Montana Sky

over his shoulder.
    So he let her set the pace now, let her shudder back into control. Now she leaned over him, her hair curtaining his face, her hands braced on either side of it.
    “I want to make you crazy.” She lowered her head until her lips were a breath from his. “I want to make you beg.”
    Her pace was slow, torturous, and her mouth took his in quick, nipping kisses that gradually deepened and heated. When his hands were fisted in her hair, his breath heaving, she released his mouth, eased back. Quickened the rhythm, skimmed her hands over him, watched his eyes.
    She saw what she wanted. They were wild and blind and desperate, mirroring the emotions raging inside her. His hands had moved, gripped her hips now, gripped them hard. She’d have bruises. Branding, she thought in triumph.
    Her body bowed back, shuddered while Ben’s fingers dug into her pumping hips. She knew what to expect now, thatexplosion of pleasure ramming into pleasure, the assault on the system that could come like lightning or linger like dew. Yet still it was always a shock, this violent intimacy and the need that always, always bloomed.
    She felt him erupt, the final hard drive of him into her, and the glorious burst of heat. The orgasm struck like an arrow winging through her system, and pinned to him, filled with him, she welcomed it.
    “Willa.” Ben drew her down so they could tremble, slick flesh to slick flesh. When he could speak more than her name, he turned his lips to her throat. “I’ve wanted to hold you like this all night.”
    A little foolishness like that always warmed her, and tied her tongue. “You were too busy eating to think about this.”
    “I’m never to busy to think about this. Or you. I do think about you.” He lost his hands in her hair as he turned her mouth to his. “More all the time. And I worry about you.”
    “Worry?” Beautifully relaxed, she braced herself on her elbows and looked down at him. She loved to find his face in the dark, pick out feature by feature. “About what?”
    “I don’t like not being right on hand with all this going on.”
    “I can take care of myself.” She brushed the hair back from his face. Funny, she thought, how the tips of it always looked as if they’d been dipped in wet gold dust. Funnier still how her fingers always itched to touch it these days. “And I can take care of the ranch.”
    “Yeah.” Almost too well, he thought. “But I worry anyway. I could stay tonight.”
    “We’ve been through that. Bess likes to pretend she doesn’t know what’s going on up here. I like to let her. And . . .” She kissed him before she rolled lazily to her back. “You’ve got your own ranch to run.” She stretched. “Saddle up, McKinnon. I’m done with you.”
    “Think so?” He rolled atop her to prove her wrong.
     
    W HEN A MAN TIPTOES OUT OF A DARKENED HOUSE , HE mostly feels like a fool. Or very lucky. Nate was debatingwhich course to take when he opened the front door and came face-to-face with Ben.
    They stared at each other, cleared throats. “Nice night,” Nate said.
    “One of my best.” Ben gave up, flashed a grin. “So, where’d you park your rig?”
    “Back of the pole barn. You?”
    “Same. Don’t know why we bother. There’s not a man on this spread who doesn’t know what we’re up to with those women.” They stepped off the porch, headed toward the barn. “I keep wondering if I’m going to get shot at.”
    “Adam and Ham have this shift,” Nate pointed out. “I try to time it that way. They’re not so trigger-happy.” He glanced back toward the main house, Tess’s window. “And it might be worth dodging a couple bullets.”
    “I worry about a man who says that.”
    “I’m thinking I’ll marry her.”
    Ben stopped dead. “Something’s buzzing in my ear. I don’t think I heard you right.”
    “You heard me right enough. She’s banking on going back to California in the fall.” Nate shrugged. “I’m banking she won’t.”
    “You tell her that?”
    “Tell Tess.” Amused at the thought, Nate let out a muffled hoot of laughter. “Hell, no. You have to be cagey with a woman like that. Used to running the show. So you make her think everything’s her idea. She doesn’t know she’s in love with me, but it’ll come to her.”
    Talk of love and marriage was making Ben’s gut churn. “What if it doesn’t? Come to her. What if she packs up and goes? You just going to let her?”
    “Can’t lock her