by Elise Faber
She went stiff, and I thought for sure she wouldn’t answer.
Then, as Olivia was wont to do, she surprised me.
“I grew up in a saddle.”
I know my eyes were wide when I glanced up at her, but because they were, I didn’t miss the smirk curving her lips. “This girly girl surprised you?”
“You’re full of surprises, honey.”
That made the curve disappear, but because her expression softened, I didn’t worry when her words snapped through the air between us. “Damn right, McTavish.”
“I didn’t learn until I was an adult,” I said.
Her brows drew down. “But you’ve had horses for as long as I’ve known you.”
I shrugged. “Most professional athletes buy a car or a house with their first big paycheck. I bought a horse.”
She snorted.
“Hey,” I said, knowing she was teasing. “She was both a companion and transportation.”
More curving of her mouth, but this time it was a grin. “I can just see you riding up to the rink, your hockey stick slung over your back.”
“Luckily, I had good equipment managers.”
She laughed. “And a stable, I’m guessing.”
I nodded. “That, and a really shitty car for a couple of years to pay for that and a condo.”
“I’m guessing the horse and her care was more expensive than the apartment.”
“Maybe.”
She laughed again, and the tinkling sound slid down my spine. I watched it have the same effect on Bucky as well, my horse absorbing the cheerful noise, his flanks tensing then relaxing as a chuff slid out his nostrils.
Buck liked her.
Never let it be said my horse didn’t have good taste.
Absently, Olivia ran a hand along Buck’s neck, the bright red of her fingernails in sharp contrast to the fawn-colored hair.
And now I was jealous of my pet.
“So, why’d you buy a horse?”
I guided Bucky around a tree and down a slight incline. “I got Bessie because she was a retired racehorse.”
“Must not have been much of one.” I glanced up at her and raised a brow. “Bessie isn’t exactly a name for a famous racehorse.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, her official name was Bessahima Prometheus Augustina the Second.”
“There was a first?”
I chuckled. “Apparently. So, for obvious reasons, I called her Bessie.”
“Where did you keep her?”
“A ranch outside of L.A.”—I’d played my first few seasons for the Kings—“She was happy for quite a few years before I had to put her down.”
Hardest thing I’d ever done to date, holding the blanket over Bessie’s eyes as the vet had sedated then euthanized her. But she’d barely been able to walk at that point, her joints so painful that I’d known I couldn’t selfishly keep her with me any longer.
A hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
Just two words, but I knew she got it, knew she’d been through something similar, but before I could ask, she volunteered the information. And I knew that I’d made the right decision in the dark hours of that morning, knew that I was in this, knew I wouldn’t give up on Olivia.
“My horse was Butterfly.” A flash of white. “I guess we like the B names.”
“Not gonna touch that with a ten-foot pole.”
“What—? Oh.” Her eyes narrowed, and she smacked me lightly. “Not that B name, though we both know I think bitch isn’t an insult.”
“I—”
“Shush, you. I’m trying to tell you about Butterfly.” She patted Bucky’s neck again. “He was about Bucky’s color—”
“He?”
“Yes, he,” she said. “There are male butterflies, you know. And also, I got him when I was six. My world was butterflies and unicorns and—” She broke off, smile fading. “Anyway, I was every girly stereotype reduced down into a tiny thirty-something-pound six-year-old explosion of pink and purple and sparkles. And I wanted nothing more in the world than a unicorn.”
I chuckled.
“Yeah,” she said. “Exactly. But the next best thing aside from mythical creatures was a horse.”
When she was quiet for a minute or two, I asked, “Then came Butterfly?”
Her eyes had been on the ocean in the distance. “Yeah. My dad bought him for me. I loved him, soaked up every bit of information he gave me for his care, loved brushing his tail—he even let me braid ribbons into it.” She turned and smiled, but I knew the sad was coming, could see it edging into her expression. “Then we had to sell him.”
My heart squeezed. “Oliv—”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal. I mean, it was a big deal. I was only eight and I’d had him for two years, which felt like my entire life, but it wasn’t like my dad had a choice. It was either he went, or we didn’t eat.”
I sucked in a breath.
“It was rough, no lie, but it was also just a lesson in how life is sometimes.” Another shrug. “Things get tough. We sacrifice.”
“I don’t think any eight-year-old should have to learn that particular life lesson.”
Her hand went to my shoulder again, squeezed lightly. “That’s why you’re a good person, Cole.”
There she went again, calling me good when I could tell by her tone that she equated my being good with her being not good, as though I was simply a better person, no matter the circumstances of our upbringings or the decisions we’d both made in our lives.
It was total bullshit.
But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to convince her differently in that moment.
I was going to have to show her, and that was going to take time.
I didn’t know how a woman who burned so brightly in life, who was so smart and beautiful and funny, who managed to give the impression of living fully and totally out there could have pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes—including mine—for so long. I’d seen the distance there, of course, but I’d internalized it as me because . . .
Why?
Oh.
Because she’d wielded that distance with charm and a sharp wit.
Calling me on my shit while pretending to be self-deprecating, all so she could prove to the world she could handle dishing it out and taking it.
But it wasn’t self-deprecating so much as self-loathing.
And that worried me.
Still, we were in the middle of nowhere, walking along a trail that was skirting the ocean. The sun was shining bright, the salty tang of the sea breeze coating the air.
We’d had enough heavy.
I hoped I could prove to Olivia that what she was inside was just as good as her outside, but I also knew that ultimately, it had to come from her.
So, I tucked away the heavy, pushed down the sad memories, and I asked her about movies.
Which got us into a debate about which Die Hard was the best—the first obviously, though for some crazy reason, she thought the third—but it also got her smiling and joking and laughing.
And for that moment, it was enough.
Nine
Olivia
My car was dead.
Dead enough that Cole couldn’t make it work, and he seemed to know what he was doing, banging around under the hood.
Heh.
I’d like him to bang around under my hood.
Which was most of the problem.
Of course, I was semi-delirious, rubbed raw from the inside out. Part of it was sleeping in the tent, riding on top of the horse, being out in nature. The rest was all Cole and the way he’d held me, as though I were fragile and valuable, the way he’d talked to me, kind and encouraging, the way he looked at me, intense but gentle.
Bucky grazed nearby. We’d put him in the small pasture next to the rundown barn, its fence intact enough that he wouldn’t wander off without us.
Not that it was a big worry.
He was a good horse.
My car, on t
he other hand, wasn’t good.
It was a temperamental pain in the ass.
Cole poked his head out from around the hood and sighed before walking over and leaning back against the car next to me. I’d sprawled there, enjoying the warm metal against my spine and trying to pretend that my thighs being sore after riding Bucky for a little over an hour wasn’t a comfort. That wasn’t an oxymoron, wasn’t it?
The slight twinge of my thigh muscles shouldn’t be a good thing.
But it was.
The rustling of Bucky’s mane, the clip-clop of his hooves on the ground, his chuffs and snorts shouldn’t be sounds that I found comforting.
But they were.
And so I was stuck firmly in the past when Cole leaned next to me and said, “I don’t know anything about cars.”
My spine went straight. “What?”
He gave me a sheepish grin. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing under there.”
That had better be a reference to my car and not messing around under my hood. I had high hopes that he knew what he was doing under there and—
Focus.
And not on how cute he looked smiling down at me, all hangdog.
“What were you doing then?”
He shrugged. “Banging around on a few things, pretending I knew what I was looking for.”
I shook my head, surprised that he would admit to not knowing something when most of the men I’d known would die a slow, agonizing death before doing so. “You didn’t break anything, did you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Think?” I raised a brow.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t. Mostly, I was checking to make sure the battery cables were attached and looked okay.”
My other brow lifted. “Seriously?”
“It’s the only trick I know.”
I sighed. “Okay. So now what?”
“We’ll ride to the ranch,” he said. “Need anything from the car before we go?”
“What could I possibly need?” I asked.
Pink crept onto the corners of his cheeks. “You’re Ms. Prepared. Don’t you carry a change of clothes or something? Extra shoes?”
That I couldn’t deny. I did carry emergency supplies, but since those spare shoes were actually heels and the spare clothes in my trunk were another pair of slacks and a silk blouse, they wouldn’t exactly be the best option for extended time on horseback. The underwear and bra would be however, so I used my key to manually unlock the trunk.
Turned out a key fob meeting saltwater had fared about as well as the cell phone.
“It feels weird to be without my cell for so long,” I muttered, scrounging through the bag and trying to pocket the bra and underwear surreptitiously.
“Disconnecting is a good thing,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “So says the retired old man.”
He snorted. “I believe we’re only a couple of months apart, and since I’m thirty-two, that means you’re . . .”
“I stopped aging at twenty-nine, actually,” I said, zipping up the bag and closing the trunk. “It’s a fact of nature. Women just stop getting older at twenty-nine.”
Lips twitching, he murmured, “Funny that.”
“Yup. So funny.” I began to limp my way back over to Bucky, trying to hide my discomfort with every step. It wasn’t the most painful injury I’d ever had—that had occurred at the age of thirteen when I’d slipped down a leafy hillside and toppled into a ravine. I still remembered the way the rocks had felt as they’d cut into the skin of my back, tearing through my shirt, and how bruised and battered I’d been the next day from the fall.
This was nothing like that.
This was a sore foot and a stiff back from sleeping on the ground.
I was totally fine—
“Ack!”
Not a graceful sound, but also the way that Cole scooped me up and tossed me over his shoulder was nothing approximating graceful. It was surprising. It stole all the air from my lungs, and it—
Well, hey now, I had a very nice view of his ass.
Hockey players had the best asses.
Round and firm and totally cup-able.
“Stop looking at my butt, sweetheart,” he said, clamping his hand over the back of my knees to stop me from squirming free.
“First,” I said, unabashedly watching that butt move as he strode through the dry grass toward Bucky, “I physically cannot not look at your ass because it’s right in my face. And second—”
My breath caught when his other hand cupped my ass.
“Second, what?” he asked, voice husky.
His palm was hot through the sweatpants, and I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing underwear . . . and also that the pants were drawstring.
It would take hardly anything for him to be inside me.
Drop me to the ground. Untie the sweats. Push them down and—
“Second, I’m not wearing any underwear.”
Fuck. Shit. That hadn’t been what I was planning on saying. My second point was supposed to have been that I was fully capable of walking over to Bucky and that I didn’t need a man to carry me and—
I was on my feet before I finished my thought of second points, Cole’s brown eyes molten and locked on me, his large palms spanning my hips.
“Olivia.”
I bit my lip, saw those eyes heat further, then immediately released it. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
A curve of his mouth, those fingers on my hips convulsing. “Maybe not, but fuck, honey. You’re killing me all the same.”
My gaze drifted down.
It shouldn’t have.
All the reasons I’d had for not getting involved with him still existed. I was just having a hard time remembering why they were deterrents rather than reasons to launch myself into his arms and kiss him senseless.
That was why my eyes slid toward his pelvis, why the sight of him hard and pressing against his jeans nearly made my knees buckle—
Why I forgot all of my deterrents and launched myself into his arms.
My mouth hit his and, fuck, was it perfect. Soft lips, probing tongue, hot mouth. His hands shifted from having caught me around the waist, to banding tight around my back, yanking me against the hard muscles of his thighs and chest. He tasted of mint and cinnamon, the hint of a morning toothbrushing trailed by his preferred cinnamon chewing gum, and it was like coming home, that spice against my tongue. Heat engulfed me from head to toe, burning along my nerve endings, soaking into my stomach, between my thighs, making my nipples pebble into tight hot buds.
Then my knees actually did buckle, but Cole was there, catching me before I collapsed and tucking me tighter against him as we kissed and kissed and kissed.
His palm slipped under my sweatshirt, the slightly rough surface almost scalding as it brushed up and down my back, sliding up between my shoulder blades then down to dip under the loose waistband of the sweats.
Tease.
I reached between us and undid the tie.
The fabric puddled at my ankles.
“Olivia—”
I wasn’t completely exposed since his sweatshirt was big and covered me down to mid-thigh, but the sudden wash of cold air over my heated skin was enough for a full-bodied shiver to pass through me.
Cole cursed and my eyes jumped to his. “Killing. Me,” he muttered.
Since dropping my pants pretty much meant I’d blown off any potential consequences of me pursuing something with him, I’d decided to forgo my fears and. Just. Keep. Leaping.
“Well,” I said, widening my legs. “I was actually hoping you’d eat me.”
I’d barely gotten the words out of my mouth before he was on me, fingers spreading me wide, lips latching onto my clit. I’d expected him to tackle me to the dry-grass covered ground, to feel the prickles of the weeds and rocks against my back and thighs. What I didn’t expect was for his mouth to be between my thighs, his free arm clamping around my waist
and keeping me pressed to his face as he fell to his back.
My knees hit the dirt, and I felt a slight sting, but it hardly processed because then both of his hands had found my thighs and spread me wide while I sat on his mouth.
In the middle of a field.
In the middle of the day.
But fuck if I was thinking about any of that.
Instead, my focus was on his tongue flicking against my clit, finding a pattern that sent me soaring in seconds, pleasure spinning out from my center and filling my limbs with heat. Those hands coaxed me forward, my palms hitting the dirt by his head as he drove his tongue inside me. One palm slid up the inside of my sweatshirt, cupping my breast, then pinching my nipple just on the right side of rough. The other slipped in, taking over the rhythm of his tongue and alternately circling and tapping my clit.
Hot. Wet. Pleasure spiraling up and up until . . .
“Fuck!” I cried. “Cole. Oh God. Don’t fucking stop.”
He groaned and the sound vibrated through me, catapulting me over the edge.
I rode his mouth through the orgasm, not giving two fucks that it was still the middle of the day and we were still completely out in the open. If anything, with the fear of getting caught like this prickling the back of my mind, worry that someone might see me straddling his face and coming all over him had made the entire thing the hottest experience of my life.
But more than that, this was about Cole and me, about the way he made me feel and the fucking incredibleness of his tongue.
I’d known it would be good between us . . . or at least I’d hoped that would be the case, just based on the sheer volume of attraction I felt for him. To have this proof, to be able to come this fast in this risky of a place . . . yeah, Cole and I had it going on, at least between the sheets—cough—dried blades of grass? Rotting fence posts?
His tongue flicked out and brushed my clit, making me jump and focus back on the man between my thighs.
I was probably smothering the poor guy.
But when I went to move back, to allow him some undoubtedly much-needed oxygen, his hand slid around my hips and held me close.
Then he nuzzled me, lips moving across my labia, causing heat to prickle outward again, my pelvis to tilt forward and seek the pleasure it knew it could find from that beautiful mouth. I could tell he was smiling, knew it would be cocky—