Page 40 of Wild and Wanted

Her throat bobbed as he continued to stare, every husky pull of her breath like a scrape of fingernails to his shaft. She was nervous, too, he realised, but not cowed by it, not dissuaded as her hand slid from his and she performed a slow pirouette.

Pristine blue jeans tucked into blingy city-girl boots outlined her long, coltish legs. A short-sleeved, scoop-necked T-shirt – white underneath but overlaid with a shimmery pink lace – sat snug against her body, ending a half inch short of the denim waistband of her jeans, leaving a tantalising strip of midriff.

And then, as she came full circle, there were the buttons…

‘Buttons,’ she said, as if reading his mind, fingering one of the pearly discs and smiling tentatively.

Clay grinned as his eyes followed the line of tiny pink temptations from where they started at the lowest point of the scoop all the way down to the hem. He’d asked for them more to titillate than as an actual bone fide request, but Stevie had clearly taken him very seriously.

Hell if he didn’t want to unbutton each one – with his teeth.

‘You understood the assignment,’ he murmured, his eyes travelling all the way up again before returning to meet her gaze.

She lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. ‘Ask and you shall receive.’

Ordinarily being quoted from the Bible as he was contemplating carnal debauchery would not be conducive to maintaining an erection, but hell if the innuendo – intended or not – in that simple statement didn’t further inflate the problem in his pants.

It was going to be hell keeping his dick in check.

Still, he could see the shiny band of her purity ring and was hyperaware of another row of buttons. The ones fastening her fly – famously much harder to navigate than the easy slide of a zipper. Both the ring and her fly buttons were at odds with her words and her body language even if she wasn’t consciously aware of it.

Perhaps she wasn’t quite ready yet to lose her virginity? Tonight or any night. Or with him? Maybe she just wanted to fool around a bit, push the envelope a little more, try out a few things without going all the way?

Which was perfectly fine. He was up for whatever experimentation she was offering. He’d happily be her guinea pig. Her very presence on the ranch had dragged him out of an epic funk, making him look outside himself and really see all the good things in his life. So if she just wanted to dry hump him every night for the next two and a bit weeks, he’d lay back and enjoy.

Her gaze shifted from him to check out her surroundings. ‘So this is a…’

‘Loft.’

He looked around himself at the large open space. One half was dominated by bales of hay stacked floor to ceiling, the sweet grassy smell perfuming the air. Large double doors on sliders were placed centrally on the wall under the peak of the barn’s A-frame roof and opened to the outside where the hay could be tossed down.

The doors were shut now but Clay had always loved the elevated view over the farm, and he’d have shown her eagerly had they not been trying to be discreet.

‘We store hay up here so it stays dry for the winter months when we often have to supplement the cattle.’

She nodded absently as she wandered over to the large mound of loose hay that had been unbound from bales ready to be pitched down inside the barn for when they occasionally housed a horse or two for a brief spell.

‘That’s the haystack?’

‘I promised you one, didn’t I?’

‘You did.’ A smile touched her mouth as if she was remembering last night and it made her happy. ‘And’ – she tipped her chin at the plaid blanket Clay had already laid on the hay – ‘you came prepared.’

‘Well…’ He shrugged. ‘Straw ain’t as romantic as it looks in the movies.’

Wandering over to the mound, she murmured, ‘A regular boy scout, huh?’

‘No, ma’am.’ Clay grinned at the comparison. ‘Cowboys eat boy scouts for breakfast.’

She laughed. ‘I bet.’

Then she turned and gracefully lowered herself onto the blanket, bending her knees as she eased back onto her bent elbows. Lifting her eyes, she found his, that row of damn buttons taunting the fuck out of him despite the low light.

‘Are you going to join me?’ she asked, looking up at him through her eyelashes like a fucking angel, tempting him like the devil.

Clay’s breath hitched as a rush of words affirming his intention to do exactly that stumbled over each other in their haste to get out. Deciding on action instead, he strode the half dozen paces to the haystack and threw himself down beside her in a much less elegant fashion than Stevie had managed.

Immediately the grassy aroma was superseded by the floral scent of her, winding its way through his system, unfurling like a drug, tripping through his pulse, utterly intoxicating him. With her knees still bent, she fell back, her hair fanning out like a corona on the blanket, and Clay rolled to his side, searching her face for any signs of hesitancy or renitence.