Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

Too much.

Can you love someone, want someone too much? Can you go crazy from it?

I’m afraid if I let go, I just might.

“Stay with me,” Shane says, breathless as he thrusts into me. “Be here with me, now.”

He starts pumping hard and fast, fucking me so roughly that it’s digging splinters into my hands, his sweat is dripping onto my back. Each thrust renders me thoughtless, until I’m just a body and a soul and I’m needing, needing, needing more.

More.

God.

“Shane,” I cry out.

I am so impossibly full which makes me realize how hollow I was before. Empty, carved out, not sure what I was always yearning for when the truth is I always knew his name.

His hand reaches around, sliding over my clit, still slick, and I whimper because it’s too much and he’s too much and this is too much.

Don’t ever stop. Don’t ever stop.

Please, you have to stop.

Keep it coming.

I’m almost there.

I don’t want it to be over.

Don’t let this be over.

Fuck me forever.

My beautiful cowboy.

“Can you come?” he whispers to me.

I try to nod but I’m gasping, feeling the cool sweat run down my breasts, my neck. I’m on a tightrope ready to snap. My pulse skips when he groans, tells me he wants to hear me come.

“Rachel,” he rasps, voice straining.

His fingers slide.

I go off like a buckshot and I’m soaring, speeding through time and space and then expanding until I’m confetti, slowly drifting down to earth on shaking legs, barely standing up and holding on.

Shane’s hands become steel around me as he starts pumping harder, the sweat flying, grunts and groans rolling out of him as he comes.

He calls out my name and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it sound so revered, his voice almost pained.

Then his hips slow against me.

He loses a bit of control, shaking now, and leans over me, reaching for the tree to take the pressure off of me, his hot, slick chest pressed against my back.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck. Rachel, that was…”

There are no words.

My mind takes its time coming back into the present, to the now, to the fact that I was just thoroughly fucked from behind by Shane Nelson. Not for the first time, not by a longshot, but fucking hell.

What could ever top this?

Who can ever top him?

And it hurts and pinches and stings that I know the answer to that one very well.

Shane pulls out and his cum drips down my legs and he’s trying to catch his breath.

Suddenly I can’t breathe either.

Before it was just want and need and a desire that never wavered.

Now there’s just my pulse pounding in my head, my legs throbbing, my hands cramped and raw, and that pure, sharp twist of fear deep inside.

“Rachel,” he says to me as I straighten up, trying to find my balance as I push off from the tree. I turn around and he’s stepping into me, his hand at my jaw, the other holding my arm. “Please tell me that…that…” He swallows, the sweat glistening above his lip as he gazes at me. “Please tell me that meant to you what it meant to me.”

There’s a strange fluttering in my chest.

Fear. Hope. Love. Loss.

“What did it mean to you?” I whisper.

“The world,” he says before he kisses me, quick and light and laced with tenderness. “It meant the whole entire world.”

Everything inside me brightens, warm and delirious. Because that meant the world to me too.

But when someone hands you the world, don’t tell me it doesn’t scare you.

“Hold on,” he whispers to me and walks over to the saddle bags he strung up on the neighboring tree. Even though the light is dim, painting him in lavender and grey, I can’t help but stare at his gorgeously bare ass. No wonder he was able to fuck me so hard, that ass is made out of steel.

He comes back with a handful of tissues and slowly glides it up my leg, cleaning me off. He then kisses me on the forehead, discarding the tissues and getting back in his boxer briefs.

“I know it’s early but…I’m fucking spent,” he says with a wry grin, spreading out the sleeping bag on top of the mat he rolled out earlier. Then he tosses me my underwear and t-shirt, and lifts the edge of the bag. “After you.”

I put my underwear and shirt back on, quickly go pee behind the trees, not dawdling this time because, you know, bears, and then get inside the sleeping bag.

When he gets in beside me, his body spooning mine, holding me flush to him, it’s only then that I realize Polly and Fletcher had seen us having sex. Thankfully they don’t seem all that fazed, though poor Fletcher won’t meet my eyes.

“Is he going to be okay?” I nod at the dog who is curled up at the foot of the sleeping bag. “Not because he saw us fucking, I mean, from what the bear did.”

Shane pulls back and I look over my shoulder at him as he gives me a funny look. “You were worried about the dog watching us have sex?”

“No. I mean, for a second. The horse too. But I mean, will he be okay?”

Shane nods and kisses the back of my head. “He’ll be fine. Bright and early we’ll head back to the ranch. My dad and I can go back out later to get the cows. Right now, we just need to get everyone home and Fletcher to the vet. It’s all going to fine.”

I exhale, feeling more relieved. “What about Sybil?”

“Well I briefly saw her just as we came into this site. She was trailing behind us. My guess is we’ll see her tomorrow. Don’t you worry about a thing, you’re safe tonight.”

I close my eyes, sinking into the feeling of his arms around me, a feeling as strong and old as time.

Safe.

I’d spent years in therapy learning how to function after what my father did.

I’d worked through it all until I could learn to love myself, learn to feel safe.

I don’t live in that fear anymore, except for the fear of losing myself to Shane all over again.

But being in his arms makes me realize how safe I really am. With him, without him.

I am safe.





17





Shane





I awake just after dawn to birdsong.

My face is buried in Rachel’s soft neck, her silky hair around me like wings.

I smile. Breathe in the smell of her. The morning air. Fresh and cool with only a hint of the heat to come.

She stirs, letting out a little moan.

“Good morning,” I murmur, kissing the back of her head. “How did you sleep?”

She sighs dreamily. “Best sleep I had in years.”

“You didn’t dream about bears.”

She pauses, as if remembering. “No. No, I dreamed about you.”

“A good dream, I hope.”

“You’re only in good dreams,” she says and then shifts so she’s gazing at me. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”