Page 4 of The First Day of Breeding Season
Once he gets here, I’m going to have my hands full, so I’ve been churning through what I can get done, to the point of my muscles aching from use. After wiping my face and neck with the work shirt, I decide against putting the layer back on. Whoever has dropped in, they’re going to get the real me. Dirty jeans, sweat-soaked t-shirt. Short-tempered and grimy.
I jam my cowboy hat on my head as I stride out of the barn, looking for Theo, the young ranch hand who called me down from the hay loft.
He’s fine. A bit of a dumb shit, like all of us are when we get that first taste of working hard for decent money, but he’s been a good hire this summer.
I like him well enough. He reminds me of myself at that age. Or a few years younger. By the time I was nineteen, I’d lived on my own for four years already, working on ranches and scavenging whatever I could in between jobs, and then spending it all on pretty girls who were too old and too smart for me.
He’ll learn soon enough that hormones just get you into trouble.
I rub the rope tattoo around my wrist.
For the last twenty-two years, it’s been my constant reminder of what I want in life.
My pulse jumps against my thumb as my gaze finally finds Theo.
Because right beside him is a woman, a beautiful young woman, and suddenly my ranch hand is the last thing on my mind.
She’s short, a sturdy little girl who could fit in my pocket, and it’s almost hard to look at her. Almost. Fuck. I can’t tear my gaze away. She’s poured into a pair of cut-off jean shorts, a faded t-shirt, and dusty cowboy boots that give me an excuse to look at her creamy calves, her lush curvy thighs.
Her laugh is so fucking sweet, the sound of it carrying on the dusty wind makes me trip over my own damn feet.
With a bright, winsome smile and freckles dusting her cheeks like home grown gold dust, she glows from the inside out.
Mine.
Hot damn, I wish. Because there’s something so familiar about her, it almost feels like she’s walked straight out of long-locked-up fantasies. She looks like the kind of girl that once upon a time I hoped I would find, that I hoped I'd be able to take care of before I learned that I'm not that kind of man.
And when she turns to look at me, pinning that bright, hopeful hazel gaze on my dumb face, my brain flatlines so hard I barely remember to tip my hat to her.
“This is Drew,” Theo says.
“Hi, Drew,” she says, her soft voice stroking over my name.
Her lips are hypnotic.
“Sorry, darlin’. You caught me off guard,” I murmur. “The name’s Drew Lowry. It’s a pleasure.”
Her smile blossoms slowly as she nods and looks her fill of me.
On my wrist, my tattoo tingles.
And in my jeans, my cock swells to life.
Jesus. I’m getting hard for a complete stranger.
I want that mouth wrapped around my dick. Being sweet for me as I pump it over her tongue, getting her used to Daddy’s taste.
Daddy?
Where the fuck did that come from?
But Goddamn,my cock likes it.
I glare at Theo, as if all of this is his fault. It looks like it’s a challenge for my ranch hand to drag his eyes off her, too, because he doesn’t even notice that I’m glowering at him.
“Theo!” I grit my teeth, swallowing back what I want to say. Instead, I jerk my head. “Go finish sweeping out the hay loft. Now.”
He takes one last, longing look at the curvy, touchable ray of sunshine, and hightails it into the barn because he knows who pays him.
