Breaking the Cowboy's Rules (Wildhorse Ranch Brothers Book 1)

by Leslie North

  Trevor could feel her heated cheeks through the fabric of his shirt. He was so stunned with Sabrina's story that it was several moments before he realized they had stopped dancing. He resumed with the next beat, and she followed his lead, moving with less self-assurance than she had before.

  "It's not silly," he promised her. "Sometimes the people we love and the important memories tied to them imprint themselves on things. Hell, I polish my father's old rodeo saddle every morning, even though I never intend for anyone to ever use it again. It's the first thing I do when I get up, and the last thing I look at before I shut the lights off in the barn."

  "I had no idea," Sabrina whispered. She looked up at him again, and this time Trevor stopped dancing deliberately. He smoothed a strand of hair back from her face and fought the inclination to lean in. He still didn't know how far she wanted to take this thing with him.

  "You want to get out of here?" he asked in a throaty whisper.

  Sabrina nodded. Then: "What about the horses? Don't they still need to be trailered and taken home?"

  "Pete will see to it," he said. "We drew straws earlier to see who'd be in charge of the trailer."

  "Very diplomatic of you, Mr. Wild," Sabrina said approvingly.

  Trevor offered her his arm, and she looped her hand through it. They walked out of The Tin Horseshoe together, never pausing to look back.

  8

  Sabrina

  "Want me to turn the radio up?" Trevor asked her.

  Sabrina nodded too quickly. "Oh…sure! I love this song!"

  She grimaced in the darkness of the pickup's cab. Trevor only chuckled and reached forward to oblige her.

  "It's the song we were just dancing to," he said in amusement. "'When the Stars Go Blue.'"

  Why is this so awkward? Sabrina mentally berated herself. She glanced out the window but found that, for the first time ever, it was nearly impossible to pay attention to the fading sunset and vast Texas mountains. Not with Trevor sitting beside her. Why are you so awkward? Where's the confident flirt from the rodeo earlier today? Where's the Sabrina who knows exactly how to drive Trevor Wild crazy?

  It was one thing to flirt, she realized. It was a whole other thing to know how and when to pull the trigger on these feelings both of them were fighting and failing to suppress.

  What would be so wrong about giving over to her attraction, anyway? She could practically hear her manager, Stacy, on the phone now: Sabrina, the way you have conducted yourself in this instance is utterly unprofessional and will forever be whispered of around the office as 'the Wildhorse Incident.' Your picture and resume will be framed in the hallway as an example of how not to conduct yourself with a client, ever. You're fired, and also, I never liked you in the first place.

  Okay, so maybe she knew for a fact that Stacy liked her and that no catastrophe on that massive a scale was bound to happen if she succumbed. Still, there was something stopping her from reaching out and taking that chance with Trevor.

  And with the cowboy now sitting in silence beside her, she wasn't sure he was ready to take the risk, either. Trevor was methodical; he was set in his ways. He had already changed so much of his life just to allow her to jam her foot through the door. Was it fair to expect anything more from him? Was it possible—really possible—that the strength of her attraction to him could be reciprocated?

  "Where are we?" Sabrina asked suddenly. They were driving up an unfamiliar hill that overlooked Wildhorse Ranch. She rolled her window down and poked her head out in wonder. The sun was down now, and the stars…the stars were incredible, scattered white gemstones across the navy blue night sky. It was all she could do to keep herself from gasping audibly at the sight overhead.

  "Come on." Trevor put the truck in park and got out of the car. Sabrina followed suit and joined him around back. He unlatched and opened up the bed, before holding his hand out to her to help her step up.

  "You keep a bedroll back here?" she asked suspiciously. The truck bed rocked as Trevor pulled himself up after her.

  "Sure. I keep most of my camping stuff back here." He untied and unfurled the bedroll. It was incredible to Sabrina that such a simple gesture could make her feel more like royalty than she ever had before in her life. She moved onto the mat and laid back. Trevor aligned himself beside her.

  "So you're telling me you bring girls out here all the time," she teased.

  "Never brought a soul out here with me," Trevor promised. He turned his head toward her. "But after your story about that star, and how much it means to you, I thought I'd like to give you a star to hold onto as well. You can choose whichever one you want." He pointed up toward the night sky. Without the light pollution of the city, Sabrina could clearly see the brilliant, beautiful smear of the Milky Way.

  There was nothing she could say in response to Trevor's gesture. Nothing she could do, except turn into him and press her lips against his.

  He held himself still beside her. When she deepened the kiss, and even made to slide up against his chest, he took hold of her shoulders and pushed her onto her back. The rich taste of the beer he had been drinking lingered on his tongue, but Trevor wasn't anywhere close to being drunk—he would have never agreed to drive her home if he wasn't in his right mind.

  They had expended all their words for the evening. Every argument, every clever quip and talking point, faded from existence as Trevor Wild took her in his arms and kissed her until the stars spun overhead. His hand slid up her stomach to grip her breast, and Sabrina aided him by stripping her shirt off and throwing it into the far corner of the truck.

  A gust of cold night air, combined with Trevor's forceful fingers, coaxed her nipples to tautness. Sabrina let her head fall back. She tried to even out her breathing, but her efforts proved fruitless the moment Trevor lowered his mouth to take her other breast into the warmth of his mouth.

  "Ah!" Sabrina gasped and strained against him, but there was no resistance to be mounted against such a wonderful sensation. His tongue traced the tight flesh; his teeth teasing her. She thought she would go mad, so riled and so unfulfilled. Her hands found the front of his jeans and jerked them open. He groaned a light "careful" below his breath, but never ceased in his attentions.

  Before she could get his pants down and take the erection she could see straining against his boxers into her hands, Trevor drew back from her. Sabrina made a throaty noise of dismay, but he had only withdrawn to help her wriggle out of her jeans. Despite what he might have thought about their restrictiveness, they slid off her easily now, exposing her hot pink thong. She heard him groan again as he fell upon her. Trevor likes thongs, she realized with a wicked smile. It was certainly an observation she intended to file away for later, but soon enough he was groping and kissing and thrusting himself against her fit to make her senseless.

  "The back pocket of my jeans," she gasped. She turned her eyes from him only for a moment to hunt the shadows of the truck, but she couldn't see where all her discarded clothes had gone. "I have—"

  "I've got us covered," Trevor groaned into the hollow of her throat. "My wallet."

  A new sensation came over her as she slid a hand into his back pocket and located the square of old, worn leather. His quiet reassurance deepened the flush, the warmth, of the arousal that spread through her.

  I've got us covered.

  Sabrina drew his wallet out and extracted the condom. "I've got you covered," she whispered. She made eye contact as she tore the plastic packaging open with her teeth; Trevor groaned. She worked the condom down over his erection slowly, relishing the easy way her hands slid over the latex. The additional lubrication it provided was heavenly—she could only imagine how it felt for Trevor.

  Apparently, the teasing stroke of her hands proved increasingly unbearable. As much as he might have approved of her choice in underwear, it was off in the next instant, and Trevor flung it into the corner of the truck bed. He shucked his own even faster.

  When he eased himself into her slick, tight
passage for the first time, Sabrina arched herself off the bedroll and whimpered. Trevor was massive but it wasn't enough—it wasn't nearly enough. Only when he started to rock against her did she get a fleeting glimpse of how she might be satisfied. She was desperate—desperate for pressure, desperate for friction, desperate for Trevor to lose himself in her the same way she was losing herself in him.

  "Trevor…yes…" she begged him in whispers. "I've wanted this for so long. Please." She didn't even care if she was making sense. Her body spoke to him louder than her words, and Trevor knew exactly what she wanted. He increased his pace, thrusting and lunging into her. Sabrina bucked and cried beneath him, and he slipped his arms beneath the bend in her back to clutch her to him.

  "Sabrina." The way he groaned her name made her shudder. She cupped his face in her hands, relishing how the tension in his jaw matched the clenched, unbearable tension of her body. Every hitch in his hip movements against her own, every new take on the rhythm they made together, heated the coil of pleasure inside her. Every deep, penetrative plunge of his rigid length threatened to overwhelm her anew with its girth; she could scarcely believe there was room enough inside her.

  It was a ride she certainly had no intention of being rescued from.

  "Trevor," she murmured again. There was something more lingering on the tip of her tongue than just the too-fleeting taste of him. His kisses were an addiction she couldn't satisfy no matter how much she tilted her chin and begged breathlessly for them. His tongue seemed to harden in tandem with every thrust of his cock, until she had trouble keeping track of where and when he invaded her. He filled her utterly—mind, body, and soul. If only she could find the words to convey to him just how much she needed him.

  The heat of his chest and the delicious sensation of being overfull with him made her peak too soon. Sabrina tried desperately to resist the pressure building inside her, but there was no hope for it—and if there ever had been, Trevor's uttered oath would have put her over anyway.

  "Oh, fuck."

  Her hips collided with his rough downward thrust as his body jerked against hers. She opened her mouth to cry out, and Trevor took her cry into him in a single, earth-shattering kiss.

  Sabrina collapsed into his arms, and Trevor pulled his work coat over them to keep the cold off. Sabrina snuggled close to his chest, and felt herself starting to drowse as his thundering heartbeat slowed and lulled her into complete complacency. The stars winked overhead, a silent, approving party to their union.

  "We'd better get back," Trevor said eventually. Sabrina turned in his arms, smiled dreamily, and nodded. The night around them was chilly, but she didn't intend to be out of his embrace for long.

  But the road to the overlook wasn't the only unexpected turn Trevor took that night. Sabrina paused in unclipping her seatbelt when she realized that they hadn't gone back to her bunkhouse, or even to the main house. Trevor pulled up to the barn and killed the engine.

  Then—without any trace of irony or hint that he was pulling her leg—he pulled one of his checklists out of his back pocket.

  "I've got a few things to take care of," he muttered. "And as soon as the horses get back, I'm going to wrap Tex's legs and make sure he's plenty hydrated after that run."

  "Oh…right." Sabrina sat back in her seat and stared incredulously out the window. What could she say to that? She wasn't hard-hearted enough to suggest that Trevor should forget his horses for the evening and focus solely on her. Still…she had hoped that…

  "Okay. Just promise me you'll get to bed at a reasonable hour, all right? Goodnight." She turned quickly away from him so he wouldn't be able to see the expression on her face.

  "Sabrina—" he began.

  But she had already let herself down out of the truck. She shut the door behind her and flipped him a wave, grinning from ear to ear. She then turned and started across the lawn for the bunkhouse.

  Alone.

  9

  Trevor

  "You're mad at me," Trevor stated. "You can go ahead and admit it."

  He had roped Sabrina into helping him clear out the attic of the farmhouse. He had been so busy enjoying the view of her doubled over and crawling between boxes, her tight posterior clad in those ridiculous jeans, that he almost hadn't noticed the other, more dangerous current in the air.

  "I'm not mad," she stated. Her perfect teeth clipped together audibly at the end of her assertion.

  "Uh-huh." Trevor kept his eyes on her. He didn't believe a word of it.

  "It's just that…" she continued in exasperation. He sat back and drew his knee up to his chest as he waited for the truth to come pouring out of her, and Sabrina didn't disappoint. She turned and exhaled enormously. "It's just that I didn't want the other night to end the way it did. It was so perfect—maybe the most perfect day I've ever had in my life—and then you…then…"

  Her comments surprised the hell out of him. Trevor wanted to protest, but he still had no idea why she was angry with him. All he could do was wait for her to get the words out.

  Sabrina slapped her knees and scooted closer to him. "Seriously, Trevor?" she demanded. "You have no idea why I might be a little pissed off right now? I wanted to grab another beer with you. I wanted to invite you back to my cabin and spend the night with you, and you just…you just…."

  "Got called away to work." He hadn't thought of it from Sabrina's perspective. He had thought about going back to her bunkhouse with her, sure, but when the invitation hadn't come, he had shrugged it off as her not wanting anyone on the staff to see him leaving in the morning or—as had happened before—her wanting some space after the most recent shift in their relationship.

  Sabrina sighed so roughly it was a growl. "You didn't have to work right there and then, Trevor."

  Trevor's brows together. He didn't like feeling stupid. Marcy had accused him of being a lug more than once, but he had never been able to read the women in his life as well as he read horses.

  "I didn't realize," he admitted finally. "I thought…I thought you needed more space to think about things. About us."

  Sabrina fiddled with her earring and stared at the dusty wood floor beneath them. Finally, she pointed to something behind him. "I'll forgive you," she said, "if you give me that bowl. That one. There."

  Trevor craned around to look. He had just been building a pile of items to discard. At the top of the pile was an old copper bowl that had belonged to his grandmother.

  "What do you want that for?" he asked her. No matter how he tried to imagine a use for it, he just couldn't.

  Sabrina moved in close beside him and pulled the bowl into her lap. "I'm going to use it to make something beautiful," she promised.

  He watched the way she lovingly stroked the bowl in her hand. His grandmother, he decided in that moment, would have loved Sabrina.

  "Trust me," she persisted. "This is going to be put to good use. But I'd like it to be a surprise, if that's okay."

  Trevor's mouth twitched itself into a smile. "Normally I don't like surprises," he reminded her. Sabrina just leaned in and pressed a swift kiss to his cheek. She pulled back with a satisfied giggle—one that soon resolved itself into surprised, full-throated laughter as Trevor pushed the bowl out of her lap and pinned her to the floor beneath him.

  "What, right here?" she gasped as he ravished her neck. "Mr. Wild, I didn't think you liked surprises!"

  "I know what I like," he reassured. "I also know where and when I like it."

  "Mmm," Sabrina hummed in approval as he began to unbutton the front of her blouse. "Are you sure? You might not be able to strike 'clean attic' off your checklist for the day."

  "Screw the checklist," Trevor growled.

  "Now that is certainly a surprise!" Sabrina laughed with delight as he lowered himself to her once more. Having her here with him, beneath him, made it remarkably easy to savor the snatched unexpectedness of the moment—and to forget about his work obligations. There were chores that needed to be seen to, certainly,
but they would still be waiting for him when he caught hold of himself again.

  Right now, it was Sabrina that had captivated him. He paused, lips hovering above her skin, with only room left between them to breathe. He took his time slowly inhaling the familiar floral scent of her hair; when he pressed his mouth to the tender spot just below her ear, he tasted the clean comfort of her. He lost himself in listening to the faint, ecstatic throb of her pulse, before the sound of his own heart beating in his ears overwhelmed it.

  He spoke before he realized his brain had given his mouth orders to do so.

  "Sabrina, this thing between us…."

  She stilled beneath him, but it wasn't resistance. He drew back to look at her. Her blonde hair fanned out around her pale, beautiful face like fire wreaths the sun. The flush in her cheeks brought out every freckle. Her eyes had freckles, too, he realized, flecks and flares of emerald green, lost but not beyond discovery in the blues of her irises.

  "We don't have to put a name to it," she breathed. "Not if you don't want to."

  Something in her face told him otherwise. She looked so vulnerable laid beneath him…yet the softness of her face was less pronounced all of a sudden. There was more steel there than he remembered. Was she guarding herself—protecting herself—from the noncommittal answer she claimed to have no stake in?

  He couldn't guess what answer was the right one; all he could do was give her the true one.

  "I think I'm falling in love with you, Sabrina Hearthstone."

  In all his past relationships, he had never been the first to say it—now, he wasn't sure he had ever really meant it, or known what it was he was confessing. Not like this.

  Sabrina's eyelashes fluttered, like butterflies taken by a surprise gust of wind. "I think I'm falling for you too, Trevor Wild," she whispered. She raised herself up on one elbow, cupped his face, and pressed her lips to his. The lightness of the touch, combined with their words, made his heart stutter to an almost-stop in his chest.