Once Touched (21 page)

T
UCKED AWAY IN
Tucker's stall, Quinn currycombed her gelding and let her thoughts roam. No one was there to catch her dreamy smile. Tucker was busy butting a yellow rubber ball the size of a cantaloupe. Ethan had hung it in the corner of his stall while she'd been feeding Tucker his ration of hay. Not only had her horse not freaked out at Ethan's presence but he'd further surprised Quinn by taking an active interest in the installation. As soon as Ethan had finished attaching the nylon rope, the horse had walked up and slammed the ball with the side of his head, sending it swinging in a wide arc. By the time he'd chomped his way through his flakes of hay, he'd become quite proficient at batting the ball, stopping it with his muzzle, and then sending it flying in the opposite direction.

Who knew her gelding had ambitions to be a tetherball champion?

Ethan, apparently. His quiet discernment was one in an ever-growing list of reasons why she'd fallen so hard and fast.

A week had passed since he turned the most rotten Thanksgiving ever into a night of wonder, revealing aspects of herself Quinn had nearly lost hope of discovering. That night had been followed by others no less staggering. Hours filled with whispers, entreaties, delirious laughter, and low, drawn-out groans as their sweat-slick bodies moved against each other.

More quickly than Quinn would have believed possible, she had become one of
them,
one of those people she stumbled across regularly at the ranch. Blissed out and in love.

As a Californian, she recognized the tectonic shift that had occurred. Ethan had shaken things—beliefs, feelings, her very heart and soul—forever altering the landscape inside her.

It was possible that if she'd chosen another man to give herself to, the effect would not have been so dramatic.

How to describe what happened when he made love to her? So difficult when the experience changed every time. Sometimes it felt like he'd catapulted her into the stars: dizzyingly bright and awesome. Floating back to the earth, to the circle of his arms and to the slow, deliberate kisses he pressed to her flushed skin, she willingly abandoned that spectacular diamond-bright world, exchanging it for one where she was cocooned in warm, burnished gold.

Sometimes the pleasure was like a giant wave. With each pump of his hips, the swell grew, magnificent and relentless, so powerful that she feared it might break her into a million scattered pieces. But then she would feel Ethan shuddering—quaking—as he poured himself into her and she knew that she wasn't alone. The knowledge made her cry out with joy as the wave broke inside her.

Then there were raw and even raunchy couplings with climaxes hitting her like sudden explosions, making her legs and toes stiffen and her fingers curl into his sweat-slicked flesh, her voice helpless and harsh as she called his name, stunned by the near violent beauty of their mating.

There was only one constant to what she and Ethan shared. Each time the act struck Quinn as more profound.

While the lovemaking was beyond anything Quinn had imagined—and she had a pretty vivid imagination—it was the other things she saw in Ethan that made her heart melt. For instance in those drifting moments before sleep claimed them, he invariably wrapped an arm about her middle and hauled her into the warm curve of his body.

For twenty-four years she'd slept alone. Who'd have thought she would enjoy spooning? Crave feeling their bodies pressed together as their breathing found the same rhythm? Again, the answer was Ethan. Apparently he could read her as well as he could Tucker.

The flick of Tucker's tail brought her back to the confines of the stall, fourteen feet square. While she'd been lost in her musings, she'd exchanged her currycomb for a soft brush. She moved from his withers to his belly, brushing the red coat that had been covered by his bandage, now removed. The incision running along his abdomen looked good. The risk of infection now past, it would heal in a neat straight line, so different from the jagged scars marking Ethan's shoulder. A lasting testimony to the violence he'd experienced.

Would he ever tell her about that day? Really tell her, rather than offering the carefully edited and scrubbed version of how an IED exploded near the armored vehicle he was riding in—horrifying enough though that one was?

From the first she'd wanted to help Ethan heal both physically and emotionally. Now it had become imperative. Because he held her heart, hers ached with the pain she glimpsed in his.

Eleven creatures in the animal world were known to mate for life. While she didn't necessarily identify with
Schistosoma mansoni
worms—parasitic and ugly to boot—she'd always thought the monogamous bonds of swans, wolves, gibbons, bald eagles, and, of course, turtledoves were extraordinary. Magical. The same held true whenever she read about a man and a woman who'd found each other in high school, married at eighteen, and then, after seventy years of marriage, passed within hours of each other.

Now she recognized why those stories never failed to move her and caused her throat to tighten, thick with emotion. It was because she belonged to that group of beings who had one mate, one love for life. Her heart had found hers.

But those stories and articles, poignant examples of lasting and true love, were rare for a reason. While she might know that her heart now belonged to Ethan, she couldn't demand or expect him to feel the same, that she was the
one….

And unless he was able to heal and banish the pain festering inside him, Quinn feared there would be no real chance for the two of them.

It used to be that Tucker would signal the approach of a human even better than Sooner. No more. He didn't toss his head or pin his ears when Ethan approached the stall and said, “Hi there. Came to see how you were getting along.”

Tucker answered first by sending the tethered ball careening into the stall's boards with a satisfying
thwack.

“As you can see, we're having a smashing time.”

“So he still likes it?” Ethan asked from the half-open sliding stall door.

“Oh, yeah. Once Gary Cooney clears him to return to the pasture I'm going to have to string a ball from one of the oak tree's branches so he can keep his skills sharp. Maybe he can get Harper and Bristol to play.”

Tucker once again hammered the ball at the stall wall.

“Something tells me he may be in a different league from those two.”

Harper and Bristol were knuckleheads. Sweet and mellow as could be, though. Along with Brocco, Tess's favorite horse, they were a beginner rider's dream.

“Could be,” she agreed. “So how was Domino?”

Ethan had borrowed her gelding to ride out with Ward and Reid to check on the cattle.

“Smooth. Incredibly responsive. You did an amazing job training him.”

She was pleased he liked her horse. After the Thanksgiving Day ride, her family had begun lending Ethan their mounts on an almost daily basis. By now he'd ridden not only Kane but also Rio, Sirrus, and Forester. Serious competition for Domino. She'd held off offering Ethan her horse so as not to raise any suspicion among her family that anything had changed between her and Ethan.

“Domino was a dream to bring along.” She picked up the carryall and placed the soft brush back in its spot next to the other brushes. “Our yearling Rush is like that. You've seen him, right? The dark chestnut colt?”

“The one who wants to race every horse that enters the pasture.”

“Yeah, he's got the moves. Plus Rush remembers everything. And speaking of quick learners, are you ready to teach Bowie ‘come bye' and ‘away to me'? Sooner loves showing off his skills.”

“You've got the time?”

Seriously? She was in terrible danger of wanting to spend every hour of the day with him. She liked being with him out of bed as much as in it. Today he was dressed in faded jeans and a dark blue flannel shirt. Stuck to it were a few stray white hairs, evidence that he'd been brushing against the spotted white blanket that covered Domino's flank and descended nearly to his gaskin.

The navy blue of his shirt made Ethan's eyes seem darker. She loved how changeable they were. Loved even more how they held her own gaze with a magnetic intensity when he was deep inside her, holding himself still so she could feel his erection pulse as her core muscles quivered and contracted around his thickness. Heat would blaze in them as he started to thrust with long, sure strokes…

He took the carryall from her. “Let's go.”

With a goodbye pat to Tucker, she stepped through the narrow aperture. Ethan slid the stall door shut and grabbed her hand in his. Hand holding. That was part of her life now. A warmth as delicious and heady as mulled cider filled her.

He set a fast pace. Luckily she had long legs, so she didn't have to trot to keep up. It was midafternoon, a lull in the day before the feeding and watering and sweeping up commenced. The chill in the air guaranteed that the hands would be taking a coffee break in the staff room adjacent to Pete's office. It being midweek, there wasn't even too much tack to clean and inspect for damage, either. Between now and Christmas and New Year's it would be the weekends when they'd be running at full capacity. Then there'd be a blessedly slow period in January, with mostly repeat guests visiting, those who already knew how tranquil Silver Creek Ranch was in the still of the winter.

She was grateful for the lack of activity; no one was around to see her so obviously attached to Ethan. So far she and Ethan had managed to keep their new status on the down-low and she wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Their steps rang in quick crunches of dirt and stone on the road that led to the cluster of staff cabins and then a quarter of a mile farther to her family's houses.

“We can practice with Bowie in the backyard, where there'll be fewer distractions,” she began, only to have Ethan surprise her with a tug as he veered abruptly, heading up the gravel path to his cabin. “You remember we left Bowie at my house, right?” she reminded him as they jogged up the narrow porch.

“I know.” He jammed his key in the lock and pushed the door open. “Didn't want to haggle with Alfie and Pirate over you. Or have Sooner give me the look.”

“What look?”

“The one he levels when I'm about to kiss you.”

“Oh.” A delicious shiver rippled through her.

“Yeah.” Pulling her inside the warmth of his cabin, he spun her around so her back was pressed against the planked wall. Her breath caught and he stole it, plastering his mouth over hers. Like the roaring velocity of a Formula One, their kiss went from hot to incendiary in two seconds flat.

When they broke apart, gasping for air, he muttered hoarsely, “Damn, I want you.”

Heat sizzled inside her. Still unused to being struck by this lightning flash of need, she shifted restlessly.

“It's the middle of the day,” she noted in a rare attempt to be the voice of reason.

“Doesn't matter what time it is. All I have to do is see you, Quinn.” His teeth raked the side of her neck as his hands set to work, tugging at buttons, opening zippers, finding flesh in quick, needy strokes.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she replied weakly, her body turning fluid as he cupped her breasts, squeezing them as he ground his hips against hers.

“Yeah, I know it's crazy. You're not
that
beautiful. But damned if I can do anything about it.” Like a plumb line he dropped to his knees and yanked off her boots, sending them flying backward, then grabbed the waistband of her jeans and peeled them down her legs. Hooking his fingers around the elastic waistband of her panties, he slowly dragged them down, revealing the triangle of curls between her thighs.

He touched her. A testing rub of his index finger that ended in a rough whisper of “Jesus,” when he found her wet for him. “I have to taste you.”