Reece (Stud Ranch 4)

It was as good a time as any to grab a break—and some water. I was parched.

I was heading back to the bar, eyes on the ground to make sure I didn’t trip over anybody’s feet, when all of the sudden there was a long-legged pair of wranglers in front of me and familiar boots.

I looked up in shock at Reece. “You came.”

I’d all but walked right into him. We were only standing about a foot apart, the melee of the crowd moving and swaying all around us.

“Wanna dance?” He had to all but shout it, the music was so loud.

I wanted to ask a hundred things. How come you’re here? What about your brother? Why the sudden change of heart?

Instead I just nodded, wide-eyed, and took another little half-step closer to him.

The next thing I knew, he was taking my right hand in his and then pulling me into his body by his other hand on my waist. Like it was the easiest thing in the world. Like that hand had always been meant to fit exactly there.

I blinked a few times as we started swaying to the song. It was still the slow song. He hadn’t pulled me flat up against his body or anything, there were still a few inches of space between us.

But it was nothing like the dance I’d just had with the other man only minutes before. Everywhere Reece touched me felt alive and electric, that peculiar way his touch always affected me.

I tipped my head back and glanced into his face and whoa—mistake, mistake.

His face was just right there, along with his lips. I immediately looked back down and turned my head sideways, my ear brushing against his shoulder. And tried to regulate my suddenly rapid breathing and speeding heart rate.

It was a slow song for God’s sake, and I’d been jumping around for the last half hour. It was ridiculous that this was the dance that had me feeling suddenly overheated and sweaty.

But Reece’s body was just so—

It was like he was overloading all my senses at once. And his right arm was snaked around my waist so we were dancing so close, bodies together in a little cocoon of intimacy in the middle of the dance floor as a country singer crooned overhead about never wanting to have missed the dance.

Emotions. I was feeling a lot of emotions at once. I could recognize that even if I couldn’t sort out one emotion from another. What the hell was this attraction between us?

Reece smelled good. I knew that. I leaned in as we moved, more and more as one. He felt good and he smelled good and when I leaned my head against his chest, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Natural too that I could hear his heartbeat solid in my ear.

And then his arms curved around my back instead of just a light touch at my waist. I curled into him and closed my eyes. Losing myself in him, in the song, in the security of his strong arms around me, in the magic of this moment surrounded by couples dancing just like us, humans connected and moving and being alive.

The fog I’d been sort of existing in faded and everything became sharp clarity. Each moment something to savor, to memorize.

His muscles were so firm under my arms. The way he guided me so solid and sure. His warmth soaked into me.

When the song came to an end, a fast pop track came on afterwards and I clung to Reece for a long moment after it was probably appropriate. I finally let go and pulled back from him, feeling my face heat.

Every time I was near him I felt this irresistible draw, but it was… it didn’t change anything. Did it?

So I did the only thing I could—the thing that felt safe but also dangerous at the same time. I reached up, took hold of his shoulders and went up on tiptoe to whisper in his ear, “You wanna play pretend?”

His hand immediately came to my waist. Where he squeezed me possessively as he leaned down. “Where?” he growled in my ear.

I turned my face in towards his, intimate in the crowded bar as my face grazed the five o’clock shadow on his cheek. “The bathroom. We’re strangers and you drag me in for a quickie.”

I’d barely finished speaking before he’d grabbed my hand and was pulling me towards the back of the club.

The bathrooms were down a long hallway, dark but for a single bulb. My breath hitched in anticipation as Reece walked with purpose. There were a couple women waiting outside the women’s bathroom but there wasn’t any line for the men’s. Reece didn’t stop or try to be stealthy. He pulled open the door and tugged me inside with him, shutting the door behind us and flipping the lock.