~~o0o~~
The party was as crazy and wonderful as Rose had hoped. She stared up at the moon as she warmed her hands in front of the huge, crackling bonfire. Cliché alert: it was the same moon that shone down on Dante—wherever the hell he was tonight.
He liked to be alone, the gauchos had told her. He liked to ride out with just a bedroll and no fixed destination. Dante’s men were slowly coming to accept her. That made her happy because she admired them so much. They appeared intimidating but had hearts of gold, and their aim was the same as hers—to work long hours, and to spare nothing in their care of their horses.
“Are you going to sit on the magic carpet, or am I?” she asked as Tom strode toward her. The gaucho game they had agreed to take part in required one of them to ride their horse at a flat-out gallop while the other sat on a cowhide, or a magic carpet, as it was optimistically known. The hide was then towed around the course at breakneck speed and the first pair back won the prize. First pair to survive won the race, Rose had decided with a flutter of apprehension as they walked toward the start.
“You ride. It’s safer. I’ll take the magic carpet,” Tom offered. “The less weight for the horse, the better,” he pointed out when Rose began to argue.
The gauchos welcomed her with nods and sympathetic looks. They thought she was well outclassed. And she was. Once the race began, there would be no allowances made for the fact that she was half their size—and yes, a woman. The gauchos had centuries of horse lore between them, and she respected that, but it didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to give this race everything she had. She was riding Stargazer. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for the freedom of the pampas. He loved his training to become a polo pony, and he loved the regular attention. The gauchos had singled him out as a horse with real potential. Anyone who said animals didn’t understand when they were admired was so wrong. She could swear Stargazer had grown a couple of inches since he’d been here, and Rose was confident that by the time Dante returned, the horse would have earned his place on the Blood and Thunder team. Meanwhile, her aim was to bring him back from this race in one piece and uninjured—the same hope she had for herself and for Tom.
What would Dante say if he knew she was here? The thought alone made her stomach clench with alarm. Then her imagination got to work. Was he really checking the boundaries of his land? Or was Dante with a woman? Wherever he was, what could she do about it? She had a race to
run and needed all her concentration on that now.
Jostling around at the start with twenty other pumped-up horses and riders was dangerous enough, even before the race began. She might work with these men, but they were competitors now, and there was no eye contact between them. She glanced around to check that Tom was firmly settled on the mat and exchanged a grim smile of reassurance with him.
When the starting pistol fired, there was no time to think. Stargazer plunged into a storming gallop, and it was only thanks to his outstanding agility they avoided a collision. He had a natural instinct to stay out of trouble, and soon they were galloping for home. More importantly, Tom was still attached to the magic carpet, and Rose was still firmly seated in the saddle when they rode in a respectable third.
Tom was laughing and groaning and complaining about his bruises, which Costanza had offered to bathe, while Rose was smiling as she checked her horse’s legs when the unmistakable sound of a Harley signaled the fact that Dante had chosen this precise moment to come back. Great. She braced herself for the inevitable confrontation. She had ignored his instruction, and like it or not, he was still her boss.
Dante skidded to a halt and parked the bike. She stiffened as he came toward her. Looking as commanding as ever in battered jeans and a formfitting top, he was unmistakably The Boss, and everyone, without exception, stopped what they were doing to welcome him home. She lifted her chin, ready to defend herself and Tom.
Staring past her, Dante walked on. Going up to his men, he congratulated them on their win. From the set of his muscular back, which was firmly turned against her, Rose got the impression that retribution was suspended rather than canceled.
She was right. When Dante’s men peeled away, he turned to face her, and judging by his expression, he was not too happy.
“I know you said I shouldn’t take part,” she began as he approached.
“You disobeyed me,” he said coldly. “And not for the first time. Is the horse injured?”
“No. He’s fine. I was just checking his legs when you rode up—”
“Wait for me in the stable when you’ve seen him settled.”
He didn’t wait for her reply, though she got the message loud and clear: if she valued her job, she wouldn’t disobey him a second time.
She could only speculate as to what her punishment would be. The more she thought about it, the more her throat dried. Dante had been away a long time, and she’d missed him. Her body had missed him. Seeing the heat in his eyes, she guessed he’d missed her too. Would he take a stern view of her disobedience? Under some circumstances, she might take a dim view of that, but as her gaze followed him as he moved around the guests at the party, being charming to everyone, all she wanted was to be with him. And sooner rather than later, Rose concluded as she led Stargazer back to the darkened stable block.
~~o0o~~
Rose was waiting for him, perched on a hay bale, swinging her legs, looking not a bit repentant. He found it hard to be angry with her. She was so understated and unaffected, she made him smile. The horses were quietly munching. Everything was as it should be. Only his engines were roaring. The sounds from the party were faint enough to remind him of their first meeting, when Rose had cooled him off with a hosepipe. With retribution on his mind, he grabbed a soft-bristled dandy brush from the grooming table and unhooked a whip with a long fiberglass shaft covered in leather. The leather keeper, shaped like a tongue at the end of the whip, prevented the horse's skin from being marked. The handle had a loop of leather to secure the grip and prevent it from slipping through the rider's hand. With that in his hand, the urge to pleasure Rose was fierce. The thought of combining pleasure with discipline made him instantly hard.
Chapter Ten
Rose shrieked with shock as something skimmed across her back. The tip of a whip, she realized. Whirling around to see Dante on the other end of it led to her acting on instinct. Moving quickly, she seized the shaft and tried to pull it from his hands, but that only succeeded in making him laugh. She dodged to one side, but he grabbed her wrist and brought her close. “You didn’t seriously think I was about to thrash you, did you, Rose?” he murmured, his black stare dark and amused on her face.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she admitted, “but I wasn’t about to take any chances.”
Dante hummed. “So, how shall I punish you for your disobedience?”
As his big, hard frame was pressed up so tightly against hers, she could feel every inch of him, including the many impressive inches of his erection, her throat was momentarily too tight to speak. But she could wrestle him. She wasn’t about to give in without a fight—not when fighting him felt as good as this.
“Do you have a use for that whip?” she challenged as he held her in a grip like iron.
“I certainly do,” he confirmed, arousing her with his amused confidence. ‘I wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise.”
“And the dandy brush? Clean, I hope?”