Rough Erotica

by Lexi Lovelost

  Immediately regret hit her again, and guilt. Her father had loved that ranch. He’d said the reason he hadn’t come to New York was because the city was too crowded and he preferred the vast open spaces and scenery of his ranch to it.

  Maybe…maybe a change of pace was exactly what she needed, and hadn’t there been plenty of artists who’d gone west to get a new perspective? Yes, there had been. She could go out there and try to paint a little. Maybe she’d get to know her father a little, and find a fresh inspiration. Maybe the sight of places so different from the city was bring that old passion she’d had for painting back again.

  Yes. She would go out, stay at the place for a little while and try to gain some fresh inspiration and learn about her father, all at once. The rent was due in a few days anyway, and the money she’d made from her paintings would barely cover it. If she could cover it she’d also have to sign a new lease, and that would mean renewing the rent at a higher rate.

  She definitely didn’t have enough money to pay the higher rent. She took a deep breath. This was a boon, and at just the right time but it was also a terrible thing. Her father was gone, and she had never known him. This—this opportunity was one she couldn’t pass up. There was some money, not a lot but enough she could support herself while she decided what it was that she wanted to do with the ranch and her life.

  It wouldn’t be hard to pack up the apartment. She’d gotten rid of so much after her mother, who had been a gleeful hoarder, had passed away. She preferred the barren look of the place now to the overstuffed rooms that she had lived in before her mother passed.

  A pang of fear shot through her. The apartment was the only place she could remember living in. She’d lived elsewhere, when she was very small she had lived in New Mexico with both her parents but her mother had moved east when Lori was only three, and they’d moved into that apartment and never moved again.

  She knew exactly what the window looked down upon and the people on her hallway. She knew which floorboards squeaked and how low the temperature would dip on the coldest winter nights and just how long the heat would take to kick on when those temperatures did drop.

  She was safe there.

  Safe.

  Yes.

  But she had no passion left either.

  She turned to look at the paintings. The woman she’d seen dancing in Bryant Park should have looked joyful and ecstatic but instead she looked flat and a little grim. She’d dishonored that woman. She’d let her own lack of passion and joy take away that woman’s. Her lack of passion did show, and fear, while a terrifying and strange emotion for her, was at least better than her usual blasé emotions.

  Her decision made she went to her laptop and flipped it open to search the airlines for as deeply a discounted ticket as she could find, and then she called her landlord and told him she would be leaving. Her heart pounded as she considered just how daring what she was doing really was.

  She was breaking out of her comfort zone. She was going to go and have an adventure on a ranch in New Mexico! And not only that, she was going to a small town not far from the artist’s mecca of Santa Fe! Santa Fe practically exuded passion!

  She took several long breaths and picked her phone up again to call Jonathon Booth and inform him that she’d be heading to New Mexico and that she would be staying for a little while.

  ***

  She arrived late and exhausted. Booth had informed her that her father had kept a full-time hand on the ranch and he would meet her but when she stepped out of the airport she didn’t see anyone except a devastatingly handsome man wearing a cowboy hat tipped back on his head and a pair of indecently tight jeans that showed off the lean length of his legs and the tight narrow hips that sat below his taut waist and the sheepskin jacket. She shivered and set her suitcases down to grab her own jacket, surprised by how chilly it was.

  Once warm she let her eyes drift over the deserted place again. The cowboy was tapping an impatient foot. She could see his face and she studied it. Thirty, maybe thirty-five. Her father had been in his forties when she’d been born and she was twenty now. He would not have had a man that age on the place, would he? Booth had said that the man who’d pick her up—Luke Morgan—was her father’s right hand so he had to be much older than that sexy cowboy lounging against the wall to her right.

  She swallowed hard and took out her phone. Booth had given her Luke’s number and she searched through her contacts until she found it.

  Just as she was about to tap the screen the cowboy approached her. He asked, “Excuse me, are there any other passengers?”

  Her finger went down on the screen in an involuntary reaction. His voice was warm honey poured over gravel, and the scent coming off him was leather mingled with a spicy cologne that made her knees feel weak. She blinked a few times. Talking to men who could have posed on a magazine cover—rugged hot—wasn’t exactly her forte.

  His phone lit up then jangled out a low musical tone. She said, “um, there were a few but I think they went…is that me calling you?”

  He whipped the phone off his hip and asked, “what’s your number?’

  She gave it to him. He turned the phone around to show her that it was indeed her number on the screen. “I guess so. You must be Lori.”

  She nodded, relief filling her. “You’re Luke? Luke Morgan?”

  He nodded and took the hat off. Thick blonde hair covered his finely-shaped head and her fingers itched with the need to touch it just to see if it was as coarse and thick as it looked. The light from inside the airport touched that hair and she had a sudden and unbidden desire to paint him…and sleep with him too.

  Her face heated as a very carnal image rose into her mind, them in bed and his head bent to her breasts and then lower. Her breath grew more rapid and she said, “I…I…I suppose we should head out.”

  “I suppose so. Is that your stuff?”

  “Yes. I was going to get a cart but it looked like a short hike from the baggage claim to the door so I didn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t think about loading it into your vehicle.”

  “No worries,” he reached down and hooked up two suitcases with one strong hand. She gawked at him and then remembered what she was doing. She grabbed the handle of the other suitcase and the smaller carry-on bag and followed him out toward the parking garage just beyond.

  Luke walked swiftly. The jeans clung to his ass and legs, and she gulped, hard, as she realized that she was thinking about how his cheeks would feel clutched in her hands.

  They came to a rather battered but nice SUV and he opened the back of it to deposit the suitcases inside. He said, “Let me get that door for you,” and then he moved past her. His body brushed against hers, just slightly. But enough that she felt a jolt run down her entire body and her nipples stiffened into tight peaks.

  His cologne wafted into her nose again along with that tantalizing smell of leather and something else she couldn’t identify.

  Her belly filled with butterflies that erupted into flight as he opened the door then helped her up into the tall vehicle. Lori was on the short side, just five-foot-three, and her skirt, while modest, climbed up the back of her legs as she climbed into the seat. She saw his eyes go to her legs and she blushed furiously.

  He walked around the front of the truck and she sighed. He probably liked thin reedy women with long blonde hair and bolt-on tits anyway. Dreaming about bedding him was foolish at best and silly at its worst. She turned her head and caught a glimpse of her pale face in the window.

  Dark brown hair that fell exactly to her jaw, a style she kept because it was easy to care for, and green eyes that were too large for her oval face, a slim straight nose and a full mouth that she often thought was her best feature, along with her slender and long neck.

  And a size fourteen body that had stubborn curves of hip, breast and thighs. A plush ass and a set of round arms. A body that didn’t fit into anything she could buy in the city and so was clad in ones she bought online. Luke probably dat
ed women who could wear a tube top for a dress, and who knew how to walk in stilettos and could wear lipstick without getting it all over her teeth. It never failed to annoy Lori that she could paint a perfect picture but couldn’t paint her own mouth a vibrant color and keep it there.

  The road twisted and climbed then dipped again. She didn’t want to seem like she was snobby or stuck up, but she also didn’t want to sound like a total fool so she kept silent a little longer then said, “I haven’t been here in…seventeen years.”

  “I know. Your father would have liked for you to come out but your mother was fairly adamant that you needed to be in New York for your art.”

  She blinked. “Mom talked to him?”

  Luke’s forehead creased. “Of course.”

  “She never said so. She always said he didn’t call or write.” She shifted in the seat and then she shook her head. “Parents, I guess. I was going to come out. I was always interested in Santa Fe, and its art scene but I was busy with a big show at a gallery in SoHo. I mean it’s rare for a painter my age to have a whole show.”

  How’d it go?”

  She turned her face away and stared back out the window, “Okay. I learned a lot anyway.”

  He didn’t say anything. The silence rapidly became uncomfortable. If he had been one of her friends she could have talked to him but he wasn’t. He was older, and she had no idea how much older than her he was.

  The low hills humped up and around them. She knew that, in the daylight, they would be ocher and dun, dotted with sage and rust and the striking golden light coming off the sun. Right now they were dark, and darker, just low hulking shapes.

  She burst out, “They said I don’t have any passion.”

  “You don’t.”

  She turned her face toward him. The moonlight came through the window, and stroked the outline of his strong profile. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You sent your paintings ahead, they’re good but they don’t have any guts.”

  She sputtered, “What do you know about art?”

  “What do you know about running a ranch?”

  “Nothing.” Her hands flew up and then back into her lap. “I’m not going to fire you if that is what you’re worried about.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” there was a grin on his mouth that was both wicked and amused and her heart thumped in her chest. “I’m just curious. You never seemed inclined to come out here before so why now?”

  “Is that any of your business?” Her voice was sharper than she intended it to be. “You worked for my dad, right?”

  He said, “Yes. In a way.”

  She blinked, “What does that mean?”

  “It means I have my own ranch, right next door. Your father’s ranch is just a few acres as you likely noticed on the asset sheet. Ten acres, small really. He had all of four horses and they are all broken down for the most part. He had a habit of rescuing horses most people would have put down. Other than that and the house there’s not much to do, but he was fairly ill over the last couple years so I helped him out.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” She was embarrassed again. “I thought…the way it was phrased it sounded like you lived in.”

  “I do. I did. I am building a house on my ranch. There was one there until a few months ago when I finally had it torn down, it was old and in serious disrepair when I bought the place a few years ago and it was just a matter of time really before it fell right down on my head. Your father let me stay on in exchange for handling the horses and so on.”

  She swallowed hard and said, “I’m so sorry. I sounded like a real asshole.”

  “No worries. I know what Booth wrote you. He’s a pompous ass, and so I don’t doubt you thought I was just an employee. If it makes you uncomfortable, my being there, I’m happy to head to a hotel or to camp out in the new house on my property.”

  “No,” she said hastily, “I don’t mind, not at all. I mean…I mean it’s…it would be nice to have someone around. I’ve lived in the city for so long being alone on all that space is a little daunting.”

  “Okay then.”

  She waited but he didn’t say anything else.

  ***

  The house was set back off the long highway, hidden behind a huge wall with a whimsical gate that had a thick blue door set into its center. Luke pulled the SUV around the wall to a detached garage and they got out. He carried her bags through yet another door and Lori stared as they headed up a long flagstone walk off-set by desert cactus and flower gardens. Grass lay to each side of the flower gardens and she was delighted to see it.

  It was too dark to see too much and she was exhausted since it was well past midnight, Santa Fe time, and she was still on Eastern Time. Luke led her through the house, not bothering to turn on the lights, showed her to a room, and excused himself.

  Lori took a quick look at the room then headed for the bed. She stripped off her clothes, rummaged in the suitcases next to the bed and tumbled into it, her eyes closing immediately as she dropped into a deep sleep.

  ***

  She had a chance to explore the house the next morning and she did after discovering that Luke was not in the house or on the grounds. She found the stables and she tried to pet the horses but they frightened her and she gave up and went back into the house.

  The house was a delight. It stood in a rolling series of hills, on a high point. From every window she could see a large greenbelt and glorious mountain views to the South, West and North. The great room featured beamed ceilings and a kiva fireplace and pine wood floors that shone with care and polish. The biggest surprise wasn’t the enormous bedrooms or the small souvenirs she found everywhere, it was the studio tucked between the house and the garage. She stood in it, gaping at the large windows that looked to the mountains, towering and snow-capped, and the easel, now empty. There were rows of paints and brushes and a stunning table set near one wall that held paper, canvas neatly rolled and paint scrapers as well as other necessities.

  “He built it for you.”

  She jumped and turned. Luke stood in the doorway, his hat tugged low over his eyes and his hands covered by heavy gloves. He smelled of wind and leather and warm animal flesh and she walked toward him, drawn like a moth to the flame.

  In the strong lemony sunlight the tiny lines around his eyes were more obvious, as were the ones bracketing his chiseled mouth. Her heart pounded and her panties became sticky and damp as he tugged the gloves off and leaned a narrow hip against the door frame, a casual and entirely sexy pose that was heightened by his looping a thumb around one belt loop. His index finger dangled near his crotch and her eyes dropped there to see a plump bulge that made her heart pound so fast she was positively dizzy.

  “I should have come sooner. I didn’t know he was in touch with my mother. She never told me and after she died, well I was in art school and…and I was just turned eighteen. It was a lot. I kept meaning to come out but there was no money and…” she sighed heavily.

  Luke changed the subject, “Have you seen the rest of the ranch?”

  She nodded, “I met the horses but I didn’t get much past that. I’ve never ridden.”

  Why had she said that? Her face colored again. Luke said, “Well, everything’s okay over at my place and I have some time. Would you like to ride?”

  “Oh. Um…” she looked down at her jeans and plain long sleeved sweater. “I don’t have those assless chaps things.”

  Luke howled laughter. She glared at him. When he quit laughing he said, “Of course they’re assless, otherwise they would be pants. But you don’t need chaps, assless or otherwise, to ride. Jeans are fine.”

  She paused. There was a dare in his eyes, and she knew it. She wanted to believe that the expression is his face when he looked at her was desire but she was too insecure about her weight to let herself really believe it. No, he was older and so good-looking. There was no way he was interested in her, he was just being nice to her.

  Still, it was nice to think he lik
ed her and with that thought came a little recklessness. She said, “Then I’d love to ride.” She put a little pout in her mouth as she spoke, her pulse racing at her daring. Would he know it was a sexual innuendo?

  His eyes raked over her entire body. When he looked back into her face his eyes were dark and hooded. Her heartbeat accelerated again. He said, “Me too.”

  She had no idea of what to say next. Dammit! Luke was not only so unlike the hipsters and wannabe authors she knew back in the city, he was older too. He didn’t give her any clues, and she wished she had much more experience than she did.

  Oh, she’d dated and she’d had sex, but it was mostly with her vibrator and her fantasies and the occasional fumbling encounter with one of those young and too-eager hipsters with their flannel shirts and designer beards. Nothing and nobody like this… and him.