by Em Petrova
When he thrust his cock balls-deep, they shared a rough cry. At the same time, he reached between her legs and pressed the pad of his fingertips into her clit. Her core flexed around him, and he withdrew through the tight clamp of her walls.
“Jesus Christ. I could fuck you all night long.”
“Don’t stop.” Her plea cut off on a gasp as he stroked her clit into an ache so big she couldn’t think about anything but reaching the blissful, mind-blowing end.
The slap of his body against hers. The music of their groans. And her own fever. Each disjointed realization hit along with another one—that she was quickly falling for Dane Moon.
She might be in for a world of hell or heaven—who knew what to expect with Dane? But right this minute, she wanted him, and tomorrow she’d let her logical mind take control once again and decide.
He pinched her clit lightly between his fingers and rubbed them back and forth. The action pitched her high. She peaked on a scream. His name tumbled from her lips as her pussy contracted wildly around his hard length.
“Fuck, baby doll. Brennah…take my cock. Take it all.” He churned his hips in a primitive swirl, and she lost herself in the rhythm of her release and his claiming. Behind her, his whole body went rigid, and he tipped over the ledge right along with her.
They were in this together.
* * * * *
Goddammit, he shouldn’t have taken her that way, especially knowing he had to walk away. But he wouldn’t get another chance to feel her coming apart in his arms, and damn if he wasn’t selfish enough to take her one more time.
He hovered over her, panting, still buried in her hot pussy. The woman owned more of him than she knew or he cared to admit.
Her hair swirled over her shoulders, falling forward enough to give him a peek of her damp neck. Unable to resist, he leaned in and kissed it.
A shiver rolled through her and snaked down her spine.
What the hell was he going to do about her? Now that she knew his every secret, he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t lie and tell her he wasn’t a dickhead who took after his drunk, deadbeat daddy.
She deserves more. So much more.
If she left tomorrow for Seattle, who could blame her? She’d given her best here, and he’d fucked her over just by being in her life, where he definitely did not belong.
Hell if he could even pull his dick out of her, though.
He sucked in a deep breath of her sweet-smelling skin and gently withdrew. Unwinding his arm from her middle where he supported her took more effort, and stepping back and reaching for his jeans damn near gutted him.
Where the hell’s my hat? Whenever he was around Brennah, he couldn’t seem to keep the damn thing on his head.
He located his Stetson and settled the brim low. Turning, he looked at the beautiful woman tugging her top down into place. Fully-clothed but quite altered from an hour before, they faced each other.
“I hardly know what to say to you.” Shadows cut over her face.
“You know everything there is to know now, Brennah.”
She nodded. “It’s a lot to process. I need some time.”
“You haven’t exactly come clean with me, though.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“When were you gonna tell me about the offer in Seattle?”
Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned aside. “You overheard me on the phone.”
“Yeah. Look, it sounds like a good chance. You shouldn’t pass it up.”
When she shot a look back at him, he saw the crease in her brow. “What if I don’t want to leave Stokes? I mean, I’m run ragged some days. I work long, tiring hours. But I love the community. And I don’t want to give up what I have here.”
He nodded. “It’s a good spread. But a small-size ranch can fetch a good price if you decide to sell.”
She swung back to him and set her hands on her hips. “You’ve already gotten rid of me in your mind, haven’t you? Fine. All we shared in my bedroom, and here just a bit ago, that means jack shit to you, doesn’t it? I’m just another notch on your bedpost, only this time you can say you had a veterinarian instead of a stripper or a waitress—”
He caught her wrist and drew her close. Dammit, he wanted to yank her into his body to feel how turned on he still was, but he resisted.
“You’re not just another woman to me, Brennah.”
“And I don’t just give myself to men either!”
He stared at her lips until he throbbed. She had given herself—body and soul. He’d felt that in her reactions to him, and he never wanted to forget those moments. But that was all they would be to him—because he had to walk away and let her have some semblance of a normal life without more drama like she’d endured with her momma.
Encouraging her to get as far from him as possible felt like the only course.
He released her. “I have to get home.”
After a long pause, she nodded. “I have things to do and an early start tomorrow.”
When he forced himself to move away from her and walk to the barn door, his chest welled with the urge to bellow.
Why couldn’t he have something as good and pure as Brennah? He’d done this to himself, ruined his own life. Even if he got out from under the likes of Big John, he’d go and fuck up something else in his life. He couldn’t drag her behind him.
At the door, he hesitated, gripping the frame ’til he thought the wood might splinter under his strength. Then he shoved himself through the opening and hit the field at a fast clip. He didn’t dare look back, for fear he’d see his beating heart left behind in the reflection of her eyes.
* * * * *
Brennah’s day consisted of seeing three dogs, two cats, a pet snake and a piglet. Plus, she’d made a field call early this morning to attend the rough birthing of a calf. Just when she thought they were about to lose the calf, Brennah finally got enough muscle behind the baby to pull him safely out.
Now she had at least six files to add notes to and a couple phone calls to make. She didn’t even want to glance at her emails.
Listing all these things won’t make me forget what happened with Dane.
All day she’d battled to keep her mind off the man and the fact that she’d probably never see him again—not like she knew him. They might greet each other in passing at the feed store or tack shop. They were neighbors and would throw an occasional wave in the other’s direction.
But the way he’d walked out of her barn resonated with a finality she couldn’t deny.
She’d also been facing down a lot of her own demons. Things she’d buried from long ago, that she thought she’d dealt with, were now monsters under her bed.
Seeing that AA token had started them churning, and she knew what she had to do. Stokes or one of the outlying towns must have an Al-Anon meeting. She needed to face her mother’s evils and learn how to cope with them all at last. Then maybe she’d know how to deal with Dane’s short explosion in and out of her life.
Logical thinking locked in, and she considered her attraction to him in a brand-new light. What if the feeling stemmed from her past? Taking care of a drunk mommy would surely lead to attraction to a man who abused alcohol. But when they were kids, she thought they might be kindred spirits, both victims of their parents’ lack of love.
God, they were both broken, weren’t they? She pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting off the ache beginning in her head. She had so much more work to get done and no time for a tension headache.
The phones at the front desk rang off the hook as usual, and she lifted her head as Mindi poked her head into her office.
“Bree says there’s an emergency call for you on line 1.”
“Got it.” She picked up and hit the number one. “Dr. Peterson.”
“Brennah.”
The rough grit of the voice projecting into her ear sounded all too familiar—and intimate.
“Dane.”
“No, it’s Zayden. I got a
problem up here. One of my horses spooked and tried to make an escape. Now she’s got a gash in her front leg. She won’t stop bleeding no matter what I try.”
She stood as she listened. “I’ll be right up.”
“I appreciate it.”
On the way out the door, she called to Bree. “Forward any emergencies to my cellphone. I’ll be at the Moon Ranch tending an injured horse.”
Just how injured she didn’t yet know, but any gashes to horse legs could mean the worst. For the Moons’ sake, she hoped not.
She left the building before she could get dragged into some other crisis and jumped into her SUV. Her lunch still sat on the passenger’s seat, untouched. Just seeing the patterned lunch bag raised memories of her picnic with Dane.
Squelching down the emotions she’d brought along for the ride, she focused on the task ahead. In her time here in Stokes, she’d seen a few leg injuries. For two she’d had to put the horses down, and one had been a minor nick to the artery but the injury bled like hell.
Well, she would just see once she got to the ranch.
Her stomach dipped. Dane would be there.
She had a job to do and her focus would not be compromised by his all-consuming, suck-the-air-from-her-lungs presence.
As she drove under the arching sign over the driveway to the Moon Ranch, her thoughts briefly touched on his confessions the previous night. She believed a debtor would take the Moons’ tractor—but burn her field? She had a hard time believing things like that happened anywhere but on a TV crime show.
Quickly, she drove the rest of the distance to the house, parked and jumped out. As soon as she looked up, Zayden stood there, along with an older woman.
“Thanks for comin’ so quick,” Zayden sported the same size and muscle as his brother, but their features held differences she didn’t want to pick out right now.
“Sure.” She turned to the woman. “You must be Mimi?”
“I am.” She gave a smile and nod, but concern lit her dark eyes. The proud look of the woman was all Ute, reminding Brennah of the tattoo on Dane’s shoulder.
“Lead the way,” Brennah said in her most no-nonsense voice.
The three of them reached the field, and in one corner she spotted Dane squatting by the horse’s front leg. Her heart gave a wheeze, but she ignored her reaction and threw a leg between the fence rungs to slip through. At her approach, he looked up.
She only had eyes for the horse now. Dane pressed a towel to the wound, but the stain of blood seeped through.
“Move aside and give me some room.” Her order brought a grunt from him, but he moved.
She set down her bag and slowly drew back the toweling. Blood spurted, and she quickly applied pressure.
“How did this happen?”
“She spooked. Ran at the gate and got her leg hooked,” Zayden said over her shoulder.
“Did you see what she could have cut it on? A shard of metal or a wood splinter?”
“We couldn’t find anything,” he said.
“Well, something cut her good. Let’s have a look, sweetheart.” Her attention riveted on the horse’s leg instead of the all-too-familiar man to her side. As soon as she moved the towel, blood ran freely. She slipped a finger into the gash, and the horse tried to shy away.
“Get hold of her head,” she ordered.
Zayden moved to the horse and held her still while she gingerly ran her fingertip inside the wound. Everything was blood-soaked and as squishy as worms, so determining if she was facing a severed tendon along with an artery was difficult.
Then she came up against something rough.
“Ahh.”
“What is it?” Dane asked.
“I think I found what cut her.” Tossing a look at him, she said, “Put pressure on the leg while I find what I need in my bag.”
“Is it bad, Doc?” Zayden’s face appeared dark with concern. Horses were worth a lot to a rancher, and no one could afford to lose one, let alone a struggling rancher like him.
She gave a short nod. “Bad enough. I won’t know until I get in there. I’m going to sedate her. Then once I have her on the ground, I’ll be able to work.”
“Mimi, honey, do you have more towels?” Dane asked the woman.
The sweet tone he used pinged in Brennah’s heart. Mimi turned for the house, and Brennah dug in her bag for the items she needed.
As she filled a syringe, Dane’s eyes rested on her. She squirted some fluid out the tip to eliminate air bubbles and inserted the point into the horse’s vein.
“Okay, not long now. When she goes over, we need to guide her so this leg’s up.” She squatted by Dane. “Here, let me put pressure on the wound and you help guide the horse down.”
He did her bidding. In less than a minute, the mare started to sway on her feet. When she rocked, they eased her down the best they could, with as much as she weighed.
Mimi returned with the towels.
“Place one over her eyes while I work.”
The world closed off, and Brennah existed only for this patient right now. She moved the towel and grabbed her long-nose tweezers. After fishing around inside the wound for a moment, she felt the rough scrape of the foreign object.
“Got it.” She pulled, slow and steady, coming out with a long, lethal splinter of wood.
“Jesus Christ,” Dane ground out.
“Hell, no wonder she’s bleeding so much,” Zayden added.
Brennah set this aside and reached for her thick gauze. After blotting away what blood she could, she fished around until locating the end of the artery. “I have to suture the artery, and after that I’ll assess if there’s any damage to the tendon.”
Nobody spoke while she worked. People handed her everything she asked for. And minutes later, she dabbed the wound with more clean gauze. “I think the bleeding’s stopped.”
“It was a lot,” Mimi said from the horse’s head, where she sat stroking her mane.
“It was,” Brennah agreed. “Now, about that tendon.” She probed in the open wound again, feeling up the sinewy tendons. When she closed her eyes, she could imagine the structures of the horse’s leg.
She opened her eyes to feel Dane’s gaze on her face. “I don’t think the tendon’s affected.”
“Thank God.” Zayden’s voice burned with relief.
“All right, I’ll stitch the gash closed and then bandage her up. How’s she doing, Mimi? Not trying to move on you?”
“No.”
“Good. All right, girl, we’re nearly finished.” Brennah moved in with needle and sutures. The others looked on as she fixed internal structures first with dissolvable stitches and then added a neat row to close the mare’s leg.
“Dane, I need that antiseptic bottle in my bag.”
He scooted to the bag and a second later, placed the item in her hand. Their fingers brushed, but she ignored his callused touch and the scorching heat that jolted up her arm.
After thoroughly washing the wound, she bandaged the leg well. Finally, she looked up.
Zayden’s eyes shone with relief. Mimi smiled. And Dane… Well, she wouldn’t look him in the eyes.
Getting to her feet, Brennah examined her handiwork. “I’ll give her an antibiotic shot. Give her Bute for a week. Keep her quiet and dry. Put her on stall rest to keep her from tearing that leg back open.”
Zayden gave one hard nod. “Will do. Can I see the splinter?”
She bent and lifted the jagged wood from the towels and gauze she’d used. The lethal wood fragment was at least three inches long.
“I’d suggest replacing that gate. If there’s more where this came from—”
“I’ll take care of it today,” Dane interjected.
God, his voice just had to lift and tease every hair on her body, didn’t it? That and the effects of her adrenaline burn left her wobbly.
“I’ll just clean up then be on my way. Where’s the closest water hose?”
“After saving our prized horse, we can’
t have you washin’ up outdoors like an unwelcome house guest. Come inside and wash up.” Mimi stood.
“I don’t want to muddy your floors with my dirty boots.”
The older woman waved away her retort. “Come inside.”
Brennah had a feeling nobody ever had the pluck to say no to the woman, least of all the three hurt, lost boys she’d raised as her own.
She nodded and followed, carefully avoiding the gaze of the man who’d given her more pleasure than she’d ever imagined possible.
As she entered the house, she swore she still felt his stare on her. Ignoring him felt like closing the door on a chapter of a book she loved and didn’t want to end.
Did it need to end?
* * * * *
Dane had never brought a girl home to introduce to his family. Even if he had considered bringing one around Mimi, the thought that his old man might be home would have stomped the notion into the earth. So seeing Brennah walk through their front door did things to his insides.
He turned to his brother. “I’ll get some cardboard and strap it to that gate to protect the other horses until I can replace the wood.”
“Good idea. Thanks.”
“You don’t need to thank me for workin’ around here. You know that, right?” He peered at his brother from under the brim of his hat.
“I guess ya do own a percent of the place.”
He grunted. “Well, then I’ll be sure not to put in more work than necessary.”
Zayden chuckled. He still stood by the horse, watching over her like a mother hen. “I’m going to stay out here a while with her and make sure she’s steady enough on her feet to take to the barn.”
“All right. I know the mare’s important to the ranch and you just about had her trained up and ready to sell.”
His brother nodded but didn’t take his eyes off the horse. “Maybe she’s lost too much blood.”
Dane eyed the horse, who seemed to be regaining her consciousness. “Brennah would have said something if we needed to worry about it.”
“True.”
Dane paused. “You always were the real owner of this place, Z.”
He looked up. “What do you mean?”
