“Fifty! That seems like a big group of wild horses. I can’t even imagine.”
“Well, the ranchers don’t like them much. Because they graze on their land, drink the water, erode the ground.”
“Where are they supposed to go?”
“It’s complicated. There’s supposed to be a hard limit on how many horses can be in certain areas, but unless the locals kick up a fuss, BLM doesn’t often do anything about it. A lot of local ranchers want this herd rounded up and… thinned. They want them put in captivity or dispatched.”
“But you don’t.”
He shook his head. “No.”
She looked at his profile, strong and solid. A wild thing. Something that was part of this land. It didn’t surprise her that he wasn’t a fan of something else wild being put away.
“They’re great tourist attractions, anyway.”
“That’s not why you like them, though.”
“Maybe not. Can’t prove it, though.”
She laughed softly.
They kept driving, winding up a dirt road, and she noticed that another dirt road fed into this one, coming in from the other direction.
“Where does that come from?”
“Town?”
“Are we still on the ranch?”
“Technically. But it’s easy to access from town. I just figured I’d take you up here,” he said. And that was when he stopped the truck, right at the top of a mountain, she hadn’t even realized how high they’d gone up, and she still couldn’tquite tell, because it was so dark. The moon loomed high above them, the stars even brighter, the farther away they were from everything.
“This place used to be pretty infamous back in my day,” he said.
“For what?” she whispered.
“For this.”
He shut the engine off, unbuckled, and leaned across the seat, kissing her.
Oh, they were parking. Excitement fizzed through her veins. And she wanted… Well, she wanted him, all of him. She wanted him to take her right there in the back of the truck. She wanted to be reckless and wild. And so, she was going to be. The kiss deepened, and he gestured toward the backseat. “Ladies first.”
She climbed into the backseat, and it was cramped and crowded, no real space, but he didn’t lay her down across the seat, instead, he positioned himself between her thighs, kneeling in front of her as he kissed her deep and long, fingers forking through her hair. Her hands moved desperately against the buttons on his shirt, working to undo them, just to touch his skin. Just as he pushed the skirt on her dress up past her hips, pushed her underwear to the side, and began to tease her, touch her.
“This is silly,” she whispered against his mouth, “how many beds do we have in this place? We literally walked out of a building filled with beds to squeeze into the back of this truck? For what? So I could see jackrabbits?”
He laughed, low and sexy. She was short of breath, aching between her legs. She didn’t know why she was running her mouth when all she wanted was for him to kiss her. She didn’t know why she was delaying what she wanted.
Maybe it was too intense. Maybe she was more afraid of it than she’d thought.
Though not so afraid that she wasn’t going to do it.
“There’s plenty of time for beds, Marlowe,” he whispered against her mouth, “There could be beds, showers, floors, against the walls.” With every suggestion, his voice grew more intense, with every suggestion, he touched her a little harder, a little faster, pushed one finger deep inside of her. “I’d like to lay you down and fuck you in every single bed on this property. But right now, I want this. Right now, I want to have you here. Is that okay with you?”
She shivered. The sensual promise was almost too much to bear. She wanted it more than she wanted her next breath. She wanted all of those things.
She wanted to live a life that the previous version of her would never have been able to imagine. She wanted to get lost in this. To not worry about consequences. To not worry about anything but what she wanted.
She had never been able to do that.
