Claiming the Rancher's Heir

by Maisey Yates

He was burning for her, and he’d decided to jump into the flames. That was control. He’d made a choice and he was resolved in it.

  Or he’d just decided to take his hands off the wheel and let the car steer itself. One or the other.

  He had to admit that the event was going well. His father even looked like he was enjoying himself. Though, his entire countenance had taken on an odd tone after he had met Wren.

  Creed didn’t really understand it.

  He knew that there was...weird blood between the Maxfield and Cooper families, but he didn’t fully know why. He had always assumed it was because they were business rivals, but effectively... They weren’t anymore. Maybe it was just old habits dying hard. Except there had been no animosity in his father’s bearing. None at all. He’d shown a strange kind of wistfulness. A sadness. But then, everything his father did these days was wistful and sad.

  The old man missed his wife, and there wasn’t much anyone could do to fix that.

  They all missed their mother. It didn’t matter that it was the natural order of things to lose a parent. You knew that you would. If everything went according to plan... You did.

  But you were never ready for it. It was never time.

  It would always feel too soon.

  But it really had been too soon.

  And they’d been suffering the aftereffects of grief, as a family incomplete, ever since.

  Incomplete and different. Jackson had been distant. But Jackson had always been closest to their mother. Still, it was just another thing.

  Creed hadn’t had a drink or a bite to eat all day, mostly because he felt like he was being fueled by desire for Wren, but he was about ready to go and get himself some brisket when everything inside him went still.

  He’d experienced this a couple of times in his life. But not for a long while. And it was never for a good reason. It was only ever for one reason. He closed his eyes, steeling himself.

  Why the hell would she come to this?

  He turned slowly, and that was when he saw her.

  Louisa Johnson. Her accomplished doctor husband, Calvin Johnson. And as far as all the world was concerned, their four children. Including their oldest son, who was taller and broader than his father.

  As a matter of fact, the boy looked a hell of a lot like Creed.

  His stomach went acid.

  He hadn’t seen the kid in... Maybe going on four years.

  The boy was eighteen now. Creed knew his birthday. Every year marked itself on his heart. A deep groove. A line in a particular chart that spoke of the hours, weeks, months, years that he’d been father to a son he could never acknowledge.

  It was a small town. He couldn’t always avoid Louisa. But her actually coming to one of his events was a study in sadism. Even he didn’t think she could be quite that evil.

  Just self-centered and hell-bent on creating the life she wanted. Never willing to admit she had given her virginity up to somebody other than her longtime boyfriend. And that when she’d gotten pregnant at sixteen it had not been with Cal Johnson’s baby. But she’d gone and fixed that uncomfortable fact really quickly, slept with Cal right away and claimed the kid was his.

  Creed knew the truth.

  Creed had thought they were in love.

  A virgin himself, he’d believed that having sex with her meant something. That her climbing into the bed of his truck with him had mattered. And he’d been so overwhelmed by desire that he hadn’t stopped to think about anything.

  He was sure... He had been so sure that it meant she was going to break up with that college-bound boy for him. Even though he wasn’t from a fancy family, wasn’t a future doctor. He’d been sure she’d fallen for him all the same.

  But no.

  And even when she had found out she was pregnant...

  He wondered, to this day, if Calvin knew who fathered the kid. Wondered if he didn’t especially care, not given the life they had built on the back of that lie.

  Creed realized he had been standing there frozen for a full minute, and Louisa hadn’t even looked his way.

  The kid was harassing a younger sibling, laughing.

  And then Calvin reached over and playfully punched his oldest son in the arm, gently telling him to knock it off.

  They were a family. Built by years and birthday parties, Christmases and good-night kisses. By fights and celebrations and soccer games and barbecues in the backyard. In the face of all that, genetics didn’t matter.

  Except they mattered to Creed.

  Because he’d had eighteen years of never getting to know that kid, and all the regret that went with it.

  But what was he supposed to do? She hadn’t put his name on the birth certificate, refused to admit they’d ever had sex. Creed’s father had tried, he had damn well tried to get a court-ordered paternity test, but the judge refused to do it. To subject an underage girl to scrutiny, to call her a liar when she said staunchly that the only boy she’d ever slept with was her longtime boyfriend.

  There had been nothing Creed could do, and everyone had said that he was just mounting a smear campaign against a girl who had rejected him. A girl who’d already found herself in a delicate situation.

  They were happy. Clearly. She had Calvin. Their four kids.

  What was he?

  He didn’t even know.

  Suddenly, he felt a soft hand on his shoulder. “Is everything all right?”

  He turned and saw Wren. Louisa wasn’t looking at him, not even with the full force of his anger turned in her direction. But Wren had seen him.

  “Fine,” he responded.

  “You look like you’re about to start a fight.”

  “No,” he said, turning away. “I’m not.”

  “Good.”

  Suddenly, the feeling inside him went from hungry to ravenous. And he needed this damn thing to be over so he could lose himself in Wren’s body.

  He lived with the mistakes of his past every day. But having to stare them down was a particular kind of torture he was never quite prepared for.

  And he needed something, anything, to find a little oblivion. If it wasn’t Wren, it would be the liquor on the table, but he would rather have her.

  It was strange, the exchange they’d had back in the tent, and this one. Because it wasn’t as sharp and hard-edged as most of their interactions.

  But it was still tinged with that same kind of raw grit. Which he recognized now as just desire. Only not desire like he’d ever known it before.

  The closest thing that came to it was that sixteen-year-old lust haze he’d found himself in with Louisa. But that had been born out of inexperience. Out of desperation to know what it felt like to be inside a woman.

  Well, he knew what it felt like now. That wasn’t why Wren created this wildness in him.

  It wasn’t about knowing what it was like to be inside a woman, but what it was like to be inside Wren.

  He knew the answer to that now, but a simple answer wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted her.

  And that want began to eclipse the pain in his chest.

  He was desperate for it. Because the promise of it—of her—was so big, so intense, with the capacity to take away this hurt. And he wanted that. He damn well did.

  Needed it. Especially now.

  He bent down slightly, careful to make it look like they were just having a business exchange, and not like they had shared any kind of intimacy.

  If you could call sex against a wall intimacy.

  “I can’t wait until you’re naked beneath me,” he said.

  She arched a brow. “Who says I’ll be beneath you? I was kind of thinking I might like to be on top.”

  “There’s time for that,” he said. “There’s time for a whole hell of a lot.”

  “So many promises.”

&n
bsp; “I promise you one thing—you’re going to be screaming my name all night.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes glittering a challenge. “You’ll be screaming mine.”

  “I plan on it.”

  They parted then, the tension between them so intense it would combust if they didn’t release their hold.

  So they did, because they both knew they were in a public setting, and a professional one. And whatever the hell he thought of Wren, whatever she thought of him, they were both damn good at their jobs.

  He turned away then. From the direction that Wren walked. From the place where Louisa stood with her family.

  A piece of his family. A piece of his heart.

  He would focus on getting through all of this. And then he would focus on getting Wren into bed.

  That was his life.

  Work. Sex.

  What the hell else did he need?

  * * *

  Everything was done, everything was cleaned up, and Wren was sitting in the driveway of Creed Cooper’s house. She had made her excuses to her family about being tired, having a headache and a few other things she couldn’t readily remember, and scampered off almost immediately after the last guest left.

  She knew Emerson thought she was acting strange, but Wren didn’t much care.

  Wren was obsessed with Creed.

  And if she were honest with herself, she could admit she had been obsessed with him for quite some time.

  She might have couched that obsession in irritation, but the fact of the matter was, it had been deeper than that.

  He hadn’t annoyed her at all today.

  No. Quite the opposite. He had been wonderful at his role during the event, and more than that, she had seen humanity in him that she didn’t particularly want to see.

  She had no idea what had been going through his mind when he had been standing there staring into the crowded party right before she had come up to him. But she had seen that it was something. The intensity that had come off him in waves had been palpable, at least to her.

  She wasn’t entirely sure whom he had been looking at, but she thought it might have been Louisa Johnson, a woman Wren knew because she and her husband frequented the winery and often had birthday parties and events there. It was common for wealthy families to come to Maxfield for special events. It was a status symbol. And Louisa had always seemed like the kind of woman who enjoyed her status.

  Wren quite liked her. Louisa was nice, and she was funny, and a generous tipper to the waitstaff.

  If it was Louisa that Creed was staring at, though, Wren had the feeling that he hated her.

  And there was really only one reason for people to hate each other like that.

  Love gone wrong.

  Wren screwed up her face.

  Well, there were actually a lot of reasons for people to hate each other. She and Creed hated each other, for no real reason.

  Except, as she got out of her car and walked toward his front door, she couldn’t find any of the hatred that she normally felt. She only felt giddy. Excited to have his hands on her, to have him make good on all those promises he had issued earlier at the event today.

  She liked it when their verbal sparring had a bit of an edge, even if it wasn’t a fight.

  There was something electric and exciting about their exchanges.

  She liked the danger that came with talking to him.

  She just did.

  She walked up to the door, prepared to knock, when it opened, and she found herself being dragged inside and pressed against that door, six-foot-plus of muscular man pinning her there as he kissed her. Kissed her with all the pent-up longing she knew had been building in both of them for the entire day.

  She kissed him like he might hold all the answers she was so desperately seeking.

  “Please let’s make it to a bed,” she whispered against his mouth. “I like the desperate stuff, but I really just want to see you naked.”

  “I can oblige,” he growled.

  He picked her up off the ground and carried her straight to a staircase, taking them two at a time. There was an edge of darkness to all of this that was so different from how it had been before. That first time had been charged by anger, the kind of anger they commonly felt toward each other, reasonable or not.

  But this was different.

  He seemed fractured, broken in some way, and like he thought perhaps this might put him back together. She was used to him looking at her and being irritated. And that one day down in the wine cellar he had found pleasure. But today, he seemed to be after something altogether deeper, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could help him find it.

  But she wanted to.

  And that was perhaps even more surprising than his looking to her for something deeper in the first place.

  He pushed open the door, revealing a large bed made of heavy wooden beams. The bed was the largest thing in the room, a clear indicator of exactly where his priorities were.

  His house was Spartan. Everything about it was serviceable, practical. And she knew full well he didn’t need that much mattress for sleeping.

  No, he was a man who clearly used his bed for more athletic pursuits. And she knew already he was a man who did those pursuits well.

  “You said you wanted to see me naked.” He set her down lightly on her feet. Then he moved away from her, unbuttoning the crisp white shirt she’d been looking at all day. Exposing that gorgeous chest, those impressive abs. He shrugged the shirt and jacket off, his body a thing of outright beauty the likes of which she had never seen before she’d seen him.

  “Trading,” he said, gesturing to her.

  She reached behind her back and grabbed hold of the zipper tab on her dress, pulling it down slowly, letting her dress pool at her feet. She was wearing only heels and a matching red lace bra and panties.

  She wasn’t insecure about her body. Men, in her experience, were quite simple about things like that.

  But the hunger in his eyes surpassed anything she had ever experienced before from other men. This passion, which seemed to simmer so intensely it was bound to bubble over, was something foreign to her. Something entirely different from all her previous experiences. Sure, she had found sex pleasurable before. But she had not found it to be fire and hunger. She hadn’t found it to be the air she needed to breathe. She had never felt like the urge to be touched was so intense it was a physical agony.

  And she could see all that she was feeling mirrored in his face as he looked at her.

  She hadn’t known. Hadn’t known that having him, this man—this man who didn’t even like her—look at her like she was... Like she was a wonder. Like she was perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever seen...

  Like she was seen.

  Her.

  Wren Maxfield.

  This new version of herself that she was finding, inventing and creating as she went along...

  He was captivated by her.

  He wanted her.

  It was a revelation.

  Because she wasn’t insecure about her body, but she felt new and fragile in her skin. In all that she was, in all that she was going to be.

  Didn’t even know what that might be in the end.

  But when Creed looked at her, she thought she might be closer to finding it.

  And it didn’t make sense, how it was somehow more affirming to have it be him who made her feel that way, but it was.

  Maybe because her sister Emerson would be supportive of her no matter what. Her mother would say that she loved Wren regardless of what she did.

  Creed wouldn’t. Creed found her intolerable.

  He would never tell her anything just for the hell of it. He wouldn’t pretend that he wanted to touch her, kiss her, be inside her. He would only do what he wanted to do.

  I
t was freeing.

  And with all the freedom it gave her, she reached behind her back and undid her bra, throwing it to the ground, glorying in the look of absolute need on his face.

  She wiggled out of her panties, leaving herself standing there in nothing but her high heels. And then, she leaned backward on the bed, arching her breasts upward, letting her thighs fall slightly apart. She knew she looked like a wanton. And she had never been one, not particularly.

  But she wanted to be.

  Here. Now. For him.

  She wanted to take this thing between them and test it to the breaking point. Wanted to test herself to the breaking point.

  And whatever dark emotion was rolling beneath the surface of his skin... She wanted to unleash it.

  Because she wanted to go as far as she could. She wanted to take them both to the edge.

  This felt safe, with him, because it wouldn’t be forever.

  Because they didn’t have a relationship, and they wouldn’t. Because it was only this. Only her trying to figure out who she was, and only him trying to contend with whatever demons were clawing at him right now.

  She could take it. For now.

  And he could take her. Imperfect and new and unsteady.

  They could both please themselves.

  It was a miracle.

  And she badly needed a miracle.

  Creed didn’t disappoint.

  Because then he dropped to his knees, a position of submission she had never expected from him. He was beautiful from this angle, too. The planes of muscle on his shoulders and chest intoxicating. His strength, bowed before her...

  Oh, she shivered with it.

  Of course, immediately following that submissive posture he revealed that it was not submissive at all. Because he grabbed hold of her ass and pulled her forward, burying his face between her legs and licking her until she screamed.

  Until she couldn’t breathe.

  He had all the control. There was no restraint. No quarter given.

  He tortured her with pleasure, and if that wasn’t the most Creed Cooper thing on the planet, she didn’t know what was.

  That he sank to his knees and yet managed to still have all the control.

  And she didn’t want to fight it. Didn’t want to stop it. No. She surrendered to it. To just taking. Everything that he wanted to give. To the slow glide of his fingers inside her, and the wicked friction of his tongue against her. She surrendered to all of it. To the absolute glory of knowing this man needed to taste her.