Gentling the Cowboy (23 page)

He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed in a sexy way that Sarah cautioned her libido to ignore. He met her eyes with an openness she hadn’t seen since the cabin and said, “I’m sorry about dinner.”

Sarah touched his tense jaw with one soft hand. “It’s okay. Part of it was my fault. I knew you didn’t want it, but I thought that once we were all together you would see how it could be. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”

“You didn’t.”

Really, then why do you look so miserable? What is holding you back from being happy?
“When we were at the cabin you laughed. You smiled and joked. Why can’t you do that here?”

At first she didn’t think Tony would answer, but then he took her hand from his cheek and held it in his. “The cabin was different. It wasn’t real so I didn’t care.” Sarah tensed and pulled at her hand, but he gripped it and said, “That came out wrong.”

It’d better have.

Tony tipped her face up with a finger beneath her chin. “When I start thinking I know what I’m doing, really know—that’s when things fall apart. It’s never as good as you think it is, and if you let yourself believe it is, you’re setting yourself up for a bad fall.”

Sarah looked up into his beautiful green eyes and prompted, “Please tell me. Let me in.”

Tony pulled her to his chest, unwilling or unable to look her in the eye as he opened up to her. “My mother left when I was real young. I don’t remember her, but I do remember wanting to find her. I used to ask about her all the time. Didn’t matter who I met, I interrogated them. I was sure that if I asked enough people, I’d find her. You know what I found? Dean. Seems my mother left soon after I was born because she found out my father had been married before and never told her. Neither woman wanted anything to do with my father until Dean’s mother decided it was important for brothers to know each other.”

“So, Dean’s really your half brother?”

“Half, whole, it never mattered. We’re not close.”

“Did he want to be?”

“I don’t know what the hell he wanted, but after I found him I couldn’t shake him. He was always visiting, sometimes with the mother he got along so well with. All it ever did was set my father and me to fighting until we couldn’t be in the same room anymore. My father always told me that the fewer questions a man asked, the happier he tended to be. He was right in that case. I moved out at sixteen because my father and I couldn’t talk without coming to blows.”

Sarah hugged him as he went on. “I used to believe in what I was doing with horses. I had all the answers. I lost that and more when Kimberly died.” He shuddered against her, betraying how much it had cost him to relive both times.

Tipping her head back, Sarah said, “I wish I could guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to either one of us again. If they ever do invent a time machine, I’ll be the first one in line to go back and try to do most of it better. But until then, this is the only life I’m going to have and I don’t want to waste any more of it. You helped me see that. It took coming here to see that I was only half alive up North. I could blame my parents. I could blame my brother. But no one did that to me. I did it. I let my life become so much less than it was meant to be. I won’t make that mistake twice.”

His heart thudded in his chest as she continued to speak.

“Life is scary, but I think it’s supposed to be. If you’re living it right, that is.”

He hugged her tighter against him. “What do you want from me, Sarah?”

She met his eyes and dared the truth. “A chance.”

He nodded and ran a finger teasingly over the neckline of her dress. “And in return?”

Sarah raised herself onto her tiptoes and whispered, “A confession.”

He growled deep in his throat, “I like that. Tell me.”

Rubbing herself against him, Sarah said, “When you grabbed the back of my head and pulled me to you, I liked it.”

He reenacted his early move, burying his hand in the back of her hair and holding her helplessly immobile before him. “You mean this?”

She sighed through parted lips, “Yes.”

He claimed her lips with his, teasing, testing, while he boldly slid a hand beneath the back hem of her dress, cupping her ass roughly. “You like it rough?”

Sarah playfully struggled against his hold, loving how easily he restrained her. “I don’t know, but I’d like to try it out,” she admitted.

His mouth closed over hers again, his tongue deep within her mouth, demanding a submission she gladly gave. With one strong move he ripped her thong underwear off. There was a sting to the move. Sarah moaned into the kiss, loving how the slight pain flooded her with want.

He growled into her ear. “I told you earlier that there’d be a price to pay for inviting everyone to dinner.”

Sarah wasn’t sure if his anger was fake or real, and she didn’t know if she cared.

He set her away from him for a moment and took off his belt. Her eyes rounded as she realized she should have defined rough before the game started.

He laughed and dropped the belt, along with the rest of his clothing to the floor. “Don’t worry, I would never mark what is mine.”

She turned to flee, half in jest and half in response to what she was pretty sure he intended to do. He grabbed her around the waist, swung her up and sat on the edge of the bed, settling her face down across his lap. The sting of the first spank was softened by the material of her dress, but then he slid it up, exposing her bare ass to his reprimand. “Do you like soft?” He tapped one ass cheek lightly. “Or hard?” The crack of his hand echoed in the quiet of the room and Sarah gasped at the sudden pain, then marveled how it intensified her desire.

“Both,” she panted and squirmed in his hold.

He repeated the same pattern on her other cheek. Another gasp and more pleasure. A few more spanks and Sarah was writhing and moaning. Just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, he bent and kissed the flesh he’d reddened. He ran his hand down the back of one of her thighs and pushed her legs apart wider.

With one hand, he held her head arched back by pulling on a fistful of hair while he slid one finger of his other hand inside her soaked pussy. His thumb sought and circled her excited nub. His erection jutted against her stomach. “You’re not in control here, Sarah. I am.” He thrust another finger inside her, pumping in and out, faster and faster. “You only come when I tell you to.”

He kissed her waist, bit her lightly on the curve of her ass and kept a steady rhythm within her. He’d stop, twirl a finger, rub her clit with increased speed, then stop again. She felt orgasms build, then retreat, only to come back stronger and fiercer in their promise.

“Oh, God,” she gripped his leg. “Don’t stop again. Please.”

“I like it when you beg.”

“Don’t make me kick your ass,” she threatened in a haze of frustrated desire.

He chuckled, but his hand started moving again, faster than before, while his thumb lavishly rewarded her most sensitive spot. “Now, Sarah. Come for me.”

“Yes,” she wept, moving her hips against the fingers he’d paused within her.

He released her hair, removed his hand and rolled her over in his arms, kissing her lightly as the last waves of orgasm shook through her. She laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and said, “Apology accepted.”

He chuckled again, then stood, still holding her in his arms as he carried her back to his bed. Later, spent and wrapped in each other’s arms, Tony was just about to fall asleep when Sarah asked, “Would you be upset if I quickly wrote a few things in my notebook before I forget them?”

He opened one eye and said, “I don’t know which I should worry about more—that you have enough energy to write, or that you’re afraid you’ll forget what we did.”

Sarah laughed and stood naked beside the bed. “Would it help if I told you that I want to capture the wonder of it all?”

He smiled and closed his eyes with a groan. “Go get your notebook. You can read it to me tomorrow, and if you forgot any details we can repeat tonight again and again. Purely to help you with your research.”

Sarah lifted his shirt off the floor and threw it at him. He caught it a few inches above his head, smiled, and dropped it to the floor.

Pulling her notebook and pen out of her bag, Sarah headed back to the bed and thought,
I hope he doesn’t really believe I’m doing this for my book. What we have is about so much more than sex.

Isn’t it?

Three weeks later, Sarah was sitting on the porch in a cotton summer dress and the cowboy boots Tony had surprised her with, hugging her notebook to her chest. Time had flown by in a happy haze of notebook-worthy lovemaking. Being with a lover who was both demanding and respectful of her preferences gave Sarah a confidence she had never imagined possible. It wasn’t about what she would or wouldn’t do, it was about what they enjoyed doing together and how the trust between them was growing.

She woke in his arms each morning, loving the warm kiss he gave her and how reluctant he always was to leave her. He’d returned to his training schedule and Sarah had found a comfortable rhythm to the ranch days. She helped Melanie with the morning cleanup, read books with her son, and dragged them both to town to shop for Tony’s house. At first their conversations were strained, but as trust began to build, a friendship was born.

Sarah took photos of the people who worked on the ranch and framed them, placing them on the walls and around the house on tables. With Tony’s permission, she replaced his old furniture with simple but comfortable pieces that made a person want to stay for a while. The quiet of the house was replaced with soft music on most days and Sarah had even convinced Tony that he needed not only a television but also a computer and Internet access. Slowly, Tony’s house was becoming a home.

A home she felt comfortable enough to spend her afternoons writing in. Her once-empty notebook was overflowing with answered questions, chapters, and revisions. Sarah had never felt more alive or at peace.

This is where I belong.

Thursdays had become days she looked forward to. She’d been apprehensive when Tony had suggested she invite everyone to dinner again, but he’d reassured her things would be different, and he’d been right. Everyone, including Dean, had been on their best behavior, and real conversations had replaced the previous ribbing.

Tony would never be a man of many words, but when he’d patiently answered questions from the young men around the table regarding his training philosophy and even praised one of them regarding a horse, Sarah’s heart had soared. Like rain coming to the desert, the change in Tony brought his ranch alive. After dinner, she and Tony often walked, hand in hand, through the barn and paddocks. Tony greeted the men he came across, and she even caught him smiling more than once.

Everything was perfect.

So perfect that Sarah accepted that Tony didn’t talk about his feelings or the future. She told herself that she didn’t need the words because his actions showed the world he cared about her.

Maybe even loves.

Sarah hugged her notebook tighter.

Definitely loves.

In the main barn, Tony absently brushed down the horse he’d just exercised and fought to empty his mind of the images from his latest nightmare. Sarah didn’t know he was still having them, and he wasn’t about to tell her they were getting worse rather than better.

Images of the girl who had died tormented him long after he awoke. The happier he was during the day, the more pleasure he found with Sarah in his bed, the uglier and more graphic his nightmares became until the message in them began to overshadow what should have been a good time in his life.

Kimberly Staten.

Are you haunting me or am I torturing myself?

Which one of us is convinced that I don’t deserve to be happy?

His hand paused as an image of Sarah, smiling sweetly up at him during one of their evening walks, mocked him.
How can she be the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to me? Is that the hell I earned for myself? To have everything offered to me and be unable to enjoy it? To watch a good woman fall in love with me and know that ultimately I’ll disappoint her?

And Sarah was a good woman. Everything she touched was better for the attention she gave it. His house finally looked lived in, his employees were happier than he’d ever seen them, and David said their clients appreciated the sparkle hoof polish she applied to each horse they sold. Dean dropped by the ranch a few times a week, and each time he did he mentioned how good everything and everyone looked.

So I smile and lie.

I let everyone believe that Sarah’s magic has worked on me as well.

Because the truth is as ugly as my nightmares.

I’ll never be the man she needs me to be.

Sarah was sitting on the porch steps and had just finished revising a chapter in her book when a long, black limo pulled into Tony’s driveway. She stood up and shaded her eyes to see it better. A perspective buyer? Had Tony gotten to the point where he was willing to meet with them now? A swell of pride rushed through her.
He’s come so far.

When the tuxedoed driver walked around to open the door, Sarah held her breath and instantly recognized the expensive shoes and business suit before she saw the face of the man they belonged to.
Charlie!

She sprinted down the driveway, her smile growing wider as she did. She’d wanted to tell him the details of her new life in Texas but had been waiting for the perfect time. Now she could show him instead.

He took off his dark sunglasses and looked around even after Sarah had come to a near-sliding stop in front of him. “So, this is where you’ve been all summer.”

Despite how serious her brother looked, Sarah threw her arms around him and hugged him. “I’m so glad you came.”