by Maisey Yates
“And yet you’re so mean to me.”
“It didn’t stop you from wanting to have sex with me,” she pointed out. And then she suddenly became very afraid that he didn’t actually want to have sex with her. What if she was just a charity case? What if this was just pity? Or worse, some misguided overprotective instinct because he didn’t want her to have sex with a man she didn’t know, a man that she was going to go work for. What if this was...him using his penis as a protective shield. Like parents who wanted their kids to drink at home if they were going to drink. Maybe he wanted her to have sex with him if she was going to have sex with anyone.
That would just be a whole lot of a hot mess. And she did not want that.
Except she didn’t really want to question him either. Because she wanted him. But of course, him not really wanting her would be unbearable...
“Is this about me? I mean, at all? Do you... Are you attracted to me?”
He huffed a laugh. “I have spent the last little bit trying not to notice just how beautiful you were. Because the fact of the matter is, there’s a lot of women that I could be with who don’t present as much of a complication as you do.”
“That is not very flattering,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“I’m not trying to flatter you. I’m trying to be honest with you. And honestly? This is a terrible idea. If your brothers find out, they’re going to kick my ass. Your dad’s gonna kick my ass. Hell, maybe when I come to my senses, I’m going to want to kick my own ass. But I want you more than I care about that.”
He hesitated for a second. As if there was something else he wanted to say, but then he didn’t.
“All this is insulting, and deeply flattering at the same time. I’ll take it.” Because her chest burned. With satisfaction. With triumph. With the knowledge and desire that whether or not she was a terrible idea, Jericho Smith wanted her. He could have any woman. Fundamentally, he often did.
But right now he wanted her. Right now, she was the thing that he craved. Right now, she wanted to luxuriate in that more than just about anything. “The condoms are in my suitcase.”
“The lingerie suitcase.”
“Yes. I have several boxes, and I bought different kinds. Because I didn’t know... You know, they say ribbed on some of them. And I didn’t really know what that meant, so I got that. But I got regular kinds too.” She felt silly all of a sudden.
“As long as they’re not hot pink, I’m fine.”
“What if they are? Would that be a deal breaker?”
He shifted. “At this point, nothing is a deal breaker. I’m too far gone.”
The fact that he couldn’t reject her over a hot pink condom was another spurious compliment, but another one that she would gladly take.
He got up close to the suitcase and bent down in front of it, taking out a couple of boxes. “Did you choose the ribbed?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think I can manage your pleasure just fine without them.” His lips hitched upward into a grin that made her stomach flip. “In fact. I know I can.”
“You are very confident. Has anyone ever told you that before?”
“Yeah. Though, usually the word is arrogant.”
“You don’t sound bothered by it.”
“The question I always have about arrogance is why is it a problem if you can back all your claims up?” He grinned. “Am I arrogant? Or am I just telling the truth.”
“I feel that I will not be able to comment upon that until after... After.”
“If you’re still able to comment after, I’ll consider it a personal failure.”
He took a whole strip of the condoms from the box, dropped it back into the suitcase, then deposited the protection on the end of the bed. Then he stood there, pitched his cowboy hat up off his head and pulled his shirt up directly after.
Her mouth went dry. She knew that he was beautiful. She had known. But the last time she had seen him shirtless, it had been all fruitless longing and furtive, embarrassed attempts to keep herself from staring too intently. And now she just looked her fill. Because why not? Why not just look? His dark brown skin, with hard ridged muscles and just the right amount of dark hair was the perfect representation of all things masculine. And it called to everything feminine in her. To her softness. A softness that she’d had to deny more than indulge, because she had been dropped into a world that was hard. A world she knew was hard.
And all of her soft feelings had always felt twisted around that reality. Around the truth that there was no reward for being sad or grieving, and there was no special prize for having lost much in life. She’d made the mistake of getting lost in all that once, and she’d only caused other people grief.
So she had just done her best to cover it up, to get along.
And it had all come to a head in an explosion of anger when her father had sold him the winery, but there was just so much more to her than that. So much more to her than anger. And she didn’t often let herself explore that or feel that. And maybe that was partly why her attraction to him had often come out as an expression of anger or aggression. Because it was easier. Because if it wasn’t that, it was softness. And it was the softness she had always feared. But there was something about him, and all that masculine hardness that made her want to luxuriate in everything about herself that was different.
And she found herself slipping out from under the covers. Not quite so embarrassed now to show herself. She kicked the boots off beneath the blankets and shoved them down off the edge of the mattress, then slipped out from beneath the furs, parting her robe as she did. Exposing her breasts on a rush of air. She had done the same thing in the sauna, but she had felt insulated by the steam then. But there was nothing concealing her now. The firelight glowed over his skin and hers. And it added to the intimacy of it. To the mood. To the magic of the moment.
She climbed out from beneath the covers completely, slipping the robe away, showing him her.
He sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth. “You are so damn sexy.”
He saw her.
Not what she had been able to show the world up until this point. Not the things her brothers wanted other people to see, or that her father thought. He saw her. A piece of herself that she wasn’t even fully comfortable with. Because even when she had made the decision to go up north and sleep with Donovan, she hadn’t been driven by an overwhelming surge of attraction. Or by being in touch with her sexuality. Rather it had been anger. Just more anger, fueling her and firing her on. And right now she wasn’t angry. Right now, she was soft and she was vulnerable, and if he said something pointed, she had a feeling that he could rent her in two.
But he wasn’t. Instead, he had said just the right thing. Just the perfect thing. Instead, he had made her feel like more, not less.
She was very unbearably conscious just then of all the things that she had missed in her life because she hadn’t had a mother.
The conversations, the shopping trips. She wondered if her mother would’ve shifted her focus just enough so that this feminine piece of herself didn’t feel quite so foreign.
So that her focus hadn’t been so squarely on simply fitting in with her family. Because there would’ve been someone else like her. Someone else who was different. And maybe she would’ve still been the same her, but maybe the feminine mystique wouldn’t have been quite so...mystical.
It didn’t feel mystical now. It felt simple.
But she was safe with him. The stranger who was also familiar.
He put his hands on his belt, while he kicked his boots off and shrugged off his jeans and underwear in one fluid motion. Her mouth went dry.
Because in his entirety, he was the most gorgeous thing she had ever seen.
A friend of hers in high school—just a casual friend—had once said that
she had seen a penis in person and was not going to rush to buy artistic renderings of it for her room.
She really thought that she might buy some art if it was fashioned to look like him.
He was art all on his own. Thick and strong and large.
His thighs were muscular, his waist lean, every ounce of hard work that man did etched deep into his muscles.
He was a sculpture come to life, every loving detail on his body seemingly handcrafted into an ideal human form.
She had done a bit of time on the internet, trying to prepare herself for what was going to happen. Not with porn, obviously—she knew better than to try to consult male fantasies for what she should expect out of sex. But she had done a bit of reading on how sometimes the first time hurt—but probably not if the woman was a little older and had ridden a lot of horses—she qualified as an older virgin, and she had certainly done her fair share of horse riding.
She also knew—because she wasn’t a child—that a man would fit.
But right now, inexplicably, she felt a bit nervous about that. Just a bit skeptical. But then he came down on the bed beside her, and he was kissing her, the length of his naked body pressed against hers, and she forgot to be nervous. She forgot everything but the way that it felt to be touched by him. Kissed by him.
And suddenly, ridiculously, her eyes filled with tears. Because this was... It was different than she had imagined it would be. He was different. There was no fighting, no banter, no ridiculousness. None of the things that they threw out between each other to keep the other distant. That was what she did. All the time. Throwing down gauntlets and throwing out outrageous statements to keep him standing back. So that she wasn’t challenged. So that he didn’t see.
But he could see now. And he knew. He knew that she wanted him. And the world hadn’t collapsed in on itself. Rather, a whole new world had opened up to her. Rather, everything had become brighter and brilliant and more beautiful.
And, oh, how she wanted him.
She was on fire with it. That heat between her legs slick and hot and ready.
As if on cue, he put his hand there, between her thighs, rubbing at the sensitive bundle of nerves there. And she arched against him. He pushed a finger inside of her tight channel, and she winced.
Okay. Maybe the horse riding wasn’t going to make this as easy as she’d hoped.
But then he pushed another finger in and kept on kissing her. And she got wetter and hotter, and if there was still pain, it didn’t matter quite so much. If there was still pain, it didn’t surpass the deep, throbbing need inside of her. She burned.
And he was the only thing that could possibly put out the fire. Or maybe he would simply be gasoline on a lit match. Maybe he would still get higher, and maybe that was what she wanted. To burn out of control with no end in sight.
He teased her and toyed with her until the pleasure built to unbearable heights. Until her entire world reduced to his mouth on hers and his fingers inside her.
And then she shattered. Her climax rolling over her like a wave. And when she came back to herself, he was positioned between her thighs, the protection firmly in place.
“I’m ready,” she said.
And he thrust home. Deep and hard. She gasped, arching against him. She was overwhelmed by the sensation of fullness, but it wasn’t bad.
No. It wasn’t bad. It was him. Overwhelming and far too much, but the alternative was not having him, and that was simply something that she couldn’t take. A reality that she wouldn’t be happy with at all.
And then, he began to move, the fullness becoming essential rather than unbearable, the weight of him a gift that she wanted to hang on to forever. Impossibly, she felt another climax begin to build. This went deeper, more intense than the previous two. Her body tightened around his, and she arched her back, throwing her head back against the pillows, crying out her pleasure. And that was when he gave himself over to it. Lost himself in his own desire. And all the while she was still riding out the aftershocks of her desire, she was flooded by the overwhelming satisfaction of his.
She had never been with a man before. And he had been with plenty of women. But they were shaking just the same. She was clinging to him, his body sweat slicked, his desire so apparent, and she felt...
She felt more herself than she ever had in her life.
She had done it. She was no longer a virgin. But she realized that wasn’t even what mattered. What mattered was him.
She pushed that realization aside as quickly as it occurred, because of all the things that could potentially ruin this, that was the worst.
This was just for the blizzard.
It was great that it could be him. Because she had always wanted him, but she didn’t need him to be essential. In fact she needed him to very much not be. He was hot, and she liked him. And without feeling the need to distance him because of her attraction to him, they would probably feel like they liked each other even more.
But it could only ever be this. This cold weather thing. That would melt along with the snow.
She chose not to think about that. Instead, she snuggled against him beneath the furs. She thought about saying something. There was nothing to say. And sleep was dragging her under.
So she gave in to it. For the first time in memory Honey Cooper just didn’t bother to fight. Instead, she just rested.
Nine
“I told you,” Jericho said when Honey’s eyes finally fluttered open. “If you still had something to say then I wasn’t worthy of my arrogance.”
She gazed at him out of her narrowed eyes. “That is really the first thing on your mind?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m always on hand for the ‘I told you so.’”
“That is deeply, deeply petty.”
“I never said I wasn’t.” And all right, it wasn’t the most romantic thing. But they weren’t romantic.
Except... She had been amazing, and he was getting impatient watching her sleep. It was the middle of the day, after all.
And you want her again.
Not that he could afford to. Not that either of them could afford this.
But hey, they were stuck here until the weather cleared, which it still hadn’t done. And as long as they could make the most of it, why shouldn’t they? As long as they were here...
“Well, fine. You have earned your arrogance.”
“Happy to hear it.”
Her stomach growled. Audibly. “I’m hungry.”
He was too. But not particularly for food.
“You can have some food. After you have a bath.”
“Hey,” she said, as he picked her up out of the bed. “I can walk, you know. You seem to have forgotten that.”
“I didn’t forget. I just like carrying you.”
It was true.
He liked the feeling of the soft weight in his arms. He liked feeling her in general.
“I’ll get you your bird book if you want.”
“I don’t want the bird book.”
He chuckled. “How about I take a bath with you?”
A flush covered her skin, and he was ridiculously pleased by it. That she was affected by them. By this.
You’ve lost your mind.
Maybe. But it didn’t seem so crazy that what he wanted was to stay here, not face what was out there. Not deal with the fact that he had a long-lost family he was supposed to be spending Christmas with. Yeah, spending time with Honey was a hell of a lot nicer.
He had run the bath already, because he hadn’t been totally sure that they would have enough hot water, and it had been pretty close. He’d warmed a couple pots up on the stove and added them to the deep claw-foot tub in the bathroom.
He deposited her in the warm water and watched the way the firelight sparkled over her damp skin. She was so damned pretty. So perfect. It made hi
m feel... Well, it made him feel a damn sight too much. “Good,” he said. But she didn’t move at all, and he laughed as he got into the tub and lifted her, setting her back down so that she was on his lap.
She sighed, letting her head fall back against his chest. Then she tilted her head. Looking at him as best she could. “This is very strange.”
“How so?” But it made his chest tight.
“Well, just a few hours ago we were fully clothed and sitting across the room from each other talking about birds...”
“I never really talked about birds. It was mostly you talking about birds.”
“Whatever,” she said. “It’s just that... It’s very strange to now be sitting with you like this. Without clothes.”
And perhaps the strangest part of all was it didn’t feel strange. Because they were still them. She was still talking about birds.
“Right.”
He lifted his hand from the water, let the droplets fall over her skin. Her breasts.
He was transfixed by the sight of her. By her beauty. And he hadn’t gotten to where he was marinating in the strangeness of it, because he wanted her for as long as he had and now he finally had her.
She was as beautiful as he’d imagined that she might be. And that was... Well, his imagination had been pretty thorough, but it still hadn’t quite managed to get the particulars. Every dip and hollow and facet of beauty that was unique to Honey.
It was strange. The rightness of it.
“Yeah. I guess,” he said, even though he didn’t feel the same disquiet he imagined she did. Perhaps it was experience.
Except he knew it wasn’t that. Maybe it was just the way they were cocooned in this moment. The entire thing had been a little bit surreal. Maybe he had just sunk into it. Maybe he’d been sinking into it for the last month, finding out the Daltons didn’t know about him—or at least Hank hadn’t. That he actually wanted to get to know him.
“It’s only a few days before Christmas,” he said.
What was supposed to have been his first Christmas with his father.
