“Consider yourself forgiven, then.”
“Oh, it’ll take more than that to make up for what a jerk I was. How about I take you out to dinner?”
Abigail started. If only he’d asked her eight years ago, she’d have melted into a puddle at his feet. But she was a different woman now.
“Thanks, after all those fat jokes, I don’t think I’d feel comfortable eating in front of you.”
He grimaced. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. Are you sorry about all those dumb jock jokes you made, and printing up my bad grades for everyone in the school to see?”
She managed a smile. “I plead the fifth.” Glancing at the door of the cabin, she sighed. The clouds were still in full downpour mode; it would be like running through a waterfall.
Ty had carefully angled the truck so her door was near the front door. “Go on,” he said.
Well, after all those years in the big city, he was still a gentleman, she’d give him that much.
The two of them leaped from the truck and made a mad dash for the front store, as torrents of rain poured from the sky and soaked them to the skin.
Ty slammed the door shut behind them. They stood in the livingroom/bedroom/kitchen, water streaming down their faces and clothing plastered to their skin. The room was tiny and dark, with a wood-framed bed, kitchen table, chairs, and potbellied stove crowded into the small space.
“We’d best strip right here so we don’t track mud everywhere. I’ll start a fire and we can hang our clothes up in front of it to dry,” Ty said, nodding his head at the potbellied stove. He began unbuttoning his shirt, revealing his broad, tanned chest.
“What? Take my clothes off right here? In front of you?” She gasped.
He flashed her a wicked grin. “Why not? You afraid you won’t be able to control yourself once I’m buck nekkid?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Abigail scorched him with a withering glare, but he just smiled blithely as he peeled off his wet shirt and dropped it on to the wooden bench by the door. Her mouth suddenly went dry. His arms were muscled perfection, his skin smooth and tanned, his abs so defined they looked as if they’d been carved by a sculptor. A narrow dark trail of curly hair started at his navel and traveled straight down, disappearing underneath the waistline of his jeans…
Which he was rapidly unzipping.
He looked up at her and saw her watching him undress, and flashed her a grin. “You’re going to catch your death in those wet clothes, darlin’. You need some help?”
Mutely, she shook her head, and began unbuttoning her shirt with trembling fingers. She thought maybe he’d at least pretend to be a gentleman and look away, but his eyes were fixed on her, with an unmistakable hunger.
She peeled off her shirt, and mutely dropped it on the wooden bench by the door. Ty had pulled off his belt and unzipped his jeans, but he stopped to watch her, openly staring at her now, lips parted, eyes gleaming.
She was stripping in front of Ty Jackson and he was looking at her as if he wanted to sweep her off her feet and ravage her. Ty Jackson. Her. In the same room together. She felt as if she’d somehow ended up in a strange alternate universe; this couldn’t be happening.
He sat down on the bench to take his boots off. “Mind giving me a hand here?”
She sank down to her knees, grasped his boot with both hands, and slid it off, and set it down on the floor. Then she looked up, and saw him looking down at her.
She was kneeling before him. Looking up at him, big and dominant and powerful above her…as if she were waiting for his command.
And she was indeed, she realized. She was waiting for him to tell her what to do next.
Lightning bolts of arousal shot through her, and she felt her lips parting involuntarily as she stared up into his eyes.
He breathed in harshly, his gaze locking hers.
“Now the other one,” he commanded. She felt as if the world had stopped turning, as if everything fell away from her and the two of them were the only people in the universe. As if hypnotized, she reached up and grabbed his right boot and pulled it off.
Following his orders.
And loving it.
“Put it on the bench,” he ordered her. She did, moving as if in a trance.
What else would he tell her to do?
He reached down and brushed his calloused fingers across the side of her face, slowly, a feathering, teasing touch.
His hands were still rough. How was that possible? He’d moved to New York, he should have the soft, manicured hands of a metrosexual city slicker by now.
“What?” he asked, at her startled glance.
“You – you still work with your hands. I thought you were living in New York, doing some kind of stock market job.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Is that what you thought? I was a stockbroker in New York for a few years. I was pretty good at it. When I had made enough money, I bought some property in Wyoming. I have my own cattle ranch there now.”
His own ranch. Of course, that was no surprise. He’d been practically been born on horseback, with a lasso in his hand.
He traced the outline of her cheeks with his thumb, than ran it slowly along the swell of her bottom lip. “Forget about the past. Let’s concentrate on the here and now. You’re soaking wet and you’re shivering. Stand up and take your pants off. Now.”
Her body seemed to react without consulting her brain. They both stood up, and as he shucked out of his wet jeans, she followed suit, sliding her pants off and stepping out of them. Then she stood shivering before him in her rose-colored lace bra and underwear, her ivory skin dimpled with gooseflesh, hugging herself against the chill.
In a heartbeat, he had his arms around her, and she was pressed up against a solid wall of muscle. She could feel the heat radiating through his body, warming her like a blanket, and the length and thickness of his erection, straining through his plaid boxers, took her breath away.
His strong arms tightened around her and she felt safe and warm in his embrace, and she had to tip her head back to look him in the eye.
He bent down, lips parting to claim her with a kiss…and a blast of lightning struck, and it sounded like the world exploded right outside the front door.
They both glanced out the window. The lightning had struck his pickup truck, blowing out the windshield in an explosion of shattered glass.
They were trapped there until someone could come pick them up…unless they wanted to trudge miles and miles across the vast property to reach the main ranch house.
The lightning strike had shocked Abigail back to her senses. When Ty turned back to take her in his arms again, she pushed him away from her, furious at herself.
What the hell was she doing? Eight years ago Ty had made her life miserable. They’d just run into each other, and she was already ready to fall on her back for him, like all of the dumb cheerleaders in high school. The ones he’d screwed and left. Mindy and Cindy and Trudy – all those girls with cutesie “y” endings to their names.
Quickly, she turned her back on him, scooping up their wet clothes.
Chapter Three
“Here, I’ll get this.” Before he could argue, she’d scooped up their wet clothing, rushed over the clothesline strung up in front of the stove, and pinned up their clothing. She reached in to his pocket and pulled out his wallet; a packet of condoms fell out, and she picked them up.
Ribbed, lubricated, extra girth. Although she already knew that last part from the bulge in his boxer shorts.
She held them up and looked at them before handing them to him. She forced herself to ignore the throb she felt pulsating low in her stomach, and the fire that flared through her when his fingers brushed hers.
“Dang, Ty, did you plan on getting lucky when you were headed out to the field today?”
He snorted in amusement, setting the condoms down on the small wooden table and turning his attention to the potbellied stove. First he opened the draft. Then he rea
ched into one of the wooden baskets by the stove, grabbed wads of paper and shoved them into the stove, set kindling on top, and lit them on fire with matches from a small ceramic jar.
“Of course, Abigail. Whatever trespasser I found out there was going to get a taste of my man-meat. That’s how I operate.” He shoved in several logs in a cross pattern on top of the burning kindling, and shut the stove door.
“As I recall back from high school, that’s just about true.”
He stood up, shaking his head at her. “I’ve matured. Where you going?” he said, as she backed away from him, towards the bed.
With her back turned to him, she grabbed the blue and red plaid flannel blanket from the bed, and wrapped it around herself, sarong style.
“I’m not up for a quick roll in the hay with someone who wouldn’t be caught dead being seen in public with me. And you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Her mind flashed back to the day when all the teasing started, freshman year in high school, and her cheeks flushed with anger.
That moment when he’d run into her behind the high school bleachers, looking at her as if he’d seen her for the first time. Literally run into her; he hadn’t been looking where he was going. She’d developed over the summer, big time, and this was the first time that he’d seen her with her full breasts and her rounded hips. She’d stumbled and fallen against him when he ran into her, and he’d put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. And then, looking around furtively, he’d bent down and kissed her.
Part of her knew what he’d just done – he’d been looking around to make sure that no-one saw them together. But his lips were warm, and soft, and his tongue was sliding into her mouth, and…
And then they’d heard a burst of noise as a group of his friends walked by the bleachers, noisy, laughing, happy…and he’d leaped back as if she’d burned him, and walked off quickly without looking back.
And then the teasing had started.
Her cheeks flushed with anger all over again at the memory.
He looked down at her. “That was a long time ago. I was a dumb, insecure kid. Did I just ask you out to dinner before we got to the cabin, or did I not? Does that sound like someone who doesn’t want to be seen with you in public?”
Damn. He had her there.
He cupped her chin and tipped her head back, his hand gentle but strong, fingertips brushing her face.
“I’d be proud to be seen with you,” he said. “I’d take you out and show you off any day of the week. Try me.”
Her face flushed, and she smelled his clean scent, the faint lingering cologne, and the rain in his hair.
And suddenly it dawned on her that if he owned a ranch in Wyoming, that meant that he wasn’t sticking around here. He would ensure that the developers couldn’t touch the Jackson ranch, and then he would go home to his ranch, which made sense, because he’d severed all ties to Crooked Creek a long time ago. So whatever she did with him here didn’t matter. He’d be gone in a few days.
It had been six long months since she’d broken up with her last boyfriend, a bartender at the Dry Gulch saloon. And he hadn’t been particularly great in bed…which is probably why the relationship died a slow death.
Here she was, mostly naked and trapped in a cabin with her high school fantasy man, who was making no secret of how much he wanted her. She had no doubt that the sex would be incredible. And then he’d leave for Wyoming and she’d never have to see him again.
Why not just go for it?
She turned to look at him, head tipped back. She shrugged the blanket off and let it drop to the floor. The warmth from the stove filled the room, and she basked in it. “Tell me what you want me to do, Ty. I like it when you do that.”
He drew in a sharp breath, and his eyes gleamed with a savage light. A smile curved his lips.
“Take off your bra and panties. Now.”
Mesmerized, she stripped them off and dropped them on the floor. His gaze swept her from head to toe, slowly drifting over her. His tongue touched his lower lip. And suddenly he grabbed her and slung her over his shoulders as if she were a sack of feathery down.
With long, rapid strides, he carried her to the bed.
He set her down gently, and the goose-down mattress was warm and delightfully soft, and she shamelessly stared at him as he stripped off his underwear, unleashing his thick cock. His shaft jutted straight up from a thatch of curly black hair, pointing at the ceiling.
In seconds, he was on top of her, grabbing her hands and pinning them above her head, and a rush of desire swept over her like a warm ocean wave. She felt his cock pressing against her neatly trimmed triangle of hair, and she moaned, parting her legs and moving against him.
He grinned savagely. “Not yet, sweetheart. You’ll get it when I say so.”
He shifted his grip, one hand trapping both her wrists now, and his other hand cupping her chin and holding her face in place. Then he brushed his lips against hers, and they were as soft as she remembered. “Kiss me,” he ordered her. “Kiss me like I’m the only man in the world. Kiss me like you’re drowning and I’m your only oxygen.”
And then he claimed her mouth in a savage kiss, tongue thrusting inside her mouth and probing deeply. Abigail met his kiss eagerly, hungrily, sucking at him and drinking him in. The kiss seemed to last eons, and their mouths melted together, and her nipples swelled to tight buds of arousal. Her sex was wet and throbbing with need.
She struggled against his hands, desperately wanting to touch him, to run her hands over his smooth skin, to sink her pearly nails into his buttocks and pull him into her.
Slowly, he pulled away from her, and shook his head at her, grinning. “Uh uh, baby,” he said. “I run this show.”
“Bastard,” she hissed, frustrated, as desire sizzled up inside her and she squirmed uselessly underneath him.
“You’re just now figuring that out?” He leaned down and ran his tongue along her top lip, teasing, and she whimpered.
“You know how many times I fantasized about this in high school?” He moved lower and nipped at the curve of her neck and she stifled a low moan. “I was too chicken to go for it back then, but you were always the star of my wet dreams. Every time I got in the shower, I was imagining your hand on my cock…your mouth…” He nipped again, and she drew in her breath between her teeth, whimpering.
“And now I’m going to do everything I ever dreamed of doing to you. And then some.” Suddenly, she realized he had a kerchief in his hands, and before she could protest, he’d used it to lash her wrists together and tied them to the bed frame.
“Ty! Let me go!” she protested, squirming and yanking uselessly at her restraints. “Let me touch you! I want to touch you…”
“Not now, darlin’. When I’m ready, and not before.” He looked her in the eyes and ran his finger across her face, and dipped it between her lips. “Now tell me what you want me to do to your body.”
She bit back a wail of frustration and looked up at him, her breath coming in heavy pants. He wasn’t moving, wasn’t budging. He’d have no mercy. “I want you…I want you to suck on my nipples. Bite them. Take my breasts in your hands…”
“Yesss,” he hissed, as if she’d voiced the one command he wanted to hear most. His head dipped down and he cupped the full ivory globes of her breasts in his hands, squeezing just hard enough, running his thumb over her left nipple as he took the swollen rosebud of her right nipple into his mouth.
She was so aroused that the tips of her breasts were exquisitely sensitive, and sweet pain mingled with pleasure as he suckled and then gently bit her, scraping his white teeth across her tender flesh.
“Oh, god. Oh, yes,” she whimpered, and he moved to her other breast, tongue sweeping in circles around her nipple and then over it, before he plunged his hot mouth onto it and sucked hard.
Helpless, unable to move, she closed her eyes and lay back, reveling in the sensations of his mouth on her, feeling the sweep of his tongue, the
hungry suckling that pulled her nipple into his warm mouth. His hot breath heated her skin, and his beard stubble rasped her sensitive flesh.
Then he pulled away and he was kissing lower, tracing a trail of feathery kisses down her stomach, tongue dipping into the well of her navel, and her nerves were on fire underneath him.
Finally he stopped right above her swollen, throbbing sex, and his breath came in harsh rasps. “Tell me what you want me to do now, Abigail. Come on, baby, I want to hear it.”
“I…ohhh, God…I want you to lick me. I want you to suck me.”
“Where, baby? Say it!”
Abigail’s breath hissed out in frustration. Every nerve ending in her body was on fire, lit up like a network of live wires, and she burned with hunger for him.
“I want you to kiss my pussy. Please…” she begged.
“That’s it, baby.”
He moved down on the bed until he was positioned between her legs, and then began kissing his way up her thigh, slowly, tongue dancing along her sensitive skin. He paused frequently to gently nip at her full inner thigh, and then ran his tongue over the area he’d just bitten, in a slow, swirling circle. Teasing her. Taking his time.
She fought to keep from screaming at him to hurry, to make her come. She sank her teeth into her lip and clenched her fists so hard that her fingers ached, and yanked and strained uselessly at her bonds. She wanted to run her fingers through his silky black hair and then guide his head to where she wanted him to go…but she knew that no matter how hard she begged and pleaded, she couldn’t hurry him. He was enjoying the exquisite torture too much.
Finally he parted her slick pink lips with his fingers, and swept his tongue over the wet slit, from back to front, in a long, slow caress, until he reached the throbbing button of her clitoris. His mouth closed around it and he sucked hard, and fire roared through her body.
Gasping, she spread her legs open wide to accept him, and his tongue slid slowly between her lips again and then pressed against the tight hole of her entrance, forcing its way in. He thrust inside her, sucking at her and fucking her with his tongue, and his thumb brushed over her swollen clitoris, wrenching a wail of desperate need from her.
Curvy Girls: Claimed By The Cowboy (The BBW and the Billionaire Rancher) Page 2
