“Not like that,” she murmured, pushing his fingers lower. “Like this.” Her back arched as he slid a finger along the folds that concealed her intimate warmth. “Almost, but not quite...there.”
Her shudder drove his willpower to the brink. Sensing she’d rush him if he let her, Shane eased down her body, gliding his mouth over the swell of one breast, and then the other. Brandee’s fingers sifted through his hair as she sighed in pleasure.
But when his tongue drew damp patterns on her belly, she tensed, guessing his destination. His mouth found her without the preliminaries he usually observed. This time he wasn’t here to seduce, only to push her over the edge hard.
Her body bowed as he lapped at her. A moan of intense pleasure ripped from her throat. The sound pierced him and drove his own passion higher. In the last week he’d learned what she liked and leveraged every bit of knowledge to wring his name from her lips over and over.
With her body still shaking in the aftermath of her climax, she directed him to her nightstand and an unopened box of condoms. The sight of it made him smile. She’d been planning to invite him to her room. This meant that her walls were crumbling, if only a little. Was he close to winning their bet?
The thought chilled him. If she fell in love with him and he took away the ranch that meant so much to her, would she ever be able to forgive him?
He slid on the condom and kissed his way up her body. She clung to him as he settled between her thighs and brought his lips to hers for a deep, hot kiss. Her foot skimmed up the back of his leg as she met his gaze. Then she opened herself for his possession. He thrust into her, his heart expanding at the vulnerability in her expression.
She pumped her hips, taking him all the way in, and he hissed through his teeth as her muscles contracted around him. For a long second he held still, breathing raggedly. Then he began to move, sliding out of her slowly, savoring every bit of friction.
“Let’s go, Delgado,” she urged, her nails digging into his back. She wrapped her leg around his hip, making his penetration a little deeper, and rocked to urge him on.
“You feel amazing.” At the end of another slow thrust, he lightly bit her shoulder and she moaned. “I could go like this all night.” He was lying.
Already he could feel pleasure tightening in his groin. He was climbing too fast toward orgasm. He surged into her, his strokes steady and deep, then quickening as he felt her body tighten around him. She was gasping for air, hands clamped down hard on his biceps as they began to climax nearly at the same moment. He’d discovered timing his orgasm to hers required very little attention on his part. It was as if some instinct allowed their bodies to sync.
But tonight Shane grit his teeth and held off so he could watch Brandee come. It was a perfect moment, and in a lightning flash of clarity, he realized that he’d gone and done it. He’d fallen for her. Hard. Caught off guard by the shock of it, Shane’s orgasm overcame him, and as his whole body clenched with it, pleasure bursting inside him, a shift occurred in his perception.
This was no longer a woman climaxing beneath him, but his woman. He couldn’t imagine his life without her in it. He wanted her in his bed. Riding beside him on a horse. Laughing, teasing, working. Yes, even working. He wanted to be with her all the time.
Stunned by what he’d just admitted to himself, Shane lay on his back and stared at the ceiling while Brandee settled against his side, her arm draped over his chest, her breath puffing against his neck. Contentment saturated bone, muscle and sinew, rendering him incapable of movement, but his brain continued to whirl.
Brandee was already asleep, her deep, regular breathing dragging him toward slumber. Yet, despite his exhaustion, something nagged at him. As perfect as their lovemaking had been, there was a final piece of unfinished business that lay between them.
Leaving Brandee slumbering, Shane eased out of bed. He needed to do this while his thoughts were clear. He suspected doubts would muddy his motivation all too soon.
The first night he’d arrived, she’d shown him the two contracts. He’d taken both copies to his lawyer to make sure there was nothing tricky buried in the language. Turned out, it had been straightforward. If he signed the paperwork, he agreed to give up all claim to the land. If she signed, she agreed to sell him the land for ten million.
Several times in the last two weeks, she’d reminded him that his contract awaited his signature in her office. He headed there now. Turning on the desk light, he found a pen and set his signature to the document with a flourish.
As he added the date, it occurred to him he was declaring that he’d fallen for her. Opening himself up to rejection like this wasn’t something he did. Usually he was the one making a break for it as soon as the woman he was dating started getting ideas.
Except Brandee wasn’t like the women he usually went for. She was more like him. Fiercely independent. Relentlessly self-protective. And stubborn as all get-out.
Shane reached across the desk and turned off the lamp. A second after Brandee’s office plunged back into darkness, her cell phone lit up. The text message caught his eye.
Pay up tomorrow or Delgado gets your land back.
Shane stared at the message in confusion. “Your land back”? Those three words made no sense. And what was this about “pay up tomorrow”? As far as Shane knew, Brandee owned the land outright. Could there be a lien on the property he didn’t know about? Shane was still puzzling about the text as he sat down in Brandee’s chair, once again turned on the lamp and pulled open her file drawer.
Her organizational skills betrayed her. A hanging file bearing his name hung in alphabetical order among files for property taxes, credit card and bank statements, as well as sketches for her upcoming clothing line. Shane pulled out his file and spread the pages across the desk.
His heart stopped when he saw the birth certificates going back several generations. He reviewed the copy of Jasper Crowley’s legal document that made the Hope Springs Ranch land his daughter’s dowry. After reading through the newspaper clippings and retracing his ancestry, Shane understood. Brandee intended to cheat him out of the land that should belong to his family.
Leaving everything behind, he returned to the bedroom to wake Brandee and demand answers. But when he got to the room, he stopped dead and stared at her sleeping form. He loved her. That was why he’d signed the document.
Not one thing his father had ever said to him had hurt as much as finding out he’d fallen in love with a woman who was using him.
Torn between confronting her and getting the hell away before he did something else he’d regret, Shane snatched his clothes off the floor and headed for the back door. He slid his feet into his boots, grabbed his coat with his truck keys and went out into the night.
* * *
Brandee woke to a sense of well-being and the pleasant ache of worn muscles. She lay on her side, tucked into a warm cocoon of sheets and quilts. Her bedroom was still dark. The time on her alarm clock was 5:43 a.m.