Chapter 12
CLAY
Clay was not sorry that a day of slushing about in muddy yards with cantankerous cattle and irritatingly chipper cowhands had come to an end and he was finally where he’d been wanting to be ever since this time last night – sitting high up on the edge of the loft, his legs dangling over the side, waiting for Stevie.
The rain, which had been relentless all day, had finally stopped as he’d stepped into the shower to wash away mud that had gotten just about everywhere – his hair, his nape, under his nails. And now he was freshly washed and clothed and, surprisingly, nervous as fuck.
How long had it been since he’d been nervous with a woman?
A long time. Since his first time, perhaps?
As a rookie on the junior circuit, just turned seventeen, brand new to female attention but utterly willing to be shown the ropes by Lucy Watson, two years older and about a decade more knowing both in ways of the rodeo and how to show a woman a good time between the sheets.
She’d taught him well and, God help him, Clay had taken that knowledge and run with it, never looking back. Tonight was different, though. As far as he knew, he’d never been anyone’s first but he still remembered what it had felt like to lose his virginity, how momentous it had felt, how big.
And he felt the gravity of that now deep in his bones.
Not that he was planning any deflowering tonight.
But there was no doubt in his mind that he would be Stevie’s first – if that’s what she truly wanted.
She was well past the age of consent and old enough to make that decision, and he had no intention of infantilising her if she chose him to be her first.
Man… the mere thought of it had his heart thumping a little harder in his chest.
But that didn’t mean they had to rush into it either. Lucy’s urgings of restraint from that night all those years ago came back to him.
Women like foreplay, Clay. Smart men do, too. Don’t be in such a damn hurry.
He heard the distant noise of a slowly approaching car from behind and his groin tightened. Stevie. She hadn’t chickened out like he thought she might.
She was on her way.
After his shower he’d texted her to drive to the back of the barn, park next to his vehicle and come in through the door he’d unlocked.
He hadn’t wanted her walking because it would be muddy and dark when they left but with it still light now, her car parked at the hitching rails would be too visible from the ranch house.
Not that he thought it would be noticed necessarily but if someone was looking they might wonder why Stevie’s car was there and come to investigate, and apart from the fact Clay didn’t want any interruptions, he was pretty sure she didn’t want anybody knowing her business.
He sure as hell didn’t want anyone knowing his.
Not that anyone should care – they were both grown adults. But deep in his bones he knew that his parents had taken Stevie under their wing since her mother’s departure and he didn’t think they’d approve of this kind of… fraternisation.
And he didn’t need that kind of judgement.
Clay listened as the engine noise drew closer then cut out. As the car door opened, then shut. As, directly below him, the door creaked open like the sound of a coffin lid in an old black-and-white horror movie. As the low shuffle of boots scraped against concrete.
‘Clay?’
Her tentative whisper floated up to him, the unmistakeable streak of anticipation husking her voice, roaring through his every cell.
With his eyes well and truly adjusted to the gloom of the barn, Clay spotted the moment the top of her caramel-blonde head came into view and a streak of his own anticipation corkscrewed through his abs.
‘Up here,’ he whispered back as he clicked on the large electronic tealight he’d grabbed as he’d walked out the door.
It was a faint glow in the cavernous space, enough to guide the way but not to be spotted from outside. His ever-vigilant father would be out to investigate any light in the barn.
She turned quickly, her head dropping back to look up, a slight frown creasing her brow before she spotted him. ‘Hey,’ she said, her voice low, a smile replacing the frown.
‘Hey,’ he replied, also smiling. ‘Come on up.’
Scrambling to his feet, Clay strode to the long, wide, sturdy ladder that was fixed in permanent place a few feet away.
Leaning over it, he held the tealight for better guidance.
It was gratifying to see her lack of hesitation as she strode wordlessly to the ladder and clambered up as if she’d been climbing ladders all her life.
Her haste and the fact she didn’t take her eyes off him as she climbed was a dizzying aphrodisiac. It had only been a day but seeing her now, get closer and closer, it had felt like an age. Every hour away from her a chore of epic proportions.
Clay took a step back as her head levelled with the floor of the loft, offering his hand as she took the last two rungs, the pulse at his wrist leaping as her cool fingers slid over his heated palm.
He took another couple of steps back as her feet hit the hay-strewn floorboards, drawing her away from the ladder and the edge and into the loft proper.
‘Hey,’ he said again, their hands still joined, because frankly he was dumbstruck in this moment by the enormity of having her here with him like this.
By her willingness, her eagerness to be here.
And fuck, she was beautiful, the glow from the tealight a halo around the loose fall of her hair. Clay’s cock turned to granite at the sight of her flushed cheeks, her eyes glittering with excitement, her lips parted in anticipation.
‘Hey.’
Her throat bobbed as he continued to stare, every husky pull of her breath like a scrape of fingernails to his shaft. She was nervous, too, he realised, but not cowed by it, not dissuaded as her hand slid from his and she performed a slow pirouette.
Pristine blue jeans tucked into blingy city-girl boots outlined her long, coltish legs.
A short-sleeved, scoop-necked T-shirt – white underneath but overlaid with a shimmery pink lace – sat snug against her body, ending a half inch short of the denim waistband of her jeans, leaving a tantalising strip of midriff.
And then, as she came full circle, there were the buttons…
‘Buttons,’ she said, as if reading his mind, fingering one of the pearly discs and smiling tentatively.
Clay grinned as his eyes followed the line of tiny pink temptations from where they started at the lowest point of the scoop all the way down to the hem. He’d asked for them more to titillate than as an actual bone fide request, but Stevie had clearly taken him very seriously.
Hell if he didn’t want to unbutton each one – with his teeth.
‘You understood the assignment,’ he murmured, his eyes travelling all the way up again before returning to meet her gaze.
She lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. ‘Ask and you shall receive.’
Ordinarily being quoted from the Bible as he was contemplating carnal debauchery would not be conducive to maintaining an erection, but hell if the innuendo – intended or not – in that simple statement didn’t further inflate the problem in his pants.
It was going to be hell keeping his dick in check.
Still, he could see the shiny band of her purity ring and was hyperaware of another row of buttons.
The ones fastening her fly – famously much harder to navigate than the easy slide of a zipper.
Both the ring and her fly buttons were at odds with her words and her body language even if she wasn’t consciously aware of it.
Perhaps she wasn’t quite ready yet to lose her virginity? Tonight or any night. Or with him? Maybe she just wanted to fool around a bit, push the envelope a little more, try out a few things without going all the way?
Which was perfectly fine. He was up for whatever experimentation she was offering.
He’d happily be her guinea pig. Her very presence on the ranch had dragged him out of an epic funk, making him look outside himself and really see all the good things in his life.
So if she just wanted to dry hump him every night for the next two and a bit weeks, he’d lay back and enjoy.
Her gaze shifted from him to check out her surroundings. ‘So this is a…’
‘Loft.’
He looked around himself at the large open space.
One half was dominated by bales of hay stacked floor to ceiling, the sweet grassy smell perfuming the air.
Large double doors on sliders were placed centrally on the wall under the peak of the barn’s A-frame roof and opened to the outside where the hay could be tossed down.
The doors were shut now but Clay had always loved the elevated view over the farm, and he’d have shown her eagerly had they not been trying to be discreet.
‘We store hay up here so it stays dry for the winter months when we often have to supplement the cattle.’
She nodded absently as she wandered over to the large mound of loose hay that had been unbound from bales ready to be pitched down inside the barn for when they occasionally housed a horse or two for a brief spell.
‘That’s the haystack?’
‘I promised you one, didn’t I?’
‘You did.’ A smile touched her mouth as if she was remembering last night and it made her happy. ‘And’ – she tipped her chin at the plaid blanket Clay had already laid on the hay – ‘you came prepared.’
‘Well…’ He shrugged. ‘Straw ain’t as romantic as it looks in the movies.’
Wandering over to the mound, she murmured, ‘A regular boy scout, huh?’
‘No, ma’am.’ Clay grinned at the comparison. ‘Cowboys eat boy scouts for breakfast.’
She laughed. ‘I bet.’
Then she turned and gracefully lowered herself onto the blanket, bending her knees as she eased back onto her bent elbows. Lifting her eyes, she found his, that row of damn buttons taunting the fuck out of him despite the low light.
‘Are you going to join me?’ she asked, looking up at him through her eyelashes like a fucking angel, tempting him like the devil.