Her face was still flushed from the pathetic scene she’d made, so she kept her head down as she led Shadowdancer to the pasture. When she returned to the stables, she lowered onto all fours and cleaned up her mess. Grabbing the sponge, she did her best to soak up the water that had spilled. With each swipe, she prayed tears wouldn’t fall from her eyes.

A few moments later, she heard the heavy thud of his boots coming toward her.

“Stand up, Cinderella. I’ll take care of that.”

His voice sounded gravelly and almost choked. As if it were taking considerable effort just for him to speak. She looked up and met his wild stare.

“Please get up. I’m trying very hard to behave myself. You on your knees is not helping matters.”

So he does want me then? Her head swam from the mixed signals he was constantly sending.

Glancing down, she realized that most of her body was drenched. If he wanted her half as much as she wanted him, seeing her in nearly transparent and dripping-wet clothing wasn’t going to help either of them.

Well, screw it. The man had obviously decided nothing was happening between them tonight. If she had to writhe in aching misery, then he could too.

She stood slowly, keeping her eyes on his so she could watch him as he drank her in.

“You’re the devil,” was all he said.

“Perhaps.”

His tongue flicked out to his lips, and she stared openly. “Come here.”

Two words. Two very simple and perfectly commonplace words stripped her of every protective layer she held. Layers she’d built up over the years. Each step she took in his direction rid her of another one. By the time she reached him, she might as well have been stark naked.

A strong hand reached out and gripped her chin. Desire sparked brightly inside of her until flames began to lick at every inch of her body. The heat in his eyes matched the burning blaze encompassing her entire being.

“You. Aren’t. Ready.”

She shook her head violently in an attempt to escape his grasp. Tears stung her eyes. He’d lured her back into his tangled web just to reject her. Again.

His fingers pressed tighter, denting deeper.

“But when you are,” he continued, “I am going to fuck you. And when I do, it’s going to be so deep and thorough that men will be able to smell me on you from miles away. I am going to fuck a path inside of you, a path in which only my dick will fit. Because once I’ve been inside you, you will belong to me. Understood?”

Her knees went weak as her entire body began to tremble.

“Now,” she stammered out. “I want you now.”

This woman was going to drive him straight from rehab into the fucking nut house. She made him insane. Certifiably.

Her deliciously intoxicating scent combined with how much of her body he could see through her sopping-wet clothing was a torture that had begun to break him.

Add the whimpered pleas and her finally submitting to her attraction to him? It was a recipe for destruction—his and hers. But instead of matching monogrammed towels, they might as well have gotten it branded on their asses.

“I-I think I already belong to you. That first day, when you ran into me, something…something happened to me.”

Her words annihilated the last of his resolve.

“What happened to you, cowgirl? Tell me. I want to hear it.”

The naked vulnerability she was exuding made his dick even harder than her body against him. He released her chin so that she could look away if she needed to. He half hoped she would. But she didn’t.

“I try to avoid you because I can’t understand the way you make me feel. My mind wants to wrap itself around you, to know you, every part of you. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the terrifying. I want it all.”

Her unadulterated honesty enticed him to share a truth of his own. “I dream of you. I don’t know how or why. But I do. Night after night. It’s the first time my nights haven’t been plagued with nightmares.”

“What do you dream, Van? Tell me. I want to hear it,” she whispered his words back to him softly. When she wrapped her arms around his waist, he didn’t feel ensnared like he did with most women. He didn’t feel trapped. He felt needed. In a way he hadn’t felt since he’d lost Val.

He studied her smooth skin, her perfectly plump and heart-shaped lips, the flecks of gold in her green eyes. “Some of it’s nice, stuff you’d want to hear. Holding you, waking up with you.”

“And the rest?” she prompted.

“The rest is more than you can handle, cowgirl.”

Something brave and dangerous flashed and glinted in her exotic-jewel-colored eyes. “You might be surprised what I can handle.”

Words wouldn’t do it. Verbal warnings were getting him nowhere. So he grabbed her underneath her thighs and lifted. The audible gasp she let out only fueled his determination to show her what she refused to hear. Slamming her against the side of the barn, he thrust the rock-hard ridge of his erection against her.

“This what you want, cowgirl? Make damn sure, because I’m no quitter. Once we pass that point of no return, I don’t care if you beg, plead, or outright cry. There’s no safe word, no taking it back, and no stopping.”

Her lips pressed together, drawing his attention to her mouth once again. “I’ve spent so long avoiding feeling things—pain, pleasure, anything—that sometimes I’m afraid I might be completely…empty inside.” Her confession tore him apart, broke through every barrier he’d built.

“Oh, baby. No. You’re not—”

“You make me feel, Van. You’re the first one to ever make me feel. So if you think I can’t handle it, you’re wrong. What you do to me… The way you make me feel…” She stared intently at him for several seconds. “The only thing I’m going to beg or plead for is more.”

Jesus Christ. He sucked in a ragged breath to steady himself.

“I can’t control myself with you,” he admitted quietly. “Not that self-control has ever been my greatest skill, but with you, I have none.”

“I am practically made of self-control. I have enough for both of us.”

With that, she leaned forward and kissed him—softly at first, a gentle brush of her lips against his. Then harder. Hungrier. Pulling and sucking him into her mouth. He felt as if she were devouring him, but he was more than happy to let her.

Due to their equestrian audience, losing himself completely in her was not an option at the moment. Van took control of their kiss, deepening it, lashing his tongue inside her and then dragging it slowly across her lips. He kissed her in the way that he planned to fuck her, deep and deliberate and with a worshipful intensity so fierce he nearly dropped to his knees.

Stella was responsive, so damn responsive it was painful. Her sweet flavor intensified as she opened for him again and again. When she sucked his lower lip into her mouth and barely grazed her teeth against it, he decided he’d give up oxygen, drugs, music, alcohol—all of it—if he could just have this.

“Dear God, you are going to kill me,” he groaned when she began grinding her hips against his. He still held her to his waist, so the seam of her damp shorts stroked roughly against his cock as it strained against his jeans.

“Never,” she mumbled against his lips.

He pulled back, letting out a dark chuckle at the obvious displeasure on her face. His eyes drifted to her full breasts heaving between them. He wanted nothing more than to sink himself into her luscious heat while sucking those perfect swells into his mouth, but damned if he was doing it in a barn with a bunch of horses watching. The old him would’ve just fucked her hard and fast, not caring who saw or if she got hers or not. But something about this woman had him striving to be better. She deserved better. And he had intricate plans for how he was going to take her, and he’d need much more privacy for what he had in store for Stella Jo Chandler.