Chapter 27
27
AURORA
I should know better than to expect anything when it comes to Johnny. Every time I think he can’t possibly do something else to blow my mind, he goes and proves me wrong.
They certainly don’t make men like him where I’m from. Every day I spend with him, I become surer that I’ll never find one like him again.
“We’re not taking Joker?” I ask when he lifts the matte-black saddle from the hook in front of Frost’s pen.
Yeah, Frost’s pen . Because she’s here , on Steele Ranch, in a pen that looks tidy and cozy. With her own saddle.
“I am, but you’re taking Frost. She’s completely saddle broken. I’ve ridden her a few times this week to make sure for myself before I put you on her back. She’s got the temperament of an angel, if not a stubborn one sometimes. Just don’t let her get her teeth on any of the wild raspberry bushes out there, or she’ll come back with a juice-splattered mouth. She’s goddamn addicted to them.”
I nod along with his words but continue to stare at him in wonder as he sets the saddle on her back and starts to fiddle with the straps and clips. Frost watches me, a sense of calmness radiating off her. She doesn’t move an inch as he gets her ready to go.
“I don’t blame her. I could eat cartons of raspberries at a time,” I say.
Johnny grins over her back. “Oh yeah? Note taken, darlin’.”
“Do you like them?”
“Yeah, but I prefer melons to berries.”
My laugh comes out louder than I intended it to, far from ladylike. The suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows only makes me laugh harder as my stomach starts to cramp.
“What’s so funny?” he asks, batting his lashes innocently.
I come up to Frost’s side and gently place my hand on her side, feeling her strength. “Don’t play innocent.”
He swipes a hand through his hair. “Fuckin’ love your laugh, Rory.”
The admission sobers me as my laugh trickles off. My stomach fills with flapping wings. “Do I thank you now?”
“I also fuckin’ love how you never know what to say when I tell you shit like that.”
I shrug. “Nobody’s complimented me so much before.”
His expression tightens, growing serious as he reaches over Frost’s back and strokes a knuckle down my cheek. “Good. You’re mine to compliment. Now, let’s get you up on this girl’s back so we can go.”
“Is it hard?” I blurt out.
His eyes snare mine, crinkling at the corners as he smirks. “Around you? Always.”
“Johnny!” I ignore the heat flooding my cheeks and try to appear serious. “I meant riding.”
He comes around Frost’s front and gives her nose a gentle rub before stopping a step from me. My eyes are drawn up his body, over the wide expanse of a strong chest crafted from long, long hours on the ranch and shoulders that I’ve dug my nails into more than once and have fantasized about seeing above me, slick with sweat. Heat settles between my legs the longer I look at him, checking him out without a care in the world.
My fingers twitch with the desire to touch him and explore the body I can’t look away from. He’d let me, I know he would. I’d let him explore me too. The realization of that isn’t scary but relieving. I’m falling for Johnny more and more every day, and I’ve been holding myself back from taking a step further with him out of fear. But the more time we spend together, each day revealing something new about him that I can’t help but love, the harder it is to keep up my fa?ade.
I want him, and if he knew that . . . would he take me right now, as I am? No questions asked?
By the time I’m looking into his eyes, my skin has grown hot and sensitive. My clothes feel too tight over my body, and as the light blue of his eyes grows more intense, I debate asking him to take them off me.
“You’ll give me a complex looking at me like that, darlin’,” he murmurs, the thick lines of his throat working with a swallow.
“How am I looking at you?”
“Like you want me to work your tight fuckin’ jeans down your thighs and bury my face between them. Just say the word, and I’ll dive deep without giving a shit about coming up for air.”
My entire body shivers at the promise in the gravelly words. “Do that, then.”
“Not yet.”
“Why?” I croak, a blast of cold ripping through the heat of the haze wrapped around my mind.
He takes my hand and tugs me closer to him before settling my palm over the large bulge in his jeans. I grip it on instinct and get rewarded by a tight-lipped hiss and slight thrust.
“You want to be taken in a stable, baby? I’ll take you in a fuckin’ stable so many times you’ll feel the ghost of me buried deep the moment you walk inside of one. But not the first time. If you knew how many times I’ve dreamed of licking your pussy or sliding my cock inside of you, you’d never question how badly I want you. But I’m waitin’, and I’m patient. I’m going to have you splayed out for me and your cum on my tongue tonight, but not yet. Not here. Okay?”
I drop a hand to Frost’s side to keep myself upright as the weight of his words settles. The guttural promises that he’s made and the way each one has cranked up the dial on the desire I feel.
Again, he touches my face, stroking my skin so delicately it’s like he fears it’ll crumble and blow away like ash if he’s too rough.
“If not here, then where?” I ask, unashamed with how desperate I sound.
Fuck it all to hell, but I don’t care.
“Do you trust me?” he asks, the words hardly more than a fan of breath across my face.
It should take me longer to answer him. To debate on whether or not I do. But there’s no need for debate.
“Yes.”
The joy that lights up his face right then is every reason as to why I do.
It’s hard to concentrate as Frost and I trot alongside Johnny and Joker, the pace slow and steady. I should be grateful for that, considering how raw the inside of my thighs feel from the slap of them against Frost’s sides and how every time I sway side to side, the pulse of pain in my lower back grows in intensity.
Yet, slow and steady is the last thing I want right now.
There’s never been a time in my life where I’ve been as physically attracted to a man as I am right now, staring across the small space between Frost and Joker at Johnny.
Spine straight as an arrow, cowboy hat resting easy on his head, and those strong, veiny hands wrapped loosely around Joker’s reins, he looks like a wet dream straight out of a cowboy movie. The ease and confidence with which he rides his horse, commanding her without force or sharp words, has the heat between my legs transforming into an inferno. I ache everywhere, and not from the riding.
The tension between us stretches, keeping us both trapped within it. I’ve kept silent as we rode off the ranch and into the ditch beside the highway, each clop of hooves sounding like a tick of a clock. Johnny knows exactly what I’m thinking about and hasn’t stopped grinning since he helped me up on Frost and saddled up Joker.
I don’t recognize where we are. Not because it’s dark but because I’ve never ventured out this way. Unless I’m at the ranch, I don’t leave town. I want to pay more attention to my surroundings, but I can’t fucking focus on anything but Johnny.
“We’re almost there,” he says, as if sensing how close I am to losing my ever-loving mind. “How are you feeling?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
I scowl. “Too bad.”
He laughs in answer, the deep, rumbling sound of it making my toes curl in my sneakers. I want to press my palm to his chest and feel that rumble work its way up my arm.
“Did you ever make wishes on shooting stars when you were a kid?” he asks.
I know he’s looking at me without having to check. “I think every kid did that.”
“What did you use to wish for?”
“Isn’t the golden rule of wishing for something never telling anyone what you actually wished for?”
“Are you saying that your wishes never came true?”
“Not unless I’ve been walking around with a unicorn horn my entire life, no.”
“You wished for a unicorn horn?”
“I was a kid. Were you making perfectly thought-out wishes back then? ”
Reaching out with his foot to tap the side of mine, he says, “I was, actually. I’ve always known what I wanted more than anything. Even more than a unicorn horn.”
I’m too chicken to pull my foot out of the stirrup to kick him back, so I shake my head at him instead.
“You’re not allowed to tease me for that.”
“But you like it when I tease you,” he replies, nearly purring the words.
“Right now, I don’t.”
He makes a disbelieving noise in his throat before leading us out of the ditch and onto a dirt path formed between clusters of overhanging trees. Tiny twinkle lights have been strung in the branches of the trees closest to the road, lighting it up just enough that my eyes don’t have to strain to see in front of us.
Frost follows Joker with ease, as if she’s ridden this path a million times before. If I was nervous at all, her comfortability would have helped settle me.
“Have you ever watched Cabin in the Woods ?” I ask him when a small house appears at the end of the dirt road.
Small may be an exaggeration. It’s on the smaller side, but a good size with wide windows and a door with a stained-glass window. Its roof is peaked and adorned with two solar panels on both sides. The lawn is well-kept, the grass thick and green, not a weed in sight.
“Yeah, actually. I built my house based off the movies. Kept a few bodies inside for decoration as well. Hope you don’t mind the smell of decaying flesh.”
My mouth cracks open with a smile as I ask, “This is your house?”
“Yeah, darlin’. It was on Steele Ranch property when they first bought it God knows how long ago, and nobody made any use of it until I bought it from Wade two years back. A work in progress still, but she’s home,” he explains before swinging himself off Joker’s back and leading her toward the long wooden post beside the house .
Clicking his tongue, he calls Frost over to join them.
“You bought it from Wade? He didn’t want it?”
It’s hard to understand why. It’s secluded and private with the thick wooded area surrounding us. One glance up at the sky and I can see a thousand, maybe a million stars.
“It’s too far out, and they’ve got all they need already close to the main house. Brody and Anna built their house up near the shop, and it’s probably the closest place to here.”
Once he’s done tying Joker to the post, he moves to me next. “Hold on to the reins like you did when mounting, and put your weight in the stirrup. Pull your leg over her back and set it on the ground first,” he coaxes, guiding me with a hand stabilizing my back.
It happens quickly, and before I know it, I’ve got two feet back on the ground. I rub Frost’s neck a few times, hoping she can tell how much I enjoyed our first ride together, and walk beside her as Johnny ties her up.
“How big exactly is Steele Ranch?” I ask.
“Thirty thousand acres, last time I asked. It’s a whole lot of empty fields, though. It gives us the room to rotate cattle when we need to. The horses like the space too.”
“Is that why they’re building another stable? For more horses?”
He gives our horses a final couple of scratches before turning, his back against the beam, eyes focused solely on me. “Me and a couple of the guys have been trying to convince Wade to take on more horses and expand into training. We’ve got a good couple of trainers that work with us to saddle break and whatnot, but taking it a step further than that would be good for the future of the ranch. Puts our foot in the door for opportunities outside of cattle.”
I nod, enjoying learning more about this life that I’ve been sort of thrown into. There isn’t much I know about ranching, and I feel almost embarrassed about that.
“Have you always loved horses? ”
He extends an arm in front of him, calling me over, and I move without hesitation. His hand cups my waist and spins me so my back is to his chest before he’s wrapping his arm around my front, tucking me against him.
“You’re so curious, Rory,” he hums, running his nose along the shell of my ear. My breathing picks up. “I want to tell you everything. About me, my family, my life on the ranch. My future.”
“I wouldn’t complain about that,” I whisper.
“Ask me something first. Something you should have asked before I tied our horses up.”
My brows knit together as I try to remember what I forgot to ask but come up short. His lips on my ear and cheek and jaw don’t help me concentrate much either, damn him.
His laugh is low in my ear. “Ask me what I wished for when I was a kid, Rory.”
“What did you wish for?”
I can hear the thump of my heart in the night. Or maybe that’s his. Unable to help myself, I turn my head back to look at him. The affection in his eyes shifts the world beneath my feet as he speaks.
“You, Rory. I wished for you.”