This Calder Sky (Calder Saga 3)

“Considering that you were my teacher, are you bragging or complaining?” Maggie countered.

“Bragging.” When she turned to catch the trailing reins of her horse, he frowned and reached out to stop her. “Where do you think you’re going?” She didn’t resist when he turned her back to face him.

“You said you were leaving when I came. I didn’t want to keep you from your work.” Her green eyes blinked with too much innocence. Maggie enjoyed exercising the power she’d discovered she had over him, the ability to make him want her despite other prior claims on his attention … even from his father.

“You little liar.” Chase smiled and pulled the reins from her hand to let them drop while he hooked her hat on the saddle horn. Then his hands were on her shoulders, rubbing the rounded curve of her bones and feeling the soft flesh of her upper arms. “You know . . . now that you are here … I’m staying. And to hell with any work.”

There was nothing in her hands, and nothing to keep her from touching him. Her fingers felt the flatness of his stomach and the involuntary contraction of his muscles beneath them. Slowly, she let her fingers glide up his rib cage to his hair-roughened chest and shoulders, staying under the shirt. His hands tightened on her shoulders to pull her up on her toes so that she would meet his descending mouth halfway. His hungry kiss did such warm, delicious things to her. Sometimes Maggie felt there was a Fourth of July display going on inside her, with brightly colored stars shooting all through her, spraying their light and heat to every corner of her body.

She pressed closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and arching her body against his hard, rangy length, not satisfied until she was molded intimately to him and the heat of his flesh was burning its imprint on her. The crush of his encircling arms echoed the need for absolute closeness. When he began nibbling on the curve of her neck, Maggie couldn’t contain the soft animal sound that came from her throat, but she tried to deny that he was equally empowered to devastate her.

“Sometimes”—her voice was a hoarsely disturbed whisper—“I think you’re only interested in sex.”

His hands moved to cup her firm bottom and fit her hips tightly to the saddle of his so that she would know she was making him hard. “You did this to me deliberately. Now you’re saying it’s my fault.” He was amused, rather than angry.

Maggie lowered her head, wondering if such aggression by a woman was improper, yet unable to feel ashamed of it if it was. She pressed her lips against the nakedness of his chest to taste his skin, liking its smooth texture and salty flavor.

“I can’t help it, I guess,” she murmured and heard the groan he made deep inside.

“Maggie, haven’t you discovered yet that neither one of us can?” he muttered thickly and scooped her up to carry her to a shaded stretch of grass where he put her down.

Once the primitive fires had burned themselves out, there was time to talk. Chase enjoyed Maggie’s company as much as he enjoyed her body. She was bright and intelligent, easy to talk to. The responsibility of housework and family at an early age had made her mature beyond her years. Despite the stark difference in their backgrounds—Maggie coming from a poor family and a home that possessed few creature comforts, and Chase reared in an environment of wealth and power—they had both been raised with hardship: in h

is case, by his father’s decree; and in hers, by reality. Life held few illusions for either of them. Nothing was free; there was a price to be paid for everything. Yet there was something special between them, given freely and without expectation for more than what was received.

With regret, Chase signaled he had to leave. He had allowed himself over an hour to be with her, but he’d used most of it waiting for her to come. The time they had spent together made him more than an hour behind schedule. He walked her to the grazing horse and gathered her into his arms for one last, lingering kiss. The tooting of a truck horn ended it before either of them was satisfied.

Chase straightened and cast an impatient glance over his shoulder. A ranch pickup was bouncing over the uneven terrain toward them, a trio of cowboys laughing and hooting from the cab. The one with the grinning face stuck out the window was Buck. A grimness masked his features when he turned back to Maggie.

“You’d better go,” he said, wanting to protect her from any ribald comments that might be made.

He helped her into the saddle and passed her the reins, waiting until she had turned the bay into the trees before swinging around to face the approaching pickup. It slowed long enough to let Buck hop out, then made a wide arc to return the way it had come. The pickup Chase had driven was parked in the open ground between the two. Chase started toward it, and Buck did, also.

“In case you forgot, you were supposed to pick me up an hour ago so we could load that bull up at the Crosstree pasture,” Buck reminded him with a wide grin and approached Chase with a swaggering stride. “Clay and Jerry were headed this way. I hitched a ride with them to see if you’d broken down somewhere.”

“I hadn’t forgotten.” Chase replied only to the initial remark.

“I guess I don’t need to ask what kept you.” His gaze sought out the horse and rider disappearing over the hillside, then returned to sweep over Chase, a knowing gleam dancing in the blueness of Buck’s eyes. “Or how you got them grass stains on your knees. That was the O’Rourke girl, wasn’t it?”

Chase darkened in anger, his rough features hardening as he ignored his friend’s comments and walked past Buck directly to the pickup. “Let’s get a move on.”

Buck climbed across the open bed of the truck, rather than walk around the tailgate to the passenger’s side. Both doors were slammed shut in unison and Chase turned the key in the ignition.

“Now I understand why you bought those rubbers a couple of weeks back.” Buck was still grinning, his hat tilted to the back of his head, an arm resting on the frame of the opened window. He loved to tease, especially when he could get a rise out of his victim. “You don’t want to get a young thing like that knocked up, but I don’t know if I would trust those rubbers if I were you. You don’t know how long they’ve been sitting on the shelf under Lew’s counter. They’re probably yellow with age now. They’re liable to split on you just when you need them the most.”

“Lay off it, Buck,” Chase warned and shifted the truck into gear. It jumped forward as his foot tromped on the accelerator, then eased back with an effort at control.

“How come you never told me you had some action going on the side?” Buck persisted in a mock complaint. “We never had any secrets from each other before. We’re practically brothers. You know I would never try to move in on your territory, so how come you never mentioned this hot little affair you have going with the O’Rourke girl!”

It was true. They rarely kept any information from each other, trading stories and experiences, bragging and joking about the women they’d had.

“Maybe I just didn’t want to hear any of your crude remarks.” Chase’s expression remained stern, his gaze not straying from the bumpy path through the grass.

“Come on, Chase,” Buck grumbled. “Where’s your sense of humor?”

“I’ll find it when you show some sense of decency.”

“Man, you’re as testy as a bull on the prod.” Buck slouched in the seat, pulling his hat forward and low on his forehead, and stared out the side window for a sullen moment. “What you need is a few beers to loosen up,” he said finally. “It’s Friday and I’m going into town. Why don’t you come with me?”