"You're mad at me," Trevor stated. "You can go ahead and admit it."

He had roped Sabrina into helping him clear out the attic of the farmhouse. He had been so busy enjoying the view of her doubled over and crawling between boxes, her tight posterior clad in those ridiculous jeans, that he almost hadn't noticed the other, more dangerous current in the air.

"I'm not mad," she stated. Her perfect teeth clipped together audibly at the end of her assertion.

"Uh-huh." Trevor kept his eyes on her. He didn't believe a word of it.

"It's just that…" she continued in exasperation. He sat back and drew his knee up to his chest as he waited for the truth to come pouring out of her, and Sabrina didn't disappoint. She turned and exhaled enormously. "It's just that I didn't want the other night to end the way it did. It was so perfect—maybe the most perfect day I've ever had in my life—and then you…then…"

Her comments surprised the hell out of him. Trevor wanted to protest, but he still had no idea why she was angry with him. All he could do was wait for her to get the words out.

Sabrina slapped her knees and scooted closer to him. "Seriously, Trevor?" she demanded. "You have no idea why I might be a little pissed off right now? I wanted to grab another beer with you. I wanted to invite you back to my cabin and spend the night with you, and you just…you just…."

"Got called away to work." He hadn't thought of it from Sabrina's perspective. He had thought about going back to her bunkhouse with her, sure, but when the invitation hadn't come, he had shrugged it off as her not wanting anyone on the staff to see him leaving in the morning or—as had happened before—her wanting some space after the most recent shift in their relationship.

Sabrina sighed so roughly it was a growl. "You didn't have to work right there and then, Trevor."

Trevor's brows together. He didn't like feeling stupid. Marcy had accused him of being a lug more than once, but he had never been able to read the women in his life as well as he read horses.

"I didn't realize," he admitted finally. "I thought…I thought you needed more space to think about things. About us."

Sabrina fiddled with her earring and stared at the dusty wood floor beneath them. Finally, she pointed to something behind him. "I'll forgive you," she said, "if you give me that bowl. That one. There."

Trevor craned around to look. He had just been building a pile of items to discard. At the top of the pile was an old copper bowl that had belonged to his grandmother.

"What do you want that for?" he asked her. No matter how he tried to imagine a use for it, he just couldn't.

Sabrina moved in close beside him and pulled the bowl into her lap. "I'm going to use it to make something beautiful," she promised.

He watched the way she lovingly stroked the bowl in her hand. His grandmother, he decided in that moment, would have loved Sabrina.

"Trust me," she persisted. "This is going to be put to good use. But I'd like it to be a surprise, if that's okay."

Trevor's mouth twitched itself into a smile. "Normally I don't like surprises," he reminded her. Sabrina just leaned in and pressed a swift kiss to his cheek. She pulled back with a satisfied giggle—one that soon resolved itself into surprised, full-throated laughter as Trevor pushed the bowl out of her lap and pinned her to the floor beneath him.

"What, right here?" she gasped as he ravished her neck. "Mr. Wild, I didn't think you liked surprises!"

"I know what I like," he reassured. "I also know where and when I like it."

"Mmm," Sabrina hummed in approval as he began to unbutton the front of her blouse. "Are you sure? You might not be able to strike 'clean attic' off your checklist for the day."

"Screw the checklist," Trevor growled.

"Now that is certainly a surprise!" Sabrina laughed with delight as he lowered himself to her once more. Having her here with him, beneath him, made it remarkably easy to savor the snatched unexpectedness of the moment—and to forget about his work obligations. There were chores that needed to be seen to, certainly, but they would still be waiting for him when he caught hold of himself again.

Right now, it was Sabrina that had captivated him. He paused, lips hovering above her skin, with only room left between them to breathe. He took his time slowly inhaling the familiar floral scent of her hair; when he pressed his mouth to the tender spot just below her ear, he tasted the clean comfort of her. He lost himself in listening to the faint, ecstatic throb of her pulse, before the sound of his own heart beating in his ears overwhelmed it.

He spoke before he realized his brain had given his mouth orders to do so.

"Sabrina, this thing between us…."

She stilled beneath him, but it wasn't resistance. He drew back to look at her. Her blonde hair fanned out around her pale, beautiful face like fire wreaths the sun. The flush in her cheeks brought out every freckle. Her eyes had freckles, too, he realized, flecks and flares of emerald green, lost but not beyond discovery in the blues of her irises.

"We don't have to put a name to it," she breathed. "Not if you don't want to."

Something in her face told him otherwise. She looked so vulnerable laid beneath him…yet the softness of her face was less pronounced all of a sudden. There was more steel there than he remembered. Was she guarding herself—protecting herself—from the noncommittal answer she claimed to have no stake in?

He couldn't guess what answer was the right one; all he could do was give her the true one.

"I think I'm falling in love with you, Sabrina Hearthstone."

In all his past relationships, he had never been the first to say it—now, he wasn't sure he had ever really meant it, or known what it was he was confessing. Not like this.

Sabrina's eyelashes fluttered, like butterflies taken by a surprise gust of wind. "I think I'm falling for you too, Trevor Wild," she whispered. She raised herself up on one elbow, cupped his face, and pressed her lips to his. The lightness of the touch, combined with their words, made his heart stutter to an almost-stop in his chest.

His hands slid down her body, reverent in their exploration. He took this new knowledge of what she felt for him and relearned everything he knew about her: her trim waist, her taut abdomen, the dimple of her belly button and the smooth, velvet plane leading to heaven below. He laid his lips upon her stomach as his finger caught in the front of her pants and inched them down her hips. He could have sworn he heard Sabrina purr.

"Mmm." Her suppressed moan was delicious, and with every inch of her that was revealed he pressed a subsequent kiss to her skin. She arched her hips off the ground as he tugged her jeans, her underwear, all the way down her slender legs. She kicked them away as he dragged his lips along her inner thigh. "Trevor." The way she hissed his name as he savored her was sweet, sensual music to his ears.

His kisses carried him back up between Sabrina's legs, and he darted his tongue out to taste her wet, pink center. God, there was nothing better than listening to the way her breath hitched and her hips bucked hard into the floor when he did that. He licked and sucked and nibbled her until her thighs quaked on either side of his head; then he grasped her legs and continued a minute more for good measure.

"Oh, God," she moaned. "You're good at everything. It's not fair."

"Are you about to come already?" he murmured, lifting his eyes from between her legs to look at her. Judging by the wanton way she had her own eyes fixed upon him and the way she gasped and panted, he thought he had his answer. Before she could claim something contrary, he grabbed her hips and pulled her upright with him. He crossed his legs beneath them and settled her onto his lap.

The next few seconds were a blur as Sabrina fought his fervent, unrelenting kisses, laughing as she struggled to get her hands between them. His belt slithered free, and she practically ripped the front of his jeans open, aided by the fact that he was already straining to be free of them anyway. She encased his erection in her fist, and Trevor's breath caught at the firm pressure.

"You really want this," he noted as he yanked his shirt up over his head.

"I'm not the one so obviously bursting at the seams for it," Sabrina retorted. As soon as he had dispensed with his T-shirt, Trevor snatched her face in his hands and thrust his tongue into her gasping mouth—just to show her there were better things to do in that instant than sass him. Sabrina pushed into him eagerly, releasing his cock only long enough to shed her own shirt. Her bare skin felt on fire against his.

Trevor dropped his hands, grasping either side of her ass as he pulled her in closer. Her legs clenched around his waist as he raised then lowered her onto his rigid cock. Sabrina, already slick between the legs from his earlier attentions, undulated her hips just once, and he slid inside her without resistance.

A shared, explosive groan rocked them both. Trevor buried his face in her shoulder as Sabrina threw her head back, but his body wouldn't let him pause to catch his breath now. He jounced Sabrina in his lap; his fingers grasped and worked her waist as she rode him. The sensation of her breasts pressed hard against his chest drove him wild. She took over the rhythm, and his hands slid up the small of her back, skimming beads of perspiration as they went.

"You're so goddamned beautiful," he whispered. A tangled, sweat-soaked lock of hair fell across her face as she glanced down at him, her cries mounting. She was beyond response, but she had heard him. That was all that mattered.

Trevor tensed beneath her, but Sabrina's hips kept their course, circling and stirring him around inside her. His abdominals tightened, and heat flooded him in a rush; he banded his arms around her back and held her close as he shuddered to completion. His hips gave a few more questing thrusts, and Sabrina's voice broke on a cry of ecstasy. Her slight frame trembled in his arms as an orgasm took her, and Trevor groaned at the beautiful sight. He carried her down with him, kissing her fervently and relishing the astonished, bell-like clarity of her laugh.

"Still think I'm good at everything?" he asked in a spent whisper. He pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes as she smiled sleepily at him.

"Good at everything," she repeated, "but great at one thing in particular. Feel free to check 'getting laid' off your list for the day."

It wasn't on his list for the day. But, Trevor reflected, I wouldn't mind making it a recurring item.

* * *

"Boss!"

Pete was shouting and running down the driveway waving his arms. Trevor raised himself off his outside work bench in alarm. Pete was his most laid-back ranch hand—any show of panic from him meant that either something vital was on fire, or it was about to be.

"Sabrina sent me to get you!" Pete pulled his hat off and pointed off toward the bunkhouses. "You better come quick!"

Trevor dropped the tack he was cleaning. He didn't ask questions or demand elaboration; he heard Sabrina's name and came, leaving his own hat and gloves behind him and throwing up clouds of dirt as he sprinted ahead of Pete. "She's in the west bunkhouse!" Pete called after him.

It should have struck him as suspicious that his ranch hand didn't follow.

When he got to the bunkhouse, he mounted the steps in a single leap and threw the door open. "Sabrina?" he hollered into the house. He didn't smell fire, didn't see smoke, didn't hear screaming, only—

"D-don't come in here!" Sabrina called back to him. Her muffled voice came from the direction of the bathroom; what's more, it sounded panicked. Trevor strode across the length of the front room. He stopped only when his boot sloshed into the carpet.

He stared down in horror. Half of the living room was soggy with water.

Sabrina.

He didn't say the culprit's name out loud. He couldn't. He didn't want to wrap his head around the fact that the woman he…the woman…that Sabrina could cause this much damage.

Trevor completed his line to the bathroom and threw the door open. Sabrina glanced up from where she crouched beneath the sink. She was completely drenched from head to toe; her blonde hair was dark with saturation, and her white shirt was plastered to her chest. A memory flashed across Trevor's mind, and he recalled the time she had accidentally sprayed herself down with the hose.

But this…this was much, much worse. The bathroom was in absolute chaos. The shower curtain rod was pulled down, and water was gushing out of the cabinet Sabrina knelt partway inside. Even from here he could see that she had tried—and failed—to staunch the flow of water with her shirt.

"I…I was just trying to install the new basin," she stammered. "I had the YouTube video keyed up and everything." She gestured to her laptop, which was perched precariously on the back of the toilet.

"Jesus," Trevor cursed. "Hand that thing to me and let me put it in the kitchen before it shorts."

Sabrina complied, and he had the short walk to the kitchen and back to master his temper and think of what to say to her.

When he returned, he exploded.