by Jess Bentley
He teases my clit with his tongue, over and over again. Driving me insane. I scratch at his shoulders, knowing I’m probably going to be leaving a mark, but not caring. Taking my hand, he finally takes my clit into his mouth. And then he slides one of his thick, callused fingers inside of me.
A quiet scream escapes me as the orgasm rolls through my entire body. I feel myself clenching around his finger. He continues to work me with his mouth, wringing every second of my orgasm out with relentless motions of his tongue. As the last of my shudders fade, he slides over me again. He kisses me again, this time hard, punishingly. I’m not the only one who’s lost control.
A protest escapes my lips when he moves away for a moment, standing on his knees on the bed. He covers my body again, then with a smooth motion, he slides his cock into my aching entrance. My body offers little resistance despite his size. He’s prepared me to take him.
Even so, he grunts with the effort to push the last inch of himself inside. And I can feel my need growing again.
“So fucking tight,” he says, words sounding more like a curse from his lip that a compliment. He slides back out just a couple of inches as if he is unwilling to leave my body entirely. And then he thrusts forward, taking me fully.
The overwhelming feeling of fullness almost pushes me over the edge again. Have I ever felt anything so wonderful in my life? I realize that the condom he pulled out has been forgotten. But we’ll be safe, won’t we? I try to do the mental math from my last period, but before long I can’t think as he starts to move inside me.
Painfully slowly, he begins to fuck me. Hips pulling and thrusting with an gentle force that makes me dig my nails into his ass and meet him thrust for thrust, urging him on.
“Fuck,” he groans beside my ear. He begins to move more quickly. Sliding in and out of me. Pushing my body closer to sweet release with every thrust. Greedily, I meet his every movement. He kisses me again, devouring me with the thrust of his tongue. Our bodies collide, moving as one. His hand slips between us and he flicks my clit.
The orgasm crashes into me, unexpected and almost violent. I cry out, and I hear him grunt in answer. His thrusts become erratic, and then he’s pushing into me, as fast and hard as he can, lost in his own pleasure even as I float in mine. With a low guttural sound, he stiffens, spilling, then still.
He rolls over and pulls me against him. I fall asleep with my head on his chest.
I wake to an empty bed. And for half a second I think it was a dream. Then reality comes crashing back.
“Crap,” I mutter, rolling over onto my side. Light floods the room, sneaking in from the edges of the curtains. Xander is gone.
My head cursing me for the couple of glasses of wine, I sit up. Trepidation makes my throat tight. I shuffle to the bathroom and peek inside. Empty.
It’s stupid, but I want to talk to him. Maybe to prove to myself that I didn’t actually just have the first one-night stand of my life. Maybe because I want just want to hear his sexy cowboy voice one more time. Maybe I just want to prove that he was real.
I take a quick shower to wake up. He was real, all right. My breasts ache—my whole body feels rough and raw and, amazingly, sated. Still wearing the hotel’s terrycloth robe, I call the front desk.
“Good morning, how can I help you, Ms. Long?” The front desk person sounds far too perky. My eyes slide to the alarm clock by the desk—half past ten. Holy cow. I have to get packed up in half an hour if I don’t want to miss my check out.
“Hello, can you please tell me which room Xander…” Crap, crap, crap. “Hall!” The word rushes out of me. Hall, I was pretty sure that’s what he’d said. I try to calm my voice, sound more professional. “Xander Hall, I mean. Can you tell me what room he’s in, please?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Long. We can’t give room information out on other guests.” Still freaking perky.
This is so not a conversation I want to have over the phone, but so be it. “I understand. Can you please transfer me to his line, then?”
“One moment, please.” Clicking noises come from the background as she searches for his room. “I’m sorry, but we don’t seem to have a Xander Hall staying with us.”
Dread swirls in my stomach. “Can you try Alexander, please?”
Her voice is kinder this time. “I’m sorry. But there’s no one registered by that name either.”
I glance at the sunshine streaming in. He’s probably checked out already. Dammit.
“Will there be anything else, Ms. Long?” Perky and professional is back.
“No, nothing else. Thank you.” I slam the phone down
No. I am not going to crucify myself for this. One-night stands happen—just not, normally, to me. The sex was amazing, unplanned, but world-shaking good.
No regrets.
Chapter 1
Jessa
Eight weeks later...
The room spins around me, and I hop out of my bed with a jolt of desperate energy. Two seconds later, I’m tossing my cookies into the toilet. My cell phone is going off, but have to ignore it for the moment.
“Gross,” I mutter. I drag my butt to the sink and rinse out my mouth. Muttering curses under my breath, I grab my purple toothbrush and clean my teeth angrily. I’m wishing I could assume this is a stomach bug, but I know exactly what’s wrong with me.
I’m pregnant.
Panic bubbles up inside my chest, and I swallow it down with some water. A baby isn’t in my life plan, not right now. I’m twenty-six years old and unmarried. I’m supposed to be focusing on my career for a few more years before I find the perfect man to marry and we settle down. Then we’ll have two kids, spaced exactly two years apart, and we’ll send them to the best schools in a nice suburb somewhere.
So much for the plan.
I eye the large room where I live. My small desk sits in one corner, books and papers piled on high on one side. It’s an antique roll-top. So pretty, and so uncomfortable for modern computing. But I don’t care, I love it. The desk sits opposite the tiny kitchen where the whole of my cooking skill amounts to reheating take-out in the microwave. My studio apartment outside of Boston has been my home for nearly six years—ever since I graduated college. It’s cute. It’s in a good neighborhood. And it’s small. Too small for a baby, and barely big enough for just me.
How am I going to do this all alone?
Panic makes me short of breath, and gripping the counter, I force myself to take in a few slow inhalations.
I almost ignore my phone and tromp right back to bed—both because of the morning sickness and because I’m just not up to facing all this quite yet. But there’s another rule of working freelance—you never ignore your phone.
I grab my cell from my nightstand and roll back into bed, still feeling a little nauseous and dizzy. My editor. Of course, it would be a call I can’t ignore.
“McCoin,” my editor barks, instead of ‘hello.’.
“Hey Argus, it’s Jessa,” I croak. “What’s up?”
“You sound like hell,” he says. That’s Argus. The man couldn’t figure out tact if his life depended on it.
“Always with the compliments, boss.” Argus is actually the best boss ever. He sends me lots of stories—good and bad. And he’s always felt more like a father figure to me than just another editor. I’ve only known him a few years, but for whatever reason, he’s felt fatherly since the day I met him. Even more so than my actual father, whose work as a salesman took him out of town for most of my childhood and young adult years. And whose fishing obsession keeps him out of town and even country for most of the year now. My father is, without a doubt, where I got my love of travel.
“You okay?”
“Nothing a lot of Pepto won’t cure, I’m sure,” I lie. There is no cure, and what’s more, there is no father in the picture, either. I have done everything I can to find Xander, short of breaking into the New York hotel and stealing their guest records for that night. But that’s the thing about sleeping with a str
anger. They’re tough to track down.
I manage not to let out the hysterical laugh bubbling up inside of me. Just barely.
He grunts in acknowledgment. “I have a new assignment for you if you’re up for it.”
“Of course.” Another rule of freelancing—you don’t turn down work from your best client. I pick up work from other magazines occasionally, but Argus is, hands down, my go-to editor.
“Have you heard anything about the Hollister brothers?”
I don’t even have to search my memory. “Wyoming ranchers. They’re leaders right now in sustainable ranching practices. They’ve been making a big media splash for trying some cutting-edge methods to make their ranch more environmentally friendly.”
“Exactly. I need you to go write us a feature on the Hollisters. Not just on their methods, but on the brothers themselves. There’s been some bits and pieces on them, but I want you to really dig in. The way they’re changing things out there is a story, but two billionaire ranchers really embracing environmental issues? Why? That’s your angle. Dig into the family and see what you find.”
“Do they know I’m coming?” I ask, dryly. It wouldn’t be the first time Argus sent me on interviews with people who had zero interest in talking to me—of course, those generally happened with people who liked to try to skirt environmental regulations. Not those actually trying to give the Earth more of a fighting chance.
“They know you’re coming,” he replies, his tone just as dry as my own.
A surge of nausea hits me, and I lay my head back on my pillow. Gotta keep it together. At least until I can get off the phone. “When?”
“I’ve got you on a flight this afternoon.” He hesitates. “If you’re up to it.”
“Of course. Feeling better already.” I try not to make lying a habit, but I am just swimming in untruths today. But I’m not ready to tell Angus what’s going on. I’m not ready to tell anyone just yet.
“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll text you the flight details. If you can’t—”
“Like I said, I’m fine.” The room spins, mocking my reply. But I am not about to turn down an interesting project—probably the most interesting I’ve had in a long time. Especially because I am about to be supporting two people.
Crap. I’m so not ready for this.
Argus has rented me a car because there’s no commercial airport within two hundred miles of the Hollister ranch. The tiny economy Hyundai purrs happily down the two lane country roads. Blue skies are dotted with wispy clouds and desert mountains push at the sky in the distance. It’s dark outside by the time my GPS leads me to my destination. And by dark, I mean dark. I’m a city girl and missing my streetlights.
Thank God for GPS.
I drive down the longest driveway I’ve ever seen—gravel, not paved. Fences line both sides of the road, but their design appears more decorative than like they are trying to keep animals in. Then again, what do I know about fencing? At the end of the road, between my headlights and the nearly full moon, I can see a large house and a couple of big barns. If there are other outbuildings, I can’t make them out in the dark.
I slow as I approach the buildings, there are several vehicles parked haphazardly around—all pickups—and I’m not exactly sure where I’m supposed to park.
A man steps out of the nearer barn and waves at me, nothing more than his tall frame is visible in the dark. Thank goodness for their exterior lights or I might have missed him. Relief rushes through me. I’ve been half worried that I hadn’t even found the right house. I never fully trust my GPS, especially outside of the city. If it’d led me to the entirely wrong part of the state, I wouldn’t have even been surprised.
The man points for me to park in a spot next to the barn closest to the house. Thankfully, for the sake of my tiny rental, the spot is far from all the giant trucks. The man himself is big too, but I can’t tell much more about him in the dark. Other than the fact that he’s wearing a cowboy hat.
Welcome to Wyoming, about as far from Boston as I could get.
I finish parking the car and turn off the ignition. I’m a little nervous, but I don’t know why. This isn’t my first interview—not even my first interview out in the sticks. Maybe it’s arriving at night. The kind of night you only get so far from a city that there isn’t even a distant glow.
I’m not even entirely sure Wyoming has any cities big enough to glow more than a few miles away. Daylight had still reigned when I left the city.
I shake off the nerves and unlatch my seatbelt, then I open the car door. “Hi there,” I call out to the man.
“Miss Long?” He takes a couple of steps and catches my car door before it can shut on top of me. “Glad you found the place okay.”
His voice sounds familiar, but I still can’t see his face between the dark around us in the wide brim of his hat. There are exterior lights around the place, large commercial ones. But none penetrate the shadows the cowboy hat creates.
“Thanks,” I say. “Me too!” I shrug off the familiarity. Where would I have met this cowboy? No doubt my tiredness and the rough start to my day are catching up with me.
“I’m Trey.” He holds out a hand, and I shake it, and a little zing runs up my arm.
“Jessa,” I reply. I need to get my head in the game. Zing or no, I’m not repeating the mistake I made in New York a couple of months ago. I haven’t even seen this guy’s face, no way could a voice, and a touch, make me interested like that. I’m just tired, and pregnant. Hormones must be my problem. I need to stay focused, professional. At least until I can collapse into their guest bedroom. A good night’s sleep is all I need. “Thanks so much for taking this interview.”
“Our pleasure.” He gestures toward the large farmhouse. “We’re headed this way. Do you have any bags?”
I grab the single suitcase I brought with me from the backseat of the car. I’ve worked as a journalist ever since I got out of college, and I have learned over the years that packing light is always the better choice. I’ll never miss anything I didn’t bring nearly as much as my shoulder will hurt for days after a trip where I pack every set of shoes I think I might need.
He reaches for the bag, and I’m faced with a choice. Try to wrestle this chivalrous cowboy for my bag, and probably set a bad tone for the whole trip, or just let him take it. I opt for the latter. This whole pregnancy thing is making me soft.
“How was your trip?” he asks, as he leads me toward the house.
That niggling of familiarity touches me again, but I dismiss it. I haven’t met a lot of all-out cowboys in my day, not real ones anyway. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have forgotten this one. “It was fine, but a little long. You guys are off the beaten path out here, but it’s beautiful country.”
And it is gorgeous. I hadn’t gotten to see much of the state before night had fallen and hidden it from my view, but what I’d seen had been breathtaking. My time here isn’t limited—Argus just wants the story ready for edits within a couple of weeks. Maybe I can take a day trip to see Yellowstone before I jump on another plane. How often am I going to get to Wyoming, after all?
“We like it out here,” he says, a smile in his voice.
I don’t ask if he misses being so far from good Chinese and a movie theater. “I’ll bet,” I say instead.
We reach the large deck that surrounds what looks to be the whole house—and the house itself is huge. My whole condo building could fit inside of it with room to spare. How many people live here? My research into the Hollisters had been cut short by the flight schedule—not to mention the fact that my morning sickness had taken up—literally—my whole morning.
A few more steps and we reach the front door. Chivalrous man that he seems to be, he opens the door for me and holds it. I know he’s only trying for politeness, but it means passing quite close to him.
I walk by him quickly, not wanting to pause so close to this large man that I barely know. But after I’m through the door, I stop to appreciate the décor.
>
If I’d had to pick a living room out of Country Living or similar as the consummate ranch house, I would’ve picked one just like this. The front door doesn’t open into some fancy foyer. Instead, it opens into a small open space with a large great room on the left, and a chef’s dream kitchen to the right. Huge windows in the great room face what promises to be a stunning view in the morning light. Woodwork is everwhere, with all the windows and trim created from some light, pretty timber. A large stairwell—the kind you could carry a loveseat up without taking care to face it any which way—stands between the kitchen and the living room.
A large loft above the great room really brings the country style to life, with sanded log spindles and banisters. Big rugs cover the hardwood floors, and there’s a hint of whatever they had for dinner in the air that makes my mouth water. I haven’t eaten since right before I got on the plane—not good.
Would it be rude to ask the Hollisters for dinner? Or, at least, a snack of some sort?
I turn to my host, and he greets me with a polite smile. “I’ll show you to your room. I know it isn’t a hotel, but you do get your own bathroom.”
That smile. That face.
My ears ring, and I sway on my feet. It’s him.
Everything goes black.
Chapter 2
Trey
Instinctively reacting, I catch the journalist in my arms before she can crash against the hardwood floor. What the fuck just happened?
I lift her into my arms and carry her toward one of the big sofas in the living room. She seems to be breathing fine, but I wonder if I should be yelling for Clay or Joshua to call an ambulance. Her soft skin touches my clavicle where my T-shirt has been pulled down by the way I’m carrying her. And she smells good. Damn good.
I shake myself mentally and lay her carefully on the couch. The fuck am I thinking? I have half a hard-on going from carrying an unconscious woman around. Abstaining from sex for years has apparently turned me back into a fucking teenager.