One Night with my Forbidden Cowboy (Wrangler Creek: The BAD BOYS of Iron Stallion Ranch #4)

Chapter 1

ELLA

I’m hot all over, pinned beneath him, the world outside this office reduced to a muffled hum and a spray of fairy lights that ghost across the filing cabinet. His weight is a steady, dangerous thing, heavy across my ribs.

“Shiloh,” Cole breathes, dragging my lower lip with his teeth.

He’s the only one who calls me by my middle name. Always has, like some unspoken rule between us.

His hand slides lower, thumbs stroking the soft place where my hip meets my thigh. I arch into him, my fingers tangling into his thick, dark hair.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks, voice rough, his brown eyes lifting to meet my charcoal grey ones.

Not because he doubts me, I think; because he needs me to say it, to make it explicit. Because fucking me right here, on the mayor’s desk under a dim lamp, could wreck a lot of things.

Quinn will probably laugh her heart out if she ever learns about my sexual escapades in her father’s office, but the mayor will probably have a coronary. Good thing they’re both occupied outside.

I should stop this, stop me, stop him, stop us, but I’m too far gone to care.

I’ve waited two decades for this, and I’m not going to let the chance slip through my fingers.

Twenty years isn’t a number anymore; it’s a geography.

It’s the space between the kid I was and the woman he’s allowing me to be in this moment.

“Yes.” It comes out fragile and fierce. “Yes, Cole. God, yes.”

“Good, because I don’t know what I’d do with this if you asked me to stop,” he admits, taking my hand and pressing it over his bulging pants.

Damn, he’s big. Cole has always given big dick energy, and I am not disappointed.

I squeeze once, and he groans, his mouth wrapping around the pulse at my throat. His big, rough hands skim the waistband of my pants before landing on my zipper, dragging it down. I lift my hips to help him, my breath hitching as cotton peels away.

He lifts the hem of my blouse but pauses for a moment, looks up at me, eyes dark with hunger and something else—reverence, maybe.

“Are you okay?” he asks, softer now.

I nod because I don’t have words for the way my stomach has dropped into my spine, and everything in me is finally home. “I want this.”

His answer is a slow, open-mouthed kiss that knocks the last of my restraint into a corner.

His tongue is warm and commanding, his hands moving like he’s cataloguing all of me.

He takes one of my D-cups into his callused palm, thumbs rolling my nipple until a sharp, delicious ache blooms and I cry out, loud and shameless.

Cole’s old enough to know what he’s doing. He’s practiced, patient, and he knows how to make me unravel without breaking me entirely. He slides two fingers between us, finds the wetness I’m already creating, and pushes forward.

“Fuck,” I whimper.

He matches his mouth to that word, teeth nipping at me, lips swallowing every moan I utter.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he rasps.

The compliment pins me harder than any touch. I bite my lip to stop the laugh that threatens to spill. This is reckless, so goddamn reckless, but it also feels like salvation.

When his fingers curl inside me, my breath catches. He doesn’t rush me, just watches my throat, my hands, and the tiny tremor in my parted thighs.

“Talk to me,” he says, voice low.

“I want you,” I manage, the sentence a hymn. “I’ve wanted you forever.”

His laugh is a rough exhale. “Forever sounds about right.”

He pulls back for a second to take off his belt, his 6‘2“ frame towering over me. The fact that this gorgeous specimen of a man wants me is a wonder. He’s hard where I’m soft, tall where I’m short, perfect where I’m not.

Before my terrible thoughts take over, his pants drop, and I see him—thick, warm, and hard. Something wanton and feral rises in me. I’ve fantasized about him in the dark corners of my head for more than a decade, but the reality is more urgent, tender, and untamed than any daydream.

He positions himself between my legs, and for a heartbeat, the whole universe waits.

“Shiloh,” he grunts, and there is no pretense left in his voice. “If you want me to stop, say it. Now.”

I shake my head. The thought of stopping makes my lungs ache. “Don’t stop,” I hiss, my tone bleeding with need. “Please.”

He presses into me, and the first push is a heaven-splitting kind of violence that makes me see stars.

But the pain quickly blurs into ecstasy as his hands splay on my hips, anchoring me as we start on a steady rhythm.

Every tilt of his hips answers one of mine.

Every grunt, every breath is a map back to the part of me I thought was lost. When he speeds up, it’s an intimate conversation of our bodies.

He leans down, teeth grazing my ear. “You’re mine tonight, Shiloh,” he whispers, the possessiveness a vow and a thrill all at once.

I wrap my legs around him, pulling him deeper. “Then show me,” I say, voice cracked. “Show me how much.”

He does. He fucks me like he’s desperate to prove something to himself and to me, like my pleasure is a ledger he needs to balance.

His hands rake down my sides, fingers digging in, and the pressure makes me see colors.

He leans down and kisses that soft place where my hip meets my thigh—ridiculous and intimate—and I swear I could dissolve into him.

“You taste like peaches and bad decisions,” he mutters, lifting his head once more.

I pull him closer and bite him, hard, then smooth it with a kiss. “You’re the best bad decision I’ve ever made,” I whisper back.

We move faster, the angles changing, his hand cupping and trembling against the sweet spot inside me. His name becomes a chorus—Cole, Cole, Cole—until it’s less a name and more an invocation.

My walls squeeze around him, my nails scoring the soft meat of his back while he says every swear he’s ever learned into my hair.

When I come, it’s violent and beautiful. A wave that makes me sob and laugh all at once. He doesn’t stop; he rides it through, grounding me with the press of his chest, the steady, focused drive of his hips. His own release follows, urgent and hot, his voice cracking as he calls my name.

We collapse back onto the desk in a ridiculous tangle of limbs. He lies on top of me, buries his face in my neck, breathing like he just ran a marathon. Tears prick my eyelids, not from pain, not from fear, but from the ridiculous, incandescent relief of being seen and chosen.

Lifting his head, he brushes a few dark brown strands away from my face, his thumb wiping under my eye. “Are you okay?” he asks again, voice small with intimacy.

I nod, throat tight. “I am now.”

He smiles, then straightens up. “We should clean up and go back out before they notice.”

I nod as I sit up.

“I didn’t expect this tonight,” he murmurs. “But I’m not sorry.”

“Neither am I,” I smile back.

He kisses my temple, the gesture so tender it tugs at the part of my heart I only reserve for him.

A laugh, bright and oblivious, drifts through the door, reminding us of the world outside. We pull apart and start getting redressed. When we’re done, we pad out into the corridor, and Town Hall swallows us again, a warm ocean of movement and heat.

Fairy lights weave across the rafters like captive stars, glowing over tables draped in white and gold. The air smells like roses and expensive champagne. Every seat is filled, every corner buzzing with laughter and the clinking of glasses.

What’s the occasion, you may ask?

My brothers, Jace and Beck, got married today and decided to invite the whole town to celebrate.

Two men who used to wrestle over the last pancake are now standing at the front, faces split into ridiculous smiles as they kiss their brides under an arch of flowers.

Beck holds Quinn, the mayor’s daughter, like she’s the most precious thing in the world, and Jace has never looked happier, his grip around Tessa’s waist as possessive as it is protective.

I feel Cole’s warmth against my back, reminding me of his presence. I turn around, and our eyes lock.

Cole Alden Dawson—owner and CEO of Dawson Construction, the biggest construction company in South Texas.

I’ve had a crush on him since I was six, when he accompanied his father for a construction job on Iron Stallion, our family ranch.

He was sixteen then, and I thought he was the cutest boy to ever live—he still is, only he’s all man now.

He’s always been the boy turned man I have a crush on, until an hour ago, when we collided on the dance floor.

He asked me to dance, and I said yes because who’d pass up a chance to dance with the man they’ve had a crush on for two decades? Plus, I needed the distraction.

On the dance floor, we swayed with the music, traded the small warm talk that lets two people measure each other again after ages apart. He told me about his separation from his wife, Calista, and how the divorce is hard on everyone, especially his nine-year-old daughter, Aria.

My chest clenched then because there it was—an opening, my chance to finally have a taste of this man.

I opened up to him as well about the frustration of being the only one in the Morgan family who, for the past few years, has watched everyone else find their forever while remaining single.

He patted my hand like I was a delicate animal and said, “Your forever person will find you, Shiloh. You just have to be patient.”

I have been patient, dammit. I’m twenty-six years old, for crying out loud, have been single for most of my life. I’ve watched three of my brothers get married when I couldn’t even get a date to their special day.

After the dance, we ended up drifting towards the back, where the offices are. I didn’t think we’d go further than a hand squeeze in the dark. But then his fingers brushed my cheek, and it felt like permission.

The rest is history.

Now, in the hollow aftermath, I smooth my palms over the fabric of my pants as if it’s some ritual that will stitch things back to normalcy.

Cole moves as if to say something but is interrupted by his daughter calling out to him from the dance floor.

“Daddy! Over here!” Aria waves, her pink dress swirling with the lights.

“Coming, princess,” he waves back with a smile, then turns to me. “Daddy duty calls. Let’s talk later,” he whispers low, his lips brushing against my ear, making my body shiver.

He then moves past me, finds Aria, and sweeps her into his arms for a dance.

Deep down, I know that later will never come. And it fills me with sadness.

With him gone, guilt prickles sharp and fast. This is my brothers’ wedding night, for heaven’s sake. I’m supposed to be the baby sister who laughs, dances, and cheers. Instead, I’m a woman who’s been unstitched and reassembled in an office two doors down.

A hand grips my elbow, pulling me from my reverie. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

I turn, and there’s Ava, my sister-in-law, best friend, and emotional compass since we both had two front teeth missing.

She’s holding two champagne flutes, her sequined dress hugging her figure perfectly, long dark hair framing her gorgeous face.

Ava is my best friend, but she’s also married to my other brother, our firstborn Zane, and they have the cutest eight-month-old daughter together.

I always tell Ava everything, but I find myself holding back about what Cole and I just did. “Sorry, I needed some air.”

She narrows her eyes at me, passing me one of the glasses. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I take a sip and nod. “Yes, I was just regrouping.”

“Regrouping from love and happiness? How tragic,” she mocks.

I laugh, rolling my eyes. “You’re insufferable.”

Just then, the band completes the set they were playing, and everyone erupts in applause. I clap too, but my throat is tight. It’s not sadness. Not exactly. It’s something softer, quieter—that ache you get when you realize you’re the only one left standing on the edge of something beautiful.

Everywhere I turn, someone is holding someone. Couples fill the hall, arms draped over shoulders, fingers intertwined, heads resting on shoulders.

With Jace and Beck now married, it makes three Morgans down, two to go. More like one. Ryder doesn’t count; he’ll die a monk, secluded alone on his mountain. Which leaves poor ol’ me, the only single, lonely one left.

I don’t begrudge my brothers. God, no. They deserve every ounce of this happiness. And I love being the fun one, the one who keeps spirits high, the one everyone jokes with. But lately, that persona feels like a mask I never take off.

Because deep down, in a place I don’t talk about, I want this too.

I want someone who looks at me the way Beck looks at Quinn. The way Jace looks at Tessa. Like they’ve found their beginning and their ending all wrapped up in one person.

Those thoughts are the exact ones that had me falling into Cole’s arms in the first place.

Only he’s married and has a nine-year-old daughter, which makes him unavailable. The only thing that makes what we just did okay is that he’s getting divorced; otherwise, I wouldn’t have dreamt of going within a mile of him.

Beck calls for a toast, dragging me to the present once more.

People raise glasses, and when it’s my turn, I put on my best smile. “To my favorite idiots,” I shout over the noise. “Thank God you’re no longer my problem to deal with! Ladies, it’s too late to run now—you already said I do.”

The whole hall erupts into laughter as I finish off with, “Welcome to the family.”

Beck blows me a kiss, while Jace mouths, Love you, sis. For a heartbeat, the ache eases.

Cole said my forever person will find me. I want him to be that person, but I’m also realistic enough to know that tonight might have just been a fluke in the system. So I tuck those memories away into the fold of my bones where I keep the parts of myself I rarely show.

With that thought in mind, I pull on a smile, take Ava’s hand, and lead her onto the dance floor.