Page 12 of Rough Ride

Crysta needed to remind herself it was temporary and he wasn’t her Dom. But she knew it would be easier said than done.

four

Eli snorted when he saw Micah Ross’ number on his cell phone. He’d had more phone calls from the club owner in the last few weeks than he had their entire friendship. In fact, he had barely talked to Micah outside of the club. Not until Joe had gotten sick. Now, after his friend’s death, Micah called on a regular basis. He thought about ignoring it because he had a lot of work today, but he had learned that Micah would just keep calling. He picked it up.

“If you keep calling me like this, people will begin to talk.”

Micah chuckled. “I call at the behest of my woman.”

“I really hate that term,” Dee said in the background.

“It’s true,” Micah said. “And she did want me to call and check on you.”

“Yeah. So sad to see someone who used to be a revered Dom at the command of a little woman.”

“She takes orders about the important stuff. Ow, dammit, Dee. Don’t punch me.”

Eli laughed. It had been ten days since the memorial service and either Evan or Micah had called him every few days. It was a little disturbing how Eli was starting to look forward to the calls, so he had ignored a few of them. That had been a mistake.

“Whatcha want now, Ross?”

“Dee wanted to know when Crysta was returning. She’s wondering if she’d want to come over and meet everyone.”

“Why the hell would she want that?” he asked, realizing he had raised his voice when one of the horse trainers glanced over at him. Why the idea had him pissed off he had no idea.

“Dee thought she might want to get to know about the islands. And, you know, you don’t have a lot of women on the ranch. She might want some female company. Plus, you know the ladies. They’ll want to take her to Rough ‘n Ready.”

Eli said nothing as he looked out over the barn while trying to form an answer.

“Eli?”

He didn’t know why he had such a visceral reaction to her being at the club, or even just talking to the women. May Chambers and Dee Ross were sweet women and would never do anything to Crysta, but Eli realized there was a sense of wrongness about taking her to the club. She lived the life and was a beautiful woman. He didn’t want her on display.

That is until she’d submitted.

Dammit.

“Eli? Seriously, man, you have to answer me, or Dee’s going to have her brother route a call to 911 there.”

Eli shook himself out of his funk. “Control your woman, Ross. Besides, what makes you think Crysta would want a trip to Rough ‘n Ready?”

There was a beat of silence. “I talked to Damon, the Dom we talked about. She’ll want to at least stop by, according to him.”

That wasn’t acceptable. Not that he had a choice in the matter, but Eli didn’t like it. He wanted her on the ranch. With him.

Shit.

He needed to get his mind off that. There was no way he was going to be able to bed Crysta. He didn’t have time to deal with a new sub, and he didn’t want to deal with implications of getting tied up with her. They had a hard six months ahead of them.

“Listen, I’ll let her know when she comes here. We’ll probably make a trip to Oahu, but we are kind of stuck here for six months. We can only leave the island for a couple days.”

Ross chuckled. “I have a feeling old Joe had this planned all along.”

“Of course he did, the old bastard.”

“You don’t sound too upset over it.”

He shrugged knowing Micah couldn’t see it. “I can’t disagree because I’ll be left with the ranch at the end. Crysta stepped up.”

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