Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by Maisey Yates (inspirational books .TXT) 📗

said, leaning forward and rubbing her cheek against him. He could honestly say a woman had never done that. And the look on her face made him so hard he thought he might burst.

She shoved lightly, and he moved, going onto his back as she bit her lip and looked down at him. Then she knelt over him, taking him slowly into her mouth, the sweet, wet heat an assault on his senses. She tortured him. And she wasn’t practiced or knowing or anything like that. Didn’t have a parade of well coordinated tricks, but she made up for it with enthusiasm. Pure and simple. She was a woman in full enjoyment of his body, and he didn’t think he’d ever experienced anything quite like that. And hell, looking at her, at the elegant line of her spine, her ass up in the air as she pleasured him, was something more powerful than he’d ever experienced.

This moment was free of obligation. Something in his chest began to unravel, as if each pass of her tongue, each movement of her mouth over his body, was working to loosen something inside him, unraveling something he hadn’t been aware was there.

Who knew that sandwiches and a blow job out in the middle of a field would be enough to make a man almost believe in romance? He sure as hell hadn’t. But it was something. She was something. Far and away beyond anything he’d ever known or experienced or figured he might want to understand.

Cricket.

She pleasured him until he thought he couldn’t take it anymore. Then he reached in his back pocket, grabbed his wallet and took out the condom, tearing it open and guiding her up his body as he sheathed himself with one practiced hand.

She seated herself on top of him and took him inside of her slowly, achingly so, her mouth dropping open, her head falling back. She flexed her hips, a ragged sound on her lips, and then she began to move, slowly at first. Then more quickly. But it still wasn’t enough for him. He grabbed on to her hips, moved her up and down over his body, driving them both crazy. Pushing them both until she cried out her pleasure. And then he reversed their positions, pounding into her, unable to hold himself back any longer. It was primal and urgent, and exactly what he needed to compound that strange unraveling in his chest. Only then, she opened her eyes and met his.

And he couldn’t breathe. Not then. Just as his climax took him over, he was lost. In Cricket. In the look of wonder on her face, the absolute trust there. He was her first lover. The only man who had ever touched her like this. He was bound up in all of the strange things she’d been going through for all this time, and he didn’t want to be even more turned on by that, but he was. And he lost himself then, just went over the edge, growling out her name as she cried out his and convulsed around him. As she stared up at him, the look of absolute contentment in her eyes undid him. She didn’t know better. Didn’t know a different man.

He had taken her crush and used it to his advantage.

He had taken her inexperience as a rancher, as a poker player, and had used it to his advantage there too.

He felt… Well, he felt like shit, actually. Because there was something in him that knew instinctively he could never answer the depth of longing in her eyes. There was something in him that knew he had bound her to him. Her childish feelings, her awakening desire—she would feel connected to him in a way she shouldn’t. That was a fact. That was the problem. And he would… He would what? Take her away from this place that she was turning into her own? Away from this life she was making and into his? He would just be another man taking a woman’s dreams and putting them underneath his own.

They would be done at the end of the month. That was the deal. And whatever possibilities he felt out here in the wilderness… They just weren’t to be.

That was good. It was right that he knew that, felt that. Everything would go back to the way it had been, when all this was said and done. That was for the best. Because he wouldn’t be able to give Cricket what she wanted. Not really. And when she realized that, then they would both be trapped in the exact same hell their parents had been trapped in.

And he wouldn’t have that.

Not ever.

But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he kissed her forehead, and she snuggled against him. And right out there in the open, completely naked, the two of them fell asleep.

What happened at the end of the wager was a problem for their future selves. Because right now, they had this.

And Jackson’s last thought before he drifted out of consciousness was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt quite this content.

CHAPTER NINE

It was the thirtieth day.

Cricket hadn’t had the heart to ask if he would be staying the entire day, or leaving right away, or… She didn’t know. And she was afraid to find out exactly what the answer was.

She was a coward.

She desperately wanted this to keep on going. She desperately wanted him to stay with her.

Right. So you’re going to beg him to stay in your little ranch house? And for what? You’re trying to find your own way…

No. She couldn’t beg him to stay.

But they woke up the morning of the thirtieth day in the same bed just as they had every morning since they’d begun sleeping together, and he had gone out to work the same as he had from the beginning.

And so when he returned that evening, dirty and disheveled, she breathed out a sigh of relief.

Maybe he wasn’t ready for things to