Chapter 11
STEVIE
In the end, it was easier than she thought thanks to the placement of the restroom facilities.
Mags had spotted her mid escape, calling for her to join the group she was standing with, and Stevie had called, ‘Coming, just…’ and pointed in the direction of the rustic-looking amenities block, and Mags had nodded and turned back to her conversation.
She figured with time to use the restroom and Mags’s distraction, she might get twenty minutes with Clay.
Twenty. Minutes.
Stevie might not have any practical experience with the sexual act but it didn’t require experience or genius to know a lot could happen in twenty minutes.
Was tonight the night she was going to finally cash in that V card Yolly had urged her to lose the second she’d cashed hers in at the age of fifteen?
Did she want it to be?
Over the years she’d romanticised the experience, fantasised about all the details. A huge bed with satin sheets, rose petals and soft music. A handsome guy she’d known for a while who she loved and who loved her back. All the time in the world to explore and play.
She’d never imagined anything as… rustic as a barn. Or sneaking away in the middle of a party. Or a guy she’d known for just over a week.
She’d never imagined Clay Calhoun.
But how could even her fertile imagination have conjured up such a specimen? So big and sure and… wild. She’d pictured a modern-day gentleman in chinos and brogues straight out of Elle or Vogue. Not an old-fashioned howdy ma’am cowboy in fringed chaps and boots straight out of the Wild West.
It was him that she wanted, though. She definitely wanted the cowboy.
The thought was like an intracardiac injection of adrenaline and by the time she snuck in the more secluded side-door entrance to the barn, her heart was beating like she’d run a marathon. She was so primed for what was about to happen she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to need twenty minutes.
Hell, she’d probably climax the second his mouth touched down on hers.
It was darker inside, the air stiller, a mix of hay and engine grease scenting the air in a not unpleasant aroma. It was… earthy. Like him. Like Clay. And Stevie was coming to appreciate earthy.
‘Clay?’ she whispered as her eyes adjusted to the lower light, conscious of the muffled murmur of the cookout continuing outside.
Of her life – Stephanie’s life – continuing outside.
She didn’t get an answer, not a verbal one anyway, just a hand clamping around her waist, turning her until her back was pressed against the wall beside the door and her hands were lifted above her head, her wrists shackled together by one big hand.
‘Hey,’ his raspy voice greeted on a low rumble.
‘Hey,’ she rasped in return, her breath moving in and out of her chest in an agitated kind of anticipation.
And then he was kissing her so hard and so hot and so hungry, his mouth roving over hers, owning every inch of it, all Stevie could do was lean in and let him as she rode the thick pulse of desire pumping double time around her body.
His tongue licked into her mouth as his hips moved against hers and the hard ridge of him pressed into the soft ache of her rolling sensation to every inch of her body.
She moaned into his mouth and he sucked it in with greedy abandon.
A slug of lust punched through her system and she pushed against the restraint of her wrists which felt confusingly good, but she needed to put her hands on him.
She needed to touch him.
He didn’t resist, his hands falling away to smooth down her body, skimming the sides of her breasts and ribs and waist before anchoring on her hips, gripping them firmly, holding her to him where she was left in no doubt as to the level of his arousal.
Now freed, her hands found his hair, pushing through the curly shag of it, twisting her fingers in the thick mass, holding him fast as she kissed him back. Just as hard, just as hot, just as hungry.
His groan rolled through his chest in a subterranean rumble that sounded entirely unholy.
Like a grizzly waking from hibernation needing to eat.
It was utterly uncivilised and Stevie kissed him deeper, snatching it for herself, wanting to absorb it, revelling in the fact that she’d drawn it from his lips.
Stevie Everhart – country music singer, songwriter, Grammy winner.
Virgin.
The groan was still vibrating through her bones when his hand slid from her hip, his fingers inching down the side of her dress, ruching the fabric up until his palm hit bare skin and flattened, smoothing upward, taking her skirt with it.
His thumb was a lazy stroke against the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh until he reached the crease where her leg met her torso and the flat of his thumb whispered across the gusset of her underwear where she was so wet and achy and needy.
It was the most featherlight of touches but he might as well have hit her with one of the ranch’s cattle prods as it convulsed in a sharp wave of electric pleasure from the point of contact to the tight tips of her nipples.
So sharp she startled, her body bucking, a gasp separating her mouth from his.
No man had ever touched her so daringly, so intimately – it was shockingly good. Surely too good not to be resoundingly bad. No wonder people ruined their lives for this.
She’d had the tiniest of tastes and she was enthralled.
But Clay was looking at her as if he’d just been plunged into an ice bath.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered under his breath as he snatched his hand away, her skirt falling down, his palm back at her hip.
‘Sorry.’ He dropped his forehead to the crook of her neck, his erratic breathing swirling eddies of hot air against the thick beat of her pulse. ‘I’m going too fast.’
Stevie frowned. What? No. It had just been a shock because it was new and unexpected. It had caught her unawares. She didn’t want him to stop.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
Trying to get her erratic breathing under control, Stevie shook her head. ‘It’s fine,’ she assured in a rush, excitable cells still clashing through her veins like pinballs in a machine. ‘It was just a… surprise. I’ve not been…’
Oh God, Stevie, shut up. Don’t tell him that.
A hot sigh flurried against her neck as Clay pushed away from her, taking a small step back, and Stevie thanked the Lord she was against the wall because without all his solid hardness pinning her upright, her lust-slugged legs just weren’t up to the job.
He shoved a hand through his hair. ‘How far have you… gone, before?’
Stevie’s cheeks heated and she ducked her head, pleased for the relative gloom of the shed to cloak her embarrassment. It was like… being at the doctor. Tell me, Ms Everhart, how many sexual partners have you had?
‘Hey.’ His soft voice accompanied the slide of his index finger under her chin, lifting it to meet his gaze. ‘It’s okay.’ He smiled. ‘It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.’
‘Easy for you to say, Casanova Clay.’
He chuckled and it brushed like the soft cotton of his shirt against her skin. ‘We’re all virgins at some point, Stevie girl.’
Stevie girl. She liked it when he called her that. She liked it when he called her that as his thumb stroked her cheek, giving her the courage to spill her meagre experience. ‘Just… kissing and some…’
Oh dear God, it had just moved from embarrassing to excruciating.
She swallowed, looking for the right word.
Fondling came to mind, which she rejected outright.
‘Second-base stuff,’ she finished, looking at a patch of dark beyond his shoulder because all she could think of now was fondling, which sounded like her father’s great-aunt Mable who used terms like intercourse and monthlies on the regular.
‘So a guy’s never touched you… there, before?’
Oh Lordy, Lordy. Kill me now. Stevie was so mortified, all she could do was shake her head. She knew if she was mature enough to have decided Clay was the guy to pop her cherry then she should be mature enough to have a frank conversation about it but – yeesh.
Maturity sucked.
‘Alright.’ He nodded as his finger slid from her chin, clearly satisfied before he smiled again, so calm. So unfazed. While she was dying inside. ‘New plan. We’re going to slow this right down.’
Stevie blinked. Slow it down? That sounded like a terrible plan. She still throbbed between her legs where that fleeting caress had landed and if he thought she didn’t need more of that in the worst kind of way he clearly didn’t know women as well as his reputation implied.
Her eyes seeking his, she stared at him full-on now. ‘I’m not going to break, Clay. I’m a virgin, not spun glass.’
A fleeting smile touched his mouth before flitting away. ‘I know that,’ he said with such certainty it bolstered Stevie’s confidence. ‘And trust me, when I finally get you under me, I have no intention of treating you like spun glass.’
His bold statement was like a grenade going off in all her erogenous zones, visions of him over her, pounding into her, taunting her inner eye. Stevie wanted that. Whatever it was, however it came – she wanted that.
‘But when you skip straight to the main event you miss out on a lot of the good stuff. And I really want to show you the good stuff.’
Oh God… the way he was looking at her, like he was devising a hundred ways to touch her, made her grateful she still had the wall at her back.
‘Okay. Let’s do that.’ Stevie was up for anything on Clay’s menu as long as he was the chef, but when he made no move to pick up where he’d left off, she said, ‘Like, now?’
Clay chuckled and it was almost as dirty as that groan. ‘What’s your rush?’
‘I’m only here for another two and a half weeks.’
‘Plenty of time then.’
She folded her arms. ‘Clay Calhoun, are you teasing me?’
His grin was supremely smug, which should have been irritating but was instead titillating. Clay knew he had the goods, and that cockiness could only be to her benefit, surely? Butterflies in party dresses twirled in her stomach at the thought.
‘Ever made out on a haystack?’
Stevie had never really made out anywhere. Some furtive teenage groping in the dark at the front door after a date was about it. ‘No.’
His grin got even bigger as he held out his hand. ‘Give me your phone.’
So jumbled were her thoughts, Stevie didn’t even think to deny him; she just entered her code and handed it over. The screen lit his ruggedly handsome face as he tapped at the keys and handed it back. ‘This is my number.’
Stevie glanced at it to see Clay’s name followed by the winking cowboy emoji, and her heart did a funny little tap dance in her chest.
Passing over his phone, he murmured, ‘Give me yours.’
Taking the proffered object, Stevie tapped in her own number, using the guitar emoji next to her name. When she handed it back his lips broke into a slow, sexy smile as his eyes lifted to hers, and damn if her whole chest didn’t feel like it was full of helium.
‘Meet me here tomorrow night.’ He didn’t ask, just looked at her with that steady stare, the promise of something secret and wonderful lurking in his eyes.
Stevie nodded. She would have met him on the moon if he’s asked.
‘I’m not sure what time I’ll be done for the day but I’ll text you when I know.’
Another nod and a raspy ‘Okay’ was about all Stevie was capable of as he held her in the tractor beam of his gaze.
Slowly then, he backed away before turning and disappearing into the gloom of the barn, taking with him his pheromones and the invisible strings of his potency that had been holding her upright. Stevie’s head thunked back against the wall as she locked her knees to stop from sliding to the ground.
Somewhere beyond where she could see, she heard the soft snick of a door open and close and she shut her eyes on a rough exhale, her pulse fluttering wildly at the thought – the promise – of tomorrow night.
How was she going to sleep? How was she going to get through the entirety of the day knowing that she and Clay were meeting for a clandestine rendezvous with a haystack roughly twenty-four hours from now?
Her phone buzzed in her hand and she startled, raising her head from the wall, Stevie stared at her phone where a cowboy emoji winked at her from the screen. Half laughing, she tapped the answer button.
‘Stevie?’
Even down a phone line, his voice had the power to undo her with its gravelly undertones. ‘Are you checking I didn’t give you a bogus number?’ she teased, ridiculously buoyed that he’d called.
His low chuckle was like a rush of warm breath directly into her ear, and she shivered. In a good way. ‘No,’ he said after his laughter had ebbed. ‘I’m calling to tell you to wear something with buttons tomorrow night.’
Stevie’s breath caught in her throat as the phone went dead. Her head thunked back again as the pulse between her legs kicked up a notch.
Buttons…
Clutching the phone to her chest, she smiled at the illicitness of the request, knowing she was completely out of her depth. And not caring anyway.