Page 3 of Breaking Her In

My eyes widen. “You’re joking.”

He stops, turns, and stares at me with a face of stone. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

I watch as he walks back outside, then quickly grab my bag and hurry after him. More mud soaks through my shoes as I nearly fall over myself on the way to the barn. Inside, it smells like hay and old wood and the faint tang of horse sweat.

I glance at a handsome chestnut stallion and immediately trip over a hay bale. I yelp as I fall, but Colt saves me by simply catching me with just one of his massive hands and lifting me back to my feet.

My whole body is flushed now, and the memory from when I was young is replaying in full clarity in my mind. He lifted me with the same ease–like I weigh absolutely nothing. His smell enters my nostrils, awakening a scent-memory I had completely forgotten. It’s like time traveling back five years to when I was just a kid with a huge crush.

“Careful, Lena. We’re not in the city anymore.”

At the end of the barn, there’s a ladder leading up to the loft. He takes my bag from me, and with a single throw, tosses it all the way up to the second level where I’ll soon be staying.

“Breakfast is at six sharp. Work at six-thirty,” he says, turning away. “Be there or go hungry.”

I look up at the ladder, then back to him. “Is this even legal?”

Again, he shrugs. “If you have a problem with it, just call your daddy.” He pauses, placing a hand to his chin. “Oh, that’s right. Your daddy has your phone, doesn’t he?”

Twisting my lips, I glare back at him. “You’re real charming, you know that?”

Once more, healmostsmiles. “Welcome to the ranch, sweetheart.”

2

COLT

She’s justlike I remember her.

How could I forget?

Even five years ago, Lena Kingsley was a loud, bratty menace, always sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Mostly in my business. She’d follow me around like a little stray puppy, bombarding me with questions, tugging on my shirtsleeves, and doing her best to make me laugh with whatever totally lame dad-joke she’d found online that day.

She used to look up at me with those big brown eyes, just daring me to snap at her. And I always did.

For Christ’s sake, she wasthirteen,and I worked for her father. I didn’t need some rumor going around that I had a thing for her–which definitely would have cracked her up to a massive degree.

I kept my head down and kept on with my work, doing my best to ignore her as she tried over and over to get a reaction out of me.

But now she’s back. And she’s not a little thirteen-year-old with pigtails and scraped knees anymore. She’s blossomed. She’s eighteen and all grown up. All curves and sass and trouble with a capital T. And every inch of that womanly physique has me clenching my fist and grinding my jaw while my cock aches beneath my pants.

She may be eighteen, but she’s still the boss’s daughter and a thousand social classes higher than me. I’ve got no goddamn right to look at her like this. Until yesterday, she was still a kid in my mind. But now her body says otherwise. And every time she opens her little smart mouth or bends over in those tiny shorts, something primal claws inside my gut.

Am I proud of it? No. In fact, I hate myself for wanting her this badly. For lusting over those curves, for dreaming about her legs wrapped around my waist or her thighs spread over my mouth.

But she’s too damn young and too off-limits. Hell, she’s too much of everything I shouldn’t touch. But my cock doesn’t care about any of that. Not when she bats those big brown eyes at me like she knows exactly what I’m thinking. Like she wants it.

This is bad.Reallybad.

I toss another hay bale off the truck and watch as she jumps like a little kitten spooked by the sound of a newspaper.

“Geez, how about a bit of a warning!” she shouts up through the dust. She has no idea what she’s doing–standing there with those big brown eyes glaring at me, hands on her womanly hips, her breasts going up and down beneath that tiny little tank top she has no business wearing around here.

My cock pulses, and I instantly look away. I have to.

If I don’t, I’ll make a mistake I can’t take back.

“You lay a finger on her and you’re gone.”That’s what her father said when he told me he was sending her up here. His voice was stern, and he wasn’t asking. He was telling. Take her for the summer, get her straightened out, show her what real work looks like. That’s it.

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