by Karin Tabke
He spit the grass from his mouth and buttoned up his shirt. “Well, lady, this monkey is done for the day.” He strode past her.
She grabbed his arm. “You can’t do this! I have deadlines.” Again she knew her words were wrong, but damn it, he couldn’t just stop now.
He spun her around and grabbed her by the forearms. “Is that all this is to you? A means to an end, a deadline?”
“Skin is my priority.”
“What if I quit?”
She felt the blood drain to her feet. “You wouldn’t do that. We have a contract.” She swallowed hard and reached out to him.
He pushed her arms away, turned his back to her, and strode back to Zorro. “So sue me.”
Every organ inside her hardened. She put the camera down on the ground and ran after him. She had nothing but Skin — he was her only hope to hang on to it. “Reese! You can’t quit! Everything hinges on this shoot.”
He untied the reins, his expression grim. “Find another monkey.”
“Don’t do this to me!”
He turned, his eyes narrow. “I’m done, Frankie.”
“Fine, Reese. Fine. Running away from me isn’t going to change what you’re running away from here.” She went back to pick up her camera. She’d done it again, allowed a man to fuck up everything when the stakes would make or break her. She was at the edge, looking down into a black hole that had become her life, ready to throw her hands up and say to hell with the world. Sadness for them both engulfed her. “I never had you pegged for a coward.”
Without another word she carefully packed her camera. She glanced back at Reese. He stood at the side of his horse, staring angrily at her.
“I’m going home,” she announced. She couldn’t stay here with him. Her father’s words, hormone-induced stupidity, rang in her ears. She’d done it again. Fool that she was.
“You can’t go home.”
She gathered the reins and turned her back to him to mount her horse. “I can and I will.”
For the first time since she was a little girl, Frankie felt the uncontrollable urge to cry, to cry in frustration, to cry for herself. She’d worked so hard for this, and now when her entire world was turned upside down and inside out, the one person who she had put a little faith in, the one who had protected her, saved her life, was in effect taking it. But not in one fell swoop; he was killing her slowly. She could get another model, but it wouldn’t be the same. And really, could she just walk back into her office and feel safe?
She needed to call Unk, she needed his protection. She needed to confront Anthony. She shivered. She needed to find her father’s will.
She felt Reese behind her. “If you leave, you die.” His voice was softer. She felt the change in him but was afraid to hope.
She turned around and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I can’t control fate, Reese. If my fate is to die at twenty-eight, then so be it.”
“Now who’s the quitter?”
“Don’t talk to me about quitting. It’s obvious from what little I’ve heard since I came here that you quit on your family fifteen years ago.”
His jaw stiffened. “Shut up.”
“Shut up?” Emotion poured through her like a burst dam. “You bring me to God knows where, tell me I can’t go home, then break a legal contract that all but breaks me? I’m not going to shut up!” She balled her fists and punched him in the right pectoral. She reared back for another hit, but Reese grabbed her fist and yanked her hard against him.
His mouth swooped down on hers. She slammed her palms against his chest and pushed away from him. “No. Not this time. You want sex, go get it from your blonde girlfriend. I’m done with you!”
She couldn’t remember being so angry at anyone in her life. She’d been humiliated by Sean. She’d been frustrated by her father, and Anthony would make a nun swear, but never had she felt so frustrated and furious and hurt at a single individual as she did right now at Reese. She told herself it was because he was backing out, leaving her with her career in ruins, but she knew in her heart it was more than that. She’d come to trust him. He was her self-appointed protector, and now she felt betrayed.
She turned to mount Rosie.
“I don’t get you, Francesca,” he said, his voice barely perceptible.
His words and tone hit her emotional wall hard. It took every drop of willpower she possessed not to turn around and take another chance. Could she? Did she have the heart for another emotional crash landing?
“No one does,” she said.
“Do you get yourself?”
The question caught her off guard. She turned around but looked down at the ground. She answered truthfully. “Not really.” She didn’t get much these days. Just when she thought she knew what she wanted, her family tried to kill her.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Her head snapped up and she looked him in the eyes. “Respect.” To live. To not have to look over my shoulder every time I step outside. To share my life with someone I trust, who even if I screwed up royally wouldn’t want to drop me like last week’s news.
“You have that in the industry.”
“I have it only by way of my family name.”
“Why did you go to work for your father?”
She let out a long, frustrated breath and backed up against Rosie. Why did this man continually challenge her? “To show him I had something to contribute. To prove to him I was a team player.”
“Are you?”
She narrowed her eyes and jerked back her head. “What do you mean?”
“Are you playing on your father’s team or getting back at him?”
“Getting back at him for what?”
Reese shrugged. “All the years of neglect.”
“Look, Father wouldn’t have won any Father of the Year awards, even with Anthony. He was what he was. I accept that.”
“Then why work for him?”
“I thought it was what I wanted. To work for my father. To make him proud of me.”
“Was he?”
She swallowed hard and slowly shook her head. “Not in the end.”
“What happened, Frankie?”
“We disagreed about a lot of things.”
Reese moved closer and pushed a tendril of dark hair from her cheek with his fingertips. “If you could be anyone or do anything, what would it be?”
She shrugged and patted Rosie’s withers. “I’ve always loved horses. As a little girl I watched reruns of Big Valley with my mother. She loved Heath.” She looked up and squinted against the sunshine. “I wanted to be blonde and beautiful like Audra, and marry Heath.”
“She lived on a ranch. He was nothing but a cowboy.”
“Yes, but she was so sophisticated. She had the best of both worlds. And what’s so wrong with cowboys?”
“My mother thought she wanted that life too, cowboy and all. Turns out she didn’t.”
She watched the shadows cross his face. “What happened?”
He shrugged and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. His eyes locked with hers and he unbuttoned the next one. “She left.”
This time when Frankie reached out to touch Reese, he let her. His muscles flexed hard beneath her palm.
“Do you miss her?”
“No.”
“If I had children, I’d walk through fire for them.”
He unbuttoned the third button and opened his shirt. Her hand slid up his forearm to his bicep. “Do you want children?” he asked.
He lowered his head and her hand slid up to his shoulder. The controlled power of the man excited her. “Yes,” she whispered. “Do you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
His lips pressed against her throat and a jolt of excitement racked her. His touch stirred something deep and primal within her. It scared her as much as it excited her. She didn’t stop whatever ploy he was up to. First, because she wanted his touch and to follow the path wherever it may lead, and second, in this sexy
and compliant mood, she could get some great shots.
“I’d be a lousy father.”
Before she could reply, he lightly bit her jugular and held it between his teeth. Her back arched. His warm, wet tongue laved the length of her neck. Her nipples spiked and she slid her hand between his shirt and chest. The heat of his skin surprised her. She rubbed her fingertips across his flat nipple. It immediately rose to her touch.
His arm slipped around her waist, bringing her closer against his chest. “We’d make beautiful babies, you know.”
Frankie gasped in surprise, and Reese inwardly cringed. What the hell did he just say? And for the love of God, why?
Not wanting to discuss or think about any underlying meaning, he kissed her hard, his mouth plundering her to silence. He wanted her. He wanted her now; he wanted her tomorrow, and maybe even the day after that.
He pulled her over to the blanket he had laid out and lay her down. “I want you, Frankie. Here. Now.”
His hands dove into the thick mass of her hair; he rubbed his face into the silky softness of it and inhaled her scent. He couldn’t remember another time when he considered the scent of a woman. Not her perfume but her true essence. “You smell good.” He rubbed his nose down her throat, then kissed her at the junction of her neck and shoulder.
Frankie’s body swelled beneath his and he pulled her closer in a fierce embrace. He marveled at her complexity and her tenacity. At the same time he saw through her layers. While she pretended to be the hard-ass her family expected, she was nothing more than a scared little girl in a world that lied to her, rejected her, and now wanted her head. Protective feelings pushed their way to the surface of his consciousness. He would, Reese decided at that moment, protect her not only from her family but himself as well.
They were both in too deep. His hands trailed from the small of her back to her breasts. Their full ripeness overflowed in his hands. He’d always considered himself an ass man, but Frankie’s tits were, in his opinion, the eighth wonder of the world. He pushed up her sweater and bra, his mouth hungry for the taste of her. She cried out as he roughly took a nipple in his mouth and sucked hard, his fingers fondling the other.
A wild sense of urgency overtook him, like some wild, untamed thing took possession of him. He wanted her raw and passionate, on the prairie, like his Indian ancestors had taken their women. He pushed her shirt over her head and snatched off her bra. With one hand he unzipped her jeans and pushed them down her legs. She helped by kicking off her shoes. Her panties didn’t have a chance. He ripped them off her.
He unbuttoned his pants and shoved them down just far enough to release his swollen dick. Then he pushed her down on the blanket and plunged deep into her hot wetness.
“Frankie,” he moaned against her lips as he filled her to the hilt. Her hips rocked up to accommodate him and her long legs wrapped around his waist. He knew he was going to come too quick, and he couldn’t help it. Taking her was all he wanted. He’d make it up to her later. Tonight.
He thrust deep, hard, once, twice, a dozen times, his hips bucking out of control like a loco bronc. His body, mind, and soul were possessed with only one aim. The age-old ritual of mating. The chill in the air was nonexistent, Frankie’s hard gasps of pleasure barely registering.
Long pent-up emotion, emotion he didn’t know he harbored swelled. His hips drove into hers, his vision a cloudy haze, his only coherent thought was the woman beneath him who stirred up old hurts and his desire to take her, to send her over the edge to mark her as his.
He exploded inside of her. Frankie cried out. Her legs fell away from him, and her arms tightened around his neck as he drove into her like a battering ram, his seed continuing to spew. He’d never had an orgasm last so long and hard. Just when it peaked, Frankie clasped her thighs around him, her inner muscles pulling him deeper, milking him of every ounce of fluid he possessed. Her back arched and she bit his shoulder, her teeth sharp. He plunged deeper, the pain of her action driving him crazy. Their sweat-slicked bodies slid and slapped, and Frankie threw her head back, her mouth gasping for air as she came in one hard-hitting orgasm.
The minute Reese came back to earth, he pushed his chest up. Still inside her, he scanned her for damage. “I’m sorry, Frankie, I don’t know —”
She pulled his face down by the ears and kissed him hard. When she let him go she smiled, her lips swollen. She licked them. “Did you hear me say stop?”
On his hands, peering down at her, he shook his head.
“Then shut up.” She squirmed out from under him and quickly dressed. When he began to pull his jeans up, she stopped him with her hand. “Jeans only, and leave them unbuttoned — hell, take them off all the way, I’ll get a blanket to drape over you. I want aftermath pictures.
“You’re always working, aren’t you?”
She smiled over her shoulder as she pulled another blanket from the saddlebag. “Ya snooze, ya lose.”
Reese lay back against the blanket. “And you can never lose, can you?”
She nodded. “You get me, Reese, I’m glad.” She tossed him the blanket. “No hard feelings?”
He draped the soft flannel blanket across his lap. She nodded in approval at the full outline of his penis under the thin fabric. Though it had waned, it would still give most guys a complex.
“No, but don’t get all over me when it comes back to bite you in the ass.”
She focused her camera a few steps away from him. “What do you mean?”
“I play to win too.”
“Lie back.” She positioned the blanket to cover most of his cock, only exposing the few full inches of his root. “Put your arms up behind your head.” She focused. “Perfect, now close your eyes.” She zoomed in. “When I tell you, open them slowly, and look at me like you want me.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Frankie focused in on Reese’s sexy hooded look. Her eyes dropped to the rising blanket. “You’re hornier than a sixteen-year-old virgin.”
“Stop looking good enough to eat and maybe this old boy will calm down some.”
Frankie laughed, enjoying his compliment. “Sorry, sir, I have work to do. Maybe later, I’ll see if I can squeeze you in.”
His cock reared and he growled. “You’ll do more than squeeze me in.”
“So tell me what you’re going to do to me tonight in the barn?”
His eyes sparkled and his lips turned up into a mischievous smile. “I’m gonna take you from behind like a stallion does a mare.”
She squatted next to him. Pressing her hand against his chest, she pushed him back until he was flat on his back. “Turn slightly to your right. Good, now put both your arms over your head. Yes, wow, Reese, your body just screams ‘fuck me.’ ”
“Fuck me, then.”
His cock stirred beneath the thin flannel of the blanket and she stepped back and caught it in several frames.
“I’m afraid I can’t publish pictures of me riding that lush cock of yours.”
“How about me riding it?” The throaty female voice behind the horses startled Frankie, but Reese remained composed. Angie sat mounted on a pretty dark bay mare no more than twenty-five feet from them. Had she seen them just a few moments ago? Frankie flushed, angry.
“This is a closed set, Amy.”
“It’s Angie.” She nudged her horse closer. Frankie turned to Reese to stop her. She found him pulling his pants on, watching the woman approach. Frankie’s temper cranked up a notch to boiling.
Although Reese had his pants buttoned up, he allowed the woman access to her “closed set.” Fury, frustration, and embarrassment clouded Frankie’s vision. Her earlier feelings of violence resumed and she knew if she didn’t get away, she would do something really stupid. She glared at Reese. She couldn’t force him to want only her, and she’d be damned if she’d share him on any level. At odds with how to deal with her out-of-control emotions, she did the only thing she could. She ran.
Frankie backed away from Reese, shov
ed her camera in her backpack, mounted Rosie, and put her heels to the mare’s flanks.
She didn’t look back, not even when the hot sting of tears blurred her vision. Was she destined to always be second best when it came to men? First her father, then Sean, now Reese. She didn’t hear Reese until Zorro was almost on top of her and Rosie. He grabbed her reins, slowing Rosie to a stop. He was dressed only in his jeans; he hadn’t bothered to grab his shirt.
“Don’t, Frankie,” he said.
She wiped back the sting in her eyes. The breeze picked up, whipping her loose hair against her cheeks. “If you think I’m going to sit there and watch you and that woman make goo-goo eyes at each other, especially after we —” She hiccuped a breath. “You’re mistaken.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Right.”
“Angie and I go way back. We’re friends.”
Frankie rolled her eyes. “Do I look like I need special ed?”
“No.”
“Then don’t expect me to believe that line of bullshit.”
His lips quirked at the corners.
“See!”
“Look, I won’t deny she’s attractive and we had a thing before — but I’m not interested in her.”
She grabbed the reins from him. “I know how men are, Reese, you don’t have to make excuses.”
He maneuvered Zorro around in front of Rosie. The stallion’s bulk stopped her from leaving. “Just how are we?”
“Always craving the excitement of another woman, never content with the one you have, even if it’s just casual. Always looking for something better and more exciting.”
Reese leaned over his saddle, slid his arm around her, and plucked Frankie from Rosie’s back, setting her in front of him. “You’re exciting enough for me, I don’t want anyone else.”
She pushed against his chest. “For the moment.”
“What else is there?”
“The moment after.”
He kissed her. When he released her she let out a long breath. He was doing it to her again. Making her want him.
“Seize the moment Frankie, there might not be a moment after,” he said, his voice husky.