The Rancher's Rules

She groaned, and bucked against him with her hips.

He lifted his mouth from hers and looked down, drinking in the sight of his hand against her breast. “Zoe, mi precioso, you are so damn beautiful.”

Zoe stilled beneath him and he looked up to her face. Crystalline tears trembled on her lashes.

He sucked in his breath. “You okay?” She didn’t move. “What’s the matter? What did I say?”

Maybe he was rushing things. She hadn’t seemed nervous, but maybe she was.

“You think I’m beautiful?” Her smile did as much to warm him as her naked body beneath him. He bent his head and kissed each eyelid, brushing her tears with his lips.

“I have always thought you were beautiful.”

“You never said so.” Her voice trembled with emotion that Grant did not understand.

“That’s not true. I’ve always told you I thought you were the prettiest girl in Sunshine Springs.”

She sniffed. “But that was because you were my friend.”

“It was because it was true. But it wasn’t enough, was it?” He brushed his index finger over her pebbled nipple. “You’re beautiful. Pretty doesn’t cut it.” He wanted to taste her. Moving down until he could take the sweet little bud in his mouth, he reveled in her silky skin. “You are so soft.”

She groaned and bowed under him, pressing her breast against his lips. “Grant, I want you to touch me everywhere.”

He was more than willing to oblige. He started by nibbling on the tender, creamy flesh surrounding the wet morsel he’d been suckling.

She nearly came off the bed. “Don’t stop. Oh, please, don’t stop.”

He caressed her shoulders, her rib cage, and reached under her to squeeze her bottom. Her hands twisted in his hair, pulling his head tight against her breast, silently begging for more of the same.

“Oh, Grant, oh, Grant, oh, Grant.”

Exultation filled him at the need he heard in her voice. He lifted his mouth and she protested. He smiled at her. “Don’t worry. I’m not done yet, but you still have too many clothes on.”

He levered himself off of her and immediately set about unbuttoning her jeans. He unzipped them and then put his hands on her waistband, ready to tug them off. She lifted her hips for him. She wiggled until he got the denim past her derriere. He stopped. He could not help it. The scrap of turquoise silk covering her most intimate place paralyzed him.

She looked at him with a question in her eyes.

He licked lips suddenly gone dry. “Do you realize what a privilege this is? How honored I feel that you chose me to be your first lover, querida?”

“That’s nice—but could you get on with it?” She wasn’t smiling, because he knew she wasn’t trying to tease him. She meant it, and that did things to him. Her eyes were filled with heated desire. “I feel like I’m going to die waiting for you,” she moaned.

He smiled and felt things inside him shift. Where he had been mindless with his desire to couple with her, he now had an overwhelming need to cherish her first. To show her how much he appreciated the gift of being able to touch her and be with her.

Of being her first lover.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“GRANT?”

He slid her pants an inch down her thighs. “Yes?”

“Um, are you going to take off my jeans, or what?”

He loved the sound of impatience in her voice, loved knowing he was doing this to her. “Oh, I’m going to take off your jeans, all right. Relax, Zoe. I want to cherish you.”

She put her hands over his and pushed on her jeans. “Cherish me naked, okay?”

He laughed, the sound strangling in his throat. “I guess I can do that.”

Moving back to the edge of the bed by her feet, he pulled her pants off and stood back to appreciate the sight of her in nothing but the little scrap of fabric covering her most feminine place. She was so beautiful and, at least for right now, she was his. Totally and completely.

He leaned forward and kissed her stomach, letting his tongue explore the indentation of her belly button, reveling in the way she writhed below him. She was so responsive and still a virgin. Somehow he knew, even if she didn’t, that she had been waiting for him.

Kissing a trail over her smooth skin, he stopped when he reached the top of her panties. Taking them in his teeth and hooking his fingers on the waistband at either side, he pulled them off.

Slowly. Very, very slowly.

She groaned and squirmed, trying to get her legs free, but he kept her captive with the panties as he continued down the naked flesh of her legs centimeter by centimeter.

She shouted his name and he felt a sense of primitive male power surge through him. She wanted him. Damn, it felt good. He finally brought the scrap of silk over her ankles and then her feet. Standing up, he dropped them on the floor.