Since the picnic he’d been scheming and plotting to get her alone and been frustrated at every turn. He’d almost given in to temptation and snuck into the guest cabin with her, but that wasn’t how he wanted to finish this. Before long, he wanted to take them to the next stage.

It was time to move on. Oh hell, it was past time.

Jaxi slipped from his arms and served slices of pie onto plates. She had a little smile at the corner of her mouth, and Blake stopped even as he reached for the ice cream scoop.

She couldn’t have.

“You never answered my question. You ever been naked in front of a crowd before?”

She stole the scoop from under his unmoving hand and added servings of ice cream to the plates, her smile turning into more of a smirk by the minute. He tugged the scoop out of her hands, picked her up and set her on the counter.

Eye to eye he looked at her. Leered, to tell the truth.

“Tell me.”

“I took a modeling class to learn how to dress nice in something other than jeans all the time. I got asked to pose and there was—”

“You posed? For a Sears magazine or a—?”

Jaxi pressed her finger to his lips. “I posed for a group of artists. Nude.” She grinned at him. “It was a really lucky circumstance because I wanted to take a dance class and one of the artists turned out to be an exotic dancer. I went to her studio and she gave me private lessons.”

Blake was growing hotter by the minute, the ice cream in danger of melting to puddles from simply being in the same room. Holy shit, she knew how to exotic dance?

Did his dad know about this? Is that what he’d meant by “interesting” classes?

Blake pulled her off the counter and handed her a couple of plates of pie. She had no idea what she’d just let loose. The tentative plan running through his mind was okay, but this beat anything he could have devised, even with weeks of setup.

“Go deliver these. Then gather whatever you need to put on a show for me. I’ll wait in the barn.”

“The barn?”

“That a problem?” Blake asked. “You got a better place in mind?”

Jaxi backed against the door until it opened. “No, the barn is fine. You want to arrange a seat by the training pole?”

Blake delivered the rest of the plates to a group of silent men all wearing enormous grins on their faces.

“Someone here got the bad habit of listening at doors?” Blake let his possessive feelings show.

“Holy shit, Blake, you’ve got to let us come watch,” Joel begged.

Blake plopped a plate of pie in front of him. “In. Your. Dreams. I find any one of your scrawny hides near the barn, and I’ll convince Dad to let you handle the newborn lambs Christmas Eve all by yourself.”

He ignored his own plate of dessert and hightailed it out the door. The boys could clean up—he had a show to attend.


Jaxi slipped through the door into the long hallway. She dropped her bag onto a chair and tugged off her robe.

Blake had turned on the overhead speakers, and the walls strummed with the local country station. She paced to the far end of the barn where the horses’ training area was located. In the center of the room, a solid metal post they used for putting foals through their paces rose vertically.

Her heart beat faster as she anticipated Blake’s reaction to her dancing. It seemed forever since he’d touched her intimately, and she had no intention of waiting anymore.

He reclined in his chair, relaxed and at ease. Until she noticed his fingers gripped his belt buckle a little too tight. His eyes gone a little too wild.

Perfect.

She took a deliberate stroll behind him. Close enough to drag her fingertips along his shoulders and through the short curls at his neckline. She stepped away to grasp the upright pole cemented in the middle of the room.

And danced.

She started slow and easy, with her hips and torso close to the pole. Her jean shorts rode high on her ass and low on her hips, and showed off the long expanse of leg exposed between the top of her cowboy boots and the shorts. The studded denim vest pressed her breasts until her cleavage threatened to fall out every time she breathed.

She’d picked the outfit deliberately. The girl who had trained her wanted her to wear high heels, and Jaxi learned to dance in them as well, but the boots said it all. She was a country girl through and through, and there was nothing sexier.

She let her head drop back, hanging on to her cowboy hat. She wrapped a leg around the pole while she swung her upper body free, one hand skimming her skin. Over the vest and the buttons, letting a couple loose and exposing more of her body to Blake’s vision.

Jaxi pulled off her hat in one smooth motion and let the long hair she’d tucked inside bounce around her shoulders, swinging free. The length stroked her skin, caressing as it fell.

She danced, feeling wicked and sexy and totally in control of her body. The beat of the song echoed in her heart, bounced off the walls and traveled through her limbs to heat her from the inside out. The song finished far too soon. She closed her eyes to focus, breathing hard for a minute before she stepped back from the pole and faced Blake.

He’d opened his jeans and sat stroking himself as he stared at her, raw desire flushing his skin. She watched in fascination as he pulled with firm motions, the length of his cock hard and ready. It had been so long, and she was more than ready to renew the physical part of their relationship.

“Take off your vest.”

“Does this mean the wooing is over?”

Blake caught her gaze with his, and the answer flashed heat through her as if she’d stepped in front of a blazing fire on a winter’s day.

Oh, yeah.

Jaxi took her time, finally unbuttoning the last snap, and let the garment fall to the ground behind her.

“Holy shit, you’ve got nipple rings.”

“Clip-ons. You like them?”

He growled. Jaxi licked her fingertips, then rolled her nipples. She let the sound of her pleasure flow over him.

“The shorts. Off.”

Jaxi moved with deliberate slowness, unsnapping, unzipping, turning her back toward him as she lowered the material over her ass an inch at a time. She wanted to drive Blake mad with want. She startled when his hand touched her skin, hot and moist from touching his cock. He tugged her hips to draw her closer.

“You going to leave those boots on for me, sexy cowgirl?”

“You know it.”

Blake stripped down, all hard, glistening muscles, replacing his own boots before standing. He circled her again, like in the kitchen, only this time they were both naked.

Except for their cowboy boots.

Blake stared at her, his gaze eating her up. “Slick, I don’t even know where to begin on you. I need to taste those nipples with those pretty little rings. I want to lick your entire body. I want to kiss your sweet lips all night long. But all I can think of right now is finding out how good a cowgirl you are.”

Jaxi ran her hand down his chest, playing with the hairs that led to where his cock stood at attention, weeping with need. “You wanna take me for a ride, cowboy?”

Blake swept her into his arms. Jaxi wrapped her legs around his waist, felt his shaft hard against her heated core. He shifted his hands to her ass, and with one quick adjustment, he penetrated her. He was hot and huge, and Jaxi felt every inch as he forged into skin that was tender from too much, too soon, but she didn’t want him to stop. The pleasure rose above the faint discomfort as more fluid coated them both, smoothing the thrusts of his body as he drove deeper and deeper. Blake used his strong arms to support her, to weld them together intimately while he stood in the middle of the room. She squeezed him hard, reveled in the heat of his body. The tingle of the breast clips radiated out, upping the sensations slowly driving her higher, increasing the stimulation as he struck her clit on every plunge.

He lifted her suddenly and spun her, nestling her hips back against him. Blake centered himself and pressed in from behind, his hands cupping her breasts, his thumbs and forefingers tugging on the nipple rings while his hips pistoned.

“I need to touch. I need to feel you, all soft and welcoming under my hands. So wet and tight and everything I need. Damn, I need you.”

She was going up in flames, all the heat from teasing him at the table, the knowledge she’d turned him on with her dancing, all the love she’d seen in his eyes pulling her closer and closer to the edge. He drew both breasts together into one hand and dropped the other to brush her clitoris and she cried out. Her body squeezed his cock, tried to lock him in place as he continued to rub and thrust.

“Give it to me, Jaxi, don’t hold back. I ain’t going to stop until you come around me one more time.”

Tension drew toward a peak again. She was so wet fluid clung to the inside of her thighs, easing their joining.

“Blake, oh hell.” The explosion radiated from her core to the tips of her fingers, every ridge on his cock more pronounced as her sheath clutched tighter around him. Blake cried in triumph, his arms supporting her against his torso as his cock pumped and jerked inside her.

He cradled her close while he shuffled backward, his cock nestled deep within her. He collapsed into the chair, draping her legs over the arms to let him touch where they connected. Jaxi leaned her head on his shoulder and tried to stop the aftershocks from ripping her away from him, still hard between her legs.

One hand cupped her breast. With the other Blake ran a slow finger along the seam between his cock and her pussy, the wickedest sensation ever.

The most intimate touch.

“Damn, that was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

She couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe.

They lay in the chair until Blake softened enough he slid from her body. He twisted her in his arms, both of them sticky with sweat and come, and Jaxi realized she didn’t care one bit. She’d never felt more alive.

Blake loosened one of the nipple rings. He pressed his palm against the stinging tip for a minute before removing the other one. Dragging his jeans closer, he reached into a pocket to slip the rings away. He kissed her and cradled her against the beating of his heart.

“Jaxi, I tried to ask you something the other day before the munchkins invaded our picnic.”

She sat up a little, glowing from their shared heat.

Blake grinned. He kissed her hand and slipped something cold on her finger.

“It’s temporary. We can go pick up something real in Calgary or Edmonton, or even online I guess. I wanted—”

Jaxi kissed him to silence and leaned back to examine the ring. He’d woven two horseshoe nails together, smooth and shiny. It was simple and beautiful and evoked feelings in her she hadn’t thought possible to grow any stronger.

He held up his hand to show off a matching ring, and she fought back tears.

“Can we can be ready by October? Ma and Dad got married Thanksgiving weekend, and I figure a wedding would make a real fine reason to be thankful.”

Jaxi drew a contented breath and nodded.

He paused for a minute, then gave an embarrassed cough. “You notice we forgot to use something? Again?”

Jaxi blushed. “I was too interested in what we were doing to worry about it.”

Blake let out a big breath. “This past week I thought about the fact we’ve had sex with no protection, a couple times already. I also pondered that lecture you gave me, that first night we made love.”

“Lecture?” She shot him her best evil eye.

“Hey, I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it. In fact, I earned more of an ass kicking than you gave me that night. It was reckless of me to put you in that position, no matter how right you were about us being together no matter what the outcome. I shouldn’t have acted all territorial until we’d talked about the future.”

Jaxi wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “And the next time? In the kitchen? And now—you’re not being territorial now by leaving off a condom?”

“Now I’m totally staking my claim. Like a bloody caveman.” He brought their lips together and caught her in mid-laugh. When he finally released her from the kiss it was to back up only a couple of inches. “This time I figured I had your permission—something I didn’t have that first night in the cabin. But after you told me very plainly you didn’t think us having a baby was a mistake, I thought you might not mind us getting started on a family right quick. I know I wouldn’t mind a bit.”