by Maisey Yates
He moved his other hand up to the headboard, gripping it tight. Then he flexed his hips forward, the blunt head of his arousal teasing the slick entrance to her body. She reached up, bracing her palms flat against his chest, a shiver running through her as he teased her with near penetration.
She cursed. The sound quivering, weak in the near silence of the room. She had no idea where hard-ass Maddy had gone. That tough, flippant girl who knew how to keep everyone at a distance with her words. Who knew how to play off every situation as if it weren’t a big deal.
This was a big deal. How could she pretend that it wasn’t? She was breaking apart from the inside out; how could she act as though she weren’t?
“Please,” she repeated.
He let go of the headboard with one hand and pressed his hand down next to her face, then repeated the motion with the other as he rocked his hips forward more fully, entering her slowly, inch by tantalizing inch. She gasped when he filled her all the way, the intense stretching sensation a pleasure more than it was a pain.
She slid her hands up to his shoulders, down his back, holding on to him tightly there before locking her legs around his lean hips and urging him even deeper.
“Yes,” she breathed, a wave of satisfaction rolling over her, chased on the heels by a sense that she was still incomplete. That this wasn’t enough. That it would never be enough.
Then he began to move. Ratcheting up the tension between them. Taking her need, her arousal, to greater heights than she had ever imagined possible. He was measured at first, taking care to establish a rhythm that helped her move closer to completion. But she didn’t need the help. She didn’t want it. She just wanted to ride the storm.
She tilted her head to the side, scraping her teeth along the tendon in his neck that stood out as a testament to his hard-won self-control.
And that did it.
He growled low in his throat. Then his movements became hard, harsh. Following no particular rhythm but his own. She loved it. Gloried in it. He grabbed hold of her hips, tugging her up against him every time he thrust down, making it rougher, making it deeper. Making it hurt. She felt full with it, full with him. This was exactly what she needed, and she hadn’t even realized it. To be utterly and completely overwhelmed. To have this man consume her every sensation, her every breath.
She fused her lips to his, kissing him frantically as he continued to move inside her and she held on to him tighter, her nails digging into his skin. But she knew he didn’t mind the pain. She knew it just as she didn’t mind it. Knew it because he began to move harder, faster, reaching the edge of his own control as he pushed her nearer to the edge of hers.
Suddenly, it gripped her fiercely, down low inside her, a force of pleasure that she couldn’t deny or control. She froze, stiffening against him, the scream that lodged itself in her throat the very opposite of who she usually was. It wasn’t calculated; it wasn’t pretty; it wasn’t designed to do anything. It simply was. An expression of what she felt. Beyond her reach, beyond her completely.
She was racked with her desire for him, with the intensity of the orgasm that swept through her. And then, just as she was beginning to find a way to breathe again, he found his own release, his hardness pulsing deep inside her as he gave himself up to it.
His release—the intensity of it—sent another shattering wave through her. And she clung to him even more tightly, needing him to anchor her to the bed, to the earth, or she would lose herself completely.
And then in the aftermath, she was left there, clinging to a stranger, having just shown the deepest, most hidden parts of herself to him. Having just lost her control with him in a way she never would have done with someone she knew better. Perhaps this was the only way she could have ever experienced this kind of freedom. The only way she could have ever let her guard down enough. What did she have to lose with Sam? His opinion of her was already low. So if he thought that she was a sex-hungry maniac after this, what did it matter?
He moved away from her and she threw her arm over her face, letting her head fall back, the sound of her fractured breathing echoing in the room.
After she had gulped in a few gasps of air, she removed her arm, opened her eyes and realized that Sam wasn’t in the room anymore. Probably off to the bathroom to deal with necessities. Good. She needed some space. She needed a moment. At least a few breaths.
He returned a little bit quicker than she had hoped he might, all long lean muscle and satisfied male. It was the expression on his face that began to ease the tension in her chest. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t look like he was judging her. And he didn’t look like he was in love with her or was about to start making promises that she didn’t want him to make.
No, he just looked satisfied. A bone-deep satisfaction that she felt too.
“Holy hell,” he said, coming to lie on the bed next to her, drawing her naked body up against his. She felt a smile curve her lips. “I think you about blew my head off.”
“You’re so romantic,” she said, smiling even wider. Because this was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
“You don’t want me to be romantic,” he returned.
“No,” she said, feeling happy, buoyant even. “I sure as hell don’t.”
“You want me to be bad, and dirty, and to be your every fantasy of slumming it with a man who is so very beneath you.”
That, she took affront to a little bit. “I don’t think you’re beneath me, Sam,” she said. Then he grabbed hold of her hips and lifted her up off the mattress before bringing her down over his body. A wicked smile crossed his face.
“I am now.”
“You’re insatiable. And terrible.”
“For a weekend fling, honey, that’s all you really need.”
“Oh, dammit,” she said, “what if the roads open up, and Christopher tries to come up?”
“I’m not really into threesomes.” He tightened his grip on her. “And I’m not into sharing.”
“No worries. I don’t have any desire to broaden my experience by testing him out.”
“Have I ruined you for him?”
The cocky bastard. She wanted to tell him no, but she had a feeling that denting the masculine ego when a man was underneath you wasn’t the best idea if you wanted to have sex with said man again.
“Ruined me completely,” she responded. “In fact, I should leave a message for him.”
Sam snagged the phone on the nightstand and thrust it at her. “You can leave him a message now.”
“Okay,” she said, grimacing slightly.
She picked up the phone and dialed Christopher’s number quickly. Praying that she got his voice mail and not his actual voice.
Of course, if she did, that meant he’d gone out. Which meant that maybe he was trying to find sex to replace the sex that he’d lost. Which she had done; she couldn’t really be annoyed about that. But she had baggage.
“Come on,” she muttered as the phone rang endlessly. Then she breathed a sigh of relief when she got his voice mail. “Hi, Christopher, it’s Madison. Don’t worry about coming up here if the roads clear up. If that happens, I’m probably just going to go back to Copper Ridge. The weekend is kind of ruined. And...and maybe you should just wait for me to call you?” She looked up at Sam, who was nearly vibrating with forcibly contained laughter. She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, sorry that this didn’t work out. Bye.”
“That was terrible,” he said. “But I think you made it pretty clear that you don’t want to hear from him.”
“I said I would call him,” she said in protestation.
“Are you going to?”
“Hell no.”
Sam chuckled, rolling her back underneath him, kissing her deep, hard. “Good thing I only want a weekend.”
“Why is that?”
�
�God help the man that wants more from you.”
“Oh, please, that’s not fair.” She wiggled, luxuriating in the hard feel of him between her thighs. He wanted her again already. “I pity the woman that falls for you, Sam McCormack.”
A shadow passed over his face. “So do I.”
Then, as quickly as they had appeared, those clouds cleared and he was smiling again, that wicked, intense smile that let her know he was about ready to take her to heaven again.
“It’s a good thing both of us only want a weekend.”
Five
“How did the art retreat go?”
Sam gritted his teeth against his younger brother’s questioning as Chase walked into their workshop. “Fine,” he returned.
“Fine?” Chase leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms, looking a little too much like Sam for his own comfort. Because he was a bastard, and he didn’t want to see his bastard face looking back at him. “I thought you were going to get inspiration. To come up with the ideas that will keep the McCormack Ranch flush for the next several years.”
“I’m not a machine,” Sam said, keeping his tone hard. “You can’t force art.”
He said things like that, in that tone, because he knew that no one would believe that cliché phrase, even if it was true. He didn’t like that it was true.
But there wasn’t much he was willing to do about it either.
“Sure. And I feel a slight amount of guilt over pressuring you, but since I do a lot of managing of your career, I consider it a part of my job.”
“Stick to pounding iron, Chase—that’s where your talents lie.”
“I don’t have talent,” Chase said. “I have business sense. Which you don’t have. So you should be thankful for me.”
“You say that. You say it a lot. I think mostly because you know that I actually shouldn’t be all that thankful for your meddling.”
He was being irritable, and he knew it. But he didn’t want Chase asking how the weekend was. He didn’t want to explain the way he had spent his time. And he really didn’t want to get into why the only thing he was inspired to do was start painting nudes.
Of one woman in particular.
Because the only kind of grand inspirational moments he’d had were when he was inside Maddy. Yeah, he wasn’t going to explain that to his younger brother. He was never going to tell anybody. And he had to get his shit together.
“Seriously, though, everything is going okay? Anna is worried about you.”
“Your wife is meddlesome. I liked her better when she was just your friend and all she did was come by for pizza a couple times a week. And she didn’t worry too much about what I was doing or whether or not I was happy.”
“Yeah, sadly for you she has decided she loves me. And by extension she has decided she loves you, which means her getting up in your business. I don’t think she knows another way to be.”
“Tell her to go pull apart a tractor and stop digging around in my life.”
“No, thanks, I like my balls where they are. Which means I will not be telling Anna what to do. Ever.”
“I liked it better when you were miserable and alone.”
Chase laughed. “Why, because you’re miserable and alone?”
“No, that would imply that I’m uncomfortable with the state of things. I myself am quite dedicated to my solitude and my misery.”
“They say misery loves company,” Chase said.
“Only true if you aren’t a hermit.”
“I suppose that’s true.” His brother looked at him, his gaze far too perceptive for Sam’s liking. “You didn’t used to be this terrible.”
“I have been for a while.” But worse with Maddy. She pushed at him. At things and needs and desires that were best left in the past.
He gritted his teeth. She pushed at him because he turned her on and that made her mad. He... Well, it was complicated.
“Yes,” Chase said. “For a while.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me. Maybe it’s a crazy artist thing. Dad always said that it would make me a pussy.”
“You aren’t a pussy. You’re a jerk.”
“Six of one, half dozen of the other. Either way, I have issues.”
Chase shook his head. “Well, deal with them on your own time. You have to be over at the West Ranch in less than an hour.” Chase shook his head. “Pretty soon we’ll be released from the contract. But you know until then we could always hire somebody else to go. You don’t have to do horseshoes if you don’t want. We’re kind of beyond that now.”
Sam gritted his teeth. For the first time he was actually tempted to take his brother up on the offer. To replace his position with someone else. Mostly because the idea of seeing Madison again filled him with the kind of reckless tension that he knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything about once he saw her again.
Oh, not because of her. Not because of anything to do with her moral code or protestations. He could demolish those easily enough. It was because he couldn’t afford to waste any more time thinking about her. Because he couldn’t afford to get in any deeper. What had happened over the past weekend had been good. Damn good. But he had to leave it there.
Normally, he relished the idea of getting in there and doing grunt work. There was something about it that fulfilled him. Chase might not understand that.
But Sam wasn’t a paperwork man. He wasn’t a business mind. He needed physical exertion to keep himself going.
His lips twitched as he thought about the kind of physical exertion he had indulged in with Maddy. Yeah, it kind of all made sense. Why he had thrown himself into the blacksmithing thing during his celibacy. He needed to pound something, one way or another. And since he had been so intent on denying himself female companionship, he had picked up a hammer instead.
He was tempted to back out. To make sure he kept his distance from Maddy. He wouldn’t, because he was also far too tempted to go. Too tempted to test his control and see if there was a weak link. If he might end up with her underneath him again.
It would be the better thing to send Chase. Or to call in and say they would have to reschedule, then hire somebody else to take over that kind of work. They could more than afford it. But as much as he wanted to avoid Maddy, he wanted to see her again.
Just because.
His body began to harden just thinking about it.
“It’s fine. I’m going to head over. You know that I like physical labor.”
“I just don’t understand why,” Chase said, looking genuinely mystified.
But hell, Chase had a life. A wife. Things that Sam was never going to have. Chase had worked through his stuff and made them both a hell of a lot of money, and Sam was happy for him. As happy as he ever got.
“You don’t need to understand me. You just have to keep me organized so that I don’t end up out on the street.”
“You would never end up out on the streets of Copper Ridge. Mostly because if you stood out there with a cardboard sign, some well-meaning elderly woman would wrap you in a blanket and take you back to her house for casserole. And you would rather die. We both know that.”
That made Sam smile reluctantly. “True enough.”
“So, I guess you better keep working, then.”
Sam thought about Maddy again, about her sweet, supple curves. About how seeing her again was going to test him in the best way possible. Perhaps that was why he should go. Just so he could test himself. Push up against his control. Yeah, maybe that was what he needed.
Yeah, that justification worked well. And it meant he would see her again.
It wasn’t feelings. It was just sex. And he was starting to think just sex might be what he needed.
“I plan on it.”
* * *
M
addy took a deep breath of clean salt air and arena dirt. There was something comforting about it. Familiar. Whenever things had gone wrong in her life, this was what she could count on. The familiar sights and sounds of the ranch, her horses. Herself.
She never felt stronger than when she was on the back of a horse, working in time with the animal to move from a trot to a walk, a walk to a halt. She never felt more understood.
A funny thing. Because, while she knew she was an excellent trainer and she had full confidence in her ability to keep control over the animal, she knew that she would never have absolute control. Animals were unpredictable. Always.
One day, they could simply decide they didn’t want to deal with you and buck you off. It was the risk that every person who worked with large beasts took. And they took it on gladly.
She liked that juxtaposition. The control, the danger. The fact that though she achieved a certain level of mastery with each horse she worked with, they could still decide they weren’t going to behave on a given day.
She had never felt much of that in the rest of her life. Often she felt like she was fighting against so much. Having something like this, something that made her feel both small and powerful had been essential to her well-being. Especially during all that crap that had happened ten years ago. She had been thinking more about it lately. Honestly, it had all started because of Christopher, because she had been considering breaking her celibacy. And it had only gotten worse after she actually had. After Sam.
Mostly because she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Mostly because she felt like one weekend could never be enough. And she needed it to be. She badly needed it to be. She needed to be able to have sex with a guy without having lingering feelings for him. David had really done a number on her, and she did not want another number done on her.
It was for the best if she never saw Sam again. She knew that was unlikely, but it would be better. She let out a deep breath, walking into the barn, her riding boots making a strident sound on the hardpacked dirt as she walked in. Then she saw movement toward the end of the barn, someone coming out of one of the stalls.
