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By noon, I was muddy and damp, and forced to accept that I was also profoundly terrible at ranch work. The mud wasn’t metaphorical. It was everywhere. Thick on my boots, smeared up my jeans, and streaked across my arms like I’d been dragged through the countryside and returned with a warning.

It had started, as all bad decisions do, with optimism.

“I can help,” I’d said after breakfast, and I’d meant it.

Sterling had paused at my offer, a brow lifting like he was gauging whether I was joking or not. It had obviously become the latter.

“All you have to do is carry feed from the shed to the pen,” he’d said, as if it were simple and harmless, a task that couldn’t possibly go wrong.

Things probably would have gone fine…if not for the goat.

I should have known something was wrong with it by the amused look on the ranch hands’ faces alone.

The goat was small, horned, and possessed by something unholy. The moment I stepped into the pen, it locked onto me with eerie focus, lowered its head, let out a sound that can only be described as a battle cry, and charged.

I screamed, and the feed bucket went airborne, grain arcing through the air like a tragic offering. I backpedaled straight into a slick patch of ground, slipped, and went down hard, the impact knocking the breath out of me just as the goat skidded to a stop mere inches from my face, seeming entirely too pleased with itself.

Sterling had laughed. “Don’t move. Hemingway thinks it’s a game.”

“You named your goat Hemingway?” I gasped, still frozen, staring at the horned menace looming over me.

Hemingway chose that moment to nudge me, shoving my palm straight into the mud as if to punctuate the point. By the time Sterling hauled me to my feet and escorted the offender away, I looked like I’d been initiated into some kind of rural cult.

I stomped up the porch steps and grabbed the handle to the house, already fantasizing about hot water, only for the door to be locked. The door stayed stubbornly shut no matter how many times I knocked, even when I rapped harder and waited, listening.

Where had Sterling gone after dealing with Hemingway? He’d seemed a little tense after breakfast, now that I thought of it.

I stared down at the questionable brown goo on my hands that I suddenly wasn’t sure was just mud and then glanced over at the barn. There had to be a way to rinse off in there, right? A wash stall for the horses or at least a hose?

Trudging across the gravel, I pushed open the side door of the barn. Warm air hit me immediately along with the scent of hay and leather and something faintly musky that had to be horse. As I moved down the aisle, dim overhead lights threw long shadows along the stalls, and beneath it all I could hear the steady rush of water, growing louder with each step, echoing softly off the concrete. I turned the corner and almost had a heart attack.

It was Sterling.

In the wash stall.

Naked.

Completely, ruthlessly naked.

Water poured over his broad back, tracing every ridge of muscle, sliding down the deep groove of his spine and over the hard curve of his ass. His forearms were braced against the tile, and his head was bowed as the spray beat against him.

I should have backed away, but of course, I didn’t.

He shifted, just enough, and the side view hit me like a punch. Water skimmed the sharp cut of his hip, following that wicked V down to the thick root of his cock.

I’d seen it briefly by the waterfall, but I’d been telling myself I’d exaggerated it in my head.

I hadn’t, not even a little bit.

Even relaxed, he was massive. Long and girthy, the smooth head flared and was flushed, darker than the rest of him. Veins traced along the underside, thick and prominent, disappearing into the dark trim at the base. Water dripped from the tip in slow, steady drops that made my mouth go dry and my core clench hard enough to ache.

Fuck. He’s gorgeous. Huge. Perfect. Seriously, pick a struggle.

He chose that moment to turn his head and lock eyes with me. I was still frozen in place, still unable to move as I memorized the way the water was streaming off his sharp jaw and sliding down the corded neck and the hard slabs of his chest…all places I wanted under my tongue.

Those blue eyes of his sliced through the steam and pinned me in place as a sinful smirk curved his mouth. “Like what you see, baby?” he drawled.

That did it.