Especially now that we’re older, more experienced...confident in how to satisfy one another in bed.”
She was sexually confident? Oh, she was anything but. She might be older and wiser, but she was still more girl next door than femme fatale.
“Come home with me, Lex. Let me peel that ridiculously sexy dress from your gorgeous body and replace it with my lips and hands. I’ll make it good for you, I promise.”
He’d make it too good, and yeah, that worried her. “Daniel, this is madness.”
“So let’s be mad, just for a night. In the morning we can go back to being a Clayton and a Slade, opposing forces in this long, futile war that we never started.”
Alex closed her eyes and shook her head. She wanted him but she didn’t like wanting him, found herself wishing instead that she could put him in the past, where he belonged. Maybe she did need to sleep with him again to flush him out of her system. After all, reality was never as good as fantasy, and then they could both finally move on.
“So, yes or no?”
Alex thought she saw apprehension in his eyes, the fear that she’d reject him, but the emotions flashed across his features too quickly for her to be sure. “Yeah, I’m coming with you.”
Daniel stared down at her, his handsome face serious. “Your place or mine?”
Alex thought about their options, knowing that the ranch house at the Lone Wolf was out of the question and, as she’d heard, Daniel had converted an old barn on The Silver C. While his house was a better option than Gus’s mansion—Daniel might be met with the working end of her grandpa’s shotgun if they were caught—their chances of discovery were still too high.
Which left only one other place available to them...
“Sarah’s tree house.”
Daniel’s hand tightened on her hip and she knew that he was remembering, just as she was.
A long time ago, the tree house had been a boys’ fort and a girls’ secret club. It had held sleep outs and camping trips and overnight sleepovers. Much later it had been the place where Daniel took her virginity, where they’d spent stolen afternoons and blissful starry nights.
“You remember where it is, right?”
Daniel rubbed his jaw. “Of course I can find it. I just haven’t been there since...”
You left, Alex filled in the words for him. The tree house was deep in Slade land and Daniel had no reason or wish to be on Slade land. Land that had once been part of The Silver C spread.
The river-fronted land was one of the first parcels of land Gus bought from Rose when times had got tough, and Alex knew that Daniel mourned the loss of the property. The Silver C had once been the largest spread in four counties, but it was now on par with the Lone Wolf in acreage, a bit of a comedown for the once-mighty Claytons.
“I’ll meet you at the tree house,” Daniel said, his voice clipped. He lifted his wrist to look at his expensive watch. “In half an hour?” He rubbed his hand over his jaw and shook his head. “I can’t believe that I am risking getting splinters in my butt to have you again. Nobody but you, Alex Slade, would tempt me to do this...”
His words shouldn’t make her smile but they did. She opened her mouth to explain that the tree house wasn’t as bad as it had been... No, she’d let it be a surprise.
“Are you going to walk there?” Daniel asked.
In moonlight or bright sunshine, she always walked to the tree house. “Yes.”
“I’m going to go home, pick up my dirt bike and I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Daniel told her, his eyes steady on her face.
Good, that gave her some time to think about what she was doing, to talk herself out of this madness.
Daniel narrowed his gaze. “Do not stand me up, Alexis.”
Although it unnerved her how he’d been able to read her thoughts, she couldn’t suppress the shiver of excitement that tap-danced up and down her spine. He was gorgeous and determined and he wanted her.
No, she wouldn’t stand him up. She couldn’t; she wanted this, wanted him. “I’ll be there.”
Daniel nodded, swiped his mouth across hers in a brief but molten-lava-hot kiss. “See that you are.”
Mid-November
Daniel Clayton released a low curse and buried his head in the soft pillow, cursing his early-morning alarm. Unfortunately, neither cattle nor his ranch hands cared that he’d spent most of the night making love, that he’d had minimal sleep. The Silver C Ranch and his grandmother demanded a daily pound of flesh and since he didn’t tolerate excuses or less than 100 percent effort, he knew he should haul his ass out of bed and get to it. He rolled over and pressed his chest to Lexi’s back, filling his hand with her perfect, perfect breast. Daniel skimmed his thumb across her nipple and buried his nose in her fragrant hair. Best way to wake up, bar none. His rock-hard erection pushed into her bottom and he skated his hand down her torso, across her stomach, and his fingers flirted with the V shape below. There was nothing like sleepy, lazy sex... His cell phone alarm screeched again.
“Dammit, Clayton,” Lex muttered, reaching across him to grab his phone. Mercifully, the strident alarm ceased, and despite wanting Lexi again, Daniel found himself drifting back to sleep. Then Alex’s sharp elbow dug into his ribs and he rolled over, frowning.
“What was that for?”
“Sun’s up in forty-five minutes, and we both have to leave,” Alex told him, whipping off the covers and exposing his naked body to the chilly morning air.
The tree house was heated by a woodstove, which they didn’t bother to light because a stream of smoke from the chimney would raise questions—questions neither of them wanted to answer. As it was, he’d already endured a few lectures from Rose, demanding to know the status of his love life. He’d blown her off, as usual, but then she’d upped the ante by expressing her fervent hope that he’d meet a lovely girl through the upcoming bachelor auction—as if!—and that she would be bitterly disappointed if she found out that he was carrying on with “that Slade girl.”
Since that Slade girl was currently standing naked by the window, long blond hair tumbling down her oh-so-sexy back, he didn’t give a rat’s ass what his grandmother or anyone else thought. They’d been hooking up for six weeks—maybe a week or so more—and he’d enjoyed every second he’d spent with Alex. But what they shared was sex and desire and heat and want and nothing his grandmother needed to worry about.
He loved his grandmother—he did—but he just wished she’d stay out of his damn business. Alex, what they had together, was separate from The Silver C—one didn’t impact the other. For a decade his entire focus had been on the family spread, trying to restore the somewhat tarnished reputation of the Clayton clan. While Rose held the respect of the residents of the town of Royal and the counties of Maverick and Colonial, his late grandfather, Ed, and his mother, Stephanie, did not. One was a bastard and the other was irresponsible, wild and borderline psycho. Despite his dubious parentage, he’d worked hard to command a little of the respect his grandmother did.
And he thought he was getting there.
While not nearly as big as it had been in its heyday, The Silver C was now regarded as being one of the best-managed spreads in the country, lauded for its breeding program and producing award-winning bulls. He had a waiting list as long as his arm for buyers wanting to purchase his quarter horses, and he ran the entire ranching operation with the utmost professionalism and integrity. And by doing so, he’d recently been inducted as a member of the Texas Cattleman’s Club.
Daniel sat up, rested his