by Alison Kent
“I haven’t been home from work yet.”
“Yeah, well, you need a new wardrobe,” he said, making his way behind the waistband to slide his hand into her panties, working two fingers into her pussy, using his thumb against her clit.
And then he brought his mouth to hers, his tongue finding hers, and kissed her passionately while fucking her with his hand. All she could do was hold on.
She rode his fingers, shifted her hips to grind against his palm, gripped his shoulders as if doing so was the only way she could keep from falling. She rose on her tiptoes and he rose with her, penetrating, impaling, rubbing the fly of his jeans against her hip and groaning when she rubbed back.
“This isn’t fair,” she tried to say, wondering how fair came out instead of smart or safe or a good idea.
“Don’t worry about fair,” he told her, the rhythm of his fingers increasing, the slide of his tongue along hers as intimate as it was suggestively bold. But before he pulled free, he added, “Don’t worry about anything but getting off.”
He made it sound so easy. As if sex was the only thing worth her time. And the way he took charge left her unable to think otherwise. Left her unable to do anything but feel.
He stroked her, fingered her, played her, hurt her. She gasped and clawed at his shirt and buried her face in his chest. He brought his mouth to her temple and urged her on, his words dirty and hot and entirely inappropriate for the parking lot of a restaurant known for its chicken fried steak.
Everything they were doing here was wrong, and she wanted to care, to find the Faith who was proper and appropriate and didn’t come in public places, but her body and desire had misplaced her mind, and she cried her release into the fabric of Casper’s shirt.
He brought her back slowly, easing his hand from her body but not from her clothes. It wasn’t till she heard the material rending and felt the crotch of her panties being pulled between her legs that she realized what he was doing. It took another few seconds for her to realize why.
“Now we can talk about being fair,” he said, popping his buckle and button fly and lifting his cock from his shorts, as bold as he pleased, before bunching the strips of torn cotton in his fist like a rag.
“You’re not—” was all she got out before he started to stroke.
“I am,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, his gaze piercing and hot. “Unless you want to.”
She did. God help her, she did. She held his gaze and reached for him, so thick and ready, so proud and so fierce. She cupped her palm over the plum-ripe head, stroking in a circle, tugging down, over and over as his nostrils flared, as his chest labored.
As in the distance, the restaurant door opened and customers exited, their laughter spilling into the waning light.
“People are coming.”
“Worry about me coming.”
She swallowed, nodded, fearing discovery, loving the feel of the veins bulging on the underside of his cock. She licked her lips, and he jumped in her hand, giving her a look that dared her to drop to her knees. She wanted to oh so much. To wrap her lips around him. To tongue the slit that was seeping moisture into her palm even now.
She shook her head, stroked him faster.
“Chicken,” he said, and laughed. But then he slammed his hands onto the roof of her car on either side of her and dropped his head back, his eyes screwed closed, his throat working, his pulse hammering as he tensed. Finally he grunted, grabbing her hand and holding her where he wanted her while he spilled semen into her palm.
“Goddamn,” he said, collapsing forward and resting his forehead on his forearm still on the top of her car. Then he looked over, winked, and grinned before covering her mouth with his and kissing her senseless. She kissed him back, her arms caught between their bodies while he tucked himself back inside his jeans.
It was just about then that applause erupted. Faith froze, her eyes popping open before she pulled her mouth from his. He was still grinning, the jerk, and then he reached for his hat, removed it, and took a bow.
But he never looked at their audience. He had eyes only for her.
She, on the other hand, held her cum-filled panties. And the wild look in his eyes told her he loved that she had them, and that they were the only two to know.
TEN
“IF Y’ALL DON’T mind, I’m going do a little work for Royce Summerlin.” Casper lifted his arms and slammed the posthole digger into the ground, his whole body vibrating with the contact. Boone and Dax looked on as he wiggled it, settled it, put a boot on top of it, and shoved it deep. Then, since neither had said a word, he added, “On my own time.”
“Own time,” Dax repeated. “You have that?”
“Sure. Same as you.” Though the truth was that none of them had any at all. Hell, they’d started working on this very holding pen weeks ago, after Massey Construction had demolished the ranch’s old bunkhouse, cutting the boys a deal for their services based on how much of the wood they were able to save.
Casper wasn’t sure if his and the boys’ delay in getting finished was due to their jam-packed schedules, needing to free up the money to buy the fence posts and boards, or guilt at having destroyed a piece of the ranch that had been so much a part of the summers and holidays they’d spent here as teens. Hard to think that was it, except when it came to Tess and Dave, all three of them carried a soft spot.
As Casper worked the dirt from the hole, Dax rolled the next post ready to be sunk away from the pile. “And when would my own time be? Because I must’ve mixed it up with the hours I spend here or something.”
“I guess he means the time you spend with Arwen,” Boone said, using the edge of a sharpshooter to scrape the dirt from beneath Casper’s feet.
Dax snorted. “The only time I spend with Arwen is sleeping.”
Boone grunted. “If that’s all you’re doing with that woman, then I am sorry for you.”
Dax snorted again. “That’s not all I’m doing. But it would be nice to have time to do more of the other stuff.”
“Whatever you’re doing,” Casper said, getting his head back in the game and off the stuff he’d been doing with Faith, “that’s your free time. Just like Boone uses his for—”
“Boone doesn’t have free time,” Boone said. “Boone eats and sleeps and works. And sometimes Boone eats while he’s working and skips sleeping altogether. Boone is not a happy man.”
Were any of them? Saddled with a ranch it was getting harder and harder to love? Pinching pennies? Skimping on sleep? Facing a to-do list that grew longer by the day? Casper grunted. “Boone needs a woman.”
“Boone is not going to argue with that,” the big man said. “But right now he’s more interested in hearing about you cheating on your partners and your ranch with Summerlin and his spread.”
“I’m not cheating,” Casper said, ramming the tool another few inches into the hard-packed earth. “I just want to make some extra money.”
“Don’t we all?” Dax asked.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a chance to.” Casper handed the other man the tool when he offered to take a turn. “I ran into Royce a couple of days ago, he said he’s shorthanded, and I told him I’d come out and see what he had in mind.”
Boone shook his head. “So you already agreed to it?”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want him running into someone else with a ready answer while I waited to check in with y’all.”
“What sort of work you talking about?”
This was where it got tricky. He looked over at Boone. “Breaking horses.”
“You shittin’ me?”
“Doesn’t he have a man doing that already?” Dax asked, coming out of the ground with more dirt for Boone to get rid of. “What was his name? Banning or something?”
“Royce sent him over to work for Nina, so the spot’s open.” Casper took a moment to fill a tin cup with water from the Igloo lashed to the back of the flatbed. “We talked about me filling in for a while.”
“Wh
at do you know about breaking horses?”
“More than you, I reckon.”
Dax stacked his hands on the digger’s handle, took a stand. “I dunno. I put my butt on the back of a few wild ones while in Montana.”
“And if I recall correctly,” Boone said to Casper, “your butt couldn’t stick eight seconds half the time.”
“How do you know what my butt was or was not doing? You were off working in New Mexico or wherever.”
“And you think that means I couldn’t keep up with you and the PBR? Seems you didn’t do too badly one year in Albuquerque.”
The year he’d met Angie and Clay. “Were you there?”
“Not at the rodeo, no. Had planned to come, but we had a nasty brucellosis outbreak and it was all hands on deck.”
“Huh. Wonder how many times the three of us crossed paths over the years.”
Boone cocked his head Dax’s direction. “You and Dax did the nomad thing. I stuck to New Mexico, so any time you came through, we would’ve been in spittin’ distance.”
“Wish I’d known,” Casper said, meaning it. He’d hid it, even from himself, but he’d really missed his boys. “I would’ve looked you up.” He turned to Dax. “I hit Montana on the way to Calgary, but that was years ago. Doubt you’d settled in Bozeman yet.”
“I never really settled in Bozeman.” Dax reached for the cup. Casper passed it over. “It was just the last stop before getting the news about Tess and Dave.” He stared into the water, frowning as he swirled it. “I’d already been thinking about heading south of the border. I hated the cold.”
“And here I thought you were a Scotsman to the bone.”
“Speaking of bones,” Dax said, giving Casper the eye. “You got a woman who needs courting? Is that what the extra money’s for?”
Casper’s first response was to dig at Boone about his sister, the way he’d done dozens of times. But since having her in his bed, he couldn’t go there. Mostly out of respect for Faith, but he also didn’t think he could pull it off. “I need it for the house.”
“I dunno,” Boone said. “I heard his headboard bouncing off the wall the other night. Not sure I’d call what was going on in there courting.”
“You didn’t hear shit. You were snoring loud enough to wake Bing.” Who snored loud enough to wake Bob. Who snored loud enough to wake all of Crow Hill.
“By the time you snuck her out, maybe. I couldn’t get to sleep until the two of you stopped shaking the house.”
“Fess up, partner,” Dax said, tossing him the empty cup. “Who was it?”
“My dick, my business,” he said, catching it and returning it to the Igloo. “About the house. There’s something else.”
“That where you’re keeping her?”
“Godammit. I’m not keeping anyone anywhere.” He stopped then and laughed because he was doing just that. “Except I am.”
Neither of the other men said anything, with Dax lifting a brow, Boone kicking at the sharpshooter’s blade.
Casper mopped his forehead with his sleeve before settling his hat back in place. This was his cross to bear, but he had to come clean. He couldn’t do anything to hurt the partnership. That was the bottom line in all things.
And that included Faith. “There’s this kid there helping me clean up. And he needs a place to stay that’s not a pit. I was thinking of bringing him out here. His dog, too.”
“That’s going to need a lot more explanation, dude,” Dax said.
Then Boone said, “Yeah. A kid and a dog who need a place to stay doesn’t sound exactly kosher.”
Casper looked from one man to the other. He needed them to know this wasn’t a joke. “His mom died. He doesn’t have any other family. He came looking for me.”
“Shit.” Dax forced the digger back into the hole. “He yours?”
“I can say with one hundred percent certainty he is not. I met his mother in Albuquerque six years ago.”
“Met his mother? Or fucked his mother?” Boone asked, while Dax came at him with, “The same Albuquerque we were just talking about?”
“Both,” he said to Boone, and gave Dax a nod.
In return, Dax gave him a whistle. “Let me get this straight. You were doing this kid’s mother when you were in town for a rodeo. His old lady dies, and he comes looking for you? Must’ve made one hell of an impression.”
“It’s a mystery to me. If I wasn’t at the arena or in her bed, I was drunk. I barely remember him. Hell, I barely remember her,” he said, the admission carrying both shame and regret.
Dax nodded. “You ask him about it? Why you won the daddy figure lottery?”
“Not really. All he said was that he didn’t have anyplace else to go.”
“No family?”
“I guess not.”
“And foster care?”
“He gave it a try.”
“I’m pretty sure if he’s under eighteen, he doesn’t have a say. He goes. He stays. End of discussion.”
“Well, he went. And he didn’t stay. And now it seems I’m the one who’s stuck setting things right.”
“You going to see a lawyer?” Boone asked, finally weighing in.
Yeah. Since he had so much disposable income…“I figure a lawyer’s better than going to the law. For now. Until I know exactly what’s what.”
Boone glanced toward Dax. “Darcy, maybe?”
“No,” Dax said. “Leave Darcy out of it. Get Greg to look into it. He won’t feel the need to get personally involved.”
And because Darcy was a friend of the Dalton Gang, she would, even if it went against whatever code was meant to keep her impartial. Casper nodded. “What about him staying out here? The boy. Clay.”
Dax looked from Casper to Boone and shrugged. Boone looked back to Casper. “Faith was just saying we needed a maid. He could take on the job, help as he could with other chores. But it’s on your head. Anything happens. This can’t blow back on the ranch.”
“It won’t,” he said, taking the tool from Dax and slamming it into the ground, praying as he did that he could keep that promise. And that he wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of his life.
ELEVEN
WHILE FAITH SAT at the bar in the Hellcat Saloon, looking at the menu and nursing a vanilla beer, the lunchtime conversation from earlier in the week came back to haunt her, steering her away from a double order of fries and toward something more adventurous. Though what she was hoping to prove, and who she thought she’d be proving it to, wasn’t exactly clear.
Yes, she believed in being organized and efficient. And hadn’t she proved in the ranch house kitchen and Casper’s bed—not to mention the Rainsong Cafe parking lot, for chrissake—that the last thing she was was boring?
She just needed to take baby steps from the safe end of the pool to the dangerous one instead of launching her entire body into the deep end. The way she’d done in the past.
The way she was doing now.
“Good plan,” she muttered to herself. “But bad planning.”
Baby steps meant seeing someone safe. Like Dr. Mercer Pope. Or Greg Barrett, Esquire. Even Mal Breckenridge. Or Cameron Neal, DVM. Not sleeping with the Dalton Gang member most likely to ruin her reputation for good.
But that was exactly what she’d done since she’d been old enough to date, wasn’t it? Choose the worst possible men. Never learning her lesson. Thinking a bad boy could give her whatever it was that seemed to be missing in her life.
All that after growing up with the best example of a good man a girl could hope for, a coach, a husband, a father who talked and played and disciplined, who took his kids’ joys and sorrows to heart.
And then there’d been Boone. Boone and his hell-raising ways had gotten the most of their parents’ attention. But really? Had she been that ridiculously self-centered? That envious of Boone?
Had she looked for love in all the wrong places because the enormous amount showered down on her at home hadn’t been as much as that poured ont
o her brother? Lord, if she’d been that shallow, she deserved the hell she’d gone through in college. But she alone. Not her family.
Still, that disaster was done with, leaving her with no explanation for what she was doing with Casper now…
“Mind if I join you?”
Faith glanced over to see Kendall Sheppard holding the back of the neighboring stool, her straight blonde hair swept away from her face with a band. “Kendall, sure. Please, sit. It’s good to see you.”
“You, too.” Kendall moved fluidly into the seat, her long dancer’s body—kept in shape these days by climbing the rolling ladders attached to her bookstore’s shelves—making it look effortless. “I didn’t want to cut in if you’re waiting for a date.”
“I’m waiting for dinner. Or I will be as soon as I make up my mind what to order.” Faith tapped the menu in front of her. “And I’m taking it with me. Which means my only hot plans for the night are with my food.” She gave the other woman a grin. “And maybe Timothy Olyphant.”
“Ooh, good choice,” Kendall said, reaching for a menu from those tucked between bottles of Tabasco and Louisiana hot sauce. “Mine are with my food, and another three or four hours of work. I’m afraid if I streamed Timothy in the background, I’d never get anything done.”
“He is a distracting man, isn’t he? Just enough bad boy mixed in with the good.”
“And those long, long legs. Watching him walk…” Kendall let the rest of the sentence trail, sighing at the same time as Faith.
Then Faith cleared her throat and got back to being thirty-one years old. “Sorry about the late hours.”
“Thanks. There are lots of perks to being an entrepreneur, but sometimes I’d take a cozy nine-to-five over betting my future on ordering the right number of the right titles, and having them in stock when customers actually have the disposable income to spend.”
Faith heard what Kendall was saying, but her mind was stuck on the word cozy. Is that what her job was? As safe as the finance degree that had never offered a moment of challenge? As predictable as her weekly double orders of fries?
