All the King's Horses

by Lauren Gallagher

  “Don’t stop. Please, Amy, don’t… stop…”

  I rode him a little harder, a little faster, watching in the faint light as the crevices between his eyebrows deepened. His fingers twitched on my hips. His teeth dug into his lip. I rolled my hips, and he swore as he tried to thrust upward.

  Then he leaned forward and kissed my neck, his lightly stubbled chin abrading my flesh as his soft lips whispered warm curses against my throat until he groaned, pulled my hips down and held me against him, and released a sharp, hot breath against my neck as he shuddered beneath me.

  After a moment, he raised his head, and we were panting too hard to kiss, so I touched my forehead to his, and we just trembled and held on to each other for a long moment.

  I rose up off him, and he took off the condom. After he’d tossed it into the trash bag hanging off the steering column, he looked up at me again, and we sank together in a long, lazy kiss. It occurred to me now, when it was much too late to do anything about it, that anyone could have driven past the truck and seen us through the steamed-up and rain-soaked windows. We could have drawn a crowd, for all I knew.

  I really didn’t care. We were sweating, shaking, half-naked and disheveled in the passenger seat of his truck, out in the middle of God knew where, and I didn’t care. I just didn’t care.

  Long after the dust had settled and my heart had slowed down, I drew back, and our eyes met.

  He swept the tip of his tongue across his lips. “Would you believe this is the first time I’ve ever fooled around in a vehicle?”

  “Really?” I smiled. “Not even in high school?”

  He laughed softly and lowered his gaze. With the lights as dim as they were, I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he blushed as he said, “I never did anything like this in high school.”

  I lifted his chin. “Better late than never, right?”

  “Absolutely,” he whispered and kissed me again. When he pulled back this time, we were both out of breath again.

  “We should get out of here,” I said.

  “Probably.” But he drew me down to kiss me. “In a minute.”

  “Dustin…”

  “In a minute,” he said again, looking up at me with the most devilish, inhibition-melting grin.

  “Maybe a few minutes,” I said.

  “I like the sound of that.”

  Eyes locked on mine, he pushed my shirt up, and we only broke eye contact long enough for me to pull my shirt over my head. I unsnapped my bra, and as it fell away, Dustin’s hands slid up my stomach toward my breasts. He covered my breasts with his warm, tentative hands, closing his eyes and exhaling, but before I could think of something witty to say to egg him on, he leaned in and circled my nipple with the tip of his tongue. This way, the other way, back again, and just about the time I figured out how to breathe, he switched to the other nipple.

  “Fuck…”

  “Like that?” he asked and did it again.

  “Yes, I—” I cut myself off when he gently pressed his teeth into my nipple. “Oh my God…”

  He gave a quiet, knowing laugh and pressed his teeth in a little harder.

  “Keep doing that”—I bit my lip and gripped his hair, daring him to try to pull away—“and we’re going to be out here all night.”

  “Probably,” he murmured. “You in a hurry?” His tongue circled my nipple, and cool, electrified water trickled through my veins as I gripped his hair tighter.

  “No hurry.” I gasped and then shivered. “Except the longer we’re out here, the longer we’re… The longer we’re not in bed.”

  “Good point.” He tilted his head back and met my eyes. “But we’re still a few miles from home, and I don’t know if I can wait that long.”

  He reached over and turned off the headlights. Then he killed the engine.

  With a shudder, the truck went quiet.

  And Dustin kissed me.

  And in the dark, silent stillness, he laid me across the seats and had me again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dustin

  Only years of habit and muscle memory made sure the right hay and grain went into the right feeders. During turnout, I had to go back three times to make sure I really had put horses into the right paddocks, because I caught myself walking back to the barn and completely unable to recall who I’d just turned out. I was pretty sure Ransom thought I’d lost my mind when I led him halfway across the property, only to turn around and take him back to his usual paddock right behind the barn.

  The alarm clock had dragged Amy and me out of my bed long before either of us was ready to get up, and I was paying for it now. I couldn’t say if Amy was equally tired or distracted, mostly because I could barely bring myself to look at her. It wasn’t regret. Far from it. The only thing I regretted about last night was ever thinking something like that wouldn’t happen, because now that we’d been together, I couldn’t imagine being anything other than desperate to have her again. Why couldn’t I look at her now? Because I was already struggling to keep my feet under me without a glimpse of Amy to make me trip and stumble more than I already had.

  As soon as feeding and turnout were finished, Amy and I wasted no time moving in opposite directions. We crossed paths throughout the day, but jumped on any opportunity to get the hell away from each other.

  Did she regret it? Or was she just as paranoid as I was about someone seeing the two of us on the same acre of land and somehow knowing every sweaty, desperate detail of last night?

  Only one way to find out: we needed to talk. Sooner than later. No matter how hard it was to breathe when I caught so much as a glimpse of her around the farm. So, as the afternoon wore on, I forced back my nerves, and in spite of trying to stay away from her all day, I gave her a hand bringing in the turnouts and handling the evening feeding as an excuse to be in the same place at the same time.

  And before I knew it, all the horses that had been turned out had been brought back in, and everyone was fed.

  Which left Amy and me standing in the feed room, not talking and sure as hell not looking at each other.

  She finally broke the silence. “Well, um, thanks for your help.”

  “Any time.” Avoiding her eyes, I said, “Amazing how much faster it is with two people.”

  “Funny how that works.”

  We both fell silent again. I glanced at her but quickly looked away. When I looked again, our eyes met, and she broke the silence before I could figure out how.

  “Do you think—” She cut herself off, shifting her gaze away and fidgeting.

  “Do I think, what?”

  Amy looked at me again. “Do you think last night was a mistake?”

  “I…” Did I? We’d needed to talk, yes, but was that because I thought it was a mistake? My heart pounded. My mouth went dry. And somehow, I managed to whisper, “No. I don’t.”

  “Good.” Just like she had on the porch last night, she seized the front of my shirt and kissed me. I stumbled but recovered quickly and returned her kiss, because holy fuck, I wanted her. Again. Right now.

  I pushed her up against the wall, and she welcomed my deeper, hungrier kiss. Her fingers grasped my hair, my clothes, whatever they could find, and when I pressed my hips against hers, she pressed back. She smelled like dust, leather and alfalfa, and she tasted like pure, feverish sex, and my cock was painfully hard, and I was sure if I didn’t fuck her in the next thirty seconds…

  I broke the kiss and looked past her, searching for a flat surface, but aside from a few bales of hay, there was nothing.

  She found my mouth again before I could speak.

  “I don’t know if you know this,” I said, panting between kisses, “but a roll in the hay is highly overrated.”

  “I know.” She tugged my shirt free from my jeans. “But it’s a flat surface with no one around.”

  “I’ve got a better idea.” I held her shoulders and pushed myself back from her. “This way.” I led her out of the feed room, pausing to make sure no one was
around to see us, and then I keyed us into the office across the barn aisle.

  As soon as we were inside, I locked the door behind us, and Amy shivered.

  “We’ll be much more comfortable in here,” I said, and before she could make a sound, whether of surprise or arousal, I grabbed both sides of her face and kissed her. Amy didn’t resist. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, and she returned my kiss just as breathlessly and unrelentingly. This kiss transcended passionate and desperate; from both sides, it was nothing short of demanding and violent.

  We stumbled across the tiny room. I wasn’t sure where this would end—the desk, the couch, the wall?—but I needed her, I needed her now, and I was half tempted to have her right here on the floor. As unsteady as we were on our feet, that was becoming more and more likely by the second.

  Somehow, we made it to the dusty old couch against the far wall, and Amy dragged me down on top of her. She wrapped her legs around my waist, and I pressed my erection against her. Christ, I loved it when a woman was this aggressive, when every move she made said her need matched mine. If I thought I was turned on last night, that paled in comparison to how aroused I was now, breathing her in and kissing her as we held on to each other for dear life. Not only wanting to be inside her but knowing how good that would feel.

  “God damn it, I want you,” I growled in her ear.

  She shivered. “Do you have a condom with you?”

  “Of course I do.” I nipped the side of her neck. “After last night, do you think I’d come anywhere near you without one?”

  She didn’t answer. She just whimpered softly and dug her nails into my shoulders. Hooking her leg around my waist, she pulled my hard-on against her, and I was just about to come unglued.

  She slid her hands down. Just above my waist, her fingers curled around my shirt, and she pulled it free from my jeans. I sat up just long enough to pull my shirt off and drop it on the floor, and when I came back down, her nails bit into my bare skin, drawing a groan from me as we sank into another deep, hungry kiss.

  “Dustin…” she moaned, like she just needed to say my name, and her voice sent a shiver right through me.

  Her hands slid from my skin to my jeans, then into my back pockets, and that kiss intensified when she found the condom.

  “I don’t want to wait,” she whispered in my ear.

  “Neither do I.”

  She pulled out the condom and shoved it into my hands. I quickly sat up. She kicked off her boots as I struggled with my belt. When she unzipped her jeans, I stopped what I was doing to help her pull them over her hips and get them out of the damned way. Her pants had barely hit the floor before we both went for my zipper. As soon as my jeans were past my hips enough to be out of the way, I sat up again and tore the condom wrapper with my teeth.

  Putting it on was challenging enough when I was this turned on, but trying to do it while Amy writhed and whimpered in front of me? When all I could think about was my cock buried deep inside her and her legs wrapped around my waist? And with the warm overhead lights highlighting the extra blush in her cheeks and the office walls containing—amplifying—her soft, desperate sounds, it was a miracle I didn’t come before the condom was all the way on.

  The condom was finally in place.

  I leaned over her.

  She wrapped her legs around my waist.

  And I was inside her.

  Oh, dear God, I was inside her. I closed my eyes and released a low groan. She wrapped her arms around me, pulling me down to kiss her, and my every last sense was wrapped up in her: the taste of her kiss. Warm skin against mine. Her tight pussy around my cock.

  I lacked the conscious thought to will myself to move, but body took over where mind failed. I was aware I was moving. How or why, I didn’t know, but I moved, pulling out slowly, pushing in just as slowly, every stroke bringing madness that much closer.

  So tight. So hot. So wet.

  A little faster.

  A little harder.

  Jesus.

  Amy’s hips moved with mine, and together we found the rhythm our bodies demanded. Faster. Harder. Her nails bit into the bare skin of my back, raising goose bumps all over me, and I thrust deeper. Faster. Harder. With a gasp, I broke the kiss and let my head fall beside hers, drawing a breath that tasted of her.

  Her back arched beneath us. She tried to say something, but all that came out was a long, helpless moan.

  I pushed myself up and looked down at her. Her hands were everywhere now, sliding over the edge of the cushion, my hair, my shoulders in search of something to hold on to. Fuck, just the sight of her was enough to put me right on the brink. She was beautiful and disheveled, and before my eyes she was coming unraveled.

  “Don’t stop…” She arched her back again. “Don’t…”

  Stopping wasn’t an option. Not when I was finally inside her like I’d ached to be for the last few hours, and not when Amy made me lose every shred of control I’d ever possessed. The need to fuck her, to drive myself into her tight pussy again and again until I lost it and came deep inside her, consumed and overwhelmed me, and there was. No. Stopping.

  Then Amy gasped, and her spine lifted off the cushions as she tightened around me, and I fell apart. I buried my face against her neck, forced my cock all the way inside her and came so hard I saw stars.

  As both our orgasms subsided, I shuddered one last time and collapsed over her, resting my forehead on her collarbone.

  She ran her fingers through my hair. “I’ve been thinking about that all day.”

  “Me too.” I lifted my head and kissed her lightly.

  We looked into each other’s eyes, and I was vaguely aware we still needed to discuss this. We still needed to define things I wasn’t sure could be defined and figure out the whys and the hows and the where-the-hell-is-this-goings, but we were shaking too much for that now.

  So I sank back down to her and kissed her. Talking would happen when it happened, but for now, half dressed, half out of our minds, we just held each other and breathed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Amy

  I paced back and forth across my bedroom’s thick carpet. Even this tiny space, the one that was so reassuringly mine for the time being, couldn’t calm my nerves.

  My stomach refused to settle. Guilt, shame, every possible bad feeling came to life like I’d just stirred up an emotional hornet’s nest. Because that was exactly what I needed after finally breaking through the numbness to the excruciating feelings lurking beneath.

  Sleeping together again to prove the first time wasn’t a mistake…was a mistake. Just as much as the first time had been, if not more so.

  And didn’t I know it? No matter how much I’d tried to delude myself, there was no way it was a good idea to sleep with Dustin less than twenty-four hours after I’d collapsed under the weight of Sam’s death. No matter how I rationalized it, it just wasn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t right for someone still too mentally jackknifed to even know which way was up. It sure as hell wasn’t right for someone who didn’t need to be dragged into this kind of insanity, whether because I was leading him on and using him like an emotional gauze pad until I straightened myself out, or because I was deluding myself into thinking there really was or really could be something between us.

  And I still worked for him, which made him a little difficult to avoid.

  Or I could leave. I wasn’t committed to staying here.

  Leave, and go where, exactly? Home? Ooh, no. I wasn’t ready for that yet. Not when I’d just started getting circulation back to the part of my brain that needed to deal with losing Sam. This was the worst possible time to even think of going back there.

  Going elsewhere would solve…not a hell of a lot. More change, more upheaval, more running away from everything that tried to gray my hair. If I kept this up, nowhere would run out of middles before I ran out of reasons to leave something else behind.

  So, no. No. I’d stay. I’d keep working this job until I�
��d sorted my shit out enough to go home and face everything I’d left behind.

  But what about Dustin?

  I cringed. This was going to be an unpleasant conversation, but one that needed to happen. Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed my house key, put on my baseball cap and went outside to find him.

  He had Ransom in the covered arena, and in spite of the reasons I needed to talk to him, I let myself watch them for a moment. Even if I hadn’t been intimate with him, the sight of him like this always sent my pulse skyward.

  Dustin wasn’t one of those cowboys who slouched in the saddle and spurred the hell out of his horse. With flawless, effortless posture like that, he could have put some of my champion equitation students to shame. He wore spurs, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing him use them. If he did, it was just a tap or a nudge now and then to get the horse’s attention. His hands were quiet, his reins not too loose or too tight.

  And good God, he was gorgeous. Tall, fit, with jeans that knew just how to hold on to an ass like that, and… Jesus Christ. Some men were just born for this line of work.

  That ever-present black cowboy hat didn’t help matters. Not at all. Tipped just so, masking his eyes while he focused on the horse below him, leaving his jawline and his neck and the lower part of his dark hair exposed, no, it didn’t help matters in the slightest.

  Watching him now, it was tempting to talk myself into one more night with him before I did what I knew I needed to. Tempting, but it wouldn’t be right. I’d just be leading him on and using him. The self-loathing and my conscience were almost unbearable now as it was.

  Dustin reined Ransom toward the gate. Neither of us spoke, just exchanged “I have no idea how to talk after last night” glances as I opened the gate for him.

  Once they were out of the arena, Dustin took his foot out of the stirrup, swung his leg over, and landed on the ground with catlike ease. As he pulled the reins over Ransom’s head, he looked at me again, and his almost shy smile sent my heart plummeting into my feet.