“At the ranch?”
The corner of his mouth tips up into a smile. “Yeah. As fun as this is, it doesn’t seem like this was your plan back when we last saw each other.”
I shake my head. “No…I—” How do I say this? “I quit my job. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have a choice. My boss—” I swallow. “He wanted something that I didn’t want to give him, and when I told him no, he tried to ruin my reputation with the rest of the staff. It didn’t work, but I couldn’t stay there.
“I needed to get away for a while, and I wanted to see all of this.” I duck my head. “Though I guess I should have called to make sure that you were okay with it.”
A small smile again. “That would have been nice, but you’re not wrong, you do own half of this place. You have every right to be here.” Then his eyes go hard. “And if that man ever puts his hands on you again, I’ll break those hands so thoroughly he’ll never be able to use them again.”
“How did you—”
“Not hard to guess, even with you leaving out the details,” he says gently.
I stare at him for a moment, knowing what I want to ask, but desperately afraid to. What if he says no? But I don’t have to speak because Clayton is already speaking. He lifts his hand to cradle the side of my face and threads his fingers into my hair. “This isn’t something I expected,” he says quietly.
“Me either.”
“I want to know you, Rachel, if you’ll stay for a while. There’s something between us, and I’m not ready to give it up. We deserve time to figure it out. Maybe finally get to the place where we can do long and slow.”
My stomach flips, and my heart skips a beat. There’s something devastatingly sexy about a man laying out his feelings so plainly. No games, no having to ask questions to get vague hints about what he wants. And I want that too. Already the idea of leaving makes me panic. “I’d like that.”
Clayton rolls on top of me, my leg still wrapped around his hip. But he doesn’t bother to brace himself; he pins me to the bed with his weight. It’s steadying. Comforting. His lips are so close, I’m tempted to kiss him before he pulls back just far enough that I can’t reach.
“I want to lay out some ground rules.”
I smirk. “Oh?”
“Honesty,” he says. “If we’re figuring this out, there isn’t any room for lies or leaving things out. On both sides.”
I can agree to that. “Okay.”
“Here on the ranch everyone pulls their weight,” he says. “If you’re going to be here, you’re going to have to do your share. We’ll give you a few days to explore the place, try some things, and recover from the soreness before throwing you in, but it’s only fair.”
“I agree,” I say, nodding. “Any more rules.”
“Just one,” he says, “and it’s less of a rule and more of a …negotiation.”
Reaching up, I wrap my arms around his neck. “Intriguing.”
“I’m a modern man even if I do live on a ranch in Wyoming,” he says. “I don’t give a shit who does the cooking or the cleaning or whatever anyone else thinks men and woman should do.”
“Where is this going?”
I realize that he is moving so slowly that I hadn’t noticed his hand is on my neck, thumb hovering over my pulse. His voice is low. “In the bedroom, I call the shots.”
I shudder underneath him, my reaction visceral. It’s a good reaction.
“I told you I wanted your consent in everything, and I do. I would never take something from you that you weren’t willing to give. But when you’re in my bed…” he lets the sentence hang, so I imagine all the possibilities, and there are many.
It feels like all the air in the world has disappeared and I can’t breathe. He’s stolen all my breath. I need more. “What happens once I’m in your bed?”
Clayton lowers his mouth to the bruise from this morning and brushes his lips across it, a delicate reminder of what he’s already done to me. “You’re mine for the taking,” he whispers. “If I want to hold you down and fuck you till you scream, I will. If I want to tie you to the bed and tease you for hours, I will. If I want your mouth on my cock, that’s where it will be.”
The matter of fact way that he says it has heat flowing down my spine. Spears of pure arousal. All those things sound…amazing. The idea of not having to think or worry about what will happen is almost relaxing. And if it leads to the kind of blinding orgasms that I’ve had today…I have no problem with it.
“And if I need to stop?”
“Then we’ll stop.”
I smirk up at him. “And what if I disobey you in the bedroom?”
Clayton’s smile is rich with mischief. “Then I’ll get to come up with an appropriate, delicious punishment for you.”
“Fuck.” The word slips out of my mouth before I can stop it, and he laughs. “Yes,” I say. “Absolutely.”
“You’re sure?”
Fire lights my cheeks. One hundred percent honesty. “I’ve never been so turned on by anything in my life,” I tell him. “But I don’t know if I could do it if it wasn’t you.”
The sound from his throat is nearly a growl, and he seals his mouth over that bite mark, sucking hard. There’s no chance it won’t be a bruise tomorrow. “People will be able to see that.”
“Let them.”
“I wanted to ask…” I say, changing the subject. “Do people know I’m your wife?”
He nods. “Well, they know that I got married. Only Jenna—the concierge—knows who you are so far.”
“Are you going to tell people?”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”
I bite my lip. “But what if we…” The rest of the sentence dies on my lips. I can’t make myself
