The Rancher's Rules

The sight of her naked body on the rumpled bedding once again paralyzed him. He had sublimated the feelings rushing through him for so long, it was almost impossible to believe he was here, in Zoe’s old bedroom, with Zoe lying on the bed wearing nothing but a dusky red blush.

He’d had other women, but he could never remember feeling like this. This was more than physical. Hell, it was more than mere emotion. There was something spiritual about making love to this woman.

He met her eyes and smiled. “You’re blushing.”

Her lips twisted in a shy frown. “You’re staring at me.”

“I can’t help it. You’re so perfect.” Didn’t she realize that?

“I’m not perfect.”

He gave her a considering look. “Yes, you are. Let me show you.” He picked up her foot and started giving nibbling kisses to each tiny digit. “Your feet are so sexy that just the sight of this little toe—” he wiggled her pinky toe “—gets me so hot my jeans get uncomfortable.”

She stared at him, her mouth opened slightly, her brown eyes dark with emotion.

He gave her instep an open-mouth kiss, letting his tongue tickle it before pulling back. “You’ve got a really erotic arch, niña. You could do feet commercials.”

“Feet commercials?” Her voice broke in the middle of the word commercials.

“Uh-huh.” His lips moved their way up her calves to the inside of her knee. Her breathing became ragged. So did his. He knew where he was going and, by the tensing of her thighs, he figured she did too.

“Grant?”

“Sweetheart, you’ve got legs that could stop traffic. I have never appreciated your particular style of dress as much as I do at this moment. If you wore short skirts, I wouldn’t get any work done. I’d spend all my time staring at your sexy knees.” He punctuated each word with a kiss on one of her legs.

“Sexy knees? I didn’t know anyone had sexy knees.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, you’re perfect.”

Then he zeroed in on his target, gently parting her swollen flesh with his tongue and licking the slick little bud at the apex of her femininity. Zoe’s hips strained up off the bed and she screamed. He flicked her with his tongue while inserting a finger slowly into her hot, moist, very tight passage. He wanted this to be perfect for her.

He wanted her to remember this night as the most wonderful experience of her life.

“Grant!” His name sounded like both a demand and a plea.

He gave in to both and pulled her swollen button of love into his mouth, suckling it like he had her nipple earlier. Her scream reverberated through his body like an electric charge.

“Please, please, please…”

Did she even know what she was begging for? What he planned to give her? She bucked against him and he continued kissing her intimately, until he could taste her sweet honey flow and she shuddered with release against his mouth. She cried out again, a high-pitched scream that went on for several seconds. He didn’t stop his ministrations and she thrashed against the bed, trying to dislodge him and press herself more firmly against him all at the same time.

She came again, this time sobbing his name, and then just sobbing. The swollen tissues of her sex contracted around his finger and he almost came, thinking what that was going to feel like when he was inside her.

He kept on until she begged him to stop, and her body went completely limp around him, convulsing sporadically when his tongue hit a particular spot of soft feminine flesh. He gentled her with the soothing touch of his fingers and soft kisses pressed against the sensitized flesh at the juncture of her thighs.

He stood up and donned a condom. She watched him put on the protection, her eyes slumberous with spent passion.

He smiled, but his heart felt tight. This act was so important. It had never been this way with another woman, but he felt as if taking Zoe would be permanent. It was more than being her first lover. It was knowing that she belonged to him on a fundamental level he couldn’t begin to explain. She always had, but he’d been too stubborn to admit it.

A desire that did not die after four years of suppression was not born of lust. He shied away from identifying what had given it birth. It was enough to know that this was something special.

Zoe could not believe that her body was once again responding to the sight of Grant’s arousal. The way he’d brought her to multiple orgasms with his mouth had totally exhausted her—or so she’d thought. Now she felt the stirrings of renewed need, as well as a deep longing to satisfy her lover every bit as thoroughly as he had satisfied her.

She didn’t doubt she could do it, even if she’d never had a lover before. She’d read books—and not just erotic romance either. She’d read sex manuals when she’d been trying to find a way to want a man besides her best friend. But now that problem was solved. It was Grant standing so sexily above her, so obviously ready to join his body with her own.