Adam rode away from the training area, up another hill, and down into a valley where a branch of the river cut in. The inlet was deep, surrounded by trees, a good place for swimming or lazing around in rowboats.
No boaters were there today. Adam took Buster at a walk along the path that led to the inlet’s shore, a wide, flat spot that backed onto a narrow dirt road. The rutted road was the only access to the place for vehicles; it was much easier to approach down trails on horseback.
Adam lowered Bailey from the saddle, then swung off, dropped the reins, loosened the cinch, and dragged the saddle down. He pulled off the bridle as well. Buster trotted about two feet before his head was down, the horse nibbling grass. Now that he was free to run, he wouldn’t—he was like that.
Adam hung his hat on the nearest tree branch and peeled off his shirt.
“What are you …” Bailey trailed off as his hard torso came into view, slick with sweat and touched by sunshine.
Adam put his hand to his belt buckle. “Going for a swim. What do you think I’m doing?”
His belt came off, then his boots.
“Adam.”
The word was strangled as Adam unzipped his jeans and slid them down and off with his underwear.
Adam naked in the sunlight was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Didn’t matter that his body was scarred and still healing, it was hard, tight, strong. Nothing wrong with him.
He’d stripped down last night, but they’d been in a rush, and Bailey hadn’t had the chance to appreciate him fully. Now she looked, taking her time.
Wide shoulders topped hard, honed pectorals, Adam’s chest dusted with dark, curling hair, burnished now by sunshine. His waist was flat, navel a shadow, and another line of hair pointed enticingly downward. His legs were strong, balancing the weight of him perfectly.
What the glory trail pointed to grabbed Bailey’s attention and wouldn’t let go. He was half erect under her scrutiny, making her remember him fully hard last night. She imagined the feel of his cock in her hand as she glided her fingers along it, the heavy tip bumping her palm. She could be kneeling before him, sun warm on her back, as she let him slip into her mouth …
She made a noise in her throat and hugged her arms over herself, shivering despite the heat.
Adam gave her his slow smile, the one that said he knew she wanted him. He was arrogant, full of himself, and broken, all at the same time.
She pointed a shaking finger at the river. “Water’s over there.”
“I know that.” Adam retrieved his hat, completing the knee-weakening portrait by setting it on his head. “I’m waiting for you to join me.”
Bailey couldn’t have taken her eyes off him if she’d tried. “There might be snakes.” Of course there would be. The whole state was crawling with them.
Adam shrugged. “I’ll scare them away. Come on.”
He delivered the command in his slow drawl, the old Adam returning. He gave her a final look, then walked the few feet across the dried grass to the water.
The back of him was as good as the front. He strode, head up, hat firmly on, the sun kissing down his back to the firm muscle of his ass.
I am the luckiest girl in the world, just seeing that.
“Come on, Bailey,” he called. “You chicken?” He made clucking noises as he turned around and sank into the water, pushing off to swim on his back.
He wanted her to strip off all her clothes and run into the water with him. She’d be crazy to. Or maybe she’d be crazy not to.
Bailey gave the surrounding area a quick glance, making sure they were truly alone, then she fumbled off her clothes as rapidly as she could. She hung them on the limb next to Adam’s and started for the water.
Adam stood up, water lapping his hips, watching her come. He was looking over Bailey as hard as she’d looked over him, and she hoped he liked what he saw.
Cool water closed over her then, making her gasp. Adam’s smile widened, and he swam lazily to her.
“Hey,” he said, his voice low. Water beaded on his lashes, his blue eyes dark. “Ain’t you pretty?”
Bailey went hot, never mind the coldness of the water and mud sucking at her toes. She didn’t notice anything but Adam’s warm gaze, and his hands coming up to rest on her shoulders.
“Remember when I said what I mostly wanted was to be inside you?” Adam waited until Bailey gave him a frozen nod. “I figure, if I can stay inside you as much as I can, then the rest of the shit in this world won’t matter.”
Bailey wet her lips, which shook. “You can’t hide from life by having sex all the time.”
“Why the hell not? Sex is life, Bailey. It’s the most basic part of life. Without it, there is no life.”
“I suppose you’ve got a point.”
“You bet I do.” He paused. “You never had kids.”
“What?” Bailey blinked at the incongruity. “No, no I didn’t. We said we’d wait.”
No, Lawrence had said they’d wait. Until they had more money, a bigger house, higher positions in the company, whatever his excuse had been each time. Bailey realized now that kids would have taken his attention from what he wanted—wealth, success, his own pleasure.
“Bet you’d make a great mom,” Adam said.
Bailey’s heart filled with longing. “I never really thought about it.” Liar.
“When we do have kids, you can tell them.” Adam carefully removed his hat, floated up out of the water, and snagged it on an overhanging branch. “You can tell them what we did together in the swimming hole.” He grinned. “When they’re old enough. We can embarrass them.”
Did he mean having kids with her? she wondered, her heart pounding. Or was he talking about children who’d come along at some point in each of their lives?
Bailey stopped thinking when Adam slid his arms around her, pulling his wet body into hers, and slanted a warm kiss across her mouth.
**
Bailey was like sunshine in his arms. Adam tasted heat as he brought her closer still. The water let them come face-to-face without impediment, all the better for Adam to hold her, kiss her.
Nothing he’d seen in his life had been more beautiful than Bailey running bare into the water. Her breasts had moved with her stride, sunlight pouring down on her, heaven picking her out in a beam of light.
She might be an angel sent to guide him, but she was also a flesh-and-blood woman. Adam slid his hands down her back as he kissed her, fingers on her soft buttocks, lifting her to wrap her legs around him.
The cold water hadn’t deflated his cock at all, and Bailey against it had him hard and ready. Her breasts crushed into his chest, the warm scent of her surrounding him as she kissed him back.
She was seriously kissing him, nibbling his lips, licking them, opening his mouth with her tongue. She was discovering what she liked, what he liked, and Adam was fine with letting her.
He kissed her thoroughly in return, teasing behind her lips, rocking his head back as she rose up to take more.
Bailey made a sexy sound in her throat as Adam further spread her legs, pushing himself inside her without much effort.
She stopped as he thrust into her, her eyes widening for a brief moment before they took on that languid look Bailey got when she felt deepest pleasure.
Adam was a long way inside her, farther than last night, when he’d been rushed and needy. That had been good, but much too quick. Touching her last night had made him come fast, his wanting for her bottled up far too long.
Now they had a little time. He lowered her all the way onto him, his body flushing as he felt the goodness of her. She was hot and tight, Bailey holding him without shame.
She loved sex. She’d loved it back in the day, when Adam had taught it to her. Bailey hadn’t been embarrassed, or grown angry at him afterward, refusing to speak to him. Nor had she broken down, full of regret for giving him her virginity. She’d kissed him, loved him, and asked to do it again.
Adam had been proud of
himself for making her feel that way, but he now had enough experience to know that Bailey’s unapologetic enthusiasm was rare. She could be a firecracker in bed, sweet and modest out of it, and true to herself the whole time.
Adam rocked back, bracing his feet on the riverbed as he thrust into her the best he could. The water helped, letting him bring her down to him, pleasure burning with every stroke.
He cupped Bailey’s face, loving to look at her. “You are so beautiful.”
Bailey hummed in her throat. “Adam,” she whispered. Then she was kissing him again, too far gone for words.
She was even more beautiful when she came. Bailey clung to him, taking her pleasure, her head loose, her lips parted with her incoherent sounds. She loved every second of her climax, which pressed her tighter on Adam, squeezing him, moving her body to thrust with him.
She rode him hard, every stroke sending Adam into a wild place. He stood there and took it. A beautiful woman in his arms, wanting him, knowing how to pleasure him as she pleasured herself, was the most astonishingly erotic thing he’d ever experienced.
Adam tried to hold himself back, to let her find the peak of her coming and enjoy the white-hot fire she blazed through him. But his body wouldn’t cooperate. It wanted to release, to take him into a place of mindless joy, where nothing could touch him.
A shout tore out of him at the same time his seed did, finding a home in Bailey. She held him close, her kisses untamed, taking what Adam gave and giving it hard back.
They came together, Bailey a crazed thing, Adam growing stiller and stiller as intense pleasure took him.
Once again, he and Bailey were one for a single hot, moment. Then they were two people, holding on to each other, kissing, loving, while cool water flowed around them under the scorching Texas sun.
**
“Bye, you two!”
A shrill voice rang out from the shore. Bailey jerked her head up, rising out of the warm haze she’d descended into after she and Adam had calmed.
Adam had held her easily after they’d finished, Bailey’s head on his shoulder, feeling the thrum of his heartbeat. Adam bent to kiss her from time to time, but mostly they stood, wrapped in each other, enjoying the stillness and silence.
Now Bailey looked around in alarm. Buster was halfway up the hill, his bridle restored, a little girl perched on his bare back.
Faith grinned and waved at Adam and Bailey as they stared at her, Adam making sure Bailey’s body stayed hidden by his and the water. Laughing, Faith turned Buster and expertly trotted him on up the hill, leaving them behind.
“Faith!” Bailey called. She struggled out of Adam’s arms, shivering as her feet touched the rocky, muddy bottom.
Adam hauled Bailey back before she could plunge out of the water in all her nakedness. A stream of giggles came back to them, but Faith was gone.
“You know, sometimes I think she’s the sweetest little girl alive,” Adam said as they watched her disappear. “And then she proves she’s Carter’s daughter.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Bailey rubbed her arms, cold without Adam against her. “The walk will do us good. Give us a chance to dry off.” She spoke with more conviction than she felt. It was more than a mile back to the house, with a lot of hill climbing thrown in.
Adam leapt to grab his hat from the branch with a dripping hand. He started for the shore, pausing to give Bailey’s backside a caress. Bailey watched Adam’s fine rear view emerge from the river, a beautiful man nude in the sunshine.
“Damn it,” Adam growled as he shrugged on his shirt. “Now I have to carry that effing saddle all the way back up the hill.”
Bailey made herself climb out of the water. “We’ll carry it between us. A burden shared is a burden halved, they say.”
Adam reached a scarred hand down to help her, his long-sleeved shirt dangling, unbuttoned. He pulled her the rest of the way from the water and caught her around the waist.
“Stop being so damn cute,” he said, then kissed her hard on the lips.
Bailey softened to him, arms going around him, loving the feel of his sun-baked clothes on her damp skin.
He deepened the kiss, a strong man loving his lady, and then he straightened up, gave her another pat on the backside, and moved off to dress and retrieve the saddle.
**
Adam was late to dinner that night. By the time he and Bailey made it up the hill and put away the saddle, the other brothers had started shutting down for the evening. The horses were being fed, including Buster, who bared his teeth at Adam when Adam went to check on him. Ungrateful shit.
When they’d reached the ranch, Bailey had hurried immediately to her truck and driven off. Grant had come out of the barn to watch the dust rise in her wake.
“Where’s she going in such a hurry?”
Adam shrugged, pretending that today had been just a normal day. That he hadn’t made a breakthrough, and then had sex with the most beautiful woman on the planet—outside, in water.
“Bailey had things to do,” Adam said. “I’m starving.” Without another word, he strode to the house, feeling Grant’s puzzled stare on his back.
At the table, the family talked animatedly as usual. Ross had come for dinner, being off this evening.
Adam didn’t pay much attention to them, letting their conversations flow over him. Something important had happened to him today—Bailey had planted inside him the idea that he might someday forgive himself. He turned the thought over in his mind, wondering what to do with it.
“Ray Malory will be just fine,” Olivia said from the other end of the table, her silver bracelets, which she wore whenever she wasn’t riding, clinking softly. “Christina told me. He’s home now, with his mother looking after him. I guess that’s going around.” She winked at Adam.
“Good,” Grant said, a little too loudly. Under his breath as he lifted his drink, he said, “Now I can kill him.”
“I have some news,” Faith said, her voice cutting through the conversations. All eyes turned to her, expecting her to announce some achievement at school. Though the teachers in Riverbend had thrown up their hands in despair at Faith’s father and most of her uncles, the little girl got high grades and was unreservedly adored by many of those same teachers.
“What’s that, baby?” Carter asked her. His love for Faith showed in everything he did. The only softness the man had in him was reserved for his daughter.
Faith shot a wicked look to the head of the table. “I saw Adam. And Bailey. At the river.” Her face screwed up into a big smile. “Skinny-dipping!”
Chapter Sixteen
There was dead silence a moment, then the dining room erupted in noise. “Woo-ooo!” Tyler yelled. “I knew it!”
Grant had taken a drink of iced tea, and now he snorted and coughed, trying to swallow and laugh at the same time.
“Good thing I didn’t see you doing that,” Ross said, his face creased with laughter. “I’d have had to arrest you. My brother and his girl, in the lock-up for public indecency. I might have let you put your clothes back on before I hauled you in. Might.”
Grant cleared his airways and laughed for real. “No wonder Bailey hightailed it out of here.” He gave Faith a one-armed hug and a kiss on top of her head. “You are the sweetest thing, baby.”
The only ones not laughing out loud were Carter and Olivia. Adam’s mom watched him speculatively, as though she waited for something. Carter wore a quiet smile and looked at Adam as though understanding him for the first time.
Adam’s face burned, and he reached for a glass of cold water. But somehow, he didn’t mind their laughter as much as he thought he would.
My brother and his girl, Ross had said.
They weren’t surprised at all. Nor were they condemning. As though it had been inevitable that Adam and Bailey would find their way together.
Faith didn’t have any doubt. She started to sing. “Adam and Bailey, sittin’ in a tree.” Tyler and Grant joined in, their deep voices blending
with her small one. “K-i-s-s-i-n-g.”
Adam picked up his fork and went back to eating, letting them laugh at him. The cold inside him was easing off under their smiles. It felt good.
**
The story of Bailey and Adam in the river was all over town by the next day. Bailey had one calm evening of freedom from it, but when she went to pick up a few groceries the next morning, knowing smiles from every customer in the store turned in her direction.
The woman who owned the little corner grocery grinned across the counter at Bailey. “Adam’s such a handsome boy, isn’t he?” she said as she rang up and bagged Bailey’s purchases. “Any announcements we should know about?”
Bailey flushed and grabbed the filled bag. “No. Um … no. It’s not … not what you think.”
“Of course not, dear.” She looked wise. “Don’t forget your card.”
Bailey swung back, snatched her bank card from the woman’s hand, and fled. Delighted laughter followed her.
Not everyone was laughing, Bailey discovered at the gas station, where she’d stopped to put air in her tires. A tall, willowy blond woman, who’d been one of Adam’s girlfriends in high school, approached as Bailey straightened up from the machine, wiping black smears off her hands.
“You’re not Adam’s type,” the woman announced, looking Bailey up and down. Bailey remembered her well—Donna didn’t live in Riverbend anymore but in a big house with her oilman husband west of here. She’d been homecoming queen that last fall in high school, with Adam, of course, as her king.
“Adam’s different now,” Bailey said. “I’ve known him a long time.”
Donna’s lifted brows said she was skeptical. “He’s not cut out to be a small-town boy. I knew that when we were going together. He wanted out of here, while I was happy to settle down near home. I bet he hasn’t changed that much.”
Bailey had no idea. Adam was a charmer, and even without Kyle’s warning, she’d always known he didn’t stick with one woman for long. Donna was living proof—she and Adam had been broken up by that Christmas.
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