I squeezed my thighs against Milo and tried to distract myself. “Why did your father buy a cattle ranch? I mean, it’s breathtaking, but odd considering that most of your properties are focused on luxury.”
He was silent for a beat. Long enough for me to worry that the changes I’d perceived in him were only superficial. That he still wasn’t willing to open up to me.
But then he said, “My mother.” He glanced at me before going on. “She’d always wanted to live in the country. She was a city girl who wanted a… different life. A quieter life than the one she’d been born into. My father showed up and swept her off her feet, but he was already successful and the life he offered didn’t feel much varied from her own. Still business and greed and all the things that come with being a person of power. She almost didn’t marry him because of it.
“But she loved him. And he loved her. So he promised her the country. He bought this ranch for her as a wedding gift and called it Kaya. That was his nickname for her.”
“He called your mother Kaya?” It explained where her alleged surname had originated.
“Yes. It means ‘rock’ in Greek. My mother broke her family ties when she left the country to marry my father. It was what she wanted, but it was a hard decision for her to follow through with. He said she was strong like a rock.” He grinned over at me. “Though sometimes he said he called her that because she was stubborn and immovable like a boulder. Both fit who she was.”
The tone he used to speak about his parents was even and unsentimental, but there was still something – in his body language, in the undercurrents of his words – something that portrayed the deep fondness he had for them. They’d been people I’d researched and studied, names on paper with no context. Reeve breathed life into them for me. Made them real. Made them important.
He trotted ahead of me to take the lead as the trail narrowed momentarily. When it widened again, he fell back into step with Milo and me. “Anyway, we traveled a lot when I was growing up, visiting all the resorts as they were built, but this place was always the place we came back to. This place was always home. Even though they aren’t here anymore, I try to come back for at least part of each year.”
I tried to fit this story into the one that already existed in my head. Elena Vilanakis, aka Elena Kaya, had been unhappy in her life. Because of the mob ties? Had that been what Daniel Sallis had rescued her from? Then had it been Reeve who had reclaimed them when his parents died and he had nowhere to go but to them?
But those questions were for Amber and today was for Reeve.
“Thank you for bringing me with you to Wyoming,” I said. “It means a lot to me.”
“It means a lot for me to have you here.” Our gazes got caught in each other, and we held them. Maybe sweet was good in larger doses too.
A minute later we were at the creek. It snuck up seemingly out of nowhere. I’d heard it rippling in the distance with no sign of it until we were upon it. We dismounted and Reeve tied our horses to a tree. Then we perched on a large rock that jutted out of the water and ate our sandwiches.
“I love that sound,” I said when I’d finished eating. “The river babbling as it winds along. It’s so peaceful.”
“You can hear it from the house when it’s really quiet,” Reeve said, stretching out beside me and propping himself up on his elbows. “It’s peaceful and yet it’s a sound that has the potential to carry.”
I nodded. “I know what you’re talking about. I woke in the early morning the first night we were here. Couldn’t sleep. So I went out on the balcony and I could hear it.”
He frowned. “Why didn’t you wake me? I would have fucked you back to sleep.”
I gawked at him. “I can’t wake you up for sex.”
“Why not?”
“Because every time I’ve initiated something with you, it hasn’t gone well for me.” He’d been very clear about our roles in this arrangement: He was the director. I was merely a player.
“Well, that’s true.” He sat up so we were in line with each other. “Except you’re still here. Maybe you weren’t initiating the right things.”
I considered that, playing back our time together in my head, searching for any missed cues. There were probably many, but I couldn’t identify them.
I twisted toward him. “Then tell me, what would happen if I jumped you sometime instead of waiting for the other way around?”
He shrugged. “Try it and find out.”
He stood and held his hand out to me to help me up as well. He jumped down from the rock ahead of me then turned to lift me easily to the ground. The wind blew the loose strands of my hair into my face, and he reached to brush it away. Our eyes met in another mushy moment that had my chest tightening. The kind of moment that ended in a soft brush of lips, and all I could do was wish he’d push me against the tree and rip my clothes in his eagerness to get inside my pants.
I broke away before he even leaned in.
We started toward the horses, a light tension between us that I was sure had to do with the abrupt way I’d blown him off. Hesitantly he said, “I need to ask you a question.”
“Yes?” I braced myself, preparing to answer what was going on in my head, the question I was sure he’d ask.
“When we first got together, you asked me if you needed a safe word and I told you no.”
That was not at all the question I’d been expecting. It also wasn’t quite accurate. He’d said if I needed a safe word that I shouldn’t be there. “That’s not exactly how you said it, but anyway.”
“I might have been wrong.”
I stopped walking. “You think I need a safe word?”
He’d taken a few steps past me before noticing I’d halted. He pivoted to face me, his hands thrust in his pockets. “I’m not sure. I’ve never used one, but I’ve never been with a woman who didn’t make her limits absolutely clear.”
My throat tightened. I’d let him do humiliating things to me and yet, somehow, admitting this was more embarrassing than anything else.
My eyes fell to study my boots. “It doesn’t matter if I had one. I wouldn’t use it.”
“Even if I went too far?”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I don’t know what that is, Reeve.”
He was silent but I knew it wouldn’t last. He was going to ask me to explain – I could feel it. And it was arguably a conversation we should have had long ago, though it had only been recently that I’d come to accept it myself. Now that he’d brought it out to the open, I couldn’t avoid it.
So I plunged in, walking past him as I spoke so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “It’s a problem of mine. I’m, I don’t know, sick or something. I like it when men do things to me, things that some women would consider horrible. Abuse, even. I mean, I more than like it. I need it.”
“You’re a natural submissive,” Reeve said, his voice close behind me. “That doesn’t make you sick. Modern psychologists don’t even call it an illness unless it interferes with your life.”
I’d come to Milo now, and I reached out to stroke his neck, using him as a focus point. “That’s just it. It does interfere with my life at times. Because I don’t know when to say stop. I don’t know when to say no. I’ve let myself be hurt, Reeve. Really hurt.” Amber had always blamed the men I’d been with, but while they’d had culpability, so did I.
I turned back to him, my vision glistening with unshed tears. “What kind of a person doesn’t know how to stand up for herself when she’s being broken? What does it make me that I crave parts of it so much that I keep coming back to it? I understand parts of it. Like, if someone else is in control, then I won’t have to admit that I’m part of it. That I like it. It helps me feel less ashamed. But the part where I let myself be shred to pieces —” My voice caught, and I couldn’t finish the sentence. I wasn’t sure where it went next anyway.
I shook my head, trying to free the lump in my throat. “I can’t stay away from it though. When I try, I’m d
ead inside. So all I can do is hope that I’m lucky. Hope that whoever I’m with will care about protecting me more than I do.”
While I’d talked, Reeve had stood patiently, watching me, listening to me. Now I waited for him to say something trite and comforting. Something that would attempt to dismiss my shame by belittling its source. I wouldn’t blame him. Because how else was he supposed to react to someone so obviously crazy?
But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he stepped in to me, brought his mouth to mine, and kissed me. It wasn’t a tentative or soft kiss, just as it wasn’t aggressive or forceful. It was a kiss with no answers, only acceptance.
We stayed there for long minutes while he let me pour out my anguish and self-hate in subtle strokes of my tongue and the varied pressure of my lips. He let me cry like this. Let me shed my skin. Let me be raw without taking advantage of my vulnerability like so many others had done.
We kissed and kissed and would have probably kept kissing if it hadn’t been for Milo nudging at us with his head.
We broke apart, chuckling. “He’s jealous,” Reeve said. “He wants you all to himself.” He pulled the horse’s head to burrow in his neck, stroking his face. “Sorry, Milo. She’s mine, and I’m not giving her up. You’re not the only one she likes to ride.”
My laugh sounded embarrassingly like a giggle.
“Can you believe her? Acting as if that kind of talk flusters her. I know for a fact that it doesn’t.”
I wasn’t ready to lose our honest moment. “That wasn’t the part of what you said that flustered me.”
Reeve abandoned the horse and pulled me to press his forehead to mine. He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. I’d never felt so connected to him. So unified. I was sure our hearts were beating in tandem. So connected that I swore I could hear the unspoken words in his head: I’m trying. I’m going to keep trying with you.
Silently I promised him the same even though I wasn’t sure yet if it was a promise I could keep.
By the time we’d returned to the stable, I was more than recovered from my emotional episode, but I was anxious and antsy. We’d spent too many hours playing nice and romantic, and no time at all playing lusty and sex-driven. I was becoming desperate for the release that only he could give me, more and more afraid that it had been lost in our transition from arrangement to deeper.
We’d stalled Milo first and now Reeve was putting Playboy away. I waited for him to lock the door so we could start walking toward the stable entrance. But as soon as the lock had clicked, he grabbed me unexpectedly, drawing me firmly to him so I could feel the hard form of his cock at my pelvis.
“I hope you aren’t too saddle sore, because I can’t have you in those tight pants a second longer. I need you naked. I need your cunt out. I need to be inside you.”
“Then let me go so we can get back to the house.”
He surrendered me, but it was to undo his buckle. “I can’t wait that long. I’m so hard I’m in pain.”
My heart tripped a beat. “Here?” God, yes.
“Here.” Abruptly, he pushed me up against the next stall and pinned my hands over my head. His breathing was heavy, like mine, the cold air causing twin puffs of condensation to drift and mingle between us. Despite the temperature, I radiated with warmth.
This was what I needed. This was what was missing. The anticipation was hammering inside my chest, making my panties damp, causing me to shiver and sweat all at once.
His mouth was only an inch away from mine, his eyes glued to my lips and the effort of restraint etched clearly on his features. “How do you want me?”
His words swirled around us. It was another form of the question he’d asked over and over. The question he kept coming back to. What do you want? How do you want it?
I never felt like I had a good answer. For the first time, I realized why. Because what I wanted was to not be asked the question.
And, if I knew Reeve like I thought I was beginning to, I didn’t believe that he really wanted to be asking, either. He’d rather just decide.
“No,” I told him. “You tell me what I want. That’s what I want.”
His eyes darkened, confirming my suspicion. He liked this answer. It was the right answer. For both of us.
He changed his grip so that only one of his hands held mine in place. With the other, he undid one of the buttons on my jacket. “You’ve wanted to fuck me all day.” His voice was low, raw. “You kept thinking about the ways I could take you. By the river.” Another button undone. “In the fields.” Another button. “On the horse.” The last button now.
Yes. “Why didn’t you?” It came out barely more than a whisper.
He released me and I turned automatically to let him take off the outer garment, which he flung to the ground. “Because out there we were being sweet. And you wanted to be dirty.”
Yes, so much yes.
He pulled the hem of my shirt from my pants. “So now it’s going to be especially dirty because you made me wait for it.”
With one quick movement, he ripped my shirt completely open, sending buttons flying. Goose bumps scampered down every inch of my exposed skin, caused as much from his words and the primal act as from the sudden cold air. I shuddered. My nipples were taut beads poking through the lace of my bra.
He pulled the ruined material of my shirt from my shoulders, then reached behind to unhook my bra. As the straps fell down my arms, his eyes grazed over my breasts, heating me with his gaze.
No matter how many times he’d seen me undressed, he never failed to look at me like that – like a starving man. Like he wanted to eat me up. Like he couldn’t get enough.
I understood how he felt. I couldn’t imagine ever getting enough of that look.
The sound of whistling drew my attention down the aisle toward the entrance. Reeve pinched his fingers on my chin and jerked my face back to him. “Eyes on me,” he said sharply. “You don’t care about who’s around. You want me to worry about that. You want me to decide who sees you. Isn’t that right?”
I nodded.
He yanked my chin up higher. “Say it.”
“I want you to decide who sees me.” Dammit, if I wasn’t wet before, I was now.
“Good girl.” He released my face. Grabbing my arm, he dragged me forcibly to the feed storage a couple of feet away where hay was bundled in varying heights. “Turn around,” he ordered. I did and he shoved me down on a double-high stack of bales.
He curled his fingers around the waistband of my pants. “You want your cunt on display for me.” He pulled them down as far as they’d go with my boots on. “I can’t see you like that, Blue Eyes. You need to spread.”
Shuffling my feet outward, I started spreading my legs, but I was too slow or didn’t move far enough because Reeve put a hand on my lower back and kicked one of my boots then the other until I was spread wide.
He trailed his fingers at the crotch of my underwear. “You’re soaked, Emily. Good thing these are coming off.” He gripped my panties with one hand on each side of the seam on my right hip. In the same way he’d torn my shirt, he tugged and ripped the flimsy lace material apart. He repeated the action on the other side then removed the remnants.
“Beautiful, Em.” His tone was thick with appreciation. “You wanted me to see your cunt, and I can see it perfectly now.”
I glanced over my shoulder and found him standing several feet away, admiring the view. My pussy pulsed, enjoying the spotlight.
“Eyes front,” he snapped when he saw me looking. I heard his steps as he crossed to me. “You don’t want to see what I’m going to do to you. You want it to be a surprise.”
Yes. I do. “Do I want it rough?”
“So rough.” His hand slapped against an ass cheek, and I squeaked. “And fast.” He slapped the other. Then he rubbed the sting away in a circular pattern, spreading the burn throughout my skin.
“Do I want you to hurt me?” My voice was gritted.
“Yes.” He smack
ed me again, each cheek in quick succession before he massaged. “And you want to think that I might hurt you a lot.”
He knew me. Knew me so well. Knew what I wanted. Knew how to give it to me.
Maybe he even knew when to stop.
He came around to where my head was now. “Give me your hands.”
I lifted my wrists to him and he bound them with my bra, knotting it as tight as he could manage with the makeshift rope.
He leaned down to meet me at eye level. “Don’t talk. Don’t move. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Parker,” he called out. “I need one of the crops.”
“Which one?”
“The Weaver. Twenty-four inch. And a lead. A short one will do.”
My skin tingled from my scalp to my toes. I wanted to look behind me, see where Parker was, wanted to sit up in a less disgraceful position. It was one thing to be naked in front of strangers. Another to be naked in front of people I’d met that I wasn’t sleeping with. And quite another, still, to be scandalized in their presence.
But as the anxiety about it itched through my chest, arousal sang through my veins in equal proportion.
Reeve ignored me while he waited for Parker. Didn’t talk to me, didn’t touch me, and as the seconds ticked by feeling like hours, my breathing grew heavier, my heart pounded in my chest, my cunt throbbed.
Finally, finally, footsteps sounded in the distance. They slowed as they got closer. “Well, this is new,” Parker said from behind me, his tone edged with lewdness. “Great addition to the stable.”
“Prettiest filly I’ve ever owned.” Reeve’s palm – at least, I guessed it was his – stroked down my flank. “Gorgeous, round hindquarters.”
Parker whistled. “Yeah, they are.”
Feet shuffled closer then halted when Reeve said, “Touch her, I’ll break your neck.”
“Gotcha.” A pause. “Here’s your stuff. Have fun.”
I could hear the clank, clank of Parker’s retreat, the spurs of his boots jostling with each step. His retreat was still echoing through the barn when something tapped me on my cunt. Not hard, just a whisper of a tap. “We’ll have lots of fun, won’t we, Blue Eyes?”