Un-Hitched: A Camden Ranch Novel

by Jillian Neal

  “Can’t think of a better way to teach you, and I saw you staring at it curious-like while we were pulling posts. Besides, I got a bulk feeder down on the back forty I got to clean up before I can get my stock back in here. You can help me.”

  “What’s a bulk feeder?”

  “Climb up here and I’ll show you.”

  “I’ll probably wreck your tractor,” she protested.

  “Katy-Belle,” he warned. “I can turn you over my knee right here.”

  Rolling her eyes, she accepted his offered hand and let him hoist her up into his lap.

  “All right, put your feet on top of my boots.”

  “Won’t that hurt if I’m supposed to press the pedals?”

  This time she received a grunt of disdain. “You ain’t gon’ hurt me. You couldn’t if you tried.”

  When she placed her feet over his boots, he maneuvered so his cock was centered between her butt cheeks. She tried with all of her might not to blush but came up short. He chuckled in her good ear.

  “Now, you know why I wanted to teach you like this.”

  “I think I showed you that I like your less civilized side.”

  “Once we get all the feed off the ground, I’ll show you just how uncivilized I can be, sugar. All right, this here’s the throttle. Press your right foot on the brake while you press your left foot to the clutch. Turn the key right there and drop the throttle just a little. It’s already warm so it’ll go right off.”

  “Okay,” Kaitlyn reviewed everything he’d told her. “Brake, throttle, key, got it.” She grinned when the tractor roared to life. The rhythmic whir of the motor shook her backside against him. A hungry grunt filled her ear this time.

  He released the parking brake. “Can you hear me as long as I talk right here?”

  She nodded, afraid to take her eyes off the machine.

  “All right, ease off the clutch real slow like and steer. You got it.”

  The tractor lurched forward and she stomped on his foot, ramming the clutch back to the floor, bringing it to a hard stop again. “Sorry. I told you I couldn’t do this.”

  “That’s two,” he informed her.

  “Two what?”

  “Two strikes.”

  “And am I out on three?”

  “That ain’t the kind of strike I’m talking about and you know it. Now, settle in and try it again. You’re doing just fine.”

  On the next try, she managed to ease the tractor forward and out into the field where he directed her. She turned it too hard once, but he just grinned and caught the wheel before she dumped them on the muddy ground.

  Every bump and shake of the motor hardened his cock against her. Every capable plane of his body cradled her against him in a cage of masculine protection. The vibration of the machine made her weak. She was desperate and more than distracted by the time they reached a large, overturned metal bin that had at one time been tall enough to drive a truck under. The smell of cattle feed, scattered in heaps on the ground, filled her lungs but she couldn’t quite find it in herself to care.

  “I swear I’m about to come in my Wranglers,” he groaned.

  “I’d rather you come in me.” Her words were breathy and laced with desperation. Pleading utterances wrenched up from her soul. Desire burned away any of her rationale or good judgment leaving only a flash fire of need in its wake.

  “I ain’t got a condom out here with me, but I swear to you if I did, I’d already be so deep inside of you, you’d feel it for days to come.”

  “Grant, please, can’t this wait until tomorrow? I don’t care if it’s reckless. I don’t even care if it’s wrong. I just need you.”

  “It might be reckless, sugar, but it sure as hell ain’t wrong. Nothing about us is wrong.”

  She spun in the seat, abandoning the wheel. Working quickly, Grant shut down the motor, his mind full of nothing but her. Unable to help himself he thrust his hips, driving his denim-trapped cock against her hard and fast.

  A high-pitched keening plea fell from her lips, “Please, Grant. Take me.”

  “Damn, I love you begging for me. Drives me wild.”

  “Please,” she whimpered readily. Lifting up on her knees she made one hell of a presentation of her tits.

  “Careful, peaches, I might take that as an invitation,” he warned in a half growl.

  Biting her bottom lip seductively, she whipped off the t-shirt she’d been wearing all day. Her luscious tits bounced in his face caught up in a lacy black bra. His hands slipped up from her waist to cup their heavy weight. “Sweet Jesus, you’re fucking gorgeous.” His cock surged against her. Too damn many clothes between them.

  Before he could do away with their barriers, a distinctive gallop echoed in the distance. He studied her. Given the way she continued to grind against him, pushing him closer and closer to the edge, she couldn’t hear the only horse Grant would delay this for.

  “Put your shirt back on, sugar. Quick-like for me.”

  “What? Why?” Mutiny stormed in those blue eyes that he swore had turned to lakes of fire in that moment.

  He grabbed the shirt and hoisted it back over her head. She struggled with him, doing nothing but kicking his rampant craving into overdrive. “I’d love nothin’ more than for you to get scratchy and hissy in my bed in a little while, peaches, but right now, listen.”

  That got her attention. Watching closely, he noted everything she did to try to help herself hear what he was hearing. A quick swallow. She settled back down in his lap, easing her head out of the incessant wind, using him as a buffer. Her brow furrowed in concentration.

  The thunder of hooves grew louder and suddenly she stood and hopped down off the tractor. “Is that a …?”

  Grant joined her on the ground just as his father, mounted on his jet black stallion, Busco, came into view. In other teams of horses a mare might be dominant, but on Camden Ranch, Busco called the shots. At 18 hands high no one wanted to take him on.

  Another few long strides and his daddy was dismounting with an all-knowing grin. “You teaching her to drive the tractor, son?”

  Making no effort to hide his eye roll from his father, Grant grunted his impatience. This at least made Kaitlyn grin. “Katy, this is my daddy, Ev. He rules the roost around here.”

  Ev laughed outright at that. “You believe I have any say about what any of my kids do, darlin’ you’d be more wrong than right. It’s nice to meet you, though. I’m sorry I wasn’t up at the house when you got here. I saw this bulk feeder down when I was checking his cattle early this mornin’ and I knew Grant wouldn’t let tell his brothers about it ‘cause he wouldn’t want them to help him with it. Your mama’s bringing the old Dodge up here. We’ll get it cleaned up and get y’all settled in.”

  “I got it Dad. Don’t worry about it.” Irritation settled squarely between Grant’s shoulder blades, an itch he just couldn’t scratch. He was more than capable of handling his part of the ranch.

  “I know you can do it, son, but occasionally it’s nice to have a little help, and pardon me for saying so, but you two look like you were ridden hard and put up wet. I know neither of you slept last night. Your mama’s got you some supper. ‘Sides, it makes me feel useful.” He winked at Kaitlyn.

  “That’s so nice of you both. Trust me, I’m of no help. I’m still not even sure what this was before it fell over,” Kaitlyn beamed at Grant’s daddy, only adding gall to his irritation. She was plenty helpful. Why did she keep saying shit like that?

  “That’s three, peaches,” he whispered in her ear. She promptly turned every shade of a bright pink sunset.

  “You not get around to explaining what a bulk feeder was?” His father laughed at him outright. “Can’t imagine what you were doing instead.”

  “We keep cattle feed in these, sugar. We drive the feed trucks under ‘em, load ‘em up, and then take the feed out and scatter it. That’s how they eat ‘til the grass is full in. I can’t get my stock back over here ‘til this is cleaned up. If
they stumble up on it, they’ll be all over it. Surprised a few of ‘em didn’t get into it before Luke drove ‘em over to his fields.”

  “They were all pretty shook up this morning,” his father explained. “And we got to ‘em quickly. Handy to have someone else lookin’ out for you when you’re out lookin’ after your granddaddy and Miss Kaitlyn here. Nothing wrong with relying on other people.”

  Grant had received that particular lecture more than a few times in his life. He didn’t want his family to have to look out for him. He wanted to be the one looking out for them.

  Another minute passed and Grant’s mother pulled up in his father’s first Dodge Ram.

  “So, what do we do? How do we clean it up?” Kaitlyn asked him quietly.

  Scrubbing his hands over his face and willing his brain to think straight in her presence, he tried to order his night. Clean up the feed. Thank his mama for supper. Take Katy back to his house. Show her around. Fuck her senseless. No. Dammit, he had to do this right. She was different. She was innocent, relatively speaking. She wasn’t used to being with demanding ranchers who’d put a lover through her paces before turning her loose. And he had no intention of letting her go, anyway.

  “We’ll get back on the tractor, scoop up the feed, and put it in the back of the truck. I’ll tarp it tonight in case we get any more rain. Tomorrow, I’ll take it out and shovel it to the cattle once I get ‘em back over here. Then we’ll put the rest in another one of my feeders ‘til I can get this one replaced. So, hop on up and we’ll get started, sweetness.” He winked at her, knowing exactly what she was about to say.

  “Grant Camden, I am not getting back up on that tractor and sitting in your lap with your parents watching us.” The alarm in her eyes proved just as satisfying as he knew it would. He couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “All right, I’ll let you do it yourself, just watch it. Don’t turn the wheel while it’s loaded or you’ll flip it over.”

  “No! I would either wreck the tractor or wreck your father’s truck or both. In fact, knowing me, I’d probably kill all of us.”

  Dammit. “Come here to me.” Grasping her right hand, he jerked her into his arms, caging her against him and nuzzling her head until his mouth was against her good ear. “First off, you would be just fine. You can do anything. Second, I ain’t gon’ ask you to do something I haven’t helped you learn to do first. I was teasing you. And third, claiming you’d kill everyone’s gotta be worth ten strikes minimum.”

  She gave no verbal response, but her left hand trailed up his chest, her fingers landed on his nipple, and she twisted through his shirt rather hard.

  He caught her hand with an irritated grunt. “We’ll get to all that later, peaches. Damn, I like this feisty side.”

  “Good,” she challenged with an impish look in her eyes.

  Clearly having heard a little of the conversation, Grant’s father shook his head. “When Grant was about twelve, I taught him to drive a stick so he could pull the hay trailer. He was doin’ all right ‘til Austin backed one of the Gators into my truck. That’s that dent right there.” He pointed to the driver’s side door. “You can’t hurt this truck. If you want to try and load the feed, darlin’, one of us can help you. Ain’t no better way to learn than by doing.”

  Kaitlyn jerked out of Grant’s arms. “Thank you, sir, but I’m good right here. I’ll just watch.”

  “Let’s get it done,” Grant commanded. He was more than ready to send his parents on their way. He’d been trying desperately to extend his fuse of patience all damn day. Every time they were alone, she offered him more of herself, gave him more honesty, and showed him what she needed to feel her own worth. In doing all of that, she set him on fire. His composure was gone, burned up in craving her. He was tired of waiting. His pulse double-timed through his veins as he climbed up in the tractor to make quick work of the feed on the ground.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Caught up in watching Grant expertly maneuver the tractor like it was something he’d been born doing, Kaitlyn missed what his mother had said. She’d barely heard Grant’s name over the whir of the tractor and the incessant wind.

  “I’m sorry, what?” The endless debate began in her mind. When do you tell people you can’t hear properly? If you tell them too soon, it makes them uncomfortable. They usually respond by reaching a decibel just under a shout making Kaitlyn want to melt in to the ground.

  If you waited and told them after they’d gotten to know you, you risked hurting their feelings. For some reason, people seemed to believe if you cared about them you would have told them sooner. Of course, no one could actually define sooner for her, and Grant Camden was the only person who had ever figured out she was deaf before being told outright.

  “I was just saying that no one works harder than Grant.” His mother smiled and scooted closer to Kaitlyn, saving her from having to explain why she was struggling to hear. “I hope we all haven’t completely overwhelmed you, sweetheart. We’re just so thrilled to meet you.”

  Why? The question danced hesitantly on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t produce the word. The sensation that she was missing out on something gnawed at her psyche. “I’m thrilled to be here. That probably sounds odd, though. You couldn’t have been expecting me.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Maybe not expecting, but definitely hoping for you. Never know what fate has in store I guess.”

  “You believe in fate, Mrs. Camden?”

  “I didn’t when I was your age. Believe me, honey, I’ve been right where you’re standing. When Ev first brought me to the ranch, I’d never seen so much land, and I’d surely never set eyes on a pack of heifers. But you can’t live in the middle of all of this, and see life here, and not believe in fate.”

  “But what about when bad things happen? Do you think that’s fate, too?” Kaitlyn had no idea why she desperately needed Grant’s mother to answer her inquisition. “I’m sorry. That’s probably a rude thing to ask.” She needed some kind of explanation, but had no right to demand it from this woman who’d been nothing but kind to her.

  His mother offered her a tender smile, and suddenly she drew her in to a motherly embrace, the kind Kaitlyn hadn’t felt from her own mother in years. “You can ask me most anything, anytime, sweetheart. Doesn’t mean I’ll always have an answer, but here’s what I do know: there are people who will tell you everything happens for a reason, and I think that might just be one of the cruelest things you could ever say to someone. Now, mind you, they call themselves being kind, but how you look someone in the eye and tell them that the pain they’re existing in was meant to be I will never understand.

  “Sometimes life is just downright mean, and there isn’t any explanation that can make it different. We don’t get a say. But sometimes life reaches out its hand and makes us take a step we’d never planned to take and it ends up being the very step we so desperately needed to help us heal from the pain it served up previously. The only thing we don’t get to do is stand still. We have to keep taking steps and hope we somehow learn the dance. I can tell you this too, an awful lot of things in my life had to go terribly wrong for me to end up being in the right place for me, and it might be the same with you.”

  “Thank you for not saying bad things happen because of fate. People kept telling me that when my brother died.” The words stung the back of her throat. Their weight took another vicious blow to her weary frame. This was why she hated to say it out loud.

  “People don’t know what to say because somewhere deep in their soul they know there are no words that can erase the pain and that is what most people want to do. Every now and then, sometimes only once in a lifetime, fate offers us someone who figures out the right things to say or the right things to do to ease the pain. Sometimes they love you enough to just go through it with you, and there’s nothing better than that.”

  Kaitlyn had no idea how to respond. Did Grant’s mother think he was willing to go through this with her? And perhaps m
ore importantly, shouldn’t she already have gotten over her brother’s death? When did time heal the wound? Wasn’t that a thing? Grant didn’t even know what had happened yet. She’d just met him. She didn’t even know how to tell him anything beyond the fact that Keith was no longer alive.

  After the feed was loaded into the back of Grant’s father’s Dodge, Kaitlyn found herself clutching a covered pot of vegetable soup and a plate of cornbread, supplied from his mother, as she once again climbed up in Grant’s truck.

  It struck her as odd they’d been working in his fields most of the day but still weren’t close enough to his house to have walked. The sheer amount of land soothed her. Nothing could touch her there. No one could find her. Nothing bad could happen. She could exist entirely alone with him. Nothing had ever been more appealing.

  She just needed a night or two to really live before she would be forced to reconcile everything she’d done in the last twenty-four hours. The impending conversations with Seth and her father weighed on her mind, but she forced them away. The blank board of vacant despondency that was the result of every conversation she tried to have with her mother was more difficult to ignore.

  “You’re mighty quiet over there. You okay, peaches?” Grant spoke through a half-yawn. His sleepy drawl once again quaked in her blood. Suddenly, all she wanted was to curl up with the smoky warmth of his voice and let it absolve her. That husky gravel that rumbled from his lips was the healing balm to any problem she could ever have.

  “Thank you for teaching me all of that. It was fun.”

  “You’re one hell of a sexy ranch-hand. The pleasure was all mine.” He winked at her as the last vestiges of sunlight were finally vanquished in the evening sky. “Well, it ain’t much, but it’s home.” He pulled up beside a ranch house that sat low to the ground, tucked safely into a slight roll in the relatively flat prairie land. It was twice as long as it was wide and decks ran the length of the front and back. Substantial stone fixings secured the home on each corner and held the decks in place.