Page 135 of When We Were Us
I chuckle at that. “I sleep.”
“You’re the hardest worker I’ve ever met. And I’ve worked at a lot of ranches. What you do here…it’s a part of you. Not many men could do this type of work. And you do. Every day.”
I just shrug again because, to me, a great day on the ranch is the best it gets. Hell, even a bad day on the ranch is a good day if I can say I accomplished something that matters. And this does.
She eyes me from over her shoulder and then says, “You’re pretty smart, you know that?”
I laugh. “Been doing this a long time. Don’t know that it has much to do with smarts, more like just a shit ton of experience.” I toss the seed to the side.
“Don’t do that.”
My eyes flip to hers. “Don’t do what?”
“Downplay what you do,” she says, eyeing me over her shoulder. “What you know, or who it makes you.”
I watch her for a couple of beats. I wonder if she knows how much it means to me to hear her say that. I bet she doesn’t. I know what I do here on the ranch is important. I always have. But hearing her tell me that? Hearing her tell me that what I love makes me a better man? It’s everything. But I’m not sure how to respond to that, so I just nudge her with my boot.
“What else do you wanna know?”
She tilts her head, thinking. “How often do you move cattle?”
“Every day.”
“Every day?” Her eyes go wide. “All of them?”
I chuckle. “Not all of them, no. Roughly sixty to eighty each day. We have some in a few parcels thirty miles west of here that we move less often.”
“Why? And it’s you who does it?”
“Well, typically Jack and I, but sometimes Jack and Beau.” I shrug. “They’re out there because cells are bigger. More open land means more grazing surface, but they’ll all be brought this way in a couple weeks for winter. They’re up a lot higher now, and that’s fine in the summer, but as it gets colder and snow falls, we bring them down in elevation.”
“How do you move cattle thirty miles?”
“On horseback.”
“Like an honest-to-goodness cattle drive?” A grin slowly splits her face and her eyes light up. “Like in the movies?”
I laugh. “Well, it’s nothing like the movies, but yes, an honest-to-goodness cattle drive. It takes about three days or so. It’s about two-thirds of our herd.”
“That’s so sexy.”
I bark out a laugh. “Nothing sexy about moving cattle, Wren. Lots of dust, cow shit, and sleepingon the ground with a bunch of crusty cowboys.”
She twists her lips up and moves to sit back on her heels before swinging her leg over mine to straddle my lap, our sandwiches forgotten. She sinks down, her lips tipped up in a sexy smirk. “You wear a cowboy hat for that?”
“One of the only times I do.”
The humming sound she makes in the back of her throat has my dick hardening underneath her.
“Sounds pretty fucking sexy to me, Hayes,” she says against my lips before she runs her tongue along my top lip.
I run my hands up her back, pulling her closer. I’m loving the feel of her on top of me, and all that silky blond hair spilling down her back and over her shoulders. Our lips crush against one another, tasting, savoring. It starts slow and languid, but when she picks up the pace with her hips, grinding on me like she did that first night, I can’t stand it anymore.
“I need to feel you,” I rasp out against her mouth and rip open the button and zipper on her jeans as she scrambles to get my pants open. Shoving my fingers into the front of hers, my eyes snag on the red, lacy thong she wears. It reminds me of that day she gave me her number while wearing that little red bikini, damn near twenty years ago. An image has never been so vivid.
Working my fingers into her panties, my eyes roll back in my head when I slide two fingers over her clit. I push two fingers inside her in one rough thrust, making her cry out.
I fuck her with my fingers while she works my straining cock free from my pants. Her fingers close around me and let out a low groan. God, she feels so good on me, around me. She swipes across the head of my aching cock and then jerks me slow and firm.
