Sloan guided her hips, urging her to move, eliciting even more friction against that sweet spot deep within her. Dev cried out his name, sobbing and paralyzed with pleasure between his guiding hands. And just as she began to come down off that high place the orgasm had taken her, Sloan released within her, feeling the molten heat slam down his spine and spilling into her. Now, he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, could just…feel the raging, tunneling fire jetting through him, draining him until he felt like little more than sawdust afterward.
Dev lay weakly against Sloan’s damp form, gasping, clinging to him, her brow against his, their chaotic breaths commingling with one another. Her entire body quivered as the ripple effect of her orgasm continued minutes afterward. It felt so wonderful to share so much with him. Sloan felt incredible inside and she wanted to remain fused with him forever in this molten moment.
“I love you, Sloan… I love you so much…” Dev weakly framed his face with her hands, placing her mouth upon his, kissing him deeply, her tongue ravishing his. Sloan’s hands cupped her face, kissing her hungrily, letting her know just how much she enflamed him. Smiling inwardly, Dev lifted her lips from his, drowning in his hungry, narrowed eyes.
“You’re mine,” he growled thickly, running his hands across her mussed hair, taming it across her damp shoulders. “You always will be. We were made for one another.” He arched into her, reminding her in the sweetest of ways.
Dev moaned, her breasts so close to his mouth. She wasn’t disappointed as his lips captured one of her nipples, suckling her, slamming her back into that volcanic heat that still boiled deep within her. She could feel him begin to harden within her once more, stretching her, the sensations escalating, making her sigh and surrender to him in every way, all over again.
*
WHEN DEV AWOKE, she felt warm and pampered within Sloan’s embrace and against his body. Slowly opening her eyes, she stared drowsily up into his. Sloan’s face was serene, his blue eyes thoughtful looking, holding her gaze. This morning his face was darkened with stubble, making him look deliciously sexy to her. She reached up with a soft smile, trailing her fingers across the hard line of his jaw. “I love waking up with you like this,” she uttered, her voice husky with sleep.
The color of his eyes deepened, a tenderness burning in them for her alone. Dev’s lashes dropped closed as he leaned down, worshipping her lips, his breath moist against her cheek.
She now knew as never before what it was like to be truly loved by a man. Sloan had slipped inside her wounded heart and her terror over Gordon stalking her, and his quiet, steady love had silently taken root. As she opened her mouth eagerly to him, sliding her arm around his shoulders, drawing him against her, a sound caught in her throat. A sound of pure joy, a celebration of finding him. Sloan was a warrior, there was no question. Yet, he didn’t allow it to overshadow who he was when he was not in a dangerous or threatening situation. That was something Dev loved more about him than anything. He had the ability to remain his essential self, the man she mindlessly loved, who filled her heart to overflowing with joy she’d never known until him.
“Mmm,” she murmured, easing from his mouth, her lips tingling, tasting him upon them. Opening her eyes, Dev absorbed the arousal in Sloan’s eyes, feeling his erection pressing against her. “I like this. I love you…” Her voice turned tremulous as he threaded his fingers through her hair, cupping the back of her head, drawing her lips to his smiling mouth.
Golden moments spun with the arcing heat coming to a fiery ache within her lower body as Sloan worshipped her mouth. His fingers moved to her sensitive nape and he lifted his mouth from hers.
“In time,” he told her thickly, holding her half-closed gaze, seeing the arousal clearly in it, “we’ll pick up the pieces of our life together, Dev. It’s you and me.” And then he gave her a lopsided grin, smoothing hair away from her temple. “Well, let me amend that a little. You, me, Mouse and Bella.”
Laughing softly, she caressed his sandpapery cheek. “We’re on a journey of discovery, Sloan. And I don’t want it any other way.” Sobering a bit, she whispered, “I really didn’t know love could be this good. This beautiful. You’re beautiful, Sloan…”
Dev watched his cheeks turn ruddy as she caressed his jaw. “What? You don’t like being called beautiful?” Her mouth curved. He wasn’t happy about her calling his hands beautiful, either, but in her eyes and heart, he was exactly that to her. She watched Sloan frown and then shrug his shoulders.
“Well,” he mumbled teasingly, “maybe handsome? Beautiful is a term used to describe a woman like yourself, sugar.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
“Men can be beautiful, too,” Dev insisted, languishing in the heat of his body, within his strong, caring arms. “And in my eyes, cowboy, you have an outrageously beautiful body, beautiful hands, mind and heart. Okay?”
He gave her a lazy grin. “Okay, from you, I’ll live with it.”
Dev laughed and hugged him hard, her breasts pressed against the span of his chest. Kissing his cheek, his mouth, Dev leaned back. “There’s only one man like you in the world, Sloan Rankin, and you’re mine. All mine…”
As he swept her hard against him, burying his face in her hair, Dev relaxed fully, knowing Sloan would always love her, give her joy and, finally, a place to feel safe. Inhaling his scent deeply into her lungs, a smile crossed her mouth as she held him with equal fierceness as the morning light silently flooded their bedroom. Hope filled her heart, along with love for Sloan. They had time now, to live together, to get to know one another in so many large and small ways, and to plan for a bright future together. Already, Dev had ideas for that house he wanted to build for her on that parcel of land near the Bar H. Family meant everything to her, and coming from a broken one, just having Miss Gus, Val and Griff McPherson there, along with the Holt family, meant she had a cosmic family of sorts to replace what had been lost so long ago. Now, it was all being returned to her in the most wonderful of ways.
Sloan eased Dev down upon the mattress and he studied her in the silence. “There’s one thing I want to do while you’re on medical leave. I’d like to take you home to meet my parents and all the good people of Black Mountain. What do you think, Dev? Are you up for that?”
She nodded. “I’d love to meet your family, Sloan. And all those other families, too.”
“They’ll love you, sugar. My mother will dote on you, believe me.” He slid his fingers across her cheek. “We could take a week? I could show you around Black Mountain. Where I grew up. Ply you with wild stories about my childhood?”
She grinned, catching his fingers, pressing a kiss to them. “It sounds like a dream come true. I want to know everything about you, Sloan. That’s a good start.”
He gave her a warm smile. “Later today, we’ll call my parents and see if they’re okay with us suddenly dropping in for a visit. I don’t think they’ll mind at all.”
“It has been crazy, hasn’t it? I’m so glad it’s over, Sloan.”
“Well,” he cautioned, “there’s legal hoops we have to partake in, but this time, I’ll be there at your side. We’ll jump through ’em together.”
Nuzzling his jaw, Dev pressed light kisses against it. “That sounds so good…”
Sloan nodded and slid his hand beneath her nape, positioning her so he could hold her aroused gaze. “From now on,” he promised her in a low voice, “you don’t have to fight through life alone, Dev. Not ever again. I’ll be there every step of the way. Beside you…forever…”
*
Keep reading for an excerpt from NIGHT HAWK by Lindsay McKenna.
“Fast-paced romantic suspense that renders a beautiful love story, start to finish… McKenna’s writing is flawless, and her story line fully absorbing. More, please.”
—Library Journal on Taking Fire
New York Times bestselling author Lindsay McKenna brings you romance, suspense and heroes who are tough as nails in her gripping Jac
kson Hole, Wyoming series:
Out Rider
Night Hawk
Wolf Haven
High Country Rebel
The Loner
The Defender
The Wrangler
The Last Cowboy
Deadly Silence
Deadly Identity
Shadows from the Past
For more romance and excitement, don’t miss Lindsay McKenna’s thrilling Shadow Warriors series:
Running Fire
On Fire (novella)
Taking Fire
Never Surrender
Breaking Point
Down Range
Danger Close
“Talented McKenna delivers excitement and romance in equal measure.”
—RT Book Reviews
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Looking for a Western romance filled with rugged cowboys who’ll get your heart racing?
If you can’t get enough of romantic ranchers and you love a sexy Stetson-wearing hero, don’t miss:
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In this new sampler, we’ve rounded up some of our hottest Western reads by some of our most popular and bestselling authors!
Once a Rancher by Linda Lael Miller
Untamed by Diana Palmer
One Night Charmer by Maisey Yates
Rustler’s Moon by Jodi Thomas
Home on the Ranch by Trish Milburn
Hard Rain by B.J. Daniels
Texas on My Mind by Delores Fossen
Texas Rebels: Jude by Linda Warren
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Night Hawk
by Lindsay McKenna
CHAPTER ONE
KAI TRIED TO get her heart to stop pounding so hard in her chest. She sat in her Ford pickup in front of the Triple H Ranch, rubbing her damp palms against her jeans. This was the twentieth ranch she’d traveled to in order to apply for a job as a mechanic and wrangler. She’d been to six ranches in South Dakota, ten in Montana, two in Idaho, and now Wyoming ranches didn’t look like they were hiring, either. Worse, she was a fine mechanic due to her US Army time as an Apache helicopter repairer, but the listless economy was stopping any new hires. Plus, she was a woman and the ranch owners just rolled their eyes when she said she was a mechanic.
Kai could fix anything. You name it, she could handle it. She knew being a woman brought prejudice to the table. And ranchers tended to be conservative, old guard and even outright Neanderthal in their view of women. She’d had one rancher nearly fall off his chair in his office laughing hysterically when she said she was a mechanic.
Hell, it was tough enough getting out of the military after enlisting at age eighteen and separating from the Army at twenty-eight because of downsizing. She thought her job rating would make it easy to get hired. In the military, women did so-called men’s work, and no one thought anything about it. But they sure did out in the civilian world, she was discovering.
Kai wiped the dampness off the top of her lip, taking a quick glance around the ranch. There was an opening for a mechanic and wrangler. She was a perfect fit for it. The owner, Talon Holt, was the contact. Would he laugh her out of his office, too?
Money was tight. Kai didn’t have enough left, after buying the tools she’d need and her wrangling gear, to try to rent an apartment in Jackson Hole—if she got the job. She’d already cased the town, looked through the rentals in the newspaper and found exorbitant demands for a small one-bedroom apartment. It was sticker shock. Yes, she had savings. Yes, she could pay that kind of highway robbery, but she was counting on a bunkhouse where she could live, instead, until she got her feet under her. Her goal was to eventually buy a house.
Looking around, the main ranch home was built of cedar and two stories tall, a silver sheen to its aging wood. The roof looked new. There was a white picket fence, recently painted, surrounding it. It was June first and Kai knew Wyoming winters hung around forever. She saw someone had bravely planted flowers in beds along the inside of the fence in hopes they could survive and struggle to stay alive in the near freezing temperatures that occurred at night. As she gazed out beyond the graveled parking area, she saw a number of rusted pipe fences that were in sad shape. This rancher would need a welder. She knew how to weld. That would be a plus, something she could tell the owner in hopes of him hiring her.
Kai sat there, feeling her stomach knot. Desperate for a job, her hope long since fading, she didn’t want to apply for government assistance. It just wasn’t somewhere she wanted to go, and she fought the idea. Swallowing, her throat dry, she closed her eyes, knowing she couldn’t go home. Home to Cody, Wyoming. Home to her father’s ranch, the Circle T.
Her father had disowned her when she joined the Army at age eighteen. He favored her older brother, Steve, over herself. He’d written her out of the will when she left for the Army. And he never believed a woman could run a ranch, so he’d left it to her brother when it was his time to die. At age 59, Hal Tiernan was the same gruff, terse, mean son of a bitch he’d always been. Kai had been an unwanted addition to her father’s life. He doted on his son and barely tolerated her because she was female. He called her Troublemaker.
Rubbing her dark blue long-sleeved blouse that was feminine looking but functional, her heart ached for what she wished might have been with her broken family.
If her mother, Olivia, hadn’t died when Kai was eight years old, things might have turned out a lot different. Kai was in constant touch with Steve, who loved her fiercely, begging her to come home. But home to what? Hal verbally digging at her on a daily basis? Making sniping remarks because she was a woman?
He looked at all women as useful only when they were pregnant and barefoot. That was her father’s favorite saying. Kai didn’t know how her mother, who had been a high school principal, tolerated that kind of shit from him. She certainly didn’t. And that was why he called her Troublemaker. He never called her by her real name, only his nickname for her. Kai hated it.
She pulled herself out of her pain. Opening the door, she climbed out, her cowboy boots crunching across the graveled driveway to the gate of the picket fence. Kai heard a dog barking but couldn’t see it. Walking down the red-tiled sidewalk, she liked the wide, U-shaped porch that surrounded three-fourths of the house. There was a large, dark green porch swing in one corner and it looked inviting. A person could sit in it and look out over the lush swales and small hills of green grass that grew thick and abundant all around her.
Her boots thunked hollowly across the cedar porch. She saw the screen door was open and knocked loud enough so that someone would hear that there was a visitor. Heart pounding, Kai removed her dark blue baseball cap, nervously running her fingers through her short auburn hair.
A blond-haired woman in her late forties, who was very thin and frail looking, walked slowly down the foyer. She wore a bright apple-green-colored knit shawl around her shoulders, jeans and a pink sweater.
“Hi, I’m Kai Tiernan,” she said. “I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Holt for a job interview at one o’clock.”
The woman smiled and pushed open the screen door. “Nice to meet you, Kai. I’m Sandy Holt. Come on in. I’ll let my son, Talon, know you’ve arrived. Make yourself at home.”
Kai smiled and nodded, noticing Sandy moved at a halting pace. She appeared very ill, her skin not a good color, but her blue eyes were alert and the smile on her lips was genuine. Stepping into the foyer, she waited for the woman to guide her. She smelled bread baking in the kitchen and her mouth watered. Her mother used to bake bread and it brought back poignant memories. There were also other wonderful fragrances, apple pies baking. Her heart ached because she remembered her mother baking pies just like these in the kitchen of their ranch home. It brought back so many good but sad memories.
Out Rider Page 31
