by Harper Young
“Who do you call boy, boy?” Piotr asks gruffly, narrowing his eyes.
Tucker blanches, bending his face back down toward the fence. A tense moment passes, then Piotr breaks into a grin and prods at Tucker with a playful elbow.
Dane guffaws. The rest of us know better than to fall for Piotr’s games, but sometimes Tucker is a little too easy to mess with.
“So why did you bring that along?” Jameson asks, leaning his elbow on the new, firmly placed fence post and shielding his eyes from the overwhelming sun. “You don’t normally come out here packin’.”
I shrug, pretending to focus on carefully winding barbed wire over the sturdy wooden fence. “Most of you guys bring a gun. So does Daniel. Why is it a big deal?”
Dane purses his lips, and I don’t miss the quick look he exchanges with Jameson.
“What is it?” I frown, straightening and crossing my arms over my chest.
The sun is so bright and hot that it’s hard to see the faces of the other men. I can’t read their expressions, but I know they’re critical.
I swipe sweat from my brow, and I can feel the smudge of dirt my worn glove leaves on my forehead.
“We hear you almost got in a fight in town yesterday,” Piotr sighs. “Now you show up with this gun. It is cause for concern.”
My fingers brush over the sun-warmed metal of the gun grip. It’s a foreign feeling under my hand. Even though we live surrounded by beasts and these thieves, I’ve never been a fan of guns. I don’t even hunt for sport like most of the other men here do. It’s just never been my thing.
“I’m worried about safety,” I finally murmur, glancing around at the men who regard me quietly. “Ours. The animals. Those thieves are coming for us. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but I can feel it. We’re a target.”
For a second, I think the others are going to argue with me, but Tucker nods his head. “I think so too. Things feel different around here . . .” He trails off and shakes his head. “It’s silly to think we could go on forever not being hit.”
The others give a quiet rumble of agreement, and we return to work with dread churning in the backs of our minds.
I’d almost been hoping that the men would argue with me, that they would prove my worry wrong. The unease drifting around us, however, tells an entirely different tale.
We should be worried. Very worried.
I push myself hard as I can the rest of the afternoon. Maybe if I work myself to the bone, I’ll actually be able to sleep tonight instead of lying awake staring at the ceiling like I’ve been doing lately.
With the fence finished, we pack up our supplies and head back across the field. At the main house, a feminine figure leans against the doorway. My heart and dick throb in almost painful synchronicity.
Sloane’s illuminated from the back, thanks to the house’s light. It’s hard to see her features in the burgeoning dark, but as we get closer I see her arms are wrapped lazily in front of her. A slim strip of her stomach peeks out from beneath her cropped blouse, and it’s like everything in me is tightening up all at once.
Dane nudges me as he passes, winking and doing a bad job of suppressing a smirk. The other men greet Sloane and slip past her into the house. All the regular noises are going on in there: dishes clanking and Miranda talking a mile a minute about some new kind of pie she’s made us.
“Hey,” I say simply, running a hand through my sweat-damp hair.
“Hey,” Sloane replies quietly, sidling off the steps with the grace of an angel.
My angel. The thought springs to my mind before I can stop it, and though it’s corny, I can’t help but smile.
She stands in front of me, her face tipping back to greet me and the moon. The light scent of strawberries wafts off of her, and my mouth starts watering.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” she says softly, words almost drowned out by the crickets and the loud talking in the dining room.
I bite my lip, whole body going electric. Her words have zapped me like a defibrillator. Every syllable that’s left her tongue strikes me right in the heart. Everything she’s said has seemed to do that, even when she was nagging me for more sugar cubes for the horses.
She inches closer, her fingers blazing a trail over my cheek as a quiet moan parts my lips. I lean into her touch, grabbing her hand and turning my face to press my mouth against her palm.
I’ve been thinking about her too, every single damn second. I can’t seem to convince those words to come up my throat, however. It’s like they’re trapped inside of me, locked in a cage I never realized I’d built.
She’s leaving soon. There’s nothing I can do about that, and it weighs on me like a ton of bricks. Every second with this girl is so bittersweet it almost hurts.
Sloane’s other hand slides down my chest, over the ripples of my muscles until her warm fingertips graze my belt.
She steps forward so that her tiny, sexy body is pressed up against me, her arm wrapping around my hips as she leans up into her toes.
Greedily, I jerk downward, eager to taste her, but she gives a startled yelp and steps back.
“What is that?” she gasps, moving quick as lightning to inspect the holster at my side.
I’m too dazed, drunk off her body, to even realize what she’s looking at. I can barely manage a quiet, “What?”
“Is that . . . is that a gun?” Sloane asks, stepping back and staring at me in confusion. “Why?”
12
Sloane
The porch light pools on Cord’s dirty-blond hair as he blinks and shakes his head carelessly, like having a gun is the same as having an umbrella in case it rains.
He shrugs, too eager to toss aside the discussion and wrap his arms back around me.
“In case we come across those thieves.”
I push against him, stepping out of his embrace.
“You think you need a gun to protect yourself? What kind of thieves are these guys?” I whisper, voice strained and high pitched. “Do you think they’re dangerous?”
“Who knows?” he grumbles with another shrug, slowly crossing his arms over his sturdy chest. I can tell he’s getting irritated with my persistence. “But it’s standard to carry a gun on a cattle ranch. There are coyotes, wolves . . . sometimes thieves who are armed themselves. And it’s better safe than sorry, right?”
“Safe?” I cry. “How is this safe? Now I have to worry about you getting into a gun fight?”
“Sloane, it won’t come to that. Probably. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I just want to make sure—”
“Cord, I already worry so much about you. I worry that you’ll fall into one of the irrigation trenches when you’re alone. I worry you’ll get thrown off a horse. I worry that you’ll lose control of the herding cattle. Cord, I just lo—” With a gasp, I catch my tongue between my front teeth.
Did I really almost say what I’m not supposed to?
I nearly let loose the feelings that have been building since our first kiss.
My body is stiff, my hands clenching at my sides. I can tell both of our hearts are thundering in panicked time. Does he know what I almost said? I’m afraid to look at him and see fear or disgust or anything else on his face.
“You just what, Sloane?” he asks quietly, though I can hardly hear him.
I contemplate pretending I didn’t hear him at all, but then my eyes jerk to meet his. I can’t read what he’s thinking, even though the house’s light is right on him. His face is too flat.
Finally, I just give a shake of my head. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
He doesn’t react, his hands slowly sliding into his pockets and then out again, like he’s not sure what to do with them.
I hate myself for my near mistake. Those frightening, three little words are burning inside of me. I don’t need to be experienced in relationships to know you’re not supposed to say “I love you” to someone you’ve known not even two weeks
“Sloane,” he whispers abruptl
y, stepping forward, his voice gravely and deep.
Cord reaches for me, and I melt instinctively into him, my watery eyes shifting from his gaze to the curve of his delicious mouth.
Without a word, he grabs me by the hips and lifts me up off the ground like I weigh nothing. My legs tangle around his hips. My arms twine around his neck. My mouth crushes against his as I try to tell him how I feel without telling him.
He seems all too eager to use no words. He kisses me deeper, fingers digging into my rear end.
While the others gather around the dining room table and laugh and chat and eat, Cord carries me into the barn and up the hayloft where we are alone, and everything smells of earth and hay, and the stars peer in through the slats of the roof.
We still don’t speak except for guttural, hungry, desperate grunts and moans of pleasure as we shed our clothes and abandon them in a pile. He lays me down, gripping at my thighs and roughly pressing them apart.
A cry so raw that it startles me escapes my throat as his warm breath creeps down my inner thighs, and I feel his entire body shudder in response.
Cord buries his lips between my legs, breathing me in as I writhe and grind against his stubbled face. My fingers pull and knot in his hair. Only when my entire body is convulsing under the heavy strokes of his tongue does he finally crawl up my torso, his mouth still leading the way, tasting every inch of me.
Pausing at my breast, he suckles artfully at the tightened nipple as my legs wrap back around his waist.
“Cord,” I moan, back arching to close any minuscule distance between us. “I need you right now, Cord. I need you more than anything.”
I don’t know where the words are coming from. A month ago, I was afraid to look a guy too long in the eye. Tonight, though, everything is different. I’m a new person, someone who came to life under Cord’s gaze.
Luckily, Cord isn’t the kind of guy who refuses a lady’s request.
With a smirk, he wraps a strong arm around my waist, pressing me up against him as his other arm hooks under my leg and arches my back further. I moan as the head of his swollen cock presses just slightly against my opening. My head rolls back into the hay, and sharp stalks of it cut into my back and legs, contrasting Cord’s soft touches.
He leans down, capturing my mouth as our tongues slide against each other.
Then, finally, just when I can take it no longer, he buries himself inside of me with one long and clean stroke. The powerful thrust makes me cry out against his lips, and my wall’s muscles clench down so hard on his girth that I can hardly move. I’m glad our lips are tangled so roughly, because if they weren’t, everyone in the main house would have heard my scream.
We rock together, faster and harder and deeper, our fingers interlacing tight.
Cord pins my hands over my head as we move as one, our tongues and cries of pleasure twisting in a beautiful harmony.
When again I’m thrown headlong into the waves of pure pleasure, Cord pulls out of me and explodes, his head falling against my neck. We lay in a panting heap, our hands still clasped so tight that I’m unsure where I begin and where he ends.
As his breathing finally begins to slow down, Cord lifts his head, eyes locking on my own. Sweat runs down his temples, and his hair stands up in tufts where I pulled on it. He licks his lips, his chest slowly rising and falling.
Something burns on his lips, something that he wants to say . . . but it doesn’t come.
My heart plummets into the base of my stomach. Is he feeling what I am?
There’s no way to know for sure, and I can’t ask. Not now. Not this soon.
So instead I curl against Cord, sliding my hands back into his hair, breathing in his kiss one more time as the words glide back down his throat.
13
Cord
Sloane wraps her arms around my neck as we lean back against the side of the barn, hidden away from any nosy eyes—the exception being Crumpet, who watches us curiously from a tasty patch of grass.
“I’ve barely seen you in the last week,” she murmurs with a frown, her head tucking into the base of my neck.
I place a kiss against her hair, hoping the gesture relays how sorry I am about my absence.
As we embrace, we sway back and forth, my eyes reflexively returning to the fields sprawling out in front of us. I want so badly to give Sloane my undivided attention, but I’m being torn in two right now.
Over the last week, since that night in the hayloft, we’ve barely managed to get any time together. I spend all day out working on the fences and doing my chores and almost all night patrolling the perimeter of the ranch in search of anything out of the ordinary. I heard pebbles crunching the other night in the woods, and my guard is up doubly now.
I can’t sleep; I can barely eat; I don’t want to do anything but be on the lookout for the attack I know is coming. I can tell Daniel is concerned over how much time I spend patrolling. He suggested I’m “obsessed,” but it has to be done.
If anything were to happen to our cattle, I don’t know what I would do. I can’t afford to replace all the heads, and the thought of even one of them going missing fills me with boiling rage. The idea that someone thinks they could just stroll in and take what my grandfather worked so hard for drives me nearly insane.
I wish that Sloane would sleep in my cabin. If I knew I had her to crawl into bed with at the end of the night, these long days would be a hell of a lot more manageable. I mentioned it once, though, and she said something about not wanting to get caught “sneaking” in and out of my place—since we aren’t “official.”
Those were her exact words, and, man, did they hit right where it hurts.
How can I give Sloane the kind of relationship she wants when I barely have time to take a dang shower? Not to mention, she’ll be leaving soon anyway . . .
“Sloane, dear!” Miranda calls from somewhere near the house, her cheery voice drifting over on the wind. “Can you come help me set the table?”
Sloane groans into my shoulder, hugging me a little tighter, as though she thinks it’ll make her chores vanish.
“At least she didn’t ask you for help in the kitchen.” I grin, planting my lips against the soft warmth of her forehead.
She laughs and nods, leaning up on her tiptoes to press her lips against my own. I spin her around, pinning her against the wall of the barn and deepening the kiss. She sighs against my lips, holding my face in her gentle hands and arching her body against my own.
Damn, we’re perfect together.
Our lips, our hands, the curves and lines of our bodies . . . I’ve been with a few girls in my time, but it was never like this. Sloane and I just fit. It’s like we were made for each other. There’s no other way to explain it.
I shiver, not wanting to release her, and she’s all too willing to put off setting the table a little longer.
We break apart only to gasp for breath, and she brushes a finger across her swollen lips, her eyes glinting with sly joy.
“I’ll see you later.” She winks, sliding free of my arms as she saunters back around the corner of the barn and toward the main house.
I stare at the empty air, still seeing those swinging hips in my mind’s eye.
With a sigh, I pace back toward my cabin, thinking I can squeeze in a shower before dinner. The day’s last golden rays creep over the horizon as I walk. It’s a beautiful sunset, just as breathtaking and unique as all the rest of them.
I step inside my cabin, closing the door after myself and casting a slow look around the roomy space.
It’s small, sure, but with enough room for two, perhaps . . .
I flinch at the abrupt thought, easing down onto my bed and stripping my shirt off my sore shoulders. Gently, I massage the aching muscles in my upper back, then stretch my arms up over my head.
I can’t ask Sloane to move in with me.
Despite the time we’ve spent together, which has been minimal in the last week, we still aren’t anything offici
al. I’m not even sure that I would be able to give her the attention she deserves if we did become something.
I’m constantly busy at the ranch, mysterious cattle thieves or not.
I don’t have time to date, do I?
I mean, I still haven’t even found time to take Sloane out for one damn dinner.
That’s something that I want badly, that I even dream about, as silly as it sounds. I want to hold her hand as we stroll through town, her face smiling and her beautiful blond locks curling around her shoulders. I want to put on my best long-sleeve shirt and the only pair of jeans I have that aren’t patched and threadbare, and I want to take that beautiful, feisty woman on my arm and show her off to the world.
The limited time we’ve found with one another has been mostly spent naked, which, while I don’t have a single complaint about that, isn’t the only way I want her. I don’t want Sloane to think that I’m only looking for a summer fling.
I want more of Sloane. I want all of Sloane, from her heart to her lips to her soul.
Shaking my head, I stand up, strip, and hop in the shower. Once I’m nice and clean, I dress in a light tee and fresh jeans, grab a beer from the fridge, and head out to the front porch. I can be a few minutes late to dinner. Miranda always makes more than enough food, and if I roll in on the later end, it’ll be less crowded.
Maybe if I’m lucky, once we’ve eaten, Sloane will walk back down here with me and stay for a while.
I settle down on the porch steps, letting my arms rest on my knees as I gaze up at the first stars of the night. It’s the last few minutes before total darkness, and the moon is stealing the show. It’s a sliver tonight, hanging suspended among the glittering stars that remind me of Sloane’s shimmery eyes.
Is it selfish of me to want her to stay? I’ve asked her about her plans for the future a couple times, and she’s always shrugged the question off, saying she doesn’t know what she wants to do.
She’s dang smart. She could be or go anywhere she wants.