Page 57 of Single All the Way

“Who knew he was such a flirt?”

“He just likes me because I gave him corn.”

Once all three horses had corn and water, Ben went to a staircase at the end of the aisle and started up.

“Can I come?” I asked.

He paused. “Sure. It’s just a lot of hay.”

“I’ve never seen a hayloft.”

Ben laughed and shook his head. “Got me a city girl, huh?”

“Small-town girl who’s never been around barn animals.” I caught up to him and followed him up the stairs. They opened to an expansive loft filled with rectangular bales from one end to the other. “That’s…a lot of hay.”

“It should last us all winter. The llamas each go through about a bale a day.”

“Each?”

“They don’t have grains like the horses, so it’s all hay in the winter.”

“And cookies.”

“And cookies.”

There wasn’t a lot of room for us to walk up here, just stacks and stacks of hay, with some of the stacks on this end shorter, making a kind of stair-step pattern. As I took it all in, he grasped my hand and pulled me flush against him. He’d taken his thick work gloves off.

“Wanna roll around in the hay?” he asked.

I eyed the hay, grinning at his reference to my teasing accusation last night.

“Missing your many ladies?”

He went serious and tugged me in for a hot, lingering kiss, which served to stop my smart-ass remarks. Instead he pulled a moan from me as heat shot through me from just a kiss. Let it be known that Ben Holloway could work magic with his mouth even with all my clothes on.

He gripped my butt and pulled me against his erection. “I didn’t start anything in bed because I meant to let you go back to sleep, but here you are.”

“Here I am. Feeding the horses. If anyone asks.”

“No one’s going to ask,” he said in a sexy rumble, “because the kids are with Berty. Trapped by a snowstorm.”

“Mmm. The whole town is stranded by a snowstorm.” I’d likely need to close the salon for the day.

I kissed him, my arms going around his neck as I wished for fewer layers between our bodies.

Ben slipped both his hands under the waistband of my sweatpants and palmed my butt, his fingers dipping lower between my legs. As if he’d hit a switch, a persistent ache ramped up deep in my hollow core, throbbing to be filled by him.

With our mouths still locked in a frantic kiss, I unzipped his coat and ran my hands under his thermal shirt, over his ridged chest, as he teased the apex of my thighs. I’d never ached so bad for someone. If I didn’t fill myself with him in the next sixty seconds, I was going to lose my mind.

“Ben,” I gasped.

“I know.”

I went after his jeans next, unbuttoning them, trying to be careful as I worked the zipper down over his erection.

He’d undone my coat and shoved it off, then unfastened my bra so he could get his hands on my breasts. He lifted my sweatshirt and leaned down to take my nipple in his mouth, making me moan and gasp and throb deep inside.

I guided him backward to a bale of hay stacked about three feet off the ground, and he sat on it, in perfect alignment with my intentions. I toed my boots off, shoved my sweats and underwear down my legs, and stepped out of them.

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