She reaches for my shirt.
I catch both of her wrists, holding them against the wall above her head with one hand.
Her breath hitches and her eyes flare.
“Not yet.” My voice is lower than I recognize. The voice of the man I’m becoming—the one who takes what he wants and makes no apologies. “I want to look at you.”
And I do.
I look at her body with the kind of focused, hungry attention I’ve been denying myself for weeks.
The black bra against her tanned skin.
The full, heavy curves of her breasts spilling over the cotton.
The soft plane of her stomach, the muscles underneath from years of labor.
The width of her hips, the thickness of her thighs straining against her jeans.
She is built like a woman who works for a living, strong and solid and real, and every inch of her is so far from Rose that the comparison doesn’t even surface.
There is no ghost in this stall.
There is only Bex.
“You’re gorgeous.” Not a compliment. A statement of fact delivered in a voice that says I will fight anyone who disagrees. “Every time you walk into this barn I lose my train of thought. Every time you bend over a hoof I have to look away or I’ll do something that scares the horses. You have been driving me out of my mind and I am done being polite about it.”
She laughs.
Breathless, surprised, the kind of laugh that breaks the tension just enough to make what comes next survivable. “Then stop being polite.”
I release her wrists and pull my shirt over my head.
Her hands are on me immediately—palms flat on my chest, fingers tracing the ink, the muscle, the scars.
Her touch is sure and unhesitating and the feel of her calloused hands on my skin sends a current through me that settles low and hot and insistent.
I reach behind her and unclasp the bra, pull it away.
And then her breasts are in my hands—full, warm, heavy, nipples hardening against my palms as I cup and squeeze.
She arches into the touch and the sound she makes goes straight to my cock, a low moan that vibrates through her chest and into my hands.
I drop my mouth to her neck and kiss the hollow of her throat where her pulse is hammering.
Trail lower—collarbone, the slope of her chest, the swell of her breast.
When I take her nipple into my mouth she gasps and her hand flies to the back of my head, fingers gripping my hair, holding me there.
I suck. Bite gently. Feel her hips rock against mine in an involuntary roll that nearly breaks me.
Nearly. Not quite. Because tonight isn’t about losing control. Tonight is about taking it.
I undo her jeans, slide them down her hips with both hands, following the fabric with my mouth—kissing her ribs, her stomach, the soft skin below her navel.
She kicks the jeans off her boots and stands against the stall wall in nothing but her underwear and I drop to my knees in front of her.
She looks down at me.
