“I think you figured correct,” I tell him with a nod towards the crowd.
Sienna and Blake hold court while all the other ranch hands watch them talk and laugh. They all seem positively enrapturedby whatever yarn they’re spinning. It takes me about fifteen seconds to grow uncomfortable with it. I do not like one bit how lovely Blake looks as a circle of jerks watch her.
“Oh, yup, she’s what has you hiding,” Sterling chuckles before he ducks as I toss a large pebble right at his stupid head.
“Fuck off, cousin,” I gruff as I storm towards the group. Turning, I cock my head towards Sienna. “Looks as if someone found a new best friend.”
Sterling’s cocky smirk melts just as I figured it would. He might not let her see it—or anyone else if he can help it—but my cousin has a soft spot for our cook. Sienna has him wrapped around her finger, even though I get the idea she has no idea the power she has over him. I chuckle as he storms after me. Good—we're both keen to crash their little party.
“Hey folks,” I call in my best authoritative voice. One that at least a few of them have the decency to respond to. “That blaringly loud sound you just heard was indeed a break bell. Meaning your break is over. Back to it boys.”
My gaze sweeps all of them, but lands on Blake. I flush when I find her smirking at me. I am not very discreet. Crossing my arms, I stare back at her because I don’t plan to be discreet. I might not put a brand on her just yet, but the minute I can, I am claiming her as mine.
“Yes, sir,” she teases me with a salute and a dirt smudged face. “No rest for the wicked they say.”
Watching her rush off towards the barns, I can’t help myself. I wait until most of the group has broken up, some going to mend fences, some off to work with the horses. I smirk as I watch my cousin trail after Sienna like a puppy dog on a leash. Just before I turn to follow Blake the same damn way.
Mesmerized by the sway of her hips, I never take my eyes off her. I am so fixated on the roundness of her ass, the bounce of her hair, that I don’t notice that she is taunting me. Baiting me.Stepping inside the shadows of the barn, she stops abruptly and I slam into her.
“Thought you said you wouldn’t take up too much space?”
Smirking as I close any distance between us, crowding her against the wall, I nod. “I did say that. I also said I planned to take up just enough space so you would know we’re just getting started, darlin’,” I remind her, lowering my head so my words warm the shell of her ear.
“You won’t accept that I have no space for you, will you?”
I have no patience for arguments. I have given her enough damned space today. I reach out, my hand tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck, and I pull—just enough to tilt her head back, forcing her to look at the wreck she’s made of me.
I crash into her, and the collision is less of a kiss and more of a hostile takeover. It’s a lightning strike in a drought. Her mouth is hot and defiant, meeting mine with a desperation that tells me she’s done fighting too. For the moment, at least, she is willing to give in to me.
She moans a low, broken sound that she tries to swallow, but I catch it with my tongue. Her hands fly up, grabbing the front of my shirt, her nails digging into my chest as she pulls me closer, trying to eliminate the very space I told her I wouldn’t take up.
I press her harder against the gate, the metal groaning behind her, but she doesn't flinch. She fights for lead, her teeth grazing my bottom lip until I taste copper and fire. It’s chaotic. It’s messy. It’s setting a kindling to fire in the middle of a drought. If the first night was a spark, this is the entire forest going up in flames.
God help me, I’m happy to burn.
Chapter Five
Blake
I am still shaking when I make it to my bunkhouse.
With the sun setting behind me, my body aching from a long day, and my focus shattered, I ought to be exhausted. Instead, I am wired. My boots thud across the wood plank floor as I pace. I shake out my limbs, but it does no good. There is no shaking off what Brooks makes me feel.
Why did he have to be here, where I came to start over? He made a joke earlier about all the ranches in Starlight Summit. What does it mean that I wound up on his ranch? It does not mean anything.It can’t mean anything. I am a mistake away from blowing up my life all over again. I cannot let that happen. I just started pieces it all back together again.
Five years ago, the loss of my uncle was the darkest time of my life. My parents were what I would callunpreparedto be parents. They were not cruel or uncaring. They just never should have had a child. My uncle took me in one summer when they wanted to tour the country in a battered old van and... I just never left his ranch.
“You can wander like your mother without being lost,” he said in his final days as I stayed at his side, now the one unprepared. “Or you can settle somewhere that suits you. Do not clip your wings just yet, Blake.”
Staying there, at the ranch that had been my home, my anchor, my north star, seemed impossible without him. I followed the same path, took the same roads, and made the same risks my mother and father had in my grief. I had no ties to anyone or anywhere. Which meant I had nothing to go home to once my wandering was over.
My cousin Tye is all I had left, but he spent most of his life out on the road, riding the rodeo circuit. On an overdue call a few months back, he regaled me with stories of Fellow Falls and its sister to the south, Starlight Summit. He said how much it reminded him of home, of his dad, and the place we had grown up.
Now that I am here, I can see how right he was. Walking onto this ranch when I came to meet Sterling was the first time I had been able to breathe right in a long time. I could not know that hiding in the shadows, or out on the paddock working his magic, was the formidable force that is Brooks Carter.
“Stop thinking so much, darlin’,” his voice rumbles behind me, making me jump with a clatter of boots on hardwood.
Whirling, I see him sneaking in my door, letting it close behind him with a soft thud. I am furious that he followed me. Livid that he was out there, watching me work all day. I am irate at myself for working harder under the weight of his stare, as if I had something to prove to him.
