Claiming The Cowboy Read online

  Gretchen delighted at their rapport. She would be disingenuous if she pretended that seeing the attorney general’s law collection didn’t make her heart beat faster. But her heart still seemed to be back in the moment Chase scooped her into his arms.

  “And, since we’re on the topic of the future, I’d love to hear your plans, mayor.”

  Like that, the scales tipped in Gabriel’s favor.

  “Please, call me Gretchen.”

  Maria shooed them back into the grand home with a promise to send a pot of tea into the study. At the threshold of the French doors, Gretchen glanced back over her shoulder. Chase’s gaze connected with hers.

  He smiled and flashed his hand up in an understated, cool-guy wave.

  She mouthed “Surprise.” With jazz hands.

  A chuckle shook his shoulders.

  And for the first time in maybe forever, she didn’t see falling in love and her career falling in line as mutually exclusive.

  While Gretchen and Gabriel’s law talk had echoed against the smooth stone and cavernous foyer, Chase spent time in the kitchen with Maria and her aunt, the one who had prepared the savory meal. He picked their brains about what plant and herb combinations from their culture might be good to distill into water. With absolute certainty, he couldn’t say the water idea would be a full-blown operation, but he found that the longer they spoke about flavors, the more excited he became at the prospect of being the only distillery, stateside, to offer something so unique.

  And his promise to Gretchen felt less like a piece of lumber wedged against his sternum.

  When it became clear that Gretchen and Gabriel’s conversation might stretch until midnight, Chase bid Maria and her aunt goodnight and retired to the private quarters.

  Both cottages were a fair walk from the house. They shared the same limestone and wood building materials, the same shade from towering oaks, and the same meandering gravel paths sourced from local river rock. The one with the blue window shutters had a larger bathroom and a bed on the ground level—no ladder-climbing to a loft required—so Chase ran out to his truck, rain pelting, to fetch Gretchen’s belongings and set them inside the more spacious cabin.

  Low barometric pressure associated with storms always made his injuries ache bone-deep. Chase settled into his cottage, boots- and shirt-free to keep the wettest part of him from dripping all over the cottage interior. He popped a few over-the-counter pain pills and pulled out his laptop with the intention of emailing his partners, but jittery sheets of rain on the cottage’s tin roof relaxed him. At some point, he succumbed to the leather couch and dozed off.

  A soft knock on the door roused him.

  Chase checked his phone for the time. Half-past midnight. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, yawned, and padded to the door.

  In the amber glow of the porch light, Gretchen stood. Umbrella in hand, eyes rounded and glistening, brows perched as if she had spent the entire meandering path to the cottages worrying herself into imperfection and failed.

  “What’s wrong?” Chase moved aside and ushered her in. “You must be freezing.”

  She flung herself into a hug. Her wool suit jacket felt abrasive on his bare chest. He reached for a blanket on the chair beside the door and wrapped it around her shoulders. Still, she trembled against him.

  “Gretchen, what happened?” A million scenarios raced through his head: she had gotten lost on the dark property; his fancy water from Holland had made her sick. Jesus, what if Gabriel told her she didn’t have what it took to follow her dreams?

  “Gabriel told me about the bull that cracked your skull, near your right eye. That it was the highest combined score, rider and bull, and the biggest payout in the history of professional bull riding at the time.”

  “Yeah?” The word slogged out from a place of confusion between his sleepy brain and his tongue. He wasn’t following.

  “And then he said you donated the entire amount to the charity he started to help get it off the ground. Something about sponsoring underground safe houses in Mexico to help in the fight against child trafficking.”

  She was nearly in tears.

  “Gretchen, what on earth?” Chase couldn’t imagine why such a thing would upset her so much. This was precisely the reason women needed an instruction manual. He slipped from the embrace enough so that could read her eyes for clues, but she still had her mayoral mask up from her time with Gabriel. She gave away nothing.

  “Don’t you see? All this time, I was able to explain you away—that you couldn’t possibly think of the town or of others because you selfishly climbed up on animals who wanted to kill you for sport, that you manipulated people because that’s the one lesson fame taught that you didn’t get from a small town, that your shallowness prevented you from looking at someone like me who champions the important things in life—safety and honor and charity—and possibly finding anything of value beyond a Disney punchline.”

  His head was spinning. He pleaded the fifth because he had no idea where this was going.

  “But I was wrong. About all of it. About you. I can’t explain you away anymore. And I don’t want to.”

  Her speech had left her breathless, chest rising and falling as if she had run from the main house. Quite possibly, this was good for him. Or she might want to use the fireplace poker on him. He couldn’t tell—she was so fucking intense.

  Chase’s brain finally mustered up something neutral to say: I put your things in the other cabin. But Gretchen never gave him the chance. He got as far as I before she leaped against his body, legs wrapped around his hips, lips siphoning off all chance of him finishing his sentence.

  His dick charged into hyperawareness like the first second out of the chute.

  10

  The blanket fell to the floor and tangled up Chase’s stocking feet, desperately trying to gain enough traction against the area rug to close the door and plant her back against it. It wasn’t that Gretchen was heavy—she wasn’t, not even close—but the sudden gravitational shift below his buckle nearly toppled him off his axis. With his hands occupied, spread wide on her ass and doing their damnedest to hike up her pencil skirt so that their cores could meet, and his mouth doing its damnedest to answer the ravenous pressure of her kiss, he kneed the door closed and drilled her against the thick oak with his hips.

  She tasted like flavored water—fruity and woodsy—and brought with her the scent of rainwater and faint perfume and the heady musk of arousal the moment her skirt encircled her waist. With every urgent probe of her tongue against his, riding every labored exhale, she ground the tiny little strip of panties between her legs against his thick fly. The cold metal back of his buckle pressed against his abdomen.

  “Take my belt off. I don’t want to hurt you,” he pleaded against her kiss.

  She set to work right away, her brow knitted in glazed concentration. He pulled in two lusty gulps of oxygen and watched her: lips parted and swollen and natural; pupils engorged, the green all but vanished; cheeks the flushest shade of Chase red; and her hair—Christ—down and untamed, a scorching shade of red. And he knew—without question—she was the same mysterious girl who had tried to rip his jacket from the locker all those years ago, the same contradiction that had haunted his fantasies the moment he landed back into town, the same firecracker who set herself apart from every other woman who had ever caught his eye simply by being who she was—genuine, principled, good.

  And he promised to be the best steward of that goodness that she had ever known.

  Belt unbuckled, leather slipped free of his denim loops, she surprised him by looping the belt around the back of her neck like a scarf. His fantasy, recreating itself with every passing second, projected ahead to naked breasts on either side of his championship buckle, and his cock engorged even further.

  “Just like the hat,” he said. “Looks better on you.”

  Before their clothes littered the floor in a trail of passion, before he denied her every bit of sleep for every ounc
e of pleasure he could give her, he had to be sure. Chase suspected what she thought of his history with women, largely Texas tall tales, greatly exaggerated by those who knew nothing. But his reputation for being allergic to relationships—not entirely unfounded—might lead to morning regrets. And he’d have none of that on his watch. Especially not with a woman as special as Gretchen.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked. “I have protection. But we just made things a whole lot more complicated.”

  She smiled, the sweetest, most vulnerable smile he had seen to date. “I’m learning to like surprises.”

  He loved her answer so much, he kissed all other chaser words from her tongue. Gretchen was a politician, a talker. But this night, she would learn an entirely new language of elation that had nothing to do with words.

  While his fingertips roamed the apex of her legs, zeroing in on damp cloth and fleshy cusp constricted by silky fabric, while he ground his erection against her pubis, encouraged by the soft and unguarded moans escaping past her jockeying tongue, she occupied her hands with the removal of her suit jacket and silky shirt. One pearl-like button then two, three. When button four did not cooperate, she abandoned his every notion of Gretchen de Havilland, fastidious hard ass, and forced the two halves apart, tearing the button off, stripping the jacket clear of her arms, and bringing forth a muted laugh that teased a most playful night.

  A red, lacy bra to match her power suit did a most upstanding job of holding her breasts tight, high, erect, and to a perfectly rounded shape—all while giving a tantalizing peep show of the dusky center peaks straining to poke through the intricate detailing.

  He leaned forward and whispered, lips gently skimming her ear, “You make me forget how to breathe.”

  Much as she had the night in the field, she kissed her way down his scratchy jawline until she answered him with a combustible exploration of lips and tongue and mouth.

  Muscles in his arms tweaked. He had to get his hands free and roaming or he would never forgive himself for torching up and spilling out right then and there, before he had fully explored every bit of her terrain. He fingered the crotch of her panties aside and set his digits to work, tangling in her damp curls while he carried her to the kitchenette—nothing more than a sink, a few open shelves and a butcher-block island held in place by enormous structural beams that supported the overhead loft. His mouth watered at the plan taking shape around his instincts: flicking his tongue across her clit, inciting her to riot against the counter and open herself wider, the visual feast of red hair awaiting him at her mound, and climbing the goddamned ladder. Every. Single. Step.

  He placed her gently on the small island. Instantly, she spanned her chest wide and reached for the beams to hold, total surrender. Chase wanted no part of her stuffy political suit to compromise the heights he intended to take her to, so he shimmied her skirt free, opting to leave her panties and heels in place. They were matching reds, and the sight of them against her pale, creamy skin made him want to test the fabric as dental floss.

  She traced the lines of his chest and abdominal muscles with her manicured fingernails, almost reverently, as if she had never explored a peak male physique. For not the first time, he wondered about other men she had been with. Most likely the scholarly type, more likely to philosophize about the weight of political decisions than to bench press the weight of three politicians. He allowed her the time, cherishing the hours laid out before them in a place where Gretchen would feel safe. No photographers. No judgment. No decisions beyond those that chased the ultimate arousal.

  At her collarbone, he began a meandering trail of kisses lower, lower, lower, until the firm, rising crest of her left breast pressed against his lips.

  “Chase?”

  “Hmm?” He was drugged by her scent, incapable of more.

  “See that bottle over there?”

  He didn’t want to look. Anything that robbed him of one moment when her heated skin joined his was one moment too long. So, when he didn’t stop his incessant, grazing, open-mouthed kisses over the bra’s lace to the veiled nipple, she took a firm hold of him through his jeans to get his attention.

  Every muscle in his body tensed in sweet exhilaration, none more so than the ones lining his shaft, all in one deliciously painful push to stretch him to impossible lengths and squirm free of his waistband. He sucked in a breath. At once demure and decisive, she was an intoxicating blend of give and take as a lover.

  “Bottle, Chase.”

  Now, her voice was unquestionably take. With a suggestive finger at his chin, she nudged his focus away from her tits to a shelf near the sink where a bottle of Jack Daniels Old No. 7 stood erect near a shot glass.

  “Bring it here.”

  The idea of Gretchen asking for whiskey snagged in his head, but he was under the command of a different head at this point. Had she asked him to strip and sing a tune from The Little Mermaid, he would have given it hell. He fetched the bottle and shot glass and set them beside her, riveted as to what she may do next.

  No way she would drink it. Not whiskey. No fucking way.

  She untwisted the cap, poured an ounce into the shot glass, and resealed the bottle. The dry, oak-ish scent reached his nose. Mesmerized, he leaned his backside against the adjacent sink, arms crossed, cock pained—expanding, pulsing, demanding to be set free of his jeans. She reached behind her and unfastened her bra’s clasp. In a glorious display of plummeting red lace, her breasts lowered, unbound. Gently, she removed the belt from around her neck and laid it on the counter beside her.

  “You’re killing me.” His voice was like a hot match, blown out to prevent an inferno.

  “That’s not the surprise,” she said, sporting a jaunty angle to her brows.

  He fucking loved surprises. Whatever it was. The seams of his jeans were a vice, his balls an anvil. He reached for the top button of his fly to relieve some of the mounting pressure.

  Her gaze tracked his movements. She shook her head, forbidding him from leaping forward down her agenda. Never had his cock begged for relief more, but in the next breath, the mind-blowing ache ceased to matter. Life ceased to matter.

  Gretchen de Havilland dipped her index finger into the shot glass then drizzled whiskey on her nipples—first the one he had come so painfully close to devouring, then the one that had been neglected for far, far too long.

  Fuck me. “I’m dead,” he strangled out. “You can’t kill me because I’m already there.”

  The coppery-dark spirit blended with the rosy circumference of her areolas, charged down the fullness of her breasts, and dripped a lazy path to her panties.

  “Want a taste?” she asked.

  Did bulls have massive testicles? He seized the opportunity for her to share it with him, to put the monster she feared most out the door and out of her life.

  “Together,” he said.

  He cupped one heavy breast gently—higher and higher—until her wickedly deft tongue extended fully past her lips and met the tip of his tongue, right at the volcanic crest of her nipple. He knew without asking that it was her first taste of the forbidden; he had to know.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it tastes like dirt.”

  A robust laugh bubbled up from his gut. He chuckled and spoke against the swell of her perfect globe. “Water for you then.”

  He felt her smile all the way to his toes. Such a simple thing. Such a monumental step for her. Never had he felt closer to her than this moment. Not because she was spread-eagled, inviting him to consume every part of her, but because she trusted him enough to lay out her most painful fear for mutual consumption.

  Chase was not one to let whiskey go to waste. His tongue retraced its every tributary in reverse. He reached the straining, pebbled nubs of her breasts and rolled them, tugged them, kneaded them, barely skimmed them with his touch, alternating pressure until she moaned exactly as he wanted her to—uninhibited, breathless. When he had done all he could to ripen her nipples
with his hands, he circled their circumference with his tongue then tugged the rock-hard center into his mouth. Against his palette on top and stroked by a rhythmic licking of his tongue below, he suctioned her nipple toward his throat until she threaded her fingers through his hair and jolted off the counter. Her first buck of a long, long ride.

  Not to be ignored, he laved her other nipple with the same attention, refusing to stop until she cried out something new. This time, his name, married to what sounded suspiciously like the whispered hint of an f-bomb.

  Surprise, indeed. It seemed the fairy-tale princess had a hidden naughty streak. From that moment on, his goal became to incite a passionate, sharp curse from her unadulterated lips. Nowhere better to advance his goal than beneath her panties, askew from his cursory touch and riding a hard line between her two gloriously russet-haired, fleshy folds.

  He knelt before her.

  Her knees tightened together.

  Chase shot a questioning glance upward and searched her vibrant, alive eyes.

  “No one has ever…” Two fresh roses of color emerged at her cheeks.

  Were the men who had bedded her insane? What lover, in his right mind, would deny himself a taste of her molten core? The vow he had begun with circled back through his mind. He recommitted himself to being the best steward of this refreshing, untapped purity that she had ever known.

  Chase kissed the inside of one ankle first then the next before he hooked the heels of her red shoes to the counter’s edge. The small of her back arched to accommodate the change in position. Muscles in her legs tensed.

  “Breathe, chief.”

  Her chest rose and fell once, completely at his command. How hard that must be for her; how hard it was for him not to dive into her folds like a starving man into his first meal. He nudged her closer to the counter’s edge then ditched the heels completely in favor of making her more comfortable. They skated off his shoulders and dropped to the floor with a hollow clonk.

  Instantly, she relaxed.