Seduce Me, Cowboy (Mills & Boon Desire) (Copper Ridge)

by Maisey Yates

  She had pictured laughing, lightness, with people all around, like at the bar she had never been to before. But this was something else. A deep intimacy that grew from somewhere inside her chest and intensified as the music seemed to draw them more tightly together.

  She drew in a breath, letting her eyes open and look up at him. And then she froze.

  He was staring at her, the glitter in his dark eyes almost predatory. She didn’t know why that word came to mind. Didn’t even know what it might mean in this context. When a man looked at you like he was a wildcat and you were a potential meal.

  Then her eyes dipped down to his mouth. Her own lips tingled in response and she was suddenly aware of how dry they were. She slid her tongue over them, completely self-conscious about the action even as she did it, yet unable to stop.

  She was satisfied when that predatory light in his eyes turned sharper. More intense.

  She didn’t know what she was doing. But she found herself moving closer to him. She didn’t know why. She just knew she had to. With the same bone-deep impulse that came with the need to draw breath, she had to lean in closer to Jonathan Bear. She couldn’t fight it; she didn’t want to. And until her lips touched his, she didn’t even know what she was moving toward.

  But when their mouths met, it all became blindingly clear.

  She had thought about these feelings in terms of fire, but this sensation was something bigger, something infinitely more destructive. This was an explosion. One she felt all the way down to her toes; one that hit every place in between.

  She was shaking. Trembling like a leaf in the wind. Or maybe even like a tree in a storm.

  He was the storm.

  His hold changed. He let go of her hand, withdrew his arm from around her waist, pressed both palms against her cheeks as he took the kiss deeper, harder.

  It was like drowning. Like dying. Only she didn’t want to fight it. Didn’t want to turn away. She couldn’t have, even if she’d tried. Because his grip was like iron, his body like a rock wall. They weren’t moving in time with the music anymore. No. This was a different rhythm entirely. He propelled her backward, until her shoulder blades met with the dining room wall, his hard body pressed against hers.

  He was hard. Everywhere. Hard chest, hard stomach, hard thighs. And that insistent hardness pressing against her hip.

  She gasped when she realized what that was. And he consumed her shocked sound, taking advantage of her parted lips to slide his tongue between them.

  She released her hold on him, her hands floating up without a place to land, and she curled her fingers into fists. She surrendered herself to the kiss, to him. His hold was tight enough to keep her anchored to the earth, to keep her anchored to him.

  She let him have control. Let him take the lead. She didn’t know how to dance, and she didn’t know how to do this. But he did.

  So she let him show her. This was on her list, too, though she hadn’t been brave enough to say it, even to herself. To know passion. To experience her first kiss.

  She wanted it to go on and on. She never wanted it to end. If she could just be like this, those hot hands cupping her face, that insistent mouth devouring hers, she was pretty sure she could skip the Eiffel Tower.

  She felt him everywhere, not just his kiss, not just his touch. Her breasts felt heavy. They ached. In any other circumstances, she might be horrified by that. But she didn’t possess the capacity to be horrified, not right now. Not when everything else felt so good. She wasn’t ashamed; she wasn’t embarrassed—not of the heavy feeling in her breasts, not of the honeyed, slick feeling between her thighs.

  This just made sense.

  Right now, what she felt was the only thing that made sense. It was the only thing she wanted.

  Kissing Jonathan Bear was a necessity.

  He growled, flexing his hips toward hers, making it so she couldn’t ignore his arousal. And the evidence of his desire carved out a hollow feeling inside her. Made her shake, made her feel like her knees had dissolved into nothing and that without his powerful hold she would crumple onto the floor.

  She still wasn’t touching him. Her hands were still away from his body, trembling. But she didn’t want to do anything to break the moment. Didn’t want to make a sound, didn’t want to make the wrong move. She didn’t want to turn him off or scare him away. Didn’t want to do anything to telegraph her innocence. Because it would probably freak him out.

  Right, Hayley, like he totally believes you’re a sex kitten who’s kissed a hundred men.

  She didn’t know what to do with her hands, let alone her lips, her tongue. She was receiving, not giving. But she had a feeling if she did anything else she would look like an idiot.

  Suddenly, he released his hold on her, moving away from her so quickly she might have thought she’d hurt him.

  She was dazed, still leaning against the wall. If she hadn’t been, she would have collapsed. Her hands were still in the air, clenched into fists, and her breath came in short, harsh bursts. So did his, if the sharp rise and fall of his chest was anything to go by.

  “That was a mistake,” he said, his voice hard. His words were everything she had feared they might be.

  “No, it wasn’t,” she said, her lips feeling numb, and a little bit full, making it difficult for her to talk. Or maybe the real difficulty came from feeling like her head was filled with bees, buzzing all around and scrambling her thoughts.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice harder, “it was.”

  “No,” she insisted. “It was a great kiss. A really, really good kiss. I didn’t want it to end.”

  Immediately, she regretted saying that. Because it had been way too revealing. She supposed it was incredibly gauche to tell the guy you’d just kissed that you could have kissed him forever. She tried to imagine how Grant, the youth pastor, might have reacted to that. He would have told her she needed to go to an extra Bible study. Or that she needed to marry him first.

  He certainly wouldn’t have looked at her the way Jonathan was. Like he wanted to eat her whole, but was barely restraining himself from doing just that. “That’s exactly the problem,” he returned, the words like iron, “because I did want it to end. But in a much different way than it did.”

  “I don’t understand.” Her face was hot, and she was humiliated now. So she didn’t see why she shouldn’t go whole hog. Let him know she was fully outside her comfort zone and she wasn’t keeping up with all his implications. She needed stated facts, not innuendo.

  “I didn’t want to keep kissing you forever. I wanted to pull your top off, shove your skirt up and bury myself inside of you. Is that descriptive enough for you?”

  It was. And he had succeeded in shocking her. She wasn’t stupid. She knew he was hard, and she knew what that meant. But even given that fact, she hadn’t really imagined he wanted... Not with her.

  And this was just her first kiss. She wasn’t ready for more. Wasn’t ready for another step away from the person she had been taught to be.

  What about the person you want to be?

  She looked at her boss, who was also the most beautiful man she had ever seen. That hadn’t been her immediate thought when she’d met him, but she had settled into it as the truth. As certain as the fact the sky was blue and the pine trees that dotted the mountains were deep forest green.

  So maybe... Even though it was shocking. Even though it would be a big step, and undoubtedly a big mistake... Maybe she did want it.

  “You better go,” he said, his voice rough.

  “Maybe I don’t—”

  “You do,” he said. “Trust me. And I want you to.”

  She was confused. Because he had just said he wanted her, and now he was saying he wanted her to go. She didn’t understand men. She didn’t understand this. She wanted to cry. But a lick of pride slid its way up her spine, keeping her straight, keeping her tears from falling.

  Pride she hadn’t known she possessed. But then, she hadn’t realized she pos
sessed the level of passion that had just exploded between them, either. So it was a day for new discoveries.

  “That’s fine. I just wanted to have some fun. I can go have it with someone else.”

  She turned on her heel and walked out of the dining room, out the front door and down the porch steps as quickly as possible. It was dark now, trees like inky bottle brushes rising around her, framing the midnight-blue sky dotted with stars. It was beautiful, but she didn’t care. Not right now. She felt...hurt. Emotionally. Physically. The unsatisfied ache between her thighs intensified with the pain growing in her heart.

  It was awful. All of it.

  It made her want to run. Run back to her parents’ house. Run back to the church office.

  Being good had always been safe.

  She had been so certain she wanted to escape safety. Only a few moments earlier she’d needed that escape, felt it might be her salvation. Except she could see now that it was ruin. Utter and complete ruin.

  With shaking hands, she pushed the button that undid the locks on her car door and got inside, jamming the key into the ignition and starting it up, a tear sliding down her cheek as she started to back out of the driveway.

  She refused to let this ruin her, or this job, or this step she was taking on her own.

  She was finding independence, learning new things.

  As she turned onto the two-lane highway that would take her back home, she clung to that truth. To the fact that, even though her first kiss had ended somewhat disastrously, it had still shown her something about herself.

  It had shown her exactly why it was a good thing she hadn’t gotten married to that youthful crush of hers. It would have been dishonest, and not fair to him or to her.

  She drove on autopilot, eventually pulling into her driveway and stumbling inside her apartment, lying down on her bed without changing out of her work clothes.

  Was she a fallen woman? To want Jonathan like she had. A man she wasn’t in love with, a man she wasn’t planning to marry.

  Had that passion always been there? Or was it created by Jonathan? This feeling. This need.

  She bit back a sob and forced a smile. She’d had her first kiss. And she wouldn’t dwell on what it might mean. Or on the fact that he had sent her away. Or on the fact that—for a moment at least—she had been consumed with the desire for more.

  She’d had her first kiss. At twenty-four. And that felt like a change deep inside her body.

  Hayley Thompson had a new apartment, a new job, and she had been kissed.

  So maybe it wasn’t safe. But she had decided she wanted something more than safety, hadn’t she?

  She would focus on the victories and simply ignore the rest.

  No matter that this victory made her body burn in a way that kept her up for the rest of the night.

  Five

  He hadn’t expected her to show up Monday morning. But there she was, in the entryway of the house, hands clasped in front of her, dark hair pulled back in a neat bun. Like she was compensating for what had happened between them Friday night.

  “Good morning,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “I half expected you to take the day off.”

  “No,” she said, her voice shot through with steel, “I can’t just take days off. My boss is a tyrant. He’ll fire me.”

  He laughed, mostly to disguise the physical response those words created in him. There was something about her. About all that softness, that innocence, combined with the determination he hadn’t realized existed inside her until this moment.

  She wasn’t just soft, or innocent. She was a force to be reckoned with, and she was bent on showing him that now.

  “If he’s so bad why do you want to keep the job?”

  “My job history is pathetic,” she said, walking ahead of him to the stairs. “And, as he has pointed out to me many times, he is not my daddy. My previous boss was. I need something a bit more impressive on my résumé.”

  “Right. For when you do your traveling.”

  “Maybe I’ll get a job in London,” she shot back.

  “What’s the biggest city you’ve been to, Hayley?” he asked, following her up the stairs and down the hall toward the office.

  “Portland,” she said.

  He laughed. “London is a little bit bigger.”

  “I don’t care. That’s what I want. I want a city where I can walk down the street and not run into anybody that I’ve ever seen before. All new people. All new faces. I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine living a life where I do what I want and not hear a retelling of the night before coming out of my mother’s mouth at breakfast the next morning.”

  “Have you ever done anything worthy of being recounted by your mother?”

  Color infused her cheeks. “Okay, specifically, the incident I’m referring to is somebody telling my mother they were proud of me because they saw me giving a homeless woman a dollar.”

  He laughed. He couldn’t help himself, and her cheeks turned an even more intense shade of pink that he knew meant she was furious.

  She stamped. Honest to God stamped, like an old-time movie heroine. “What’s so funny?”

  “Even the gossip about you is good, Hayley Thompson. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why you hate that so much.”

  “Because I can’t do anything. Jonathan, if you had kissed me in my brother’s bar... Can you even imagine? My parents’ phone would have been ringing off the hook.”

  His body hardened at the mention of the kiss. He had been convinced she would avoid the topic.

  But he should’ve known by now that when it came to Hayley he couldn’t anticipate her next move. She was more direct, more up-front than he had thought she might be. Was it because of her innocence that she faced things so squarely? Because she hadn’t experienced a whole range of consequences for much of anything yet?

  “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said. “Because you’re right. If anybody suspected something unprofessional had happened between us, it would cause trouble for you.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” She looked horrified. “I mean, the way people would react if they thought I was... It has nothing to do with you.”

  “It does. More than you realize. You’ve been sheltered. But just because you don’t know my reputation, that doesn’t mean other people in town don’t know it. Most people who know you’re a good girl know I am a bad man, Hayley. And if anyone suspected I had put my hands on you, I’m pretty sure there would be torches and pitchforks at my front door by sunset.”

  “Well,” she said, “that isn’t fair. Because I kissed you.”

  “I’m going out on a limb here—of the two of us, I have more experience.”

  She clasped her hands in front of her and shuffled her feet. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe nothing, honey. I’m not the kind of man you need to be seen with. So, you’re right. You do need to get away. Maybe you should go to London. Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Now you want to get rid of me?”

  “Now you’re just making it so I can’t win.”

  “I don’t mean to,” she said, with that trademark sincerity that was no less alarming for being typical of her. “But I don’t know what to do with...with this.”

  She bit her lip, and the motion drew his eye to that lush mouth of hers. Forced him back to the memory of kissing it. Of tasting her.

  He wanted her. No question about it.

  He couldn’t pretend otherwise. But he could at least be honest with himself about why. He wanted her for all the wrong reasons. He wanted her because some sick, caveman part of him wanted to get all that pretty dirty. Part of him wanted to corrupt her. To show her everything she was missing. To make her fall from grace a lasting one.

  And that was some fucked up shit.

  Didn’t mean he didn’t feel it.

  “Well, after I earn enough money, that’s probably what I’ll do,” she said. “And since this isn’t going anywhere... I should probably j
ust get to work. And we shouldn’t talk about it anymore.”

  “No,” he said, “we shouldn’t.”

  “It was just a kiss.”

  His stomach twisted. Not because it disappointed him to hear her say that, but because she had to say it for her own peace of mind. She was innocent enough that a kiss worked her up. It meant something to her. Hell, sex barely meant anything to him. Much less a kiss.

  Except for hers. You remember hers far too well.

  “Just a kiss,” he confirmed.

  “Good. So give me some spreadsheets.”

  * * *

  The rest of the week went well. If well meant dodging moments alone with Jonathan, catching herself staring at him at odd times during the day and having difficulty dreaming of anything except him at night.

  “Thank God it’s Friday,” she said into the emptiness of her living room.

  She didn’t feel like cooking. She had already made a meal for Jonathan at his house, and then hightailed it out of there as quickly as possible. She knew that if she’d made enough for herself and took food with her he wouldn’t have minded, but she was doing her best to keep the lines between them firm.

  She couldn’t have any more blurred lines. They couldn’t have any more...kissing and other weirdness. Just thinking about kissing Jonathan made her feel restless, edgy. She didn’t like it. Or maybe she liked it too much.

  She huffed out a growl and wandered into the kitchen, opening the cupboard and pulling out a box of chocolate cereal.

  It was the kind of cereal her parents never would have bought. Because it wasn’t good for you, and it was expensive. So she had bought it for herself, because she had her own job, she was an adult and she made her own decisions.

  Do you?

  She shut out that snotty little voice. Yes, she did make her own decisions. Here she was, living in her own place, working at the job she had chosen. Yes, she very much made her own decisions. She had even kissed Jonathan. Yes, that had been her idea.