Page 47 of The Rancher’s One and Only

She was a woman with a very good imagination. She did experience a lot of things in her head, and consequently, she had a decent fantasy life. She knew what it felt like when she was turned on. And this surpassed it. All of it. She felt safe within the parameters of self-pleasure because she was in charge of it. He didn’t even have his hands on her body, and he was taking control of what she felt. She shivered when he put one hand between her shoulder blades, large and warm. She thought she might short-circuit. She broke the kiss for just a moment, opened her eyes, then shut them. She tried to acclimate to the new sensations in her body.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m very okay. It’s very intense.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It is.”

“Kiss me again,” she said.

And then, he did just that. But this time, he pulled her up onto his lap, kissing her deep and long, his hands cupping her face. Holding her like she was something special and precious and wonderful, and she didn’t think anyone in her whole life had ever treated her that way. Even the one man that had kissed her had treated her like she was something wrong and inconvenient and annoying. She had never felt precious to anyone. Had never felt all right and not weird. But he knew everything about the whole situation. He knew that she was a virgin. He knew how she was. He knew that she asked every question under the sun as soon as it popped into her head. He knew that she felt weird about her teeth. And he was still kissing her. It didn’t feel like it was out of pity; it didn’t feel like it was anything but mutual need. And that was an absolutely amazing thing. An absolutely incredible experience.

She could feel him beneath her rear end. Hard. Could feel that he wanted her. Oh, he actually wanted her. It made her dizzy. And she knew that men historically could want most anyone. But for twenty-eight years of her life she hadn’t been wanted. At least, not beyond someone who was more enthralled with the idea of flexing his power over her than he was with her.

And so this felt like something. It really did. And she wasn’t going to think her way out of it or around it. “I have an idea,” he said.

He took her hand, and set her down off of his lap before leading her from the couch into the bathroom. The bathroom really took some getting used to, because it was glass and light everywhere else except for a small area with the door and toilet in it. But the shower area was entirely open to the outdoors just like everything else, and even though it was reflective and slightly frosted, it had been unnerving initially.

He looked at her, and stripped his shirt off before moving to turn the water on. Her throat went dry.

“We both had a workout. We both need to rinse.”

“Oh.”

Arousal pulsed between her legs.

He was so big, so dangerous-looking. So nothing like any man she ever thought that she would hook up with. She had been holding out hope that it would happen, someday. Part of her had thought maybe it just wasn’t to be for her, and it didn’t need to matter all that much, since she didn’t think she was aiming for love and marriage and all of that—she was married to her work. And that was fine.

But she was having a very normal, wonderful experience, albeit ten years after most people had it. But…

She suddenly felt a little bit superior to Dr. Haley Boesch.

Because she was servicing undernourished scientists who seemed like they hadn’t seen the sun or crawled out of the basement of the museum for years, and she was with him. Vital, full of life, muscular, tanned. Amazing. A tattoo.

It was so…

No one would believe it.

Her rodent energy was fire.

He looked at her, his eyes intense. “You want to undress, or do you want me to do it for you?”

Oh. Oh.

She felt a little bit faint. “You can…”

She didn’t even get to finish her sentence. He crossed the space, and wrapped his arm around her waist, gripping her T-shirt and pulling it up over her head with practiced expertise.

And then he divested her of her sweatpants with ease.

He had done this before. And she was grateful for that. Because truly one of them needed to have a competent skill level. It was not her.

She never given any thought to the attractiveness of her underwear. It was a practicality, and nothing more. Right now she was little bit bummed that her underwear was so plain. So practical.

But at least she wasn’t wearing underwear that had cute things on them. Because that was the other half of her underwear stash. She bought cute, fantasy-themed underwear for her own enjoyment, because after all, that was what her underwear was generally for. And that would’ve been embarrassing.

He reached around behind her, and very efficiently undid her bra with one hand. It popped off, and fell down her arms. She felt…so naked. She had never been so acutely aware of nudity in all of her life. But he was looking at her, his eyes smoldering, the flame there something like blue fire, and she was sure she would incinerate entirely with it. She took a sharp breath, and fought the urge to cover herself. That wasn’t the point of this. It was her lesson, after all. She wanted him to enjoy it, because who wanted to experience sexual desire alone? No one, she was certain.

But still, she had to let this be about her. Her…edification.