Slow Ride Home (The Grady Legacy)

by Leah Braemel

  Geez, no wonder she was skittish when he laid it out like a laundry list. He closed the distance between them and lifted her chin until she met his gaze.

  “You’re trying to protect yourself from getting hurt. I get that. Yes, I’ll screw up. I can guarantee it, but I would never intentionally hurt you. I promise.”

  She rested her head on his chest with a weary sigh. “I thought I’d worked past all this crap, but I guess I haven’t.” Another long shuddering sigh. “I called Dad the other night to ask him about how he’d been fired, but he didn’t answer and he’s not returned my call.”

  Incensed that a father would ignore his own daughter, Ben wrapped his arms around her, swaying gently until her body relaxed against him. “I could call him for you if you want. Go visit him with you. Along with the sheriff’s reports to wave in his face until he apologized—preferably by crawling on his knees and kissing your feet.”

  She pulled back and stared at him, her eyes wide in shock. “Sheriff’s report? It went that far?”

  “Didn’t I mention it already?” After she shook her head, he leaned against the tree and pulled her snug against him again. “I can show them to you. I think. Gram’s probably got the files stored up in the attic or maybe she even took them to her place. But I know they existed. Gramps showed them to me when they told me that you weren’t coming back.” And thrown it back in his face during that infamous fight.

  “Maybe if they had a file on Dad, your grandfather kept the video too?” Hope filled her voice though her body was still tense against his.

  “I’ll look. If it’s there, I’ll give it to you and you can make sure it’s properly destroyed.”

  “Thank you.”

  He stroked her hair until she relaxed again. As she relaxed, so did he. Some might claim he was influenced by the rustling leaves overhead and the water babbling over the rocks, but he suspected all the credit should be given to Allie.

  He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Damn, you smell good.” A light air of some exotic perfume she’d dabbed behind her ears, mixed with something else. He dipped down for another sniff. Hairspray? When had that turned him on? She looked mighty fine too, her color high and her hair tousled out of its tight updo.

  “Don’t,” she murmured. Despite her demand, her hands flattened over his chest and she melted against him.

  “Don’t do this?” He caught her hips in his hands and dipped his head to rub his cheek against hers. “Or this?”

  Without waiting for her to respond, he caught her mouth with his, claiming her. “Definitely shouldn’t do this,” she murmured around the kiss. His ego roared approval as she squeezed a hand between them and found his fly. “Or this,” she added as she undid his buckle then lowered the zipper.

  Wondering why the hell not, he braced his hands against the tree, loving how her skirt flowed over her hips as she lowered herself to her knees. A beam of sunlight streamed through the thick branches, sending golden highlights over her hair. Unable to resist, he wound the strand around his fingers. “Gorgeous.”

  She glanced up at him, her lips parted and swollen from his kiss, then freed his cock from his briefs. “So’s this.”

  “Not hardly.” His breath stuttered at the erotic sight of her kissing the swollen head. He scrunched his eyes closed when her lips closed around it, licking and sucking, her fingers reaching into his briefs to fondle his sac. The cows mooing in the distance, the cicadas buzzing in a tree a ways down the creek all disappeared to pure sensation. Of Allie’s tongue swirling in lazy circles, of her soft murmurs as she shifted position to take him deeper. Of the heat gathering at the base of his spine, along with the sense of rightness in his world.

  Strange how he’d been wary when Allie had first returned, how he’d expected her to hurt him, to walk away, and now here she was, on her knees out in the open where anyone could stumble upon them again.

  Shit. Where anyone could stumble upon them. Not the way to convince her to hang around, to see if they had a future together.

  His brain fought against his baser urges as he pulled from her mouth, but he won. Barely. “Stop.”

  She sat back on her heels, her hair still locked in his fist, her lips even more swollen. “What’s the matter?”

  “I wanted to romance you, to seduce you somewhere...” He glanced around. They were in a valley, partially sheltered by the branches, but they were out in the open. Even if it was his land, there was always the chance of a hand stumbling upon them. “...more private.”

  “You wanted to seduce me?”

  Was she laughing at him?

  “I don’t want you to think all I want from you is quickie up against a tree or in the back of my truck or...that I’m only interested in you for sex.”

  “What if that’s all I want right now?” she said softly.

  He wasn’t sure which hurt worse, his ego or his heart. Here he’d come to a revelation, had put himself out there, admitting he wanted more than just sex, and all she wanted was a quickie?

  All right. She just wanted sex. He could accommodate that. This time.

  He pulled a condom from his wallet and handed it to her. He bit his lower lip, relishing the pain against the pleasure of her sheathing him. Once she’d finished, he lifted her and pressed her against the massive tree trunk.

  He rucked up her skirt, thankful that it wasn’t the tight number she’d been wearing the first day. Beneath, her silk and lace panties were damp, her folds swollen. If he could see them, they’d be the same dusky watermelon pink as her lips.

  Allie’s eyes fluttered closed as he stroked between her slick crease. Her soft moan couldn’t have been heard over the soft trickle of the creek, but the needy sound shot straight down to his heart, and was filed away for later that night as he planned for the romance he’d intended to give her.

  He pressed two fingers inside her sheath, giving her the same pleasure she’d given him moments before. “Allie?” he whispered, waiting until her heavy-lidded eyes focused on him. Then he withdrew from her and slipped one finger into his mouth. Her essence exploded on his taste buds, another sensation to be filed away.

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, watching him avidly.

  Her hands clamped onto his shoulders, Allie wrapped her legs around his waist, her thighs moving convulsively with each pump of his hand. When her moans grew louder and her body clamped against his fingers, he withdrew them and buried himself to the hilt in her tight passage. He pulled back, his groan joining hers, and thrust back in. From the hitch in her breath and the way her body clamped down on him, he must have hit a sweet spot. Again he thrust, and again, until sweat trickled down his neck. With a gasped cry, Allie bucked against him, her back bowed as her passage squeezed his cock tight, rippling and vibrating through one of the longest climaxes he’d ever known her to have. Unable to stop the tide, his own climax overcame him until they both stood there, trembling and panting.

  “Wow.” Allie unwound herself from him, lowering her legs to the ground.

  “Woman,” he panted, “if you come back tomorrow and tell me we shouldn’t have done this, I’m gonna...I’m gonna—”

  “Put me over your knee and spank me?” Her husky whisper had him opening his eyes to stare at her. She stared right back, grinning, a mixture of heat and humor filling her gaze.

  Was that a challenge? He tried to imagine her calmly lying down over his knee and letting him spank her. Nah, she’d hogtie him, cut his nuts off and feed ’em to him for dinner if he dared lay a hand on her.

  “I’m not suicidal.” He tucked himself back into his briefs and hitched up his pants. “Can we just get done with all this ‘we shouldn’t be doin’ this’ nonsense? We’re obviously still attracted to each another. I don’t care if you want to call it scratching an itch or testing out a possible relationship or just friends with benefits, but I’m done talkin’ it to death.”

  * * *

  Ben made sense, Allie admitted to herself. But just because sh
e still found him attractive, still found making out with him exciting and gratifying, that didn’t stop her spidey-sense from tingling whenever she drove under the Bull’s Hollow gate.

  She’d never been one to talk things out. She’d been a “jump in and do it then deal with the consequences later” girl. “Once burned, twice shy, I guess.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s why I keep waffling. Between your grandfather and my ex-husband, I don’t trust my own judgment anymore.”

  Ben bent his head and helped her straighten her shirt. “Understandable. “He cupped her chin and lifted it to look at him. “But you’re not going to get burned again. Not by me. And if anyone else tries, I know some damned good lawyers who will be pleased to sue their asses. If there’s anything left of their asses once I get through with them,” he added darkly.

  She dropped her gaze to his chest, unwilling to let him see how much his response pleased her. “Like Logan? He warned you off me.”

  “Or Uncle Charlie, or Pop’s lawyer, Randy.” He placed his hands under her shoulders and lifted her away from the tree. The touch of his hands as he brushed bark from her skirt sent her heart rate rocketing again.

  “Why’d you go with Logan instead of Ackerman & Freeman?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Ego, I guess.” Another adjustment to her skirt, and he stepped back. “Other than your hair fallin’ down, no one should be able to tell what we were doin’.”

  “I don’t follow. Not about my hair—” which she had given up and reached up to remove the remaining pins, “—but about firing your father’s lawyer because of ego. His or yours?”

  “Mine, mainly.” Ben bent down to retrieve his hat from the ground. He thumped it against his leg before clamping it back on his head. “After Pop died, Randy would drop by, offering suggestions about what crops to plant, whether to change the grazing rotation by one day or two. I mean, he’s a fricking lawyer, what does he know about EPDs and grazing management? Or whether we should put GPSs on our tractors or not or what cow shouldn’t be bred again but should go on the big truck ride.”

  Deciding what cow to breed based on their expected progeny hadn’t been a usual topic of discussion in her New York law offices, but Randy must have heard Ed discuss it before. “He was probably just trying to help—he was your father’s best friend.”

  “But he’s not a rancher, and he doesn’t know my cows or their breeding history. For Pete’s sake, he got Ma questioning my decisions.”

  “So you got pissed off and wanted someone who would respect you.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He kicked at a stone, watching as it tumbled down the hill and landed with a splash into the creek. “It sounds immature when I say it out loud. But I worked hard for my degree, and with Gramps’ and Pop’s training, I know what I’m doing.”

  “It sounds like you were trying to establish boundaries. Assert your—” dominance wasn’t the right word, “—independence.” She hooked her arm in his and aimed him back along the path. “But you don’t consider Logan telling you who to date butting in as badly as Randy’s suggestions?”

  “In his defense, Lo’s worried that if I ticked you off, you’d find a reason to cancel the policy and leave us hanging.”

  “I guess I know exactly what Logan thinks of me then.” Even though she technically represented Bull’s Hollow, she had the power to dismiss their claim. Or maybe Logan simply distrusted her because he was Ben’s friend. Either way, in Logan’s eyes, she was the enemy.

  “Now see, there you go, being lawyerly and twisting things again. He was just watching out for my back.”

  Maybe she was overly sensitive. Or maybe Ben only saw the good in people and hadn’t learned that people changed, that some people did things to lose the trust they may have earned in the past.

  They walked the remainder of the way in silence until they returned to the main yard, where she parked her car. She pressed the button on her remote to unlock the door and released Ben’s arm.

  “Thanks for...well, for this afternoon. It was much more...pleasant than I’d expected.” Pleasant? Her body still hummed with a little electrical tingle from his attentions. Now if she could only get her heart to slow down and her head to remember to keep a mental distance.

  “Yeah, you’d worked up quite a mad when you first showed up.”

  “You noticed? I thought you were too busy nuzzling the foal.”

  “Oh, I noticed you right away, darlin’. It would have been hard to miss you the way you charged around the barn with a full head of steam. But I also know better than to cuddle up with a woman who’s has proven she’s capable of removing a man’s ability to reproduce with one good knee strike.”

  Would they never let her forget the Billy Thompson incident? “Hey, I was sticking up for a friend.”

  He opened her car door. “And that’s what Logan was doing when he said I needed to be careful.”

  A friend who didn’t trust her not to deliberately sabotage a claim. “So why didn’t you listen to your lawyer?”

  “Logan may have a fancy law degree and work at a fancy office and drive a fancy car but he doesn’t know everything, especially when it comes to Allison Jane Daniels O’Keefe, does he?”

  “No, he doesn’t.” She ducked her chin at the flush of pleasure that went through her. He’d actually ignored his best friend’s—his lawyer’s—advice just for her.

  “You want to stay tonight?” He trapped her against the car, a mixture of heat and need in his eyes. “If you get up with me in the morning, you could still make it into your office by nine.”

  “What d’you have in mind, cowboy?” Oh damn, was she really considering staying the night?

  He twirled a strand of her hair around his index finger. “I’m hankerin’ to get you horizontal in a bed for once, darlin’.”

  She laughed at his accentuated drawl. “You’re right, it would be nice to have something soft beneath my back next time.” And the chance to have something hard—him—inside her again had her nodding. “All right. I’ll meet you over there.”

  “Key’s beneath the stone frog in the front garden. Let yourself in, make yourself comfortable and I’ll be there in about an hour.”

  “All right. But don’t be too long, or I’ll start without you.”

  His eyebrows lifted to his hatband. “I’ll be there in an hour—nah, make it thirty minutes. Tops.”

  Chapter Eight

  The thirty minutes he’d aimed for turned out to be two hours, even though he’d busted ass to get through the chores. Ben released the breath he’d been holding when he saw her waiting on the porch, wearing one of his old tees like a dress, and beneath the shirt a pair of his silk boxers some girlfriend or other had given him and actually expected him to wear.

  “Hey, you.” She uncurled from the chair she’d been sitting in. “I was about to start the party without you.”

  He let his gaze wander the length of her thighs, over her trim knees and calves and down to her bare feet, her nails painted in a shimmery gold. While he loved her fuck-me high heels, Allie’s bare feet were downright sexy.

  After her earlier flip-flopping about their relationship or whatever it was, he’d decided she was thinking too much. He’d also decided he needed to keep her concentrating so hard on something else she didn’t have time to think. Only thing he could think of to distract her was...well, sex. It always distracted him from his worries.

  A woman wanted romance, he figured, rather than the wham-bamming he’d given her the last two times. Tonight he’d take it slow, make it all about her. With a few twists just to keep her mind occupied on what he was doing. He reached behind his seat and pulled out a new hank of rope. He didn’t plan to use it but figured it would keep her mind working on what and when he’d tie her up while he slowly romanced her.

  “I thought I told you to be naked when I got home.”

  Her eyes widened. “You did not.”

  “Then I’m tellin’ you now.” With a casua
lness he didn’t feel, Ben ambled toward the porch. “You’d better not be wearing a stitch by the time I reach you.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll tie you up and spank you.”

  Her gaze darted to the rope he’d hooked over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Keep those clothes on and you’ll find out.”

  Sweet baby Jesus, he just about swallowed his tongue when she grasped the bottom of his tee and pulled it over her head, then shimmied out of the silk briefs and stepped out of the whole bundle.

  He damned near tripped over his own feet when she folded her arms beneath her breasts, the action pressing the luscious globes together. The plans to gently romance her tonight went up in a puff of smoke, replaced with a caveman-like need to get her on her hands and knees and mount her like a stallion. “Inside. Upstairs. On my bed. Now.”

  “Wow, you’re in full Me Tarzan, You Jane mode, aren’t you?”

  He opened the front door and pointed. “Inside. Upstairs. On my bed. Now.” He couldn’t help that his voice had lowered or that he sounded like he’d sucked a day’s worth of smoke. Right now words were the last thing he could formulate.

  “You’d better not be planning on sleeping ever again if I’m nearby, cowboy. Because you’ll wake up naked and hogtied. On your front lawn.” Lifting her chin, she strutted through the door and up the stairs.

  On the landing near the top of the stairs, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled archly at him standing at the bottom of the stairs, struggling to take off his boots. “I still think you’re bluffing about tying me up.”

  “I’m not bluffing.” He had been bluffing but now he couldn’t get the image out of his brain. Her, with her hands tied behind her back, kneeling in front of him, sucking on his dick. Or on her back with her hands and feet bound to the bedposts, leaving her spread open for whatever he wanted. What the hell had happened to slow and easy romancin’? “Last warning, darlin’. If you’re not on my bed when I reach the bedroom, I will tie you up.”