After dinner, the boys grab a beer and go out to the deck while Mom and I clean up. Although I would have chafed at the notion that a girl’s place is in the kitchen, I need a little space. Cooper makes my brains turn to mush.

In theory I am getting exactly what I want. I challenged him and he’s responding over and over again. There is no denying his attraction to me or mine to him, but am I ready?

“You seem distracted tonight, honey. Is everything okay.”

I dry the last dish and lean against the counter. “I’m good. Just thinking about what’s next.”

Mom tucks the dishtowel over the oven door handle. “You just got home, you don’t need to know what will happen next.”

Little did she know we are talking about two different subjects, and I know exactly what will happen next. I pined for the man for years, and now he's here and wants me, and I will give him anything he desires.

“Cooper has always been a good-looking boy, but he turned into a fine-looking man.” Mom cranes her neck to peek at the men on the deck. “He will break some hearts around here.”

“God, I hope not.” I reach into the refrigerator, grab myself a beer, and join the men outside.

“So I’ll see you at five.” Brent rises and gives Cooper a one-armed bro hug.

“Five?” I ask. “What has to happen at five that can’t happen at seven?” I take Brent’s vacated seat next to Cooper.

“We’re moving two hundred head of cattle to Coop’s property,” Brent replies.

“You are staying, aren’t you?” I turn to look into Cooper’s eyes. Big pools of blue. Not the normal sky blue that most people have, but the blue found in the shallows off of tropical beaches.

“I told you, I’m in for the count.”

Dad pushes his chair back, the legs scraping against the redwood deck. “Speaking of the count. I’m beat. I’m going down for the count myself. The La-Z Boy is calling me. You young-uns behave yourselves.” He turns to look at me. “You can help Coop get his stuff and show him to his room.” And with that Dad turns and is gone.

Brent trots down the back stairs, and Mom is nowhere to be seen.

“Are you going to help me, Ellie?” He tips back his beer and drains it dry. “I’d really love your help.”

“You’re playing with fire, Cooper.” I repeat his words from earlier.

He takes my hand and pulls me to a standing position. “I am fire, sweetheart.”

I swear he will kiss me but he doesn’t. He threads his fingers through my free hand and pulls me down the stairs toward the foreman’s house.

The tall grass tickles the skin above my boots and I stop a dozen times to scratch at the itchiness.

Cooper stops and squats down with his back to me. “Hop on. I’ll carry you.”

I take a long drink of my beer. “Not a chance cowboy. I’ll break your back.”

He stands and turns toward me. “You had a choice. Now you don’t.” He bends over and gently shoulders my stomach folding me over his back. My ass is in the air with his hands across my bare thighs.

“Put me down.” I wiggle and squirm in his arms but freeze the minute he slaps my ass. “Ouch.”

After the initial sting, his hand goes to work rubbing the sting from my bottom, and I relax in his hold. I tuck my empty beer bottle into one of his back pockets and grip my hand onto his cheek with the other. We are too far from the house to be seen.

“I have a feeling you’re going to be trouble, Ellie.”

“Me?” I say like the statement comes as a surprise.

“Yes, you. But you know what?” He stops his forward motion, shifts me into his arms and lets my body slide down the front of him until my lips are in line with his. His hands are under my dress holding handfuls of my ass.

“What?” The word whispers out in a wisp of a breath.

“I love trouble.” His lips crush down on mine. The kiss is one of deep hunger and passion. I gasp into his mouth when his tongue tangles against mine. We are back in motion, but I pay no attention to the direction we travel. His lips consume me. He licks and tastes every inch of my mouth until hard wood pushes against my back, a soft leather saddle settles between my legs and the smell of soap and leather fills the air. We're in the tack room and it might be my favorite place yet.

“You are in so much trouble.” He turns me so I’m sitting sidesaddle. His hands move up my thighs and with one push he spreads them wide.

“What are you doing?” Would he drop his pants and take me here in the dim, dusty room?

“You promised me dessert?” He drops to his knees in front of me. The last of the day’s sun seeps through the dirt-clouded window and casts a halo above his head. “You promised me a piece of your pie.”

Before I can respond, he pushes my panties aside and runs the flat of his tongue through my slit. “Oh. My. God. I’ve never…”

I lean back and find, with the shift of my position, the wall gone, and I nearly fall off the saddle.

“You won’t be able to say that after tonight.”

Cooper pulls me into his arms and kisses me again. This time I taste myself on his lips and a bolt of heat swirls in my sex.

One-handed, he pulls a saddle blanket from the shelf and tosses it on the ground. In the next second, I’m lying on that blanket and he’s back between my legs, only this time I’ve lost my underwear. I have no idea how they left so fast or where they went, but when his lips press against my clit, I don’t care.

Swirling heat, the nip of his lips at my tender flesh, the long, slow suck inside his mouth makes my legs quiver and my muscles ache in such a delicious way.

He climbs up my body to kiss me again and I groan. “Did you say never?” His tongue trails the edge of my jaw up to my ear where he pulls the lobe between his teeth and gently bites.

“I’ve had sex but…”

“Never had an orgasm?” His hand cups my breast. My nipples pucker hard like rocks.

Through panting breaths I answer, “No.”

“That’s just criminal.” His mouth moves down my body with little bites, trapping my nipples between the fabric of my dress and his mouth. My dress bunches around my waist. I’m naked down to my boots.

“I agree.” I want to grab his hair and shove his head back between my legs, but I don’t because part of the arousal is the unknown. Part of the excitement is wondering where Cooper will take my body. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment since I was a teenager.” He lays his head on my belly, and my hands thread through his hair. His dark curls twist around my fingers.

“I’ve been thinking about you since your sweet sixteen and you rode in on the black stallion in that virginal white dress.”

I lift onto my elbows and love the way he looks on my body. “You remember?” I shift my hips trying to assuage the ache still throbbing between my legs.

His fingers slide through my slick folds, tickling and tantalizing my tingling core. “I remember everything, I just couldn’t act. You were too young, but now you're a woman and our age difference won’t send me to jail.” My hips lift when he slides one finger inside me.

“Damn,” he growls, “you will feel so good wrapped around my cock tonight.”

His words. His fingers. His tongue, all work at me. Pulling me. Pushing me. Playing with me. My knees shake. My core tightens. My sex quivers. Heat rises to my neck and then slides down my spine and wraps around my pussy like a vise.

When he pulls that little nub of a thousand nerves into his mouth, I tumble. This time I hold his head in place afraid that every pulse I feel will stop if he moves.

“Cooper,” I call out on the last shudder. My hands fall to my sides and my body melts into the soft saddle blanket.

“That’s what I want to hear.” He crawls up my body. His face glistens from my orgasm. My very first orgasm. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “Was it good?”

“Oh yes. It was amazing.” Feeling self-conscious now that the hormones of arousal aren’t coursing through me, I push at the hiked up material to cover my sex.

“Don't.” Cooper slides to my side and props himself on one elbow. His thick cock presses hard through his jeans to rub against my naked thigh. “I want to see all of you that I can right now. Even if it’s just the waist down.” His calloused fingers glide down my stomach and settle between my legs where he strokes me with reverence.

I move my hand between us and cup the bulge pressing against my leg. He hisses.

“You are going to kill me.”

“No I’m not. I’m going to please you.”

He leans over and kisses me. It’s a soft languid kiss full of emotion. A confirmation that he too has loved me for a lifetime. When he pulls back, he lifts to a seated position.

“You do please me. When I showed up to fetch the cattle, I prayed you would be home from college and still want me.”

“I’ll never stop wanting you, Cooper.” I reach for him and try to pull him over my body.

“No sweetheart. Not here in the tack house. When I make love to you for the first time, it won’t be on a horse blanket in the middle of a dusty shed. You deserve more.”

“But you—”

“Just had a taste of what’s to come.” He pulls himself up and offers me a hand.

My dress falls past my knees. I look around the room in search of my panties. “Where are my—”

He pulls them from his back pocket and holds them out of my reach. “These are mine.”

“Yours?” I hop up and try to swipe them from his hand, but they are out of reach.

“I may even frame them. Some people wait a lifetime for a dream. I waited six years to eat your pussy, and it was worth it.” He tucks the slip of fabric into his back pocket and wraps me into his arms. “We should get back. Your parents will wonder what happened to us.”

“Oh my God. My parents.” Not once while his hot tongue devoured my flesh did I give them a single thought. They could have walked in on us. “What are we going to do about them?”

He wraps his arm around my shoulders. “We’ll figure it out.”