it was time for both of them to go.
She ran and he ran after her, putting his body between her and the guns. If it came down to it he would use himself as a shield.
Smuggled Wonder Page 3