Page 27 of The Cowboy's Redemption
“Are you sure they’re the right match? Neither horse has a real fire in them.”
He was sure. So sure, in fact, that if he didn’t take a chance on an additional match now, he’d regret it forever.
“I study aggression in bulls, remember?” he said. “Some breeders can’t understand that aggression and determination are two separate things.” Ryan O’Connell came to mind. “That fire you talk about… Aggression’s a hot flame. It’s for show. It riles up the animal and blinds it to reason. Determination, now.” He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, letting his fingers trail the length of her throat, sending a message along with his touch. “It’s a slow burn. It utilizes patience. Steadiness. A refusal to be turned from the goal. It’s the real mark of a winner—no matter what type of animal we’re talking about.”
Dana tipped her head, trapping his hand between her cheek and her shoulder. Lovely, quiet eyes studied him in a way that had him rethinking the whole slow, steady approach he normally favored.
“If you don’t make a decision soon, it’s going to be taken out of your hands,” he added.
To prove his point, Lady sashayed to the fence and presented herself to the stud, who made a half-hearted lunge at the fence before veering away, as if testing its strength.
“Dammit.” Levi sprang to his feet, scattering brownies and bread. Even a well-mannered stud was only so patient. “I don’t want to have to mend that fence tonight. Get a halter on Lady so you can hold her, then let her through the gate. I’ll handle the stud.”
Normally, Otto let the stud and the mare take care of business themselves. But Levi had handled the stud for him a few times, when he’d had a mare that had never been bred before, and he hadn’t known how she’d respond. The trick was in not manhandling the stud, or trying to dominate him, but to guide him and keep him from getting overexcited. The halter he used had a chain that slipped under the horse’s chin, which created just enough friction to gain his attention but not enough to cause aggravation.
Levi gave the stud a long lead, then let him walk up to Lady on his own terms to introduce himself to her. Dana held Lady steady, but the mare proved receptive, and from the first nuzzle of greeting, other than for Levi holding the mare’s tail aside while she was covered, human intervention was unrequired.
Levi slipped the halter off the stud before turning him loose. Dana did the same with Lady. They’d leave the two horses penned together for the next three or four days, so the mare could be covered again, but until then, they’d be fine on their own.
They stood for a while, shoulder to shoulder, watching the horses from the other side of the fence. Twilight slowly settled, cooling the air, but not unpleasantly so. Bands of red gold bled into the navy horizon.
“I feel like I committed a felony,” Dana said.
“Then I guess we’re partners in crime, although calling it a felony seems extreme,” he said, teasing her a little. “It’s more the equivalent of having one too many items in the express lane at the supermarket. Nobody’s counting, but you know it’s there. Besides, we just saved the new owners a fence. That’s worth compensation.”
She turned toward him, easing into his arms, and hooked her thumbs into the beltloops of his jeans at the small of his back. She crinkled her nose and smiled up at him with her eyes. The outside of her thigh rubbed against the inside of his. Levi’s heart trembled. She was so beautiful, and he wanted her somuch.
Now he was the one who could use a distraction.
“Otto wasn’t much for record keeping,” he continued, once he could breathe enough to get the words out, even if they were pitched too high, “but he does keep a notebook accounting for the mares this stud has bred. Do you want me to write Lady down? Proof of lineage will increase the value of a foal, if she carries one to term.” There was always the chance that she wouldn’t. Horses were finicky breeders, with miscarriages common, and she was old for a first timer.
He waited while Dana weighed her conscience against the reward.
“Write it down,” she finally said. “I’ll deal with the problem if it becomes one.”
It wasn’t going to be a problem for her, because he’d simply record yesterday’s date. His handwriting appeared in Otto’s notebook often enough for it to pass unremarked. And as for his conscience weighed against the benefits to Dana?
Her benefits beat his conscience hands down.
She stayed in his arms with their bodies connected. The pads of her thumbs casually mused up and down either side of his spine. She increased the friction against the inside of his thigh, and the crotch of his jeans grew uncomfortably tight. Her hands stroked his ass, coaxing the bulge in his jeans to align with her pelvis, and there went any self-control he possessed. She had to know what she was doing to him.
Why not? What was holding him back? Sex was as good a distraction as any and better than most. He kissed her lips. Slowly. Thoroughly. With no more than the light stroke of his tongue, and a great deal of promise, because he was incapable of saying no to her twice—and if he was going to be pulling this night out of his memories for the next fifty or so years, then she would be, too. Guaranteed.
Her eyes were drowsy when he lifted his head. Faintly astonished. Wide and unfocused. Filled with hunger.
“My God,” she said softly.
Her palm drifted to his aching groin, where his responding hunger for her was on prominent display. Confident fingers wandered the length of hardness that strained at his zipper. He sucked in a breath.
But those years spent with city girls in New York had taught him not to think with his dick. Women, he’d learned, were a study in contradictions. The boldest in public were often the shyest in private, and the reverse often held true.
While Dana had never been shy, right now, there was nothing ladylike about her either. He didn’t kid himself that she wanted anything more from him than the physical act, which was all those city girls were ever interested in.
The difference between Dana and them, however, was that to her, he wasn’t some exotic, alien species. Today had been rough for them both, and even if he was more invested in her than she was in him, what could be more life-affirming than sex?
He wasn’t going to take her here, on the grass, though. Not when the warmth of a soft blanket beckoned a short distance away. Where he could undress her. Watch her face by the fading light as he touched her. He could think of five different ways to bring her to pleasure off the top of his head, and he’d use them all. He’d make a game out of it. The night had barely begun.
“Come with me,” he said.
