“That’s a lot of ‘evers,’” Willow informed him.
“It bore repeating,” he said. “Now do you want to kiss the hell out of my stupid mouth or not?” he added, teasing her by lowering his head but keeping his lips just out of her reach.
Willow swallowed, her throat dry despite the two of them being soaked to the bone.
“Is that my reward for kicking your ass and leaving you in the dust?”
“Sure is,” he said with a laugh. “But—spoiler alert—I’m a sure thing. You can kiss my stupidmouth anytime you want, whether you kick my ass or not.”
She knocked the inside of his elbow, causing him to lose his balance and drop to his forearm so that his lips were now right where she wanted them. “Shut your stupid mouth, then, cowboy.” And in case he didn’t understand the request, she cupped his cheeks in her palms and pulled his mouth to hers.
“Permission tonotkeep my stupid mouth all the way shut?” he asked in a gravelly whisper that made Willow’s whole body tingle.
“I’ll allow it,” she whispered back and then parted her own lips, inviting him to lick and taste and drive her absolutely mad with want. “I think I’m done swimming for the day,” she managed to say through kiss after breathless, needy kiss.
“Me too,” Ash growled.
They had to swim back to the actual beach, dry off, and then hike back to Holiday and Midnight. Then they had to follow the trail back to the campsite, where they both realized they were too sandy to simply hop back into the sleeping bag.
“I don’t want mac and cheese,” Willow admitted. “Or to shower in a public bathroom when there is a perfectly good shower and tub back at the guesthouse. And abed,” she added wistfully. “That big, giant, king-sized bed with all those pillows and blankets and…” Her voice trailed off and she ranher fingers up Ash’s damp T-shirt until they reached those stupid lips again.
“Can we go home?” she asked. “And move you into the bedroom for the rest of our time in the house?”
Chapter 17
Ash had never wanted to ride a horse faster, but you didn’t send your new mare into an all-out gallop on woodsy terrain unless someone was chasing you, and the only thing chasing him at the moment was his need not only to explore all the amenities the master bedroom had to offer with its current inhabitant, but also to take Willow up on her offer of relocating him from the couch to the bedroom before she had time to change her mind.
Not that he had much in the way of possessions to relocate, but he figured once he occupied a drawer or two…took up residence on one side of the bed…it would be harder to evict him.
“I’ll untack the horses if you want to head inside to…uh…de-sand yourself,” he told Willow as they led the mares to their stalls, but they both stopped short when they found Cirrus’s stall door open and Boone about to lead the horse out.
“Welcome home, li’l bro,” Boone said in greeting. “You’re just in time, though…” He looked his brother up and down and wrinkled his nose. “You might want to shower first.”
Ash blinked twice, then looked from his brother to Willow and back to Boone again. “Just in time forwhat?” he asked.
Boone raised his brows. “I’m bringing Cirrus over to the grazing field to give him some outside time while we’re gone. Beth will bring him back to the barn later.”
“I’m gonna get Holiday untacked while you two hash out whatever this is,” Willow informed the men as she motioned between them. Then she disappeared into Holiday’s stall with the mare.
Ash opened Midnight’s gate and nudged her inside, promising to get her situated in a minute. Then he stepped inside Cirrus’s stall with his brother and whispered under his breath.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something important,big bro,” he told Boone.
Boone nodded in the direction of Holiday’s stall with a grin. “Sand-in-your-pants kind of important?” the older Murphy teased.
Ash instinctively gave his right leg a gentle kick and watched as sand sprinkled onto Cirrus’s bedding. He cleared his throat. “Importantimportant, okay? I don’t need to justify my reasoning to you.”
Cirrus nudged Ash’s shoulder with his nose, and Boone laughed.
“Maybe not tome,” Boone conceded. “But Cirrus here might not let you leave without an explanation.” He patted the gelding on the nose, and Cirrusgave an approving snort. “Look…there’s a rescue pair we need to grab over in Tahoe.”
“A pair?” Ash asked. “Can’t you and Eli take care of it?”
Boone scrubbed a hand across his jaw and sighed. “It’s a pretty bad neglect case. The owners were taken into custody, and there’s not a good equine vet in the vicinity. The one tending to them for the time being called Eli directly and asked for his help. Custody goes to the state if the owners are formally charged, which looks to be the case. But the doc in Tahoe can pull some strings and hopefully get us on the short list. This is an all-Murphy hands-on-deck kind of situation.” He crossed his arms. “We were just waiting for you to get home.”
Ash’s chest tightened as he clenched his jaw. The thought of someone harming a horse—or any animal for that matter—made him want to smash a fist into the wall…or a phone into another seventy-five-inch 4K television.
“Go,” Willow told him, brushing off her hands as she appeared in the stall door. “I’ll get Midnight untacked so you can run inside and shower.”
