He was going to finish it.

“You need any more help there?” Jesse called as Blake shouldered through the door to the kitchen with Jaxi hanging from his arms.

All the boys laughed and Matt complained, “I bet we don’t get any dessert until it’s gone cold.”

Cold would be good right about now, because Blake was headed for spontaneous combustion. Having kept his hands off her for this long, he was ready to break. He dropped her by the sink and looked her up and down slowly, his gaze taking in the long length of her legs, all the way from her bare feet to the hem of her sundress.

“What’s for dessert?” He circled her slowly, a finger trailing over her waist, over her hips. Up her back and along the bare skin exposed on the edge of the neckline.

Jaxi swallowed and dropped her head to the side. His hand rose to support her neck. Blake wrapped himself around her until she had nowhere to go but hard against him.

“Jaxi? You’ve got a bad habit of not answering questions.”

“I was distracted…”

Blake kissed the beating pulse in her neck. “What’s for dessert, and did you know that’s a very sexy dress?”

Jaxi smiled. A mischievous expression that told him she’d remembered their first conversation about sexy dresses. “Apple pie and ice cream, and if you’re asking if I’m wearing panties, you’ve got to find a setting a little more private than the kitchen.”

“What’s the matter? You never been naked in front of a crowd before?” he joked, smoothing his hands over her ass. No panty lines, but she might be wearing a thong.

Since the picnic he’d been scheming and plotting to get her alone and been frustrated at every turn. He’d almost given in to temptation and snuck into the guest cabin with her, but that wasn’t how he wanted to finish this. Before long, he wanted to take them to the next stage.

It was time to move on. Oh hell, it was past time.

Jaxi slipped from his arms and served slices of pie onto plates. She had a little smile at the corner of her mouth, and Blake stopped even as he reached for the ice cream scoop.

She couldn’t have.

“You never answered my question. You ever been naked in front of a crowd before?”

She stole the scoop from under his unmoving hand and added servings of ice cream to the plates, her smile turning into more of a smirk by the minute. He tugged the scoop out of her hands, picked her up and set her on the counter.

Eye to eye he looked at her. Leered, to tell the truth.

“Tell me.”

“I took a modeling class to learn how to dress nice in something other than jeans all the time. I got asked to pose and there was—”

“You posed? For a Sears magazine or a—?”

Jaxi pressed her finger to his lips. “I posed for a group of artists. Nude.” She grinned at him. “It was a really lucky circumstance because I wanted to take a dance class and one of the artists turned out to be an exotic dancer. I went to her studio and she gave me private lessons.”

Blake was growing hotter by the minute, the ice cream in danger of melting to puddles from simply being in the same room. Holy shit, she knew how to exotic dance?

Did his dad know about this? Is that what he’d meant by “interesting” classes?

Blake pulled her off the counter and handed her a couple of plates of pie. She had no idea what she’d just let loose. The tentative plan running through his mind was okay, but this beat anything he could have devised, even with weeks of setup.

“Go deliver these. Then gather whatever you need to put on a show for me. I’ll wait in the barn.”

“The barn?”

“That a problem?” Blake asked. “You got a better place in mind?”

Jaxi backed against the door until it opened. “No, the barn is fine. You want to arrange a seat by the training pole?”

Blake delivered the rest of the plates to a group of silent men all wearing enormous grins on their faces.

“Someone here got the bad habit of listening at doors?” Blake let his possessive feelings show.

“Holy shit, Blake, you’ve got to let us come watch,” Joel begged.

Blake plopped a plate of pie in front of him. “In. Your. Dreams. I find any one of your scrawny hides near the barn, and I’ll convince Dad to let you handle the newborn lambs Christmas Eve all by yourself.”

He ignored his own plate of dessert and hightailed it out the door. The boys could clean up—he had a show to attend.


Jaxi slipped through the door into the long hallway. She dropped her bag onto a chair and tugged off her robe.

Blake had turned on the overhead speakers, and the walls strummed with the local country station. She paced to the far end of the barn where the horses’ training area was located. In the center of the room, a solid metal post they used for putting foals through their paces rose vertically.

Her heart beat faster as she anticipated Blake’s reaction to her dancing. It seemed forever since he’d touched her intimately, and she had no intention of waiting anymore.

He reclined in his chair, relaxed and at ease. Until she noticed his fingers gripped his belt buckle a little too tight. His eyes gone a little too wild.

Perfect.

She took a deliberate stroll behind him. Close enough to drag her fingertips along his shoulders and through the short curls at his neckline. She stepped away to grasp the upright pole cemented in the middle of the room.

And danced.

She started slow and easy, with her hips and torso close to the pole. Her jean shorts rode high on her ass and low on her hips, and showed off the long expanse of leg exposed between the top of her cowboy boots and the shorts. The studded denim vest pressed her breasts until her cleavage threatened to fall out every time she breathed.

She’d picked the outfit deliberately. The girl who had trained her wanted her to wear high heels, and Jaxi learned to dance in them as well, but the boots said it all. She was a country girl through and through, and there was nothing sexier.

She let her head drop back, hanging on to her cowboy hat. She wrapped a leg around the pole while she swung her upper body free, one hand skimming her skin. Over the vest and the buttons, letting a couple loose and exposing more of her body to Blake’s vision.

Jaxi pulled off her hat in one smooth motion and let the long hair she’d tucked inside bounce around her shoulders, swinging free. The length stroked her skin, caressing as it fell.

She danced, feeling wicked and sexy and totally in control of her body. The beat of the song echoed in her heart, bounced off the walls and traveled through her limbs to heat her from the inside out. The song finished far too soon. She closed her eyes to focus, breathing hard for a minute before she stepped back from the pole and faced Blake.

He’d opened his jeans and sat stroking himself as he stared at her, raw desire flushing his skin. She watched in fascination as he pulled with firm motions, the length of his cock hard and ready. It had been so long, and she was more than ready to renew the physical part of their relationship.

“Take off your vest.”

“Does this mean the wooing is over?”

Blake caught her gaze with his, and the answer flashed heat through her as if she’d stepped in front of a blazing fire on a winter’s day.

Oh, yeah.

Jaxi took her time, finally unbuttoning the last snap, and let the garment fall to the ground behind her.

“Holy shit, you’ve got nipple rings.”

“Clip-ons. You like them?”

He growled. Jaxi licked her fingertips, then rolled her nipples. She let the sound of her pleasure flow over him.

“The shorts. Off.”

Jaxi moved with deliberate slowness, unsnapping, unzipping, turning her back toward him as she lowered the material over her ass an inch at a time. She wanted to drive Blake mad with want. She startled when his hand touched her skin, hot and moist from touching his cock. He tugged her hips to draw her closer.

“You going to leave those boots on for me, sexy cowgirl?”

“You know it.”

Blake stripped down, all hard, glistening muscles, replacing his own boots before standing. He circled her again, like in the kitchen, only this time they were both naked.

Except for their cowboy boots.

Blake stared at her, his gaze eating her up. “Slick, I don’t even know where to begin on you. I need to taste those nipples with those pretty little rings. I want to lick your entire body. I want to kiss your sweet lips all night long. But all I can think of right now is finding out how good a cowgirl you are.”

Jaxi ran her hand down his chest, playing with the hairs that led to where his cock stood at attention, weeping with need. “You wanna take me for a ride, cowboy?”

Blake swept her into his arms. Jaxi wrapped her legs around his waist, felt his shaft hard against her heated core. He shifted his hands to her ass, and with one quick adjustment, he penetrated her. He was hot and huge, and Jaxi felt every inch as he forged into skin that was tender from too much, too soon, but she didn’t want him to stop. The pleasure rose above the faint discomfort as more fluid coated them both, smoothing the thrusts of his body as he drove deeper and deeper. Blake used his strong arms to support her, to weld them together intimately while he stood in the middle of the room. She squeezed him hard, reveled in the heat of his body. The tingle of the breast clips radiated out, upping the sensations slowly driving her higher, increasing the stimulation as he struck her clit on every plunge.

He lifted her suddenly and spun her, nestling her hips back against him. Blake centered himself and pressed in from behind, his hands cupping her breasts, his thumbs and forefingers tugging on the nipple rings while his hips pistoned.