Retreat

by Jay Crownover

  Not that I wanted to.

  Climbing the proverbial sexual mountains with Cy wasn’t something I would change for the world. The view from the top was unbeatable . . . the view from the bottom wasn’t all that bad either.

  He cut the conversation short and rolled the leather chair closer to me, his hands on either side of my hips.

  “What has you grinning like you’re up to no good, Sunshine?”

  I pushed the brim of my hat back with a finger and set my phone down on his desk. “I got an email from Evan. She’s trying to talk her mom into bringing her and Ethan back to the ranch for winter break. Her parents are getting divorced and it sounds like Meghan is taking Marcus to the cleaners. I guess getting caught in a shootout in the middle of the woods was an eye opener for her.” It was also the reason she wasn’t too keen on bringing her kids back to the ranch, even though they begged endlessly. Everything that had happened gave Evan and Ethan the best stories to tell back at school. They were the most popular kids in their class once their faces had hit the news.

  He chuckled and used his grip on my waist to pull me closer. I put my hands on his shoulders and bent my knees so I could climb on top of him in the chair, perched over his thighs.

  “She also mentioned she has a new soccer coach and that he’s really cute.” Cy grunted and moved his hands around my back so he had a firm hold on either side of my ass. I obliged him with a sigh as he lifted me up a little bit and let me fall so that the seam of my jeans where I was soft and warm pressed against the line in his that was growing hard and stiff underneath me.

  “She needs to learn to chase after boys her own age.” He grunted as I wiggled on top of him in search of more friction. He squeezed my backside in response and lifted me up and let me fall again.

  “She says he’s only twenty. Not great, but better than where she was.” I pressed forward so I could touch my lips to his. He always tasted like coffee and life. I grinned as the salt and pepper brush above his lip tickled me. “How’s business?”

  He sighed and gave me a kiss that was harder, wetter, and lasted a lot longer than the one I gave him.

  “Business is good, in no small part because of you.” I wanted to preen under the compliment. Instead, I kissed him again.

  “You can hire someone to push paper and talk on the phone if you don’t want to be trapped in here all day.” He was making enough money between both the functions of the property. He didn’t have to be chained to this desk unless he wanted to be.

  He rubbed his bristly cheek against mine and it made me shiver all over. So did his questing fingers as they worked their way under the hem of my shirt. He pulled it out of my jeans.

  “I don’t mind it. It’s all a game and I’m better at playing it than most.” He still liked to be in the saddle but he was better at outmaneuvering the money men than he was at tending fences and birthing calves. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty when he had to, but preferred matching wits with the other movers and shakers in the industry. He was rebuilding his father’s legacy in all the ways his old man hadn’t been able to. There was modern thinking and practice put into play on this ancient land and it was beautiful to see the past and the future collide in such an important way.

  My shirt was over my head and sailing to the floor between one breath and the next. My bra soon followed. I took my turn stripping him, the cotton of his T-shirt softer than the scrape of his chest hair against the hard tips of my bared breasts. The slight abrasion always made me catch my breath, so did that seductive sound of a zipper sliding down. There was all kinds of business that went down in this masculine office, but the kind where I ended up filled with hard cock and whimpering against hot skin was my favorite kind.

  I liked the way he looked behind his big desk, he liked the way I looked bent over it, ass in the air.

  Pants dropped, hands hit wood as he moved over me. His palms were full of my breasts and I was full of him. I rested my forehead on the cool surface and panted as he drove into me from behind. It never got old. It never stopped feeling more important than any sex that had come before it. It never failed to make me feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be,

  His teeth nipped at the back of my neck. His chest pressed me farther into the desk as he pulled my hips up into his thrust. We moved together like we were made to be connected from head to toe.

  As far as afternoon quickies, this one ranked right up at the top. I managed to make it through my orgasm and his without losing my hat. The realization made me laugh as he flipped me over and ran the end of his nose along the sensitive inside of my thigh. I threaded my fingers through his hair and reached for my phone as it pinged with a text message next to my head. I sighed in heavy satisfaction as the wet tip of his tongue ran along the back of my knee and as his index finger lazily chased after all the sex and satisfaction that was smeared all over the inside of my legs. There was a smug smile on his face that quickly shifted when I bolted upright and almost fell off the edge of the desk when I saw the message that I had been waiting for since Emrys disappeared.

  I put a shaky hand on Cy’s shoulder to steady myself as he rose to stand between my spread legs. He put his hands on either side of my neck and used his thumbs to tilt my head back so I was looking up at him.

  “What just happened, Sunshine?” His deep, rough voice never failed to settle me.

  “It’s Em.” I held up my phone with one hand and wrapped my fingers around his wrist so I could feel his pulse with the other. “She said she’s coming to see me.”

  His raven dark eyebrows both shot up so high they almost touched his hairline. “She’s coming here?”

  I looked at the message again and nodded dumbly. “Yeah. She’s coming here.”

  “Does she know that Sutton is in a bad way?” The middle Warner had moved out of the main house and was drinking himself into an oblivion while he drowned in his sorrow. Cy hated it. Lane hated it. Brynn was heartbroken over his behavior and I wasn’t sure what role I was supposed to play around him.

  I was still pissed he sent Em away, which sent her spiraling, but I felt bad that his heroism had resulted in nothing but heartache. I tended to avoid him when his brothers forced him to join the land of the living. I had no idea what Em’s appearance was going to mean to the wounded warrior.

  “She knows. She wasn’t in much better shape the last time I saw her, to be honest.” I squeezed his wrist and looked at him under my lashes. “Do you want me to tell her she can’t come?” It would kill me to tell her then, but I would do it, and then I would go to her. Wherever she was.

  He stared at me for a long, pensive moment and then that smile that owned me and made my entire world spin slashed across his perfectly rugged face. “It might do some good for Sutton to get shook up by your girl. If it turns bad, we’ll ride it out, like we always do.”

  I exhaled in relief and told him with every ounce of sincerity I had within me, “I more than love you, Cy.”

  His broad chest rose and fell with his own heavy breath as he replied, “I more than love you back, Leo.”

  We meant every word.

  The End

  Shelter

  Emrys and Sutton’s story coming soonish . . .

  I will love you forever if you made it this far and you take the time to leave a review on whichever retail site you purchased Retreat on!

  Read on for a sneak peek of Riveted the next Saints of Denver book coming February 14th. It’s the perfect Valentine’s Day treat!

  Prologue

  My mom met her Prince Charming when she was a freshman in college and my dad leaned over and asked to borrow a pen so he could take notes. Rumpled, obviously hungover, but flashing a smile that promised a good time and with a twinkle in his eyes, he was impossible to resist. She always told me and my sister that it happened that fast. In a split second she knew he was the one for her.

  It was a sweet story. One that my parents shared with us often, both still sharing private smiles and eye
s still twinkling, but neither one of us gave it much thought until my younger sister met her very own prince before she was old enough to drive. It was during a hard time for my family, hard for all of us, but especially for her. She’d always been the baby, been spoiled and treated like a princess. When the attention was yanked off of her in a really ugly way, she was lost and let the family tragedy consume her. Lost in grief and confusion, she somehow managed to sign herself up for auto shop instead of an extracurricular that actually made sense for my very girly, very feminine younger sibling. She spent five minutes in that noisy, greasy garage, but she spent years and years leaning on and loving the quiet, enigmatic, auburn-haired boy she met in those five minutes. He saved her and even though she was way too young to know anything about anything, she had the same story that my mother did . . . she just knew he was the one for her.

  It happened fast in my family. We fell hard and we didn’t get up once we fell. We stayed down and we loved hard and deep. I also learned as I watched all my friends, the men I worked with, the women who I considered sisters of the heart, that when it was right for anyone, it happened fast and that they did indeed just know. They knew when it was right. They knew when it was going to last. They knew when it was worth fighting for. They knew when they had found the person who might not necessarily be perfect, but who was, without a doubt, perfect for them. They just knew.

  So I waited, admittedly impatiently and anxiously, for my shot, for my turn to fall. I waited through my family healing, for them to come back with a love that was even stronger. I waited through my sister screwing up and desperately trying to repair her perfect. I waited through weddings and babies. I waited through danger and drama. I waited through one bad date and one failed relationship after another. I waited through nights alone and nights spent with the occasional someone I knew wasn’t the one for me. I waited and waited as good men fell for even better women, all the while wondering when it would be my turn. I waited and watched love that was easy and love that was hard, telling myself I was far more prepared for my fall than anyone else around me was. I wanted it so bad I could taste it . . . but the more I waited, the more certain I became that I was never going to fall.

  I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think Dash Churchill was something special the second he walked into the bar where I worked—all coiled tension, sexy swagger, and with a black cloud of attitude hanging over him that would dim even the brightest summer days. I had eyes and I had a vagina, so all the things that I thought were special were the things those parts of my anatomy couldn’t miss. Long limbed, with a body that looked like it was ripped from the cover of Men’s Health magazine, bronze skin, unforgettable eyes, and a mouth that, even though was constantly frowning, brought to mind every single dirty, sexy thing a pair of lips like that was capable of doing. I liked the way he looked . . . a lot . . . but I couldn’t say I much liked him. He was sullen, distant, uncommunicative, and there was an air about him that marked in no uncertain terms that he was dangerous. But more than that he came across as a very unhappy individual, and no amount of rest, relaxation, and good friends seemed to shake that dark cloud of discontent that hung over him. It was a warning that I was smart enough to heed. I liked my days spent basking in the sun, not dancing in the rain.

  I was friendly to Church because I was friendly to everyone. The first month or so we had an uneasy working relationship that involved me dancing around him while every other single and not-so-single woman who came into the bar where we worked did their best to catch his eye. It worked out well for me and seemingly for him, so I went back to waiting for my perfect, my fairy tale, my heroic knight, my unmatched hero. He had to be out there somewhere and I was starting to think if he wasn’t looking for me I needed to start looking for him. My patience was wearing thin and my typically affable attitude was starting to get just as gloomy and gray as the one that hung over Church.

  But then it happened and I just knew. I knew like I had never known anything as clearly and as unquestionably in my whole life. I knew with a rightness that shot through my soul and made my heart flip over in my chest.

  I was trying to cash out a group of overly intoxicated and obviously difficult young men. It wasn’t anything new. I’d been a cocktail waitress for a long time and knew how to handle myself and the customers. This drunken group was no better or worse than any other one I’d had to deal with in all my years slinging drinks and working the floor, but they were loud and the things they were saying were easily heard throughout the bar. Some of it wasn’t so bad. They liked my hair (curly and strawberry blonde—who didn’t like my damn hair?) and they liked the way my shirt fit tight and snug across my chest. I was a solid D cup, so again, who didn’t like my tits? But they also had a lot to say about my ass. Apparently, it was too big for my small frame, and they didn’t love my freckles. That red hair was authentic and as real as it could be, so there wasn’t much I could do about the colored specks that dotted the bridge of my nose and brushed the curve of my cheeks.

  I had pretty thick skin, you had to when you worked in a bar and liquor loosened tongues, so I was ready to brush the entire conversation off and snatch the credit card off the table when I felt a hand on my lower back and a storm not just brewing off in the distance but collecting and gathering, ready to unleash hell at my back.

  “You good, Dixie?” The question made me freeze and it wasn’t just because it was asked into my ear with an unmistakable slow and very Southern drawl. It wasn’t because he was so close I could feel every line of muscle in his massive body and both the heat of his skin and the chill of his icy anger pressing into my back.

  No, I froze, riveted to the spot and stunned stupid, because in twenty-six years no one had ever bothered to ask me if I was good. They always assumed I was.

  I was the girl who could handle myself and everyone else around me.

  I was the girl who never asked for help.

  I was the girl who always smiled even when that smile hurt my face.

  I was the girl who always had time for a friend even when I really didn’t have that time.

  I was the girl who everyone ran to with a problem because I would drop everything to help fix it even if it was unfixable.

  I was the girl who never let anything or anyone drag her down and fought to keep everyone else up with her.

  I was the girl who everyone always assumed was good . . . so they never asked . . . but he had and the world stopped. At least the world as it was before I fell headfirst into the kind of love that was bound to hurt with Dash Churchill.

  I gripped my pen and struggled to clear my throat. “I’m good, Church.” My voice was barely a breath of sound and I felt his touch press even deeper into my lower back.

  “You sure?” No, I wasn’t sure. I was as far from good as I had ever been and I had no clue what to do about it.

  I gave a jerky nod and blew out a breath, which had him taking a step away from me. I looked at him over my shoulder and he returned the look. There was no warmth in his fantastic eyes. There was no change in the harsh expression on his face. There was no knowledge that he had fundamentally changed my life in the span of a few terse words.

  He was simply doing his job, making sure everything in the bar was okay and that the staff was safe. Meanwhile, I was shoved unwillingly into the kind of love that had my arms flailing, my legs kicking, while a-scream-ripped-from-my-lungs in love with him. Of course I did that all silently and in my head as he walked away from me, because I might have now known he was it for me, but it was evident Church didn’t have a clue.

  No one had ever given me any idea how to handle it when the right one came along, but you weren’t the right one for him.

  Dixie

  “Um . . . I had a lovely evening.” No, I hadn’t. It was awful. It would go down as the worst first date in the history of first dates, which was something, considering my recent run as the awful-first-date queen. But it wasn’t in my nature to say so. I just wanted to say goodnight a
nd hide in my bedroom with a glass of wine and my dog for the rest of the evening.

  “Aren’t you going to invite us in for a drink?”

  I fought to hold back a cringe and looked over the shoulder of the very cute but painfully shy young man I had accepted the date with after several weeks of online chatting. I’d met him through one of the dating apps I had signed up for when I decided I was done waiting for my perfect to realize that I was perfect for him.

  My terrible luck in love had held true and this date, with this cute boy . . . and his mother, the person who had asked about coming in for a drink since my actual date seemed incapable of speech. Yep, it solidified the fact that I was bound to end up alone. That beautiful, blinding thing that everyone important in my life I loved seemed to find with such ease was clearly not in the cards for me. I wanted a fantasy but every day was faced with the fact that all I was getting was a cold, hard, and very lonely reality.

  I sighed and reached up to push some of my wayward, strawberry-colored curls out of my face. I was annoyed that not only had I clearly been cat-fished—there was no way the son was the one running his dating profile, not if he couldn’t string two words together, and not if he couldn’t look at me without blushing and trembling nervously—but by the fact that I had wasted a perfectly cute outfit, killer hair, and a face full of flawless makeup on this sham of a date. I was typically a very low-maintenance kind of girl, so pulling myself together like this took time and effort that I would never have expended if I had known it was all for a woman with crazy eyes and a psychotic interest in finding her grown child a suitable mate. Honestly, I was surprised the woman hadn’t asked for blood and urine samples before the appetizers arrived. She’d grilled me like I was a POW for the entire date, and when my answers didn’t meet her expectations I could feel her disappointment wafting from across the table.