by Stacey Keith
The stable boy came out with the horses saddled and bridled. They ambled after him, tails swishing, hoofs making that clop clop sound that brought Jake instantly back to his childhood. His greatest joy had been horses, and most of those were the patient old mares on his uncle’s farm. Both these horses had an intelligent look to their eyes, and there was spirit in them, too.
“This handsome boy is Atlas,” Maggie said, petting the Morgan’s muzzle. “But I’m more used to riding Delilah.”
“She’s all yours then.” It made sense that Maggie was familiar with Mason’s horses. She may have even ridden them by herself sometimes. Jake watched her long fingers combing through Atlas’s mane and had to look away.
Christ, she was killing him.
He assumed Maggie would need a mounting block to get on a horse that stood fifteen hands high. Instead, she shoved one booted foot in the stirrup and swung a leg over easily. Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be, he thought. What have I gotten myself into?
Maggie gave him a laughing, defiant look. Then she clicked her tongue and Delilah took off, leaving him to mount Atlas and chase after her.
Jake grabbed the reins, swung himself over the saddle and dug his heels into Atlas’s warm flanks. The horse snorted, and he wheeled its head around in the direction of the trail. He could see Maggie up ahead at full gallop, back arched with her long hair jerking behind her. Don’t think for one minute I won’t catch you, cupcake. In the end, I always win.
Absorbed by the rhythmic drumbeat of Atlas’s hoofs, Jake kept his eyes on Maggie and the chestnut mare. He could tell that Maggie was in her element, wild and untamable. Annie Oakley if Annie had liked horses as much as she’d liked guns. She didn’t even look behind her to see if he was there.
Damn if he didn’t like her even more for it.
By the time they reached the sound of the river, Maggie was so far ahead, he couldn’t see her anymore. Atlas kept tearing up the trail and churning dust. There was no stopping him. Jake kept his weight forward, absorbing the vibrations of Atlas’s hoofs through his body and feeling the wind blasting in his ears.
Then they rounded a bend and there stood Delilah with her nose down, nibbling, as unconcerned as though she’d been taken out for a morning stroll.
Maggie grinned at him with all the adorable naughtiness of a girl caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to. Her eyes were brilliant, her cheeks flushed. She knew she’d won this round.
“Well, I’ve got to hand it to you,” she said. “You’re not just a suit. I guess you do know how to ride after all.”
Jake eased up on the bit so Atlas could graze. The horse was breathing hard and might need the break. “And you know how to fly a horse. I didn’t even know horses could fly.”
“Delilah’s a good girl, aren’t you, sweetheart?” She patted Delilah’s neck and the mare whinnied softly in response.
Jake couldn’t stop marveling at this new woman, this new Maggie. Maybe it was a little disconcerting when you thought you had someone pegged and then they pulled a fast one on you. Or in this case, a fast horse.
So far, he’d seen three Maggies. There was Bakery Maggie, brisk and in charge. Then he’d seen Date Maggie, a temptress in a red dress. He liked that one a lot.
But now there was Wild Maggie. Jake could have chased her all day and not gotten tired of it. The sky, the speed, the exhilaration had his blood pumping. He wanted to drag her off that horse, strip her naked and see how she tasted after a ride like that.
Just thinking about it made him sweat.
“I love horses,” Maggie said. “I was one of those horse-crazy girls with the posters and the plastic figurines and the dog-eared copy of Black Beauty. When Cassidy and Mason bought Willow Ridge, I instantly fell in love with the place.”
Jake took a deep breath and tried to clear his head. She’d cast a spell over him. He couldn’t even think straight. All he could see was the lush carnality of her mouth and the thrust of her breasts and the cowgirl swagger. Desire ate at him like a wolf.
But in just that moment, Jake thought he might have discovered something. With the land beneath him and Maggie beside him…what if he’d been looking for this? His life in Dallas, the revolving harem of women, deals lost and deals won…were they old snakeskins he could shed and leave behind him on the trail? This new Jake wasn’t checking his phone every two seconds. This new Jake breathed fresh air and barely cringed at the thought of just one woman. This woman. Maggie.
She turned Delilah back to the trail and he rode alongside her, wanting to ask her things but hating to spoil the enchantment of the moment. A hawk glided overhead, its shadow rippling over the trees and grass. The air smelled of wild flowers and warm dirt and the sweat of the horses. About half a mile away, the prairie gave way to two rounded hills that reminded him of a woman’s breasts. The trail led to a shallow slope dotted with pines on one side, and the remains of a split log fence on the other.
“You look like a man who found the answer to something,” she said, glancing at him.
“Maybe.”
She raised her face to the sun while he watched her, wanting. Restless. Hungry.
“I don’t know a lot about you,” she said. “I want to.”
“Go ahead.” But Jake knew he was bullshitting. This was an old game women played. They liked to pry you open and see what was inside. But he could play, too. Make them think they’d gotten somewhere and then just shut them down.
She seemed to think about what she wanted to ask him. “Okay, what’s the cheesiest song you know all the lyrics to?”
Easy. “Our Love is Here to Stay,” written by George Gershwin, popularized by Frank Sinatra. But like hell he was going to tell her he loved sentimental old songs.
“‘Highway to Hell,’” he said. “Especially the part that goes, ‘Hey, Satan, paid my dues.’”
“Have you?” she asked, clearly curious. “Paid your dues?”
What a leading question. Ah, Maggie. She’d never stop trying to get him to open up, would she? The problem was, he’d never opened up to anybody. What was the point? He’d always been a loner. Wealth hadn’t changed that. If anything, wealth had made it worse. It made him suspect the motives of everyone who tried to get close.
Jake tried to get comfortable with answering questions, but it would have been easier to get comfortable with Atlas’s rocking gait. Maggie’s presence was too real. Too near.
“I started my first business when I was in high school,” he said, hoping to satisfy her curiosity the safe way, by telling her the same stories she might have read about him in a magazine. “Palestine, Texas. It was even more of a shit hole when I grew up there. Remember when the space shuttle blew up? Most of the pieces fell on Palestine. They kept finding chunks of it for weeks—in pools, on roofs. In Palestine, all we had besides space junk were pump jacks and pine trees. But we also had a fair number of retirees. So I opened up a putting green.”
“A putting green?” she said. “Like for golf?”
“My uncle had some land. I worked my ass off tilling, planting grass, drilling drain holes. Hell, I hated golf. But I knew there’d be money in it.” He smiled, remembering how eagerly he’d count out the day’s earnings, the smell of those damp wrinkled bills. “By the time I went to college, I had quite a lot put away. That’s when I started investing in real estate.”
At first it had been empty lots in promising locations. Then parking lots that he leased to businesses. Finally, office buildings. His junior year of college, he was worth a quarter of a million dollars. Mason, his frat brother, used to call him Golden Boy.
Then Jake met a guy in the quad named Vishal Batra. Vishal had an idea for harnessing solar energy without the bulky panels. Jake invested, they formed a company, and within three years they sold that company for a healthy profit.
Jake liked telling Maggie his success story. Loretta wasn’t in it and
he came off sounding like a hero. Strange how sentimental he could get about a past that had also seen its share of failures: the hard lessons of why you had to separate business from friendship. Why long-term investments were better than a quick fix.
Why serious relationships were nothing more than a distraction.
Back then it was all go go go and money money money. Was that changing? Should he be angry that Maggie made him want more?
They dismounted and then walked the horses down the slope to drink from the river. Sun filtering down through the trees created a dappled effect on the water. A few boulders sat in the middle, the water churning white around them. Deer tracks led up to the river’s edge.
Maggie found a spot and dropped down, hugging her knees to her chest. Jake sat beside her, aware of his sudden moody discontent. He was struggling with something but didn’t know what it was yet. It made him tense.
Part of it was this sudden urge to tell Maggie his whole life story. The real one. The one only his lousy brother knew. The feeling was right fucking there. How pathetic was that? He wanted to tell her what happened when he’d come home from school. How his mother would be so passed out drunk, he’d have to hold a mirror under her nose just to see if she was still breathing. How he was actually afraid of losing her, this woman who used to pet his hair and tell him stories when she wasn’t slurring her words.
Worse than admitting to Maggie that he was damaged was admitting how badly he wanted her. How just being next to her made his heartbeat pound faster than their horses’ hoofs galloping up the trail.
Maggie watched him. Her eyes were dark and luminous. They had glints in their depths. But it seemed as though she were dealing with a few issues of her own.
“May I ask you something?” she said in a strangled voice.
He really didn’t want to talk anymore, but couldn’t tell her that. Why the fuck did he even care?
“How are we going to end, Jake?” she asked him softly. “What happens once you decide it’s over?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Maggie couldn’t believe she’d actually said those awful, needy words.
Now that she had, she couldn’t take them back. How many times had her lack of filter gotten her in trouble?
She waited, wishing she were the kind of woman who didn’t put her cards on the table. Who knew when to keep her mouth shut.
But the music of the water, the chatter of the birds, the heat in his eyes, all conspired to drug her into sensual submission. She was being pulled apart. She could save herself by walking away or she could save herself by giving in to this terrible raging need.
Jake leaned back against the tree they sat under and gave her a strange smile. The smile made her heart pound because she sensed he could see inside her and knew exactly what was going on.
She couldn’t breathe.
“Why don’t I ask you the same thing, Maggie?” he said. “Tell me. How does this end?”
“You’re talking in circles,” she said, which annoyed her because she wanted straight answers. She wanted to skip to the end of the book and discover if there was a happily ever after before she’d even figured out if there was a happily ever now.
It sounded unfair. Maybe it was unfair. But that didn’t stop her from wanting it.
Jake brushed the back of his hand across her cheek. Maggie gazed into his startling blue eyes and felt herself slowly dissolving, bit by bit, like a sandcastle being washed away by the sea.
If someone had told her a month ago that she would fall in serious lust with a man like Jake, a billionaire playboy used to getting his own way, she would have laughed.
Yet here she was—no, here they were—alone for the first time since they’d met. And she knew he was waiting for her to make up her mind. Was she in or was she out? Did she accept the terms and conditions of his contract? Had she read the fine print?
But it didn’t really matter what the contract said. It was only a matter of time before desire simply tore her apart.
Intoxication swept over her again. It made her mouth dry and other parts of her…less so. If she didn’t do this, she would have to live with the ache, the agonizing need, for the rest of her life. It would kill her slowly and make a coward of her. And if there was one thing Maggie knew for sure, she wasn’t a coward.
“Maybe I don’t care what happens,” she whispered, her breath hitching. “Maybe I just want you.”
Jake’s eyes glittered. She could see his pulse pounding in the taut, tanned skin of his throat. He stretched over her, bringing his heat close, closer, and her lips parted to receive him. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
Everywhere he touched, he ignited. He spread liquid fire to all parts of her body. He took from her. He tasted. His hands were in her hair, but she felt them everywhere else.
Everything he touched, he changed. Her skin first. It felt sunburned from the inside, each tiny hair standing at attention, each inch of overheated flesh sensitized to the point of pain. He dragged his lips down the line of her neck and along the ridge of her collarbone. By the time he found her breasts, the heat had pulled her under until she was gasping with pent-up need.
Jake laid her down on a bed of moss and dried leaves. She arched beneath his touch, crying out to him. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.
Maggie’s hands shook. She didn’t know where to put them. Jake solved the problem by pinning them above her head with one hand and unbuttoning her top with the other. She lay before him half-naked and exposed, the soft crescents of her breasts cradled in a pink satin bra. He gazed down at her with a deep guttural sound of male approval.
Jaggedly, she thought, I can’t be doing this.
Her flimsy pink bra had a front clasp. Jake found it and her breasts spilled out. His eyes darkened. He released her hands so he had the freedom to use his own to cup her warm abundant flesh. Her nipples ached for his lips and then his lips were there. He licked and pinched and teased with his teeth and tongue while she writhed beneath him. Jake’s mastery came from experience. She didn’t even care. Electric shocks wicked down to her belly and pooled between her thighs.
It didn’t matter that he’d been with a lot of women. All his intensity was hers. Just hers. It burned a trail straight to her sex, which throbbed with need, slippery and engorged and ready. Oh, God, so ready.
His T-shirt. She had to get it off. She had to feel her skin next to his. Starting from the bottom, she pulled it over his head and flung it aside. A kick of pure female lust crashed into her. Jake was all smooth skin and hard muscles, not an ounce of flab on his washboard stomach.
She slid her hands across his muscular chest and watched his eyes flicker. They never left her face.
This wasn’t sex. It was a revelation.
His lips were at her lips, her throat, her breasts again, making her feel as though she were deliciously at his mercy. When he touched her, she was beautiful. Desired. His. And when he muttered all kinds of filthy, decadent things, things he wanted to do to her, she burst into a thousand fiery pieces.
His hands moved to the waistband of her jeans. He slipped the button out and pulled the zipper down, taking his time while she groaned with impatience.
“I didn’t bring anything,” he said in his deep voice. “But we can do other stuff you’ll like.”
“You don’t have a condom?” she asked faintly.
Jake shook his head. “At the ranch. We’ll get to that later. First …” His smile turned knowing, and she swallowed hard.
He reached down and wrenched off her boots and socks.
Oh, God.
He grabbed her jeans by the belt loops and peeled her out of them. Then her pink cotton panties, which he took his time slipping down her legs and over her feet.
Now she was naked and the feel of the cool air on her sensitive, intimate flesh made her shiver.
; As he knelt between her legs, the sight of his broad shoulders and small waist, the huge erection straining the zipper of his jeans, made her reach for him. All she wanted was the hard, slick heat of Jake inside her before she remembered that she ought to care about things like condoms.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” Jake said softly, his eyes zeroing in on their target. “Fasten your seatbelt.”
She was practically panting. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
With the expression of a starving man who now expected to feast, Jake ducked his head between her thighs. Was she okay? There’d been a lot of riding and—
His tongue found her. She cried out and closed her eyes. Her hands were in his hair, tensing and releasing like a cat. Oh, God, those…skills. He bore into her with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he wanted.
When he added a finger, then another, slowly twisted them in and out, her mouth dropped open. Maybe Jake had a blueprint of her body. He knew all the stairs and secret passageways. Pressure built inside her with reckless speed. The sight of him between her thighs, licking and sucking and flicking, pushed her even faster toward the edge of the cliff.
A needy whimper escaped her lips. She had one hand in his hair now and the other digging her nails into the dirt. Blind urgency made her feel as though her body wasn’t even hers anymore. She could feel the expert precision of his tongue intensifying, circling and finding her, boring in on the sweet spot. Her stomach went wobbly but her thighs tensed.
“Holy—” she gasped. “Sweet—oh, God. Jake.” And the orgasm wrecked her.
Throe after throe of mindless pulsing waves slammed into her. She cried out, back arched, enslaved by that wicked, talented tongue. She felt herself clutch around his fingers as they worked inside her. Jake sent her spinning into a bright hot sun.
Slowly, the eddies subsided and she drifted back down to earth. She lay panting and nearly gutted. “Never,” she said. “I never—”
Jake made a sound of male triumph. “Ready for more?”
