Rocky Mountain Heat: Six Pack Ranch, Book 1

by Arend, Vivian

  He reached over her to grab something from the basket, the heat from his body covering her, and she couldn’t stop from wiggling upward, letting their bodies touch. A groan broke from his lips as he sat back, desire clouding his eyes.

  She gazed into the depths of his soul.

  Blake breathed heavy for a minute, his chest heaving, his hands shaking as he handed her the sandwich. “I can see this task ain’t going to be easy for me neither. Holy hell, woman, you’re driving me insane.” He collapsed back on the blanket, covering his eyes with one arm.

  Jaxi nibbled silently. The blood pounding through her body made the sound of the river fade until all she heard was the constant thump of her heartbeat and the echoing throb in her core.

  “I need to tell you something.” He rolled on his side to stare at her. “I’m not sorry about teasing you until you caved, and I’m not sorry we made love, but I’m also not sorry you took over and made these past weeks special.”

  He chuckled. “That’s the strangest ‘not apology’ I’ve ever heard. I’m not sorry either. About any of it.”

  She handed him a can of pop from the basket. “I need to ask you something. You said we needed time to see the truth about each other, to see if what we felt was real or just an image.” His throat moved as he drank and Jaxi found herself having to swallow hard.

  He made every inch of her tingle just sitting next to him.

  “I did.” He lifted a hand to play with her ponytail.

  She closed her eyes briefly to gather her thoughts. Facing him square on, she held his hands tightly in hers. “Blake, what I’ve seen is a man I trust. A man who has the respect of both the community and his family. Jesse went off to school a couple weeks ago after hugging you to pieces and giving me a chaste peck on the cheek. He’s got no bitterness brewing with either of us and I’m so grateful. That’s because of you, because of the way you talked to him and shared with him. The way you treated me when he was around to prove you were the best one for me.

  “Even Travis—God, the way you opened yourself up to him? I had no idea, but somehow you figured out what he needed. You haven’t urged me to share his secrets, and you trusted me right when it was most important. You haven’t asked me to give up reaching out to the others. You’ve supported me around the house and in the community. Heck, even today, stealing me away and making me relax. That’s what you want me to do that’s supposed to be so tough, right?”

  He grinned at her with his new cocky smile that made her heart melt and her panties wet all at the same time. “Well, you do seem to have a problem with the word no. Using it with others, that is. Did you notice I had to find seven people to replace you?”

  She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. “What I’ve also seen is a man who put his sexual desires on hold, even when tempted by a very naughty tease. Your strength of character and your…”

  She couldn’t go on. Her throat was closing, and it all came down to one thing.

  “I love you, Blake Coleman. I always have, but I know it more now than ever before.”

  Blake brushed his thumb over her mouth and she kissed it. He moved in close and nestled her alongside him, the hard length of his muscular body heating her up. She relaxed back on the blanket and stared up as his strong features broke into a smile that reached his eyes.

  “I’ve got a whole lot to say about you too, but I’ll start at the end. I love you.” He leaned down and kissed her again, this time harder, his tongue dipping into her mouth and stroking hers. His hand cradled her neck, directing the angle to mesh them closer, nibbling and tasting each other until they drew back breathless.

  Blake grinned at her and continued. “You’re not a little girl, you’re all woman. Not just your body but your mind and your heart. The only person I’ve ever seen work as hard as you is my ma, but she’s nowhere near as good looking.” He winked and she swatted him teasingly. “It’s not just the energy you use when you serve others, but the way you pour in love. Everything you touch is better because you’ve been involved. It’s humbling to see how much you love others and realize you love me too.”

  He kissed her nose, kissed her cheek, touched a finger to the moisture escaping from the corner of her eye.

  “I could go on and on about how you care for my family so tenderly it makes me ache inside in the part of me that needs family to be number one. I can’t just love you, Jaxi, I’ve got to love my family. I’ve got so much more to learn there about how to really be there for them, but the way you fit in and belong with us all is incredible. So important.”

  Her heart was full to overflowing. She closed her eyes to stop the tears from escaping.

  His voice scratched. “Thank you for being stubborn enough to force me to see you belong with me.” He lifted her to a sitting position across from him and clasped her hands again. She stared into his eyes, and he took a deep breath.

  “Jaxi, I want to—”

  A series of giggles broke the intimacy of the moment, and Jaxi snorted in disbelief.

  “Miss Jaxi? You gonna come hand out the awards for the colouring contest?” A trio of children traipsed over the ridge to surround Blake and Jaxi. One of them crawled into her lap, another into his. The oldest of the three glared at Blake in disapproval.

  “You’ve been kissing her, haven’cha?” he complained.

  Blake nodded slowly and solemnly. “I have.”

  “Ughhhh. Doncha know girls got cooties?” he whispered in Blake’s direction.

  “Children, come back. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know they were looking for you until a minute ago.” Cari tried to round up the strays and shoo them away, even as she checked the details of the setting with interest.

  Blake laughed out loud as the tyke in his lap wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. “Well, it’s fine, Cari. I forgot Miss Jaxi was supposed to hand out awards. I guess we need to go and do that right now.”

  He rose to his feet and shifted the little girl to his hip, reaching a hand to Jaxi. Guilt at ruining his wonderful surprise rushed her, and she tried to make it better. “We don’t have to go, Blake.”

  A chorus of disappointed cries rose from the children, and his playfully stern headshake brought more tears to her eyes.

  “Of course we have to go. This is important, handing out prizes. Come on, kids, show me where we need to take Miss Jaxi.” He nodded at Cari, and she winked before moving to pick up the blanket and basket. He lowered his voice conspiratorially to the little boy waiting. “You see, I haven’t been in a colouring contest for a long time, and I can’t remember where they hold it.”

  Jaxi ambled slowly, a child in her arms. Beside her Blake listened to the running monologue of the little waif, nodding and ahaing at appropriate times.

  If this was what a family felt like…

  Bring it on.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Blake looked around the table with mixed emotions. Jesse and Joel had came home for a weekend visit. Ma and Dad were missing, out at the hospital for a check-up and X-rays for the afternoon. They had friends staying with them to drive them home in the evening. With their folks gone, Travis’s absence was expected, but there wasn’t much he could do at this point other than wait for his brother to come around. Blake turned to talk to Daniel about a new furniture order, the quiet conversation peaceful in the room. A soft touch brushed his groin, and he flicked a hand at it, thinking one of the cats had gotten into the house.

  Jaxi’s foot rested in his lap.

  He jerked up quick, checked to see if Daniel had noticed anything, then snuck his chair in a bit tighter before he looked her way.

  She talked quietly to Jesse, not a single indication anything naughty was happening. Certainly not something like her bare foot rubbing back and forth over his crotch until it was damn near impossible to concentrate on the conversation he was pretending to hold with Daniel.

  A hand waved in front of his face, and Daniel snickered. “You need more sleep. Jaxi asked if
you wanted dessert.”

  He turned a hot glare on her that made her gasp.

  “I’d love some dessert. I’ll help serve.”

  He shoved back from the table and marched around to haul her from her chair. He didn’t care it was clear he sported a hard-on he could hang a horseshoe from. She’d started the game.

  He was going to finish it.

  “You need any more help there?” Jesse called as Blake shouldered through the door to the kitchen with Jaxi hanging from his arms.

  All the boys laughed and Matt complained, “I bet we don’t get any dessert until it’s gone cold.”

  Cold would be good right about now, because Blake was headed for spontaneous combustion. Having kept his hands off her for this long, he was ready to break. He dropped her by the sink and looked her up and down slowly, his gaze taking in the long length of her legs, all the way from her bare feet to the hem of her sundress.

  “What’s for dessert?” He circled her slowly, a finger trailing over her waist, over her hips. Up her back and along the bare skin exposed on the edge of the neckline.

  Jaxi swallowed and dropped her head to the side. His hand rose to support her neck. Blake wrapped himself around her until she had nowhere to go but hard against him.

  “Jaxi? You’ve got a bad habit of not answering questions.”

  “I was distracted…”

  Blake kissed the beating pulse in her neck. “What’s for dessert, and did you know that’s a very sexy dress?”

  Jaxi smiled. A mischievous expression that told him she’d remembered their first conversation about sexy dresses. “Apple pie and ice cream, and if you’re asking if I’m wearing panties, you’ve got to find a setting a little more private than the kitchen.”

  “What’s the matter? You never been naked in front of a crowd before?” he joked, smoothing his hands over her ass. No panty lines, but she might be wearing a thong.

  Since the picnic he’d been scheming and plotting to get her alone and been frustrated at every turn. He’d almost given in to temptation and snuck into the guest cabin with her, but that wasn’t how he wanted to finish this. Before long, he wanted to take them to the next stage.

  It was time to move on. Oh hell, it was past time.

  Jaxi slipped from his arms and served slices of pie onto plates. She had a little smile at the corner of her mouth, and Blake stopped even as he reached for the ice cream scoop.

  She couldn’t have.

  “You never answered my question. You ever been naked in front of a crowd before?”

  She stole the scoop from under his unmoving hand and added servings of ice cream to the plates, her smile turning into more of a smirk by the minute. He tugged the scoop out of her hands, picked her up and set her on the counter.

  Eye to eye he looked at her. Leered, to tell the truth.

  “Tell me.”

  “I took a modeling class to learn how to dress nice in something other than jeans all the time. I got asked to pose and there was—”

  “You posed? For a Sears magazine or a—?”

  Jaxi pressed her finger to his lips. “I posed for a group of artists. Nude.” She grinned at him. “It was a really lucky circumstance because I wanted to take a dance class and one of the artists turned out to be an exotic dancer. I went to her studio and she gave me private lessons.”

  Blake was growing hotter by the minute, the ice cream in danger of melting to puddles from simply being in the same room. Holy shit, she knew how to exotic dance?

  Did his dad know about this? Is that what he’d meant by “interesting” classes?

  Blake pulled her off the counter and handed her a couple of plates of pie. She had no idea what she’d just let loose. The tentative plan running through his mind was okay, but this beat anything he could have devised, even with weeks of setup.

  “Go deliver these. Then gather whatever you need to put on a show for me. I’ll wait in the barn.”

  “The barn?”

  “That a problem?” Blake asked. “You got a better place in mind?”

  Jaxi backed against the door until it opened. “No, the barn is fine. You want to arrange a seat by the training pole?”

  Blake delivered the rest of the plates to a group of silent men all wearing enormous grins on their faces.

  “Someone here got the bad habit of listening at doors?” Blake let his possessive feelings show.

  “Holy shit, Blake, you’ve got to let us come watch,” Joel begged.

  Blake plopped a plate of pie in front of him. “In. Your. Dreams. I find any one of your scrawny hides near the barn, and I’ll convince Dad to let you handle the newborn lambs Christmas Eve all by yourself.”

  He ignored his own plate of dessert and hightailed it out the door. The boys could clean up—he had a show to attend.

  Jaxi slipped through the door into the long hallway. She dropped her bag onto a chair and tugged off her robe.

  Blake had turned on the overhead speakers, and the walls strummed with the local country station. She paced to the far end of the barn where the horses’ training area was located. In the center of the room, a solid metal post they used for putting foals through their paces rose vertically.

  Her heart beat faster as she anticipated Blake’s reaction to her dancing. It seemed forever since he’d touched her intimately, and she had no intention of waiting anymore.

  He reclined in his chair, relaxed and at ease. Until she noticed his fingers gripped his belt buckle a little too tight. His eyes gone a little too wild.

  Perfect.

  She took a deliberate stroll behind him. Close enough to drag her fingertips along his shoulders and through the short curls at his neckline. She stepped away to grasp the upright pole cemented in the middle of the room.

  And danced.

  She started slow and easy, with her hips and torso close to the pole. Her jean shorts rode high on her ass and low on her hips, and showed off the long expanse of leg exposed between the top of her cowboy boots and the shorts. The studded denim vest pressed her breasts until her cleavage threatened to fall out every time she breathed.

  She’d picked the outfit deliberately. The girl who had trained her wanted her to wear high heels, and Jaxi learned to dance in them as well, but the boots said it all. She was a country girl through and through, and there was nothing sexier.

  She let her head drop back, hanging on to her cowboy hat. She wrapped a leg around the pole while she swung her upper body free, one hand skimming her skin. Over the vest and the buttons, letting a couple loose and exposing more of her body to Blake’s vision.

  Jaxi pulled off her hat in one smooth motion and let the long hair she’d tucked inside bounce around her shoulders, swinging free. The length stroked her skin, caressing as it fell.

  She danced, feeling wicked and sexy and totally in control of her body. The beat of the song echoed in her heart, bounced off the walls and traveled through her limbs to heat her from the inside out. The song finished far too soon. She closed her eyes to focus, breathing hard for a minute before she stepped back from the pole and faced Blake.

  He’d opened his jeans and sat stroking himself as he stared at her, raw desire flushing his skin. She watched in fascination as he pulled with firm motions, the length of his cock hard and ready. It had been so long, and she was more than ready to renew the physical part of their relationship.

  “Take off your vest.”

  “Does this mean the wooing is over?”

  Blake caught her gaze with his, and the answer flashed heat through her as if she’d stepped in front of a blazing fire on a winter’s day.

  Oh, yeah.

  Jaxi took her time, finally unbuttoning the last snap, and let the garment fall to the ground behind her.

  “Holy shit, you’ve got nipple rings.”

  “Clip-ons. You like them?”

  He growled. Jaxi licked her fingertips, then rolled her nipples. She let the sound of her pleasure flow over him.

  “The shorts.
Off.”

  Jaxi moved with deliberate slowness, unsnapping, unzipping, turning her back toward him as she lowered the material over her ass an inch at a time. She wanted to drive Blake mad with want. She startled when his hand touched her skin, hot and moist from touching his cock. He tugged her hips to draw her closer.

  “You going to leave those boots on for me, sexy cowgirl?”

  “You know it.”

  Blake stripped down, all hard, glistening muscles, replacing his own boots before standing. He circled her again, like in the kitchen, only this time they were both naked.

  Except for their cowboy boots.

  Blake stared at her, his gaze eating her up. “Slick, I don’t even know where to begin on you. I need to taste those nipples with those pretty little rings. I want to lick your entire body. I want to kiss your sweet lips all night long. But all I can think of right now is finding out how good a cowgirl you are.”

  Jaxi ran her hand down his chest, playing with the hairs that led to where his cock stood at attention, weeping with need. “You wanna take me for a ride, cowboy?”

  Blake swept her into his arms. Jaxi wrapped her legs around his waist, felt his shaft hard against her heated core. He shifted his hands to her ass, and with one quick adjustment, he penetrated her. He was hot and huge, and Jaxi felt every inch as he forged into skin that was tender from too much, too soon, but she didn’t want him to stop. The pleasure rose above the faint discomfort as more fluid coated them both, smoothing the thrusts of his body as he drove deeper and deeper. Blake used his strong arms to support her, to weld them together intimately while he stood in the middle of the room. She squeezed him hard, reveled in the heat of his body. The tingle of the breast clips radiated out, upping the sensations slowly driving her higher, increasing the stimulation as he struck her clit on every plunge.

  He lifted her suddenly and spun her, nestling her hips back against him. Blake centered himself and pressed in from behind, his hands cupping her breasts, his thumbs and forefingers tugging on the nipple rings while his hips pistoned.