Chapter 5 #2
“It’s with one of the top five firms in the nation.
That I got interviewed at all was a huge honor, and that they offered me the job…
it’s essentially the pinnacle of my academic achievement.
On the surface, it sounds amazing. Insane starting salary, a deal on a swank condo near the office.
A gym and dry cleaners in the building. Runners to pick up any food you could desire.
It sounds like a lot of perks, right? But it’s because you’re basically selling your soul for eighty-hour work weeks and a shot at partner. ”
Equal parts impressed and appalled, Sebastian leaned back to look into her face. “You’ve done all this to earn your father’s approval?”
Laurel winced. “Pretty much, yeah.”
He understood exactly the kind of toll it took to push yourself to the limits in the name of pleasing someone else.
“It’s impressive as hell. You’re impressive as hell.
But this is your life, Laurel. If you really wanted this, wanted that life, that would be one thing.
But it’s obvious you don’t. And you can’t do this to yourself for someone else. That’s a really terrible reason.”
She stiffened, straightening to look at him. “I don’t have a choice.”
There was always a choice. But she didn’t want to make it. Sebastian recognized she wasn’t in a place where he could convince her to stand her ground and take a page from her brother’s playbook, so he’d let it go. For now.
“So what exactly do you want while you’re here?”
Frowning, she made a long, wary scan of his face. “I want to relax. I want to not think about next semester. I want to get back in the saddle again.” She paused. “And I’d like to get you know you better. Whatever that might entail.”
He’d started this conversation intending to explain as best he could why getting tangled up together was a bad idea.
But she was standing at a crossroads in her life, still primed to go headlong down the wrong path.
Saving her from herself felt like something that would help balance his personal scales, paying forward the kindness and compassion he’d received from her brother.
And, he selfishly wanted to get to know her better, too.
He wanted to give in to this attraction.
To take what she was offering for this liminal time before they both went back to their normal lives.
So he brushed a stray lock of hair back from her face. “Okay.”
Laurel frowned. “Okay?”
“I can handle all that.” What the hell. In for a penny… “And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to handle you.”
Her pupils sprang wide and the pulse in her throat began to hammer.
Sebastian indulged himself, stroking a thumb over that sensitive point, feeling it flutter against his touch.
She didn’t close the distance. He realized that he’d have to make the move this time.
So he did, leaning in to close the scant space between them.
He meant for the kiss to be sweet. He really did.
But at the first brush of their lips, the heat between them exploded.
Her hands dove into his hair, gripping his head so she could angle for a deeper kiss, and damn, her taking what she wanted was hot as hell.
Heart knocking against his ribs, he licked into her mouth, loving how she met him stroke for stroke.
On a growl, he skimmed his palms beneath her sweatshirt, up her torso to cup her breasts.
Laurel moaned, arching into his touch. He devoured her mouth and wondered how fast he could strip her naked and plunge into all that softness.
Apparently entirely on board, Laurel tipped back, dragging him with her.
All but drunk on the taste of her, he twisted to follow… and rolled right off the sofa.
He crashed to the floor with an ooph, cracking his head against the hardwood.
“Oh my God. Are you okay?”
Sebastian sucked in a breath. “Fine. I just had a little sanity knocked into me.” He was about to take her with no finesse, no forethought, and more importantly, no condom, on her brother’s living room couch. Shit.
“Please tell me you didn’t just change your mind about all this.”
No. He hadn’t changed his mind. He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.
But he also wanted to help her make a better decision than he had.
To do that, their relationship had to be about more than just sex on every available surface—as appealing as that thought was.
He needed to be her friend, not just a holiday fling.
And if he was honest—and damned, he’d better get used to that since Laurel demanded nothing less—it was also about protecting himself.
The only thing worse than never having her would be to have her knowing he’d never get another chance at that kind of perfection.
So he’d have to set himself some limits. But only some. He was human, after all.
“No. I’m going to want to get my mouth back on you at the earliest opportunity.”
She blew out a breath. “Thank God.”
“But—”
“I hate ‘but.’”
He dragged himself into a sitting position. “We’re going to slow this down a little bit.” Now that the fog of lust was starting to clear a bit, he could see the sense in that.
“Slow it down? You do remember we only have ten days, right?”
“We aren’t going to spend all of them in bed.”
Her gaze sharpened on his face as she neatly stacked the paperbacks he’d knocked off, back on the coffee table. “The corollary of that is that we’re going to spend some of them in bed.”
God, this woman. “I’m gonna go ahead and tell you that the lawyer speak, when you’re looking all mussed from my hands, is hot as hell.”
She flashed a wicked grin. “I have so much more where that came from. But you didn’t answer my question.”
“Pardon me, counselor.” He scrubbed a hand over his face to hide his smile. “Yeah, I expect that’s going to be a foregone conclusion at this point. But right now, you’re going to find some boots.”
“Boots?”
“Yeah. We’re going for a ride.”
“It’s so beautiful here.” From the back of her mount, a sweet-tempered mare named Blossom, Laurel tried to look at everything at once.
Her brother’s land stretched far as the eye could see, with pastures giving way to cultivated fields.
Even in the early winter, it made a picture.
One that was rapidly imprinting on her heart.
“I can see why Logan fell in love with it.”
“He picked a helluva a spot, that’s for sure.”
“I can’t even remember the last time I was really out in nature for an extended period of time.
Maybe right after Logan bought the place, when I came out to visit for a week that summer.
But that was before he turned it into all this.
Before I started law school.” And that was a dim, distant memory, buried under hundreds of hours of lectures and thousands of pages of reading.
“You know, it’s lowering to admit, but this is the first thing I’ve done for pure pleasure in years. ”
“When was the last time you were in the saddle?”
“Oh man.” She thought back. “High school.” Horseback riding wasn’t precisely like riding a bike, but she’d found her rhythm quicker than expected.
“Why is that? Did your parents make you quit?”
“No. Not overtly, anyway. I gave up riding when I started buckling down and getting serious about my future. I’ve been so driven and focused, always with my eye on the prize. I haven't taken the time just to breathe, to enjoy something for the sake of enjoying it, to get out in the actual world.”
“And how does it feel?”
“Amazing.” The ease and freedom were such a contrast to how she’d been living.
It really brought home exactly how unbalanced her life was.
Was that what had driven her brother to walk away from everything?
She’d never asked him, maybe because she was afraid of the answer.
But she could see the seduction of that kind of radical change.
Bo and Peep bounded ahead, pausing to sniff here and there before racing off again with cheerful barks.
Sebastian rode abreast of her on a big, dark brown gelding named Brego, looking perfectly in his element.
Still, even though they were in motion. How the hell did he manage that kind of Zen?
Was it the land? The horses? Some combination of both?
“I’m really envying you right now.”
One dark brow winged up as Sebastian glanced over at her. “Why?”
“To get a chance to do this all the time. That sounds like paradise.”
His eyes crinkled at the edges. “It’s not all trail rides all the time. Running a stable, even a small one like this, is a lot of work.”
“You call sixteen horses small?”
“Well, I grew up on a farm with closer to a hundred, so yeah.”
Laurel couldn’t even imagine the true scope of that kind of operation. Whoever his mother had worked for had some very serious money. “My inner tween girl just had a major squee. What was it like?”
“Pretty fucking awesome. I mean…work. Always work. There was basically never a chance to sleep in, which sucked a lot in high school. And I have shoveled a lot of shit in my lifetime. But the horses…they were always worth it. Getting to see them run. Or better—being on their back when they did. There’s nothing like it. ”
“No. No, there’s not.” She grinned at him. “Race you.”
Before he could answer, she kicked Blossom into a canter, suffering a few bone-jarring strides before she found her seat.
Sebastian and Brego caught them fast, but they stayed neck-and-neck as they raced across the pasture, toward the edge of the valley.
The wind whipped her hair and stung her cheeks, and she felt more alive than she had in years.
By the time they eased their mounts back, she was laughing with unfettered delight. “That. Was. Awesome!”
“You’ve got a pretty good seat for someone who hasn’t ridden in the better part of a decade.”
“Are you checking out my ass, Sebastian?”