The Virgin and the Beast (Stud Ranch 1)

I sigh deeply, feeling overwhelmed by this entire conversation.

“All right. I guess we should go in.” Then I look over my shoulder toward the pastures behind us. “I haven’t brought in Sugar yet or brushed her down.”

“She’s fine.” Xavier’s voice still sounds off, but it gains strength as he talks about the more mundane topic of his horses. “I leave her out to pasture for whole weeks sometimes in the summer. Let’s just go try to survive this dinner.”

We take a few steps before something else occurs to me and I stop again.

“Wait, so when do you turn thirty?”

He’s still faced away from me when he answers. “December 23rd.”

I gape. That means…

If I hadn’t gotten pregnant when I did… that would have been it. Inheritance lost. He only ever had two months to get me pregnant.

And apart from a couple tries, he basically wasted the whole first month

I was here! Wtf?! I assumed it was because he had all the time in the world, but he only had two months and he—

“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?”