Authors: Mandy Harbin
Chapter
Seven
Don’t
you dare fall in love with him,
Brindle thought for the hundredth time this morning as she watched Dawson sleeping beside her. He had the cutest snore. The wrinkle between his eyes was gone as he rested. He looked peaceful. Not that he looked violent otherwise, but he was a hard man with a stressful life. She liked that he seemed to joke with her a little, like she got a glimpse of a man that no one ever saw. What was more, how he looked at her. No man had ever gazed at her like he had last night. In the barn, in the bed. It didn’t matter. It was a look of utter need. There was no other way to describe it. As if he was dying of dehydration and she was his water supply.
I’m falling in love with him.
But she couldn’t. She had to find a way to stop her feelings. Sure he looked at her as if he needed her more than anything else, but he was a man. She’d long had her fill of men doing or saying the right thing to get her into bed. What happened next would help her to see if he was just like any other person with a penis or if he was someone special. Not that she could allow that. He was rich. He didn’t live here. He traveled the world. Her home was on this ranch. Even if he did want something more than his physical thing between them, it’d never work. Why was life this complicated? And why was she even thinking about this? There was no future with this man.
This beautiful, caring, protective man.
“I can’t sleep when I’m being watched,” he said and opened an eye.
She bit her lip to keep from smiling.
“Hi,” he whispered.
Dang butterflies started swimming around in her belly. “Hi.”
He stretched and turned toward her. When he ran his hand through her morning hair, she had to fight down the shivers that wanted to rack her body. “How long have you been awake?”
She glanced at the clock over his shoulder. “Seven minutes.”
“Mmm. Why don’t you turn over, so I can spoon you? I think I need at least thirty minutes of that before we get up.”
Her heart pounded as he urged her around. This man who was usually all business wanted to cuddle with her. After sleeping next to her all night? It was incredibly sweet.
And very dangerous to her heart.
After she rolled, he tucked his arm around her, scooted up against her back, and nuzzled her neck. “That’s better.”
Maybe for him! He seemed to relax into her, as if he could fall back to sleep in a second, but her body was firing up. Any laziness she might have felt quickly dissipated. She had to fight herself from wiggling her butt against him. She hadn’t showered or brushed her teeth, but she had the craziest urge to push him onto his back and maul him! She wasn’t the take charge type. Not in bed. But this man did things to her.
Made her want.
She wasn’t sure if it was his confidence, his power … or his erection currently poking her backside. But she had this need to show him she could take from him anything she really wanted, and that he’d love it. Could have been the need to embrace the physical and shut-up the emotional. She honestly didn’t know. But right now she couldn’t think about anything else but consuming this man.
“You’re panting,” he said, almost growling.
She turned, pushing him onto his back.
“Brindle,” he said almost as a warning. His gaze darkened with need.
Rather than say anything, she showed him just what she wanted by diving under the sheet and grabbing his cock. The blankets flew away from her, exposing her bare body, right before he clutched her hair.
He hissed when she licked the head of his dick. “Baby. You don’t have—
ahh.”
She took him into her mouth, sucking him hard. His hips bucked, so she grabbed his thigh for purchase while she stroked him with the other. The hand on her head was an aching combination of tender encouragement and impatience, as if he fought to be gentle. It turned her on even more that she moaned around him.
“I-I can’t, Brindle,” he said before grabbing her arms and pulling her off him. She was disappointed with the sudden loss, but that feeling morphed into elation when she watched him grab a condom from the nightstand. “I need you.”
When he pushed into her, he wasn’t gentle. Her body struggled to accept him, but she wiggled a little to ease his way. He cussed, and she realized she’d bit down on his shoulder. “Sorry,” she muttered as she squeezed his back.
He didn’t seem to notice. Where last night he’d been this man of semi-calculated need, this morning he was a beast, rutting on her, and she loved it.
Absolutely loved it.
But there was something inside her that wanted him to turn to putty, not him taking her. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d pushed his shoulders. His glazed eyes focused on her with a hint of confusion as he rolled to his back. Did he think she was rejecting him? Ha! She tossed her leg over his waist and dropped down onto his penis. His eyes squeezed shut. His head dug into the pillow. But his hips? They couldn’t be still. He thrusted up as she dropped down, over and over.
“What are you doing to me?” he said, and she wasn’t sure if he realized he’d said anything.
“Showing you I can be the boss here, too.”
His gaze flew to hers. “Maybe I’m just letting you think that.”
She rose up and barely rode the tip of him. He thrusted up, but she moved away, not letting him go any deeper, teasing him and testing herself. His grip on her hips tightened. “I will toss you over and pound you into this mattress.”
Oh the idea of that made her even wetter, but she wanted to see this through. Wanted this man to surrender to her, if only in this way, this one time. She leaned closer and lightly licked his lip. “Then let me,” she whispered. “Trust me to give you what you need.” When his mouth opened, she didn’t give him a chance to reply. Rather, her tongue slipped in, stealing the words.
His hands flexed, but loosened, and she took that as a sign of his surrender. Slowly she began to ride him again, taking him all the way in and almost all the way out. When she started to pull away from him and sit up for better penetration, both of his hands left her waist and dove into her hair, holding her mouth to his.
She took it as a beautiful compromise, and kept kissing him as she moved up and down. Eventually, though, his hips began to move again, lifting up to meet her downward stroke. She sucked in a breath when he did it again, hitting a spot inside her that had her seeing stars behind her eyelids. He groaned into her mouth as if he knew he was about to make her come.
Because he was.
Oh god, she was going to come so hard. She quickened her movements. His hands tightened in her hair as his thrusts became sharper. When she could barely breath, she ripped her mouth away from his, and he grabbed her shoulders instead, holding her down as he stabbed into her. She tried to keep the rhythm, but she was lost to the sensation. He said something, what she had no idea. Her nails dug into his chest as she fought off the orgasm, but it was too late, she flew over the precipice right before his deafening roar sounded in her ear. She sucked in breaths, over and over, trying to ease her pounding heart, but the loud sound didn’t stop.
“What’s that sound?” he asked right as she opened her eyes. His own breaths were coming quickly, but he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze zeroed in on the window.
Reality slammed into her. The roar hadn’t been Dawson … or not only him. “The alarm,” she said as she scrambled off.
“What alarm?” he asked, sitting up.
“One of the gates is open.”
“What?”
He got out of the bed, and she forced herself not to look at his gorgeous body. “I thought the alarms were silent, so they wouldn’t scare the animals.”
“They are,” she said as she dug through her dresser for clothing. “But it sounds off here, in the office, and sends a text alert to my phone.” She whipped on a pair of jeans and a cotton shirt and then dug for her phone. “It’s Autumn’s area.” She looked up at Dawson, and he’d thrown on his clothes from the night before.
“Could be a malfunction,” he said calmly. “The kinks, remember?”
“Or not.” Though they’d never had any break-ins before. She killed the alarms. They weren’t doing anything more productive at this point than making noise.
“Let’s go,” he said as he grabbed her arm. He didn’t have to tell her twice.
* * * * *
Within
minutes they arrived at Autumn’s pasture.
“It’s not the front gate,” Dawson yelled over the road noise as they pulled up.
Brindle didn’t say anything as he squealed the ATV to a stop. She just wanted to get in and inspect things. She jogged up to the barn and pulled the door open, but she heard Autumn before she rounded the corner. Something was differently wrong.
“Hey, sweetie,” Brindle said softly, walking up to the agitated horse.
“I thought she was free to roam outside all the time unless things were dire.”
“Maybe Kaya wanted to keep her and the foal in here a few days to help bond.”
She reached the stall and gently offered her hand. Autumn neighed and rose up on her hide quarters. Brindle quickly glanced around. “Where’s the foal?” she asked nervously.
“I’ll check outside,” Dawson said and darted out the back.
It took several minutes for Brindle to soothe the angry horse, all the while her mind raced with the possibilities. They lived up north. It was possible a bear or another wild animal breached the gate and got the foal. She didn’t want to think like that, though. Maybe Kaya had to take the foal into her office for further exams, but she’d have called and told Brindle, so that didn’t make any sense. Maybe the baby just got out and the gate hadn’t been secured enough. They
were
still dealing with issues in the system. It could be a coincidence the horse was gone and the gate alarm went off.
She looked around inside, making sure the foal wasn’t asleep in a corner somewhere.
“I found this,” Dawson said as he ran back in.
It was the temporary tag Kaya had put on the foal shortly after birth. “Oh no,” she breathed. It wasn’t ragged as if it had been chewed off by an animal. The slice was smooth.
“Someone purposefully cut it off.”
“Why?” Dawson asked.
Brindle stared up at him. Understanding dawning and clogging her throat. “Because someone took her.”
Dawson ran a hand through his hair. “Why?” he asked slowly. She watched the analytical mode she knew he possessed lock in. “What’s a baby horse worth?”
“I—” She didn’t know how to answer that. Any number of reasons, really. She looked around trying to wade through the fog and think clearly about it. Then she saw it. “Son of a bitch!” She stormed to the side and picked up an empty package of chewing tobacco. “This was not here when we left.”
“Don’t touch it! We already know someone has been in here. It’s evidence.” He fished out his phone. “I’m calling the police.”
She laughed humorlessly. “You don’t have to do that. I know exactly who this belongs to. Trent.”
“Presley?”
She gave him a quick nod, worried if she opened her mouth, she’s scream and scare Autumn again.
“Why would he do something like that?” Dawson asked incredulously and frowned at him.
“Because he has it out for me, I guess. He knows you’re here trying to decide on keeping the ranch. Maybe he wants to show you I’m so incompetent I can’t even keep tabs on one little horse. Make you boot me out and put him in my position. Who knows?” As she said the words though, she felt the rightness of them. That’s exactly what the jerk thought! “I’m going to have words with him,” she muttered and turned.
Dawson grabbed her arm, stopping her. “You don’t know any of this for a fact. We need to call the police. There’s thousands of dollars invested in that horse. A crime has been committed, and we need to notify the authorities.”
“If we call the cops, we’ll just get bad publicity. We can handle this internally.”
“What if you’re wrong about Trent?”
“I’m not wrong about him.”
Dawson crossed his arms. “Really? Because history says you don’t read him well.”
She reared back as if he’d slapped her. How dare he throw her past with that sleaze ball in her face. “You know, not everything is as black and white as you make it out to be in your rich, little world.” With that, she yanked her arm away and stormed off.
“Brindle! Come back here.”
She looked over her shoulder. “Do whatever you want. Call the police. I’m getting the foal back.”
And then she was going to fire Trent’s sorry butt once and for all. She hopped on the ATV, not caring that she was leaving Dawson there without a ride back, and fled down the road. He could get one of the officers to drive him back to the house.