by Em Petrova
Pulling back, she looked into his eyes. Hers glittered with wanting. How could he deny her?
“Take me to bed, cowboy.”
She didn’t need to ask twice. He picked her up, and she twined her legs around his waist. The thin cotton leggings she wore were no barrier against the burning heat coming from her pussy, and his cock gave a hard jerk.
He knew her house, had spent hours in her bed. He didn’t waste time laying her down on the mattress or capturing her lips in a tongue-tangling kiss.
How much teasing could she endure? He’d find out.
When he dragged that sweatshirt over her head, the sight of her full curves struck him again. Esme wasn’t stick-thin like some, and he liked a little more weight on his women—not that he’d ever had any to call his. He could have had plenty. One even tried to snag him with a false pregnancy. Those had been the worst two weeks of his life, before he’d learned the truth and walked away.
This woman, though… He could come back for more again and again.
She gripped at his shoulders. He teased a fingertip down the crest of her breast to the point, up over the ridge and down the other side, before he followed the path over her bra with his lips. The silk and lace was warm from her skin. He closed his eyes, savoring her scents and the feel of her rising and falling under his caress.
Glancing up into her stare was a bad mistake. Her eyes glowed, and damn if he didn’t want to see that more often. A heady power came over him.
He lifted his head and moved to her other breast. This time he bit down on her straining nipple, dragging a cry from her.
“Suck it, Zayden. I need your mouth on me. Please.” She cupped his nape, guiding him.
Jesus, he wouldn’t last long if they continued this way, and he didn’t only mean orgasms and control. If he had her two more times… Hell, he already felt himself slipping.
He didn’t do relationships. This wasn’t him.
But was it the man he was meant to be?
* * * * *
A ragged breath escaped Esme’s lips, and she squeezed her eyes against the scorching burn inside her. She needed it to end—wanted it to last.
Zayden had her stripped bare, and his rough fingers worked her into a fever. When he nudged her thighs apart, she looked down to watch the sexiest man alive about to feast on her soaking pussy.
He rumbled a groan against her flesh, and she bucked upward in response. He continued to take his slow time, pressing kisses over her mound of trim pubic hair, bypassing her neediest spot to spatter more kisses down her inner thighs. He licked a trail back up, and she shuddered as his hot breath washed over her slick folds.
She twisted her fingers in the longer locks on his nape. “I need you.”
“That so?” he drawled, gaze intense on hers.
“Please.”
“You want this?” He darted his tongue over her clit, lifting a thousand nerve endings to his touch.
She bucked. “Yes!”
“And this?” Thumbing apart her outer lips, he ran the point of his tongue through her wet folds to her core. When he dipped inside, her heart thudded to a stop, and she quit breathing too.
With her head thrown back, she could only nod for more.
Issuing a growl, he slid his hands under her ass, lifted her, and dived in. She lost sight of the universe. It drew to a faraway pinprick of light in the black bliss of her mind. Each rotation of his tongue around her clit, every nibble made her tip further into the throes of ecstasy.
When he lowered her to the mattress, she opened her eyes to find his gaze fixed on her. A shock of something more hit her… Something too overwhelming to name right now.
Then he reached between her legs and thrust two fingers inside her.
As her body clamped down on his callused digits, she couldn’t look away. While he eased his fingers free of her body, their gazes held. Each time he plunged inside again, their stares locked in place.
Did he feel this insane drive to get closer like her? She was probably being stupid. Men didn’t think that way. She had to take this for what it was—insanely hot, mind-blowing sex.
She curled her toes into the sheets and rocked in time to his tongue and fingers. As he rubbed over the perfect point deep in her pussy, she tightened.
An animalistic noise rumbled through him. He pressed his fingertips downward, and she burst with a wild cry.
Chapter Nine
“Fucking hell, why am I always still dressed when all I want is to drive my cock into you?” He tore at his clothes, not removing his stare from the woman still twitching on the bed from her release.
Her eyes appeared heavy with lust, her body flushed. He couldn’t get out of his boots and jeans fast enough. Even as he shoved off his boxer briefs, he had a condom in the other hand, rolling it over the tip of his erection.
The thick shaft in his hand felt overly sensitive, his arousal at a twelve out of ten. It didn’t help that she licked her lips at the sight of it.
He settled the condom at the base and pumped his cock once, thighs steel-hard as he moved forward. When he hovered over her, he entangled their fingers and stretched her arms overhead. Pinned, she only spread her legs for him.
With a shudder of need, he poised at her center.
“I’ve never wanted anybody the way I want you,” she whispered.
There it was again—that burning in his chest like it had swollen ten times its size and been scourged in flames at the same time. She made him feel more than good, and he didn’t want to think about why.
She lit up his insides, which had been darkened his entire life.
Tightening her hold on his hands, she wet her lips. “Take me, Zayden.”
“Nothing could stop me, sweetheart.”
He drove in. The minute her slippery hot walls enveloped his cock, he slammed his mouth over hers. Their passion raged on through lips, teeth and tongues. She dragged her mouth free and bit into his neck. He churned his hips faster. The moment was getting away from him. It was coming too fast, too soon, too…
He stole a look at her face, only to find her focused on him, eyes full of passion, lip trapped in her teeth.
Letting go was like water flowing over a cliff. Like galloping on a good horse.
When he exploded, he bit down on a roar, but it didn’t stop the sound from echoing. She got her hands free of his clasp and wrapped her arms around him, riding out the storm of a release so huge that he couldn’t form a coherent thought.
“Sweetheart… Jesus.”
She pressed a kiss to his jaw, and then landed one on his lips that had him moaning out. The need to keep going was so strong. He rolled her atop him, and she flashed a heart-stopping grin.
When his heart picked up the beat again, he cupped her breasts and watched several emotions flicker across her face.
Flattening a hand to her spine, he drew her down on him, slowly. The soft, damp curves of her body and her weight on him felt good. He didn’t want to get up for a long time.
Maybe the moment had come to examine the changes in his life. Not only had he decided something he never thought he would—to stay on at the ranch he’d vowed never to return to—but he lay here with a woman he didn’t want to let go.
She stroked a hand up his side, shifting into a more comfortable position draped over him. “Am I squashing you?”
He chuckled. “Far from it. I was thinking how good you feel.” The admission took some doing. He wasn’t a man who expressed much. Through the years, anger remained his most reliable friend. Right now, the emotion was completely absent in him…and it was shocking as hell.
At this moment, he couldn’t give a crap about how his father had fucked him up or he’d fucked up his own life. He didn’t care that his mother didn’t love him and his brothers enough to take them with her when she left. For the first time in forever—maybe ever—he had peace.
As minutes passed, their breathing slowed. In the other room a clock ticked, the fridge hummed, and a faucet
dripped.
“You’ve got a leaky faucet,” he said.
“I know. I haven’t gotten around to calling the landlord. Zayden?”
He tensed, prepared for something he wasn’t ready to hear. “What is it?”
“I liked dessert.”
A grin spread over his face and then through his soul. He hugged her closer. “I didn’t even give you the ice cream on top.”
She pushed away, palms on his chest, looking down at his face. “You’re holding out on me? There’s better sex to be had?”
He arched a brow and gave her a lazy smile. “Try me.”
“I like a challenge.”
“So do I.” With a jolt, he realized it was true. He’d often taken the lazy route—get it done and move on. But with Esme, that wasn’t the case, and he wanted to show her just how she should be treated, even if only for a short while.
In the ocean, waves didn’t last. One always disappeared as another swelled in the distance, Mimi always said. All things came to an end, and this would be no different…
But he was living for the present.
He jumped up and tossed her over his shoulder, making his way to the shower with her squeals of delight ringing like bells.
* * * * *
Soaping each other up and rinsing each other off gave her more of a thrill than it should. She could spend a lot of time studying the chiseled muscle of Zayden’s body. The man embodied a six-foot-tall work of art.
Water sluiced over his tanned back and over his muscled ass. Just looking at the man made her burn with want.
When she dug her thumbs lightly into his shoulders, he leaned against the shower wall and moaned. She continued to knead the knotted muscles till she felt them relax.
“What do you do on the ranch to get so sore?” she asked over the rush of water.
“Right now, I’m trying to fix things. A lot has gone untended for too long and if I’m staying, I have to repair it. Trouble is, I don’t have much to work with and funds are short.”
“No word from the credit union on that loan yet?” She thought of Jason’s offer concerning the job opening, and her insides coiled with disgust. She had a very bad feeling about the man. Recently, she’d learned she needed to rethink her opinions of people and see them for what they were. Her ex led her on and she’d moved to Stokes on his promise that their love would last forever. Then Owen led her up the mountainside, and look how that had turned out.
At least Zayden hadn’t made any promises, and she was glad of it. Even if her heart went crazy just from being close to the man, she wouldn’t commit to more than what they had going right this minute.
“No calls yet,” he said. “Mimi would have told me.”
Her brows crinkled, and she stopped massaging his shoulders. “Who’s Mimi?”
“Closest I’ve ever had to a momma or grandma, I guess you could say. She came to live with us when I was a teen, and she never left. She takes care of things around the house.”
“I see. Was she involved with your… father?”
He tensed, and she feared her questioning hit a different kind of sore spot.
Tossing her a look, he rinsed off again. “Not that I ever knew of. She isn’t that dumb.”
She chewed her lip. “I’m sorry for asking. I’ve heard…” She stopped, sticking her foot in it even deeper.
“What have you heard?” Before she could answer, he went on. “That I’m a no-good Moon? That my father was a deadbeat drunk who knocked his kids around, and my brothers and I are cut from the same cloth?”
“I-I…hadn’t heard that, no.”
He made a sharp movement and switched off the shower, leaving her standing there cold and wet and shut out.
He took a long look at her and then his face softened. After grabbing a fluffy towel, he opened it and wrapped it around her, lifting her out of the shower and setting her on the bathmat.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly, reaching for a second towel to rub her hair with. Her curls would be a frizzy afro when he was finished, and it would take her ages to right them before she could leave the house again, but she didn’t protest his ministrations.
Head bent, he slowed his touch, working the towel over her scalp and down her shoulders. Silence built between them.
She reached up and stilled his hand, drawing the towel off her head. “Zayden, I don’t listen to rumors, and they aren’t something I believe anyway. I know very well how rumors can get blown out of proportion. Have you heard the one about Owen and I getting into a fight and how he threatened to throw me off the mountain?”
He met her gaze. “No.” A tendon in his jaw leaped. “But if he had, I would have hunted him down, Esme.”
A shiver ran through her. He sounded serious, his tone rough. And if she knew anything about Zayden Moon’s character, it was that he was dead set on any statement he made. If he told her he could break Owen’s legs, he could. If he claimed he could pleasure her better than any other man on earth, well, her body still hummed from that promise kept.
She pulled another towel off the shelf and began rubbing the water off his broad shoulders and chest. When she hit his abs, she noted he was growing hard.
“Maybe it’s time for more dessert,” she said softly.
Throwing him a teasing smile, she dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth.
* * * * *
Zayden groaned as he realized he was, for the third time in an hour, reliving the memory of Esme’s tongue riding the ridge of his swollen cock. Then her licking down the shaft with scorching flicks of her tongue, and finally encompassing his balls in liquid heat.
Each time his cock bumped at the back of her throat, he groaned louder, until the need to take over grew too strong to ignore. He’d fisted his hands in her hair and dragged her lips down over his erection till the hip-churning end.
Christ, he had to get a grip on this infatuation.
The wrench he used to torque the engine part slipped, and his knuckles bashed against steel.
“Motherfucking hell,” he bit out, shaking his hand and glaring at the tractor. Who was he kidding? It was dead, and no amount of elbow grease would revive it. His father hadn’t bothered to start it all these years, and now the engine was frozen up, useless.
He turned his face up to the sky and sent his father a curse, wherever he was. “Screw you, Dad!”
Bending to swipe the wrench off the ground, he drew three calming breaths and started over. Once he set his mind to a task, he didn’t give up easy, and he was going to do his best to get this tractor up and running. He needed it to put his plan into action—get the back pasture cleared and ready for hay.
His mind trundled ahead, over more plans. Secure that loan. If the credit union wouldn’t consider loaning him the money, he’d find another bank. Too bad the rancher’s coalition was finished with the Moons, or he’d ask them too.
He got a good, tight hold on the part he wanted to loosen and used his strength.
The wrench didn’t slip this time—but the part busted clean off.
Zayden stepped back, fury rushing over him. For a heartbeat, he considered throwing himself at the tractor and sinking his fists into the steel side, but all that would do was put him out of commission with a broken hand. Besides, punching the tractor wouldn’t help, when really he wanted to beat the shit out of his father.
Yeah, rage was good, and he could use that to make things happen. He was just turning away from the dead hunk of steel to head into the house and call the credit union, when he saw the SUV round the bend in the drive. He stood watching the vehicle approach, and soon could read the letters on the side.
Son of a bitch. The sheriff.
That couldn’t be good. At all.
His mind darted to the crumpled fine on the floor of his truck and the community service he hadn’t bothered to set up.
Yanking a hanky from his back pocket, he wiped the motor oil from his hands and walked toward the sheriff.
The ma
n settled his hat more firmly against the Colorado mountain breeze and looked to Zayden. “Howdy, Moon.”
“Sheriff.” The man didn’t look familiar.
He sauntered up, looking around. “Haven’t been up here in a while.”
Zayden leveled a stare at him. “What’s this about?”
He waited to hear more about his run-in with Deputy Dickies. The sheriff turned to gaze toward the pasture where the few horses were grazing.
“How many horses you got here on the Moon Ranch?” he asked.
“Five.”
“You sold some recently.”
Zayden narrowed his eyes. “I sold one to the neighbor.”
“What happened to the other five?”
Arching a brow, Zayden tried to tamp down the rage rising inside him. “When I got here, there were only six horses on the ranch, and a handful of cattle out in the west pasture. What’s going on?”
“Was about to ask you the same thing.” The sheriff squared his shoulders and faced Zayden. “Your father stole those horses.”
Zayden’s chest burned. “I don’t know a thing about it, but if you’d like to question him, he’s up in the Stokes Cemetery.”
“I heard. The bastard died before we could connect him with the crime.”
“Yeah, he was always a son of a bitch, but I can’t help ya.”
“Mind if I have a look at your horses?”
For a long moment, he didn’t respond. But what good would it do to deny the sheriff? He’d just return with a search warrant.
He nodded and turned for the field. The sheriff followed.
“How did you make this discovery?” he asked the lawman.
“About four months back, we got a call that six horses had been stolen out of a pasture in the middle of the night.”
He shook his head. “Couldn’t be my father.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he was drunk off his ass every night of his life. There’s no way he’d be able to stand on his own two feet, let alone steal off with six horses.”
“The rancher had a trail camera up to see if he could find out what was killing his chickens, and your father was caught on tape.”
