Page 21 of Wild and Wanted

A puzzled expression flitted across Stevie’s face as if she was trying to decipher the implications of the inside joke, but Mags had moved on. ‘Shotgun the window seat,’ she said.

Oh, crap…

Clay’s classic, old, fully restored FJ pickup that he’d brought with some of his first winnings on the circuit was his pride and joy but there was a single bench seat and nowhere near the room of a modern vehicle. Fine for two but a real squash with three.

Which meant he and Stevie would be sitting real close. Her arm, pressed against his arm. Her leg and its accompanying fringes pressed against his leg.

His erection would be back for sure.

Digging Dev in the ribs, Mags muttered, ‘Move, dude, Beau needs his beauty sleep.’

‘And where am I supposed to sit?’ he demanded.

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Ivan volunteered. ‘Clay can take the ladies.’

The RVR was in the opposite direction to Ivan’s ranch, but Clay would have expected no less. People helped each other out here. That shit was just ingrained.

‘Ooh. Did you hear that, Stevie?’ Mags’s eyebrows raised. ‘We’re ladies.’

‘At least one of you is,’ Dev quipped as he slid out of the booth and they all headed for the door.

8

STEVIE

Stevie knew from Yolly’s death that twenty minutes could feel like seven hours, that it could tick on endlessly. Interminably. But she would never have thought just sitting next to a man – smooshed against him really – could feel similar.

In a heart-stopping, breathless kind of way.

She was hyperaware of him. Every inhalation, every shift in his seat, every bob of his throat. Of his long, tanned fingers wrapped around the wheel, the heat of his bicep as it brushed against her and the torturously delicious rub of rough blue denim against her bare thigh, making her wish she’d worn something longer, thicker.

Layers. She should have worn layers.

A country station was playing music turned down low and Mags had filled the time from the bar to the ranch with inane chatter that Stevie wasn’t really following. Not when her body tingled with every bump and rut of the dirt road they’d turned onto from the highway a few minutes ago, jostling her body against his, creating a delicious kind of friction that tightened her nipples and burrowed right between her legs.

Stevie clamped her thighs together to ease the torment as they drove through the wrought-iron arch of the ranch gates and wished she could palm her breasts to relieve the ache from her tightly puckered nipples. A twisted kind of frustration simmered beneath her skin. Skin that was not used to this kind of proximity with any man, let alone one who made her dizzy from just one look.

Lordy, was it possible to orgasm from the corrugations of a dirt road?

‘We should do that again,’ Mags mused to no one in particular as they crested a rise in the road and the twinkle of lights up ahead in the moonless landscape signalled the start of the ranch buildings.

Clay snorted at his sister’s bravado, his voice a low rumble grating like fine sandpaper against all her erogenous zones. Zones she was only just discovering could be erogenous. Like the outsides of her thighs, her kneecaps, the tips of her shoulders, the centre of her spine and the delicate, blue-veined skin of her inner wrist.

Zones she somehow inherently knew could only be appeased by the firm, knowing caresses of the man responsible for said torment.

‘Why don’t you wait and see how you’re feeling tomorrow before you line up your next night out.’

‘Oh, here he is,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘The fun police.’

Stevie smiled at the affectionate banter between the siblings temporarily short-circuiting the sexual uproar of her body. Their relationship reminded her of the one she and Yolly had enjoyed. Actually… Mags reminded her a lot of Yolly. Confident, sassy, spoke her own mind and knew her own worth.

And didn’t take anyone’s crap.

She’d been an excellent teacher this past week, too. Sure, she wasn’t Clay but that was the whole point. And while Mags – short for Magnolia, apparently – could hold her own in sparring with the cowboys on the ranch and refusing to be dismissed in a very male-orientated world, it was clear she took the business side of the ranch and teaching Stevie how to ride, very seriously.

Stevie had lost count of the number of times Mags had pulled her up on her posture and her seat as they’d ridden endlessly around the ring. But she’d promised Stevie that she’d have her looking like she was born in a saddle, and Stevie believed her 100 per cent.

It took another minute for the pickup to reach the main ranch house where Clay stopped the car but kept the engine running. ‘This is your stop, Mags.’