20. Audrey
AUDREY
Graham said he’d come get me to show me the foreman’s cottage, so I spent the morning exploring the ranch while the men went to work.
Graham rode out on Cash, cutting a dashing figure with Blue by his side as he disappeared over a knoll behind the house.
Holden went back to the tractor garage while Ridge disappeared into a smaller building near the tractor barn.
As big as the place looked from the house, it was even bigger once I got outside and started looking around.
I immediately got a feel for how the buildings on the ranch lined up with the names the Bulls used for them.
The big metal garage where Holden worked on the tractors and other farm machinery was the tractor barn and the fenced-in areas for the horses were the corrals.
I entered the main barn and found three horses lined up in their stalls, nickering softly in the shadowed light.
“Hi, girl,” I said, holding out my hand to a glossy chestnut horse watching me with curiosity.
I rubbed her cheeks when she nudged my chest with her nose. “You sure are pretty.”
I laughed when she nudged me again. “Are you looking for food? I’m sorry I don’t have anything. I’ll be more prepared next time.”
The barn was like another world, shadowed and smelling of hay and manure, filled with the soft sounds of the horses, shuffling in the hay, their soft nickers and whinnies like a lullaby in the dark.
Dust motes and pieces of hay glistened in the shaft of sunlight making its way into the barn, and I inhaled the scent of the horse’s fur, earthy and comforting.
It was miles away from the hospital’s clinical setting, and I felt my shoulders drop, felt my breath come a little easier in spite of the fact that my situation was every bit as complicated as it had been an hour earlier.
Finally I left the horse barn and headed for the smaller building next to it. Machinery sounded from inside, but I was no expert so I couldn’t place it.
The door was open but I hesitated anyway. Then I remembered Graham had said I had free rein near the main house, and I stepped into a kind of workshop smelling of fresh-cut wood and sawdust.
Ridge was there, goggles covering his eyes, his head bent to a table saw as he fed a piece of wood through it.
I held still, watching him, not wanting to startle him when he was working with the saw.
And I had to say, there were worse things than watching Ridge work a piece of wood.
I was mesmerized by the dark curls at the back of his neck, the way his biceps flexed under his black T-shirt as he fed the piece of wood through the machine.
His waist was tapered above his work pants, the same carabiner he’d worn in the Hunt clipped to his belt buckle, and his work boots gave him solid footing in the sawdust at his feet.
He finished feeding the wood through the machine and the workshop went silent.
I shifted on my feet, and his head came up, his gaze finding mine through the shadows at the edge of the room.
“Didn’t see you,” he said. “How long you been there?”
“Not long.” I stepped into the room. “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working with the saw.”
He nodded, pulling the newly cut wood off the machine and brushing it off. “Good thinking.”
I looked at the piece of wood in his hand. “What are you making?”
He tipped his head at a row of dining chairs lined up against one wall. “Last one of those.”
I crossed the room to investigate the chairs, running my hand along their backs.
They were ladder-back style, the wood grain visible on their unstained surfaces. The seats were smooth and polished even in their raw state.
“They’re beautiful,” I said. “Are they for the house?”
He leaned back against a wooden work table, still holding the piece of wood, and shook his head. “Already made all the furniture for the house.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “You made all of it?”
“Well, not all of it. Some of it’s been there since Graham’s grandparents ran the place. But I filled the old stuff in, made the dining table and chairs, some of the shelving, the bed in your room.”
“You made the bed in my room?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“So who are the dining chairs for?” I asked.
“Client in the city.”
“Do you have a lot of those? Clients who pay you to make furniture for them?”
“Enough to keep me busy when I’m not building things, fixing things, around here.”
His gaze was locked on my face. It was starting to make me nervous, the way he looked at me like he wanted to eat me whole, his green eyes probing for all the things I didn’t want anyone — least of all the Bulls — to know.
His sexy-as-fuck lean against the wooden work table didn’t help. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, the bulge of his dick almost impossible to ignore under the lights of the workshop.
“That’s your job here?” I was hunting for things to keep him talking, worried that if I stopped, I’d climb him like a ladder. “Building things? Fixing things?”
“That’s right.”
A let out a nervous laugh. “You don’t talk much do you?”
“Talking isn’t what’s on my mind right now, Audrey.”
He said my name reverently, like a prayer, and I realized it had been years since a man had said my name like that.
Years since a man had looked at me the way Ridge was looking at me right now.
“Come here,” he said, when I didn’t reply.
I hesitated, then crossed the room toward him, stopping a couple feet away.
He reached for my hand and pulled me closer, and I was surprised by the warmth of his calloused flesh. Surprised by the way it zinged through my body like a runaway rocket ship.
He lifted his free hand to my face and caressed my cheek. “I’ll bet you don’t even know how beautiful you are.”
His eyes traveled over my face, and I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“I don’t have time to think about stuff like that.” Now that I’d said it out loud I realized it was true.
My life was full with work and Ella and the constant balancing act of pacifying Dean.
“I’m going to make you think about it,” Ridge said, his gaze locked on my lips. “Going to make you know it.”
I gasped when he tugged me against him. My body molded to the hard planes of his chest and thighs, and his obviously erect dick lit a fire in my pussy that begged to be quenched.
He was so tall I had to tip my head to look at him, but looking at him wasn’t a choice.
He was impossible to ignore.
The moment stretched long and silent between us, one of his hands still on my face, the other holding my hand like we were teenage sweethearts.
Then his lips touched mine, not in possession but in a kind of claiming that was entirely new.
His tongue eased between my lips, stroking deep when I opened for him. He caressed my cheek with his thumb as he took the kiss deeper, his tongue sweeping through my mouth, marking territory I hadn’t known existed.
My arms went around his neck of their own volition, and I pressed my body against his, my nipples hard, my pussy throbbing with need.
Kissing him was like falling into long soft grass.
Like coming home.
Desire sparked to life in my body, waking as if from a long sleep. It was like remembering what it felt like to breathe, and I matched every stroke of his tongue, twining my fingers in the silky hair at the back of his head as he occupied my mouth.
He reached for the hem of my shirt, and I felt the heat of his skin on my stomach before he closed his hand around one of my tits.
He squeezed and I slipped a hand between our bodies to press against his dick, thick and hard in his pants.
He groaned and his kiss grew more feverish as he tugged down my bra.
I gasped in his mouth as the heat from his palm sank into the flesh of my tit, then moaned when he pinched my nipple.
He tore his mouth away from mine. “I need to taste you.”
He lifted my sweatshirt and lowered his head to take my exposed nipple in his mouth.
I cried out when he sucked, pressed his head to my breast, relishing the silkiness of his hair under my palms.
I was grinding on his dick through his jeans, dry-humping him without inhibition while he lapped and sucked, an orgasm already rising in my body even though he hadn’t come anywhere near my pussy.
And that was when a voice, deep and gruff, sounded behind me.
“Sorry to interrupt, but we better go see that foreman’s cottage now.”
I pulled away from Ridge and turned to face Graham, then fumbled to pull down my sweatshirt in an attempt to cover my exposed tit, my nipple wet and aroused from Ridge’s mouth.
Graham stood as still a statue, like a specter hiding in the shadows of Ridge’s workshop. His graying hair was windblown, his mouth set in a hard line under his beard.
I felt like a teenager caught making out with my boyfriend.
“Couldn’t wait a few minutes?” Ridge sounded annoyed.
“No.” Graham’s voice was uncompromising.
Ridge frowned, then bent to kiss me in full view of Graham.
My nervous system was misfiring, torn between the demands of my body, which wanted nothing more than to fuck Ridge right there in front of Graham, and my brain, which was screaming at me to salvage what was left of my dignity.
I gasped when Ridge finally broke the kiss. “Go on then. We’ll pick this up later.”
The promise in his voice thrilled me to the bone, and I had to force myself to step toward Graham, who looked less than happy at the thought of showing me the foreman’s cottage.
I left the workshop between them, Graham leading the way, Ridge’s gaze burning a fire in my back.