Claiming the Rancher's Heir

by Maisey Yates

  She didn’t know what to do, because she couldn’t unthink all these things. Couldn’t unknow the feeling that made her heart squeeze tight when she looked at the man. That made her want to mess up her hair and makeup and make love to him on the floor before an important event.

  That made her want to test all his rough against her soft. That made her feel enamored of their differences, rather than disdainful of them.

  The reason she had fought with him from the beginning was because she had been desperate to keep him at bay. She could see that now, with stunning clarity.

  It was the wrong time to be realizing all of this. Any of this. Because she had to focus on this event. It mattered. It was the reason they were together in the first place, these initiatives.

  Is it?

  Or had she been unable to see a way forward without Creed because she had been desperate to spend more time with him?

  Desperate to make him a part of her life and part of her business.

  Honesty.

  Hadn’t she dedicated herself to finding honesty in who she was and what she wanted?

  Her heart felt tender as she gazed at the tall, striking figure of her husband across the room, at a different winery station from her.

  She didn’t even know how that was going to work. They were separate. Though they were married.

  And it wasn’t just because they worked at different places. But because there was a very deliberate barrier between them when it came to emotion.

  Creed had made it plain he wanted the marriage to last, but she knew that he was motivated by a deep, feral need to keep his child close to him.

  It had nothing to do with her, and he’d never pretended it did.

  It does, a little bit. He doesn’t want anyone else to have you.

  It was true. But was that the same as wanting her? Really wanting her?

  She didn’t know.

  And she didn’t even know why it mattered.

  Why it suddenly felt imperative that there be love between them.

  Because other than your sisters, have you ever felt like anyone really loved you?

  The question bit into her, and she tried hard to keep on doing her job while it gnawed at all she was.

  Eventually, she was unable to keep herself away from Creed any longer.

  “This is looking good,” she said.

  “It is,” he responded. “It’s good.”

  She wanted him to say that he was proud of her.

  But wanting his praise made her feel small and sad.

  Because was she ever really going to be different? How could she ever be new? When she was still just simpering after the approval, the love, of a man who wasn’t going to give it back?

  Maybe he will. Maybe you just need to ask him.

  She looked at his square jaw, at his striking features that seemed as if they were carved from stone.

  He had been hurt. Badly. But did that mean he couldn’t feel anything for anyone anymore? She knew that he loved their unborn baby. That he was intensely motivated by that love in everything he did.

  Although, he had never said those words exactly. He didn’t talk about love. He talked about opportunities, responsibility. He talked about not wanting to miss anything. But he had never said the word love. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel it, but it did give her questions about just how much he knew his own emotions.

  Considering her own were a big giant news flash to her, she didn’t think it was outrageous to suspect that he might not be fully in touch with his own.

  He held himself at a distance. She looked down at his left hand, at the ring he wore there.

  He was her husband. And it wasn’t a secret. She closed the distance between them, kissing him on the cheek. “I’m glad that we did this.”

  The look in his eyes was unreadable.

  “Me, too.”

  She didn’t know if she had meant the event. The pregnancy. The marriage.

  How could she feel something so deep for this man? This man she had thought she felt only antagonistic things for a few months ago. Well, she felt chemistry with him, but she hadn’t known him. Hadn’t known that deep wound that he carried around. The intensity with which he cared about things.

  And whether or not he knew it was love, she did.

  He had been ready to set everything aside at sixteen and become a father.

  He bled responsibility. He was everything her father wasn’t.

  And then he had let her choose their house, had sold a place that meant something to him. His own house, so they could build a life together. He’d asked her about her dreams, and he’d said that what she wanted was important.

  No one had ever said those things to her. No one had ever offered the things to her that Creed had.

  All that, and it came with the kind of intense passion she hadn’t even known existed.

  How could she not fall in love with him? How could she have ever not loved him?

  She swallowed hard and leaned against him, pressing her face against his suit jacket and inhaling his scent. “Thank you for dressing up for me again.”

  “It was appropriate,” he responded, his voice hard.

  She could feel him pulling away, not physically, but emotionally. And perversely it only made her want to cling to him even more tightly.

  She couldn’t help herself.

  She was supposed to be focusing on the triumph of the evening. A few months ago, she would have been. It would have been all-important to her. Because she would have gotten approval out of it. Approval from her father.

  It was such a different thing to be doing something for herself. She still cared about the winery. It was just that she already knew she approved of the job she’d done. She wasn’t waiting for recognition. She was good at what she did, and she didn’t question whether or not she could execute something like this.

  It freed up her mind to worry about other things. It made all of this less all-consuming. Less important. Because it wasn’t an essential part of her happiness. Wasn’t an essential part of who she was.

  She did this job for the winery. But she was also a sister. A daughter. A wife. Soon to be a mother.

  She was interested in other things, and Creed had reminded her of that.

  This event, and what happened at the winery, was no longer the highest-stakes thing happening in her world.

  She wondered what kind of mother she would be. And she was worried about being a good wife.

  About her husband’s feelings for her.

  This was satisfying. And it mattered.

  But it didn’t feel half so important or potentially fatal as it would have only a few short months ago.

  And suddenly she thought maybe the transformation she’d been going through wasn’t so much about becoming a different version of herself, but expanding what it meant to be Wren Maxfield.

  Wren Cooper.

  A woman who could want more than one thing, care about more than just her father’s good opinion and this winery.

  A woman whose definition of love could expand to accommodate a storm.

  A woman who could be proud of what she had done all by herself.

  It was a relief.

  Because she had been worried. Worried that she might have to break all that she was into pieces and scatter them over the sea, bury them there, so she could become something completely and entirely new and foreign to herself.

  But she didn’t have to do that. She didn’t.

  She could just be.

  She didn’t have to worry about whether or not Cricket approved, or if it made any sense to anyone else that she had married her business rival.

  That she loved him.

  Her life belonged to her now. And she imagined it would change shape a great many more times before it was over.
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  But they would be shapes formed by her hands, her heart.

  And the people she loved.

  No, she couldn’t anticipate the landscape and how it would look in the end.

  But whatever it was, she knew she would find a way to navigate it, and if necessary, find ways to change it again.

  Because she wasn’t easily broken.

  She was strong.

  And she was trying to find a way to make her bravery match that strength. Her instinct was to continue to protect herself, but she didn’t think the answers lay there. After all, it had been the strangest choices, the bravest choices, that had brought her here to begin with.

  From deciding to join forces with her enemy, to kissing him. Deciding to raise her baby. Agreeing to marry him.

  There was that honesty again.

  Honesty took so much bravery.

  Not fearlessness, but bravery indeed.

  The party was packed full of people, and everything went wonderfully. She could feel the bonds she was building between her family business and these other wonderful family-run operations here in Gold Valley. She felt connected. In the same way she had felt disconnected that day she’d driven to town and realized all the things she had missed here, she could feel herself growing roots in the place that she had been planted from the beginning.

  A place she had always felt might not be for her.

  She had anticipated this cross-promotion being a boon for her business, but she had never expected all of this could matter so much to her personally.

  Emerson was standing at the station for Maxfield, with her extremely handsome husband, Holden, at her side. Lindy was still standing with her husband.

  And Wren made a decision, then and there.

  Rather than going over to the station for Maxfield Vineyards, she went to the one that had been designated for Cowboy Wines. And she took her spot next to Creed.

  She had no loyalty to a label.

  She had a loyalty to this man. To all that he was, and more than that, all that they were together.

  Yes, Maxfield would always be her family winery.

  But Creed was her family now.

  Creed was her heart.

  Such an easy decision to make. Because now, she knew exactly who she was.

  Eleven

  Creed didn’t know what the hell had gotten into Wren tonight, but it was as unsettling as it was arousing. She had been glued to his side the entire evening, tormenting him in that emerald dress that clung to her expanding curves. He loved the way her body was changing. The way her waist was getting thicker, the slight roundness low on her stomach speaking to the life growing inside her.

  And, of course, he was enjoying the fullness in other parts of her curves.

  She was beautiful in every way, but he was especially enjoying her current beauty because he was responsible for the changes. There was something intensely sexy and satisfying about that. But there was also a look in her eye that he was afraid he couldn’t answer, and he didn’t know what to make of it.

  She had driven over to the winery on her own, but she left with him.

  There was a determined sort of gleam in her eye, and it made his heart thunder, low and heavy.

  Echoing like thunder inside him.

  Like a storm.

  She gave him a little half smile as they got into the house. And then she took his hand and led him over to the couch. He sat down, his legs relaxed, his palms rested on his knees.

  Her eyes met his, and she reached behind her, unzipping that dress that had been torturing him so, and letting it fall from her curves.

  His heart stopped. Stilled.

  Everything in him went quiet. He couldn’t breathe.

  They’d made love countless times. Hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other these last few months. It was a storm of sensation and desire that had been building between them for years, and now that they lived together, now that they shared a bed every night, neither of them ever bothered to resist. But there was something different about tonight. There was an intent to her expression, a dare glimmering in her eyes.

  Wren was never shy about sex. She was bold, and she was adventurous, but this was something else altogether. Still wearing her high heels, she unclipped her bra, removed it from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She did the same with her panties, standing there looking like a heavenly, dirty pinup that, thank God, was within arm’s reach.

  He didn’t have to confine himself to just looking. He could touch.

  He didn’t know why he held himself back. Except that it was her show, and part of him was desperate to see exactly what she was going to make of it.

  She pressed her hands to her stomach, slid them up her midsection and cupped her own breasts, teasing her nipples with her thumbs. Her eyes never left his.

  “You know,” she whispered, “you were my most forbidden fantasy. I tried to pretend that I didn’t dream about you. About your hands on my body. But sometimes I would wake up from dreaming about you, wetter than I ever was from being with one of my other lovers.”

  “You have no idea,” he ground out. “The dirty dreams I used to have about you.”

  “Is that why sometimes you were so mad at me when you would come and see me at work? Because you’d been dreaming about me naked, on my knees in front of you?”

  And then she did just that.

  Dropped to her knees in front of him, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders, the look of a predator etched into her beautiful face.

  She pressed her hand over his clothed arousal, stroking him before opening up the closure on his pants. And then she leaned in, licking him, slowly, from base to tip, before making a supremely feline sound of satisfaction.

  “I want you to know, I’ve never fantasized about doing this. But with you... I used to think about getting on my knees and sucking you to make you shut up. I could get off thinking about putting you in my mouth. That’s not normal. Not for me.”

  And then she licked him again, and his world went dark. There was nothing but streaks of white-hot pleasure behind his eyes. Nothing but need. Nothing but desire.

  She was a wicked tease, her mouth hot and slick and necessary.

  How had she become this? He had thought her spoiled. Silly. Insubstantial.

  You never really believed any of those things.

  He closed his eyes and let his head fall back as she continued to pleasure him with that clever mouth that he had loved all the times it was cutting him to shreds, and now as it sent him to heaven.

  No, he’d told himself those things. Because it was easy to disdain her, but much, much harder to have the guts to give in to a connection like this. A need like this.

  Because this had nothing to do with the right thing, the good thing. With a pregnancy, or being a good father. It had everything to do with Wren. With his deep desire to wrap her in his arms and never let her go. With the intense possessiveness he felt every time he looked at her. And now, every time he looked at her and thought wife.

  His wife.

  His woman.

  He hadn’t asked for this. Hadn’t wanted it. Had worked as hard as he could to avoid it, but all that work had been for nothing. Because here he was, and the inevitability of Wren, and his desire for her, suddenly seemed too big to ignore, too great to combat. And he was struck by his own cowardice. He had told himself so many stories about this woman that he had now seen weren’t true, so many different things about the way he felt for her, that he could have easily examined and found to be lies.

  He could tell himself he hadn’t wanted this.

  Because intensity had led to ruin all those years ago, and because he had failed.

  Had failed as a father. Had failed as a man.

  All because of desire. All because of wanting. The wrong woman. The w
rong time.

  But this was the right woman. The right time.

  He gritted his teeth, rebelling against that thought as Wren’s hand wrapped tight around the base of his arousal, squeezing him, sending his thoughts up to the stars and making it impossible for him to concentrate on anything else.

  Impossible to do anything but feel.

  She was a study in contradictions, so delicate and feminine as she destroyed his resistance with a kind of filthy poise he’d never imagined might exist.

  He’d had sexual partners in the past. But he hadn’t had a lover. Not really. Wren had become his lover. She’d learned his body, learned where to touch him and how, though he wondered if all these paths had been blazed by her hands, by what she wanted, by what she liked, because she seemed to conjure up sexual necessity out of thin air, make it so he couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t think.

  Wren had a spell cast on him that was unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

  He had been smart to avoid it. Smart to try to turn away from it.

  But he couldn’t anymore. Not now.

  Because she was here, and she was his wife. And everything she did was dark velvet perfection that took his control and ground it into stardust, glittering over the blank, night sky of his mind until she was all there was.

  And without her, there would be only darkness.

  And then what would he be?

  Pleasure built low inside him, and he could feel his control fraying to an end.

  “I need to be inside you,” he ground out, lifting her up and away from his body, pulling her into his lap. Her knees rested on either side of his thighs, that slick, hot heart of her brushing his arousal. He brought her down onto him, over him, the welcome of his body into hers like a baptism.

  Like something that might be able to make him new. Make him clean.

  Even as he lost himself in a hedonistic rhythm, he knew many wouldn’t call this salvation. But he did. Because the shattered glory he felt was the closest thing to pure he’d ever had.

  And he reveled in it. Needed it.

  She flexed her hips and rode him like an expert, and he was enrapt as he watched her. Watched her take her pleasure, watched her give pleasure to him. Her head thrown back, her breasts arched forward, the burgeoning evidence of her pregnancy echoing with deep, primal satisfaction inside him.