Taboo: A Dark Romance Boxset (Stud Ranch 1)

“Why?” I tug on his arm. There’s no way my tiny pull would move him, but he turns back at the pressure.

His eyes meet mine and he obviously reads the meaning of my question in my face. “I needed to know you would be safe. Before we really tried.”

That I would be safe? What does that—? My first impulse is to be insulted.

He needed to know he could control me is what he really means. He needed me to be a dog begging at his feet for scraps.

But— No, that doesn’t feel exactly right.

He never gave me just scraps. He fed me richly. He’s taken care of my every need. Sumptuously.

His nightly massages in the bath. Touching me whenever we’re near. Holding me so close after his nightmares. He’s needed me too.

Suddenly a barrage of things he’s told me over the months come flooding back like one of those cheesy montages in a movie.

I’ve been training you because I wanted you to stay. So I could keep you.

When he talked about Sugar that time: She was always a sweet girl underneath. She just had to learn how to trust. It took a while for me to break through with her.

And:

Trust is the most precious gift you can give to any being.

After those first couple of attempts, he realized he wasn’t willing to have a baby with me until he could trust me.

And that whole begging for his cock thing?

Well, there was no better way to prove that I trusted him than allowing him to be intimate with me.

But… he had so much to lose.

Turns out, everything was on the line.

“It mattered that much to you?” I ask him. I can still barely wrap my head around the idea that he gambled so much on me. “That I trust you first?”

“There was no point otherwise.”

My mouth drops open. “That’s insane. What if I hadn’t come around in time?”

The right side of his mouth hitches up. “No chance. You were panting every time I came into the room. You licked your lips when I took off my shirt and you couldn’t keep your eyes off my ass.”

I make an outraged noise and the smile teasing at his lips turns into a full-out grin. He wraps his arms low around my waist and then yanks me up and against him.

I gasp in a deep breath and lift my hands to his shoulders.

“Yep,” he says, leaning in, his breath warm on my ear. “A little like how you’re panting right now.”

He’s joking and playing it off, but still. He had so little chance to start with. Only two months. Two opportunities to get me pregnant, two of my eggs. If he was only concerned about the money and securing the inheritance, then the smartest move would have been for him to screw anything with a viable uterus and spread his seed far and wide. Or even to have gone the scientific route and fertilized a bunch of eggs in a lab for surrogacy.

But no. Not my Xavier.

He hikes me up just enough so that his rapidly growing hard on digs into the perfect spot between my legs. He drops his head to kiss me and I lick my lips to moisten them in anticipation.

He grins in the way that takes my breath away.

“Just proving my point, Precious.”

I startle, then realize I just licked my lips. Annoyed, I start to push him away, but he just chuckles and lands the most loin-tingling, soul-searing kiss.

I’m half crawling up him by the time he pulls away, still chuckling but also with lust darkening his blue eyes.

“If my father weren’t waiting and no doubt spying on us out the kitchen windows, I would drag you to the ground right here.”

I groan as he sets me back on my feet and starts leading me toward the house.

Dinner is as awkward an affair as I might have imagined. I fill in with mindless chitchat about life on the farm. Xavier’s father tries to look interested but I can tell it’s a strain to keep his attention focused on our equine feeding schedules or even how Xavier is training Samson.

“It’s really incredible,” I continue gushing. “He was completely wild only a few months ago and now he’s gentle as a kitten when Xavier’s got his hands on him.”

Xavier scoffs. “I don’t know about that. He’s still got some snap in him. He about took my finger off when I approached him from the right flank the other day.”

I raise my eyebrows in surprise and Pritchard drinks some of his ice water, clearly biting back some comment.

“You haven’t worked on that side as much, I guess.” I look to his dad. “I didn’t know this before I came here, but apparently ideas and things they learn don’t automatically transfer between both spheres of their brains like they do for humans. So if you teach a horse a skill from the left side, you have to teach him the same skill starting from scratch on the right side. Totally crazy, I had no idea.”