Page 63 of Ace of Spades
I slap him playfully on the chest, a smile still plastered on my face.
“Let me just grab a swimsuit,” I tell him.
“Want me to wait out here? I wouldn’t want to leave you with any unfinished business…” he teases, a cocky grin showing off a single dimple in the moonlight.
“You’re the worst,” I roll my eyes.
“What did I say about rolling your eyes at me, Sorrels?”
I swallow down a gulp, his warning from earlier waking up the spot between my legs.
“I’ll be out in a second,” I manage to choke out.
His eyes are vivid, his expression predatory.
“I’ll be waiting.”
Chapter 20
HAILEY
“You can ride on one of my horses?” I offer, the group of us rounding up our horses at the turnouts where we’d let them run around all day. Beau and Chelsea had grabbed Cooper and Barley from the stables before meeting us here, the two mounted bareback on their horses.
“Hell no. I mean, I love you and all, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I’ve seen your horses—they’re freaking crazy. They’re like, advanced. And I’m like, not advanced,” Dakota laughs.
“Well, why don’t you ride with your brother on Lark?”
“Ew, gross. We’d basically be forced to hug theentire way there.”
“Touché,” Weston agrees, pulling himself onto the black mare.
“I told you, she can ride with me on Odessa,” Chance says, leading the dappled grey mare up to the group. “Besides, she’s probably the most bomb-proof horse out here.”
“Okay fine,” Weston relents. “You can ride with Chance. But just for the record, I’m not a huge fan of this. You two are already rooming together, I don’t want either of you gettin’ any funny ideas. Rafe, are you sure she can’t ride with you?”
“No can do, Cisco’s already got a bad back as is. No offense, Kota—I just don’t want to put any more strain on him.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be the perfect gentleman,” Chance promises, giving Dakota a leg up onto his horse before climbing on behind her, his backpack full of beer clinking over the sounds of the crickets.
“You’d better be, that’s my little sister.”
“So Kota, if your brother grew up riding horses, why did you never learn to ride?” I ask, walking Vegas up against the fence to use it as a ladder. I throw my leg over him, his coat soft against the bare skin of my legs.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had ridden a horse bareback. Come to think of it, I didn’t think I had since I was a child. I stopped riding horses leisurely a long time ago, so focused on constantly training that I often forgot to have fun. Right now, sitting atop him in a field at night without a saddle, in shorts and a bikini top, I felt more free than I had been in a while.
There was something about this place, and these people, that somehow brought me back to my roots, reminding me why I loved what I did. I didn’t care about all of the fancy stuff when Iwas a kid, I just cared about the horses. About how it felt to feel connected to something, and how they seemed to understand me more than my own parents did at times.
I breathed in the smell of the outdoors and the horsehair, the evening breeze brushing across my bare shoulders. This moment right here, right now, felt more like home than my home ever had.
“Well, most of the horses he was around were either client horses that he was training, or bucking horses, and there was no way I was getting on either of those. It’s not like I’m scared of them or anything, they’re just… a tad bit intimidating, is all.”
The group of us lead our horses out of the pasture, the sound of hooves muffled by the damp earth as we make our way down the trail, the seven of us riding side by side.
“And yet you live on a horse ranch,” I point out.
“Temporarily,” she says. “I’m starting as a registered nurse at the hospital in River Valley next year, so I’ll be getting my own apartment. I keep telling them that we need to get some of those mini cows, though. How cute would those be?”
“What use would we have with those?” Rafe asks.
