__________

Maria

OH MY GOD.

He tastes like a man should taste. I’ve never been kissed like this.

His tongue is greedy, sweeping into my mouth and curling around my own, taking this kiss from me, not asking, not polite. And normally, that might bother me, but I can’t believe how much I want him...this cowboy.

Thunder smashes into the night as I open myself to him, giving him more. Not that he seems to need my permission, but I want more, I want his body and mine to be as one, I want all of this. Whatever this is.

Barely a second passes before he’s got me around the waist. Without breaking our kiss, he pulls me closer and down with him, into a sitting position, straddling him.

He moans. It’s something deep, something rumbling and primal. Like he’s in the most exquisite sort of pain. And I completely understand.

I haven’t kissed anyone in years. And when I last did, whatever that was... I may have thought that was kissing, but it clearly wasn’t.

His mouth is warm, wet, with a hint of sweet tea left to tinge his own masculine flavor. His arms wrap around my back and pull me against him. Then one hand swoops up and knots into my hair, and I sigh and groan as he tugs firmly, holding my head in place.

It’s clear that he’s in charge here, but I don’t care. In fact, to my surprise, I want more of whatever this is. This possessiveness. This power he’s got over me.

There’s no warning when he pulls my head back by the hair, but it makes me bleat in pleasured pain as a bolt of electricity cracks down my spine.

His eyes are wild, his mouth open, lips shiny with our mixed saliva.

“I can smell your cunt,” he seethes on a warm breath.

I should be offended, right?

But, oh my God, I’m so not. I feel my body react, gushing wetness onto what is an enormous erection behind the fly of his jeans.

I wiggle, feeling the rough fabric on my clit, and I nearly come.

I see his eyes go wide.

“Oh no.” He tilts his head to the side, that flash of an evil grin quickening my pulse. “You want to come already? I think not, not like this. Not with you grinding yourself down on my dick through my jeans. What a waste that would be.”

At my gasp, his tongue and teeth trail up my neck as he pulls my head to the side by the roots of my hair, his other arm clutching my body even tighter against his.

“Please...” I whimper, unsure what it is I want except more.

“Please what?” he asks on a primal breath. “Tell me what you want. I’ll give it to you. I want to give you everything.”

With that, he’s on his feet, carrying me as I cling to the front of him. He’s enormous, my weight seeming to require zero effort on his part as I grip tight to the back of his neck. I can feel the tension there. The hardness in every part of him.

My ankles cross behind his back, opening my soaking girl parts as they press on the hard flesh of his abs. I gasp, nearly losing it from the sensation, and he doesn’t miss anything.

“Don’t think for a second I’m not ready to lose it myself, feeling that wetness on me, Little Bit. You just about made me come in my pants.” He walks us down the hall, the sound of his boots scuffing the wooden floorboards audible with each step. “You also just made me the happiest man in the world. Knowing you’re wet for me? Jesus.” He throws his head back, exhaling deeply, before returning his gaze to mine. “If I wasn’t on a mission to taste what you’re dripping, I might die of a heart attack right here and now.”

He leans in and places a kiss against my lips, sending my pulse racing.

I feel swept away by all this, and something, somewhere deep inside makes me push back, fight for my own reason, my own sense of decorum. “I...barely know you,” I stammer, even as my breath hitches, my nipples pressed hard against his abs, hot, erect, excited. “This is so weird. Don’t you think it’s weird?”

“Doesn’t change what’s going on here. You want me? Tell me you want me, or tell me you don’t. Doesn’t change that you’re mine.” He raises an eyebrow then adds, “But I want to hear you say it.”

A potent mixture of fear and arousal pulses through me as he stops dead in his tracks.

He lifts me tighter against him. My nose is an inch from those lips that hang slightly open as he exhales, and I hold tighter, wishing to never be anywhere but right here. Feeling this.

This possession. A minute goes by. Maybe more. Maybe a lifetime. But I’m lost in the thumping of my heart and the way I cannot imagine a moment without him touching me. Holding me like this as though he never intends to let go.

His voice hardens along with his eyes. “Those lips are not saying what I need them to say. Do. You. Want. Me? Answer me.”

My ovaries are shooting off like Roman candles.

All I can manage to say is, “Yes.” And the moment the word is out of my lips, I see desire wash over his face.

He kisses my forehead, then moves his lips to the shell of my ear. “Yes.” He draws out the word as though he’s savoring it. “It’s my new favorite word.”

His mixture of sweetness and confidence is a powerful elixir.

He kicks open the door to a bedroom, lit by a soft lamp in the corner. Quilts cover an enormous bed, along with six black cowboy hats hung in a perfect row on one wall, each one exactly the same as the last. The opposite wall seems to be made entirely of glass, and the patter from the softening rainstorm provides the perfect backdrop for what is about to come alive between us.

His eyes are trained on me as he steps forward, moving us to the bed. The tightness in my chest quickens my heartbeat. As he lowers me down, his lips are on mine, but the kiss isn’t soft.

He’s nearly snarling as his tongue plunges deep, laying me down and then bracing his body over me. The T-shirt rides up my thighs as our mouths gain a rhythm. Wetness gushes between my legs, and waves of lust crash over me until I’m drowning in him.

His kiss is more than a kiss. It feels like he’s claiming me. Mating me with the crazed intensity of what’s happening. My body flushes with heat as he shifts, knocking my legs apart with his hips.

When he does, a bass growl rumbles from him, and that same fear and trepidation launch through me again.

What am I doing here? Why am I allowing this?

With a man I don’t even know.

In nothing but a T-shirt. His T-shirt.

“I’m hungry.” That growl again and my heart stops. In that moment, he answers my questions for me. I do know him. Somehow, I do.

Rough fingers grip just above my knees, making me gasp as he spreads my legs. There is no hint of ceremony in his actions. The folds of my body simply peel apart as soft punches of desire hit me from my chest to my thighs, leaving me melting into the soft bedding.

“God.” It’s the only word I can find, and his eyes narrow as he pushes those hands, the hands of a working man, farther up, up, up. The T-shirt slides over my bare skin along with them, exposing my flesh an inch at a time.

“Not God. Ranger.” His voice lowers. “But give me a minute, and you might find those two names interchangeable.”

A second later, I’m a believer.

His mouth.

Oh my Ranger.

I alternate lifting my head as best I can to watch the magnificence of what he’s doing between my legs, then dropping it back and arching my back as I squeal, lost in sensations that can’t be legal.

I hear my voice rising, then halting in silence, then crying out as his tongue and lips do things to me that should never stop.

Never. Ever. Stop.

He licks me up and down, up and down, until my breath is in time with his movements, before focusing on my hard nub, sending my body into orbit. The muscles in my back seize, and my hands tear into the quilt below me.

My throat hurts from the raw screams that are coming out of me.

Screams. Yes.

My thighs clamp shut against the rough scruff on his jaw.

I lift my head to see him looking up at me. The focus and determination in his eyes send me over the edge.

He’s gauging my reactions. He wants to know if what he’s doing is working.

Holy hell is it ever working.

White dots fill my vision. The look of concern on his face... The rough scratch of his beard, topping off the flicking of his tongue against my clit... It all topples me over into an orgasm from which I may never return.

My body takes on a life of its own, twisting, flailing, but his hand shoots upward, clamping down, holding me, his arm resting heavy and solid across my body. His hand grips my breast, holding me in place as I convulse and scream.

I rake my fingers through his hair, pushing him away and pulling him closer, unsure that I can handle any more of what he’s giving me and yet daring to hope he may never stop.

And right now, there is no sign that he intends to.

He licks more, harder. Around, then down. Side to side. As I push up on my heels into his face, it only spurs him on.

The sounds coming from me are base. Primal. My jaw muscles strain and ache as my mouth opens to its limits, squeezing my eyes shut, unable to focus on anything as the room spins and I’m left blank, devoid of any thought except how much I need this, more of this, more of whatever it is he’s giving me.

I’ve ripped the quilt off the bed by the time the waves begin to soften. It’s been minutes. Hours, even. I have no idea. My body is quivering. I’m arched and twisted. Panting and gasping and frozen in place.

Every inch of me aching from the strain of moving in ways I never thought possible. Yet the pleasure... Oh, the pleasure is worth it.

Ranger softly kisses the insides of my thighs, making soft humming sounds as my muscles twitch. My breath comes in tiny gasps with each movement of his lips.

Now it’s the callused pad of his thumb along with his mouth, back on me again, and I come completely undone. Tears stream out of the corners of my eyes to be absorbed into my hair as they find their way down my hot cheeks.

I want him.

I want him inside me.

This day has turned into pure fantasy come to life, and I stop fighting it.

One more glance down to see him working. Eyes closed now. Intense. The lines on his forehead deep with his effort. Something shakes loose inside me. A place never before touched that feels so deeply personal it makes the tears multiply.

This near stranger is eating me like a predator, and all I can think of is how thankful I am I’ve never done this with anyone before. That somehow, in some strange and cosmic way, I waited for him.

Waited for all this. This move to a glorious new life. It took so much effort, so much urging from my father this morning to come here with him, to pick up a load of hay, when all I wanted to do was find my way back to the life I knew before horse fences and miles of dirt roads that lead nowhere.

Before the turkey that chased me into that chicken coop where I fought and kicked the locked door, leaving me frustrated and sweat-soaked.

Before, with a click, the door opened, and there was Ranger. Silhouetted, with the sun shining behind him. And in that moment, the ground under me shifted.

This man.

His mouth is on me in such a way my vision blurs and a lust is triggered inside that tells me this is what it is to love. To be in love. To be loved. It’s not just picket fences and planning the next home improvement project.

It’s this. This gnawing need.

And I need. I need to see him. To feel him. To know everything about him.

To give myself to him.

“Ranger!” My ragged voice hits the ceiling as another orgasm rips through me, spinning my thoughts and sending them into reckless territory.

But I want more. I want all of him. I want him to use me and take me.

This scary, beautiful man who I think is giving me parts of him as well.

When the quaking subsides, words tumble out without thought. My careful, measured self left somewhere in the wake of the lust in his eyes.

“Make love to me.” No. No, that’s not right. That’s not what I want. I comb my hands through his hair as he looks up and meets my eyes. There’s a ferocity in his gaze that sends my heart racing, forcing the truth from me, making me tell him what I really want. “Fuck me. I want you inside me.”