Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Annie
What am I doing?
This is a mistake.
Objectively, professionally, structurally… every part of my brain that likes order, consequences, and not blowing up my own life is screaming that this is a terrible idea.
I’ve been here a week.
He’s one of my bosses.
This ranch already feels like a pressure cooker of secrets and expectations. I’m absolutely not supposed to be making… this kind of connection.
And yet…
When was the last time I didn’t overthink everything into the ground?
When was the last time I let myself want something without immediately planning the exit?
I should stop.
I should pull back, make a joke, put space between us before this turns into something I can’t neatly pack away and carry with me when I leave.
But then Duke kisses me again.
And the world just… drops out from under my feet.
Nothing make sense anymore. I can’t even think. All I can do is feel.
I jerk at his shirt. It comes up over his head, and Duke’s skin is so warm and taut I forget whatever half-clever thing I was going to say.
He shivers when I run my fingers down his chest, over the ladder of old scars and new tan lines, and then he grabs my wrist, thumb biting into the soft tissue as if searching for more.
His mouth curls at the edge, the half-grin transformed by hunger. “You want me, Annie?”
I should say something flippant, words that remind both of us that this is a terrible idea, but all I can do is nod once, hard enough to make him smile in relief.
“Yeah. I do.”
After the day I’ve had, maybe even the week, I want to be ruined. I want everything bared and shaken out and put back together with someone else’s hands.
I thread my fingers into his hair and draw him closer, crashing my mouth to his once more.
Then he deposits me bodily in the center of the mattress. The wood creaks and the springs shriek.
He climbs above me, shoving his shirt the rest of the way off so I can sink my teeth into the muscle of his shoulder, just above the bruised old tattoo.
He hisses, but keeps moving, stripping me while I clutch at his belt. His hands are loose, not the frantic scramble I half-expected, but as if he’s confident he’ll get as much time as he wants.
We’re a tangle of heat and teeth and grabbing, animalistic, until he pins my wrists above my head and holds me there with one palm as though I’m nothing but a too-energetic foal.
“You gonna behave?” he pants, breath loud. “Or am I gonna have to teach you a lesson about running your mouth on Ironwood Ranch?”
I cock a brow. A game… I like a game…
“I’ll try to behave.” I pout playfully. “But I can’t always promise to succeed…”
He grins, feral, like I’ve just thrown down the gauntlet.
And then he’s kissing me again, all teeth and tongue, pushing in and taking, the stubble of his jaw scraping my chin raw.
My mouth opens under his, an involuntary gasp, as he slides me out of my leggings and slips his rough, callused hands into my panties and beelines for my clit.
He strokes it, feather light, like he’s reading braille with his thumb, and it’s so precise I nearly buck him off the bed. My hands fight for freedom but he holds me fast.
“Fuck,” I gasp, because it’s the only word left, my world narrowed to a hot, vibrating point where his hand is.
Until I notice his other hand, snaking around my throat.
I laugh, or try, but it comes out as a moan. He’s learned my body in a minute, mapped the pulse between my thighs and tuned every touch to the melody of my need.
Even though he let go of my wrists, I keep them where he left them. Frozen, compliant, the shape of his dominance burned into the skin until I can almost see the fingerprint bruises forming.
His fingers remain at my throat cradling it, his palm a shackle and a shelter. Little circling sweeps of his thumb, fingers fanned in my hair.
My heart hammers against his wrist, announcing every conflicting thing I feel: the panic, the trust, the hungry, ungovernable want.
“Duke,” I pant. “Stop teasing me, I can’t take it.”
He leans down, hovers above my mouth. “You that needy, huh?”
“Oh, Duke, you have no idea…”
But that’s as far as I get, because he’s already flipping me over, so my face is buried in a pillow that smells like cut grass and resin.
He yanks my panties down my thighs so fast the elastic bites into my skin. I want to protest the sudden loss of eye contact, the way he’s using my hips and thighs like handlebars, but the next second his hand twists in my hair, yanking me upright.
The position is rude and helpless at once: I’m kneeling, back arched, breasts crushed to the mattress, his grip unyielding at my scalp, forcing my gaze forward.
I catch a glimpse of us in the cracked mirror over the cheap dresser. My face is wild, eyes huge, hair a mess. His look is possessed, hungry, a little crazed at the edges.
I’m not sure which of us looks more unhinged.
He kneels behind me, thick hands bracketing my hips, chin tucked against my shoulder, mouth pressed to a tight grimace of control.
He bears me down, and the whole green and brown universe narrows to the sweep of his body over mine, the cowboy-tough grip, the scratch of calluses even against my hips.
“Good girl,” he says, right into my ear, and the shameful throb in me spikes so hard my teeth clench around a scream.
He pulls back, just enough so the air chills the damp skin of my thighs, then thrusts in slow, so I feel every ragged inch, every splinter and catch.
I groan, shuddering, my hands fisting the sheets, not even pretending to keep silent. The noises I’m making are raw and new, pulled up from some subterranean chamber in me that never once thought to come out and see the light of day.
“Harder,” I cry out. “Duke, I need all of you.”
There’s a snarl in my ear as he grants my wish, and the sound that escapes me isn’t human. Each snap of his hips drives it deeper, echoing in my spine, up into the roots of my skull where his fist clutches my hair, and I’m lost, tunneling into a blackness that borders on whiteout.
I barely register the thunk of the headboard against the wall, or the huffed, animal noises he makes behind me, just the primitive biology of it, the way need overwhelms everything else until it’s just pressure and heat and the cracking near pain of being filled so relentlessly, so damn complete it almost hurts.
I’m being spent, wrung out, pressed until every soft and secret bit of me is exposed to the world.
I can’t even form words now, just little keening ahs and nnghs, splayed around the battered bed frame while Duke saws into me like the world will end for my benefit alone.
I lose myself on that edge, the pleasure so acute it registers as delirium.
His hand holds me at the small of my back, forcing my pelvis into an impossible arch as he pulls out. Hot lines streak across my skin.
Every nerve is alight, every part of me now aware that I’m bare and split open for him. So much so I think I’ll combust right here and now.
He grinds his cock against the small of my back, and I gasp as he rubs himself against the tender skin, the viscous mess cooling in the air, obscene and hot and wrong in a way that makes me want to cry with relief.
I collapse, arms splayed above me, cheek pressed to the pillow, choking on laughter that edges desperately close to sobbing.
Duke slides down beside me, one arm tossed over my waist, the other tangled in my ruined hair, and I can’t tell if he’s laughing or just lost for breath.
We fold together in the ragged aftershocks, raw with sweat and the effort of having taken everything.
I know this is a mistake. Rationally, I know it can only come back to bite me on the ass.
But in the heat of this moment, all I want to do is enjoy not being frazzled. Just for five minutes.