Erotica- Forever His/ Spanking (2 page)

“Yes, I can change a tire. But not two flat tires.” She lifted her chin and met his surprised gaze.

The two older women were watching and listening. The look of disapproval more noticeable than when she’d walked by them a few minutes ago. As if she wasn’t good enough for the men of their town, in particular this man. She sensed their admiration for this Seth, a feeling of loyalty and a sort of desire to protect him. Interesting, definitely interesting.

He appeared to mull over the problem so she took another second to try to figure him out. She opened her mind to his. Nothing. His thoughts didn’t just meld with hers as normally should have happened. She tried to push her mind into his. Wham! She blinked and felt as if she’d mentally slammed into a brick wall. How bizarre! This had never happened to her before, not once in twenty-six centuries. There was definitely something odd about this man. Now that she thought about it, she sensed something, but couldn’t quite figure out what.

She sat reeling from that fact when he finally said, “Well, come on. We’ll go see what size tires you have. Maybe I can scrounge up one from my ranch to get you by.”

* * *

Seth waited until the tiny woman beside him buckled her seat belt before he started up the truck. In the diner she hadn’t seemed quite so small, so delicate. Fragile women weren’t his style. They made him nervous, like if he dared to touch them, he’d break them. With his genetic background, that could easily happen. He was a big man, nearly six-foot-four and was used to towering over most people. His body was bulky, ranch-work hardened. Added to that, he was an alpha male, had been…. No, he didn’t want to go there about that.

He glanced at her and then the road. She’d barely looked able to tote that duffel of hers let alone having carried it from wherever her car had broken down. Nope, not my kind of woman. Not that he was even thinking about getting involved with another woman after the recent hellish divorce he’d gone through.

Still, there was something about the little blonde that got to him. Made him think of rumpled sheets and sweat from hours of raunchy sex. He swore under his breath. He was helping this gal out and then getting as far from her as possible. No more getting involved with human females. He’d definitely learned a lesson with Sarah. Fortunately he’d come to his senses and ended the marriage before she’d had time to learn what he really was.

“Where’s this car of yours?” he asked, a little embarrassed at how angry he sounded. He wasn’t really upset with her; it was his dang body that was ticking him off. His dick had no business getting hard.

She cocked her head at him and questioned bluntly, “Did I do something to make you mad? You don’t have to do this, you know.”

His hands tightened on the wheel. She had the most sensually alluring voice he’d ever heard. “Just not having one of my best weeks. Sorry. Not your fault.” He backed up and headed down Main Street in the direction he figured she must have walked. “Issues at my ranch. Like my housekeeper up and quitting out of the blue. And I don’t have time to put an ad out for a new one.” That was only one of his current problems, but an issue that needed attention soon. He didn’t have time—or the desire—to do the laundry. And cooking…well, not his thing.

She nibbled on her bottom lip for a second and seemed thoughtful. “My car is two or three miles out of town. I’m not real good with distances, but it felt like I walked twenty miles.”

He glanced down in disapproval at her choice of footwear but simply said, “Name’s Seth, Seth Stevenson. I own the Double S Ranch about ten miles outside Templeton.”

“Teri Pennington. Actually it’s Terianna, but I go by Teri, with one ‘r.’”

“Just passing through town, I heard you tell Maybelle.” He wasn’t big on chitchat, but she appeared nervous. She kept glancing sideways at him and frowning. It bothered him that she might feel somehow threatened by him. “Most folks around here think kindly of me. So don’t worry that I’m going to attack you or something.” Okay, his body favored the idea. He was a sexual man and he’d been too long without a woman.

She blinked in surprise. “Oh, I’m not worried about that. I can take care of myself just fine, anyway.”

“You’re a bit on the small size, dainty-like. If a man wanted to have his way with you, well….” Oddly, it worried him that this young woman with a body to drive any still-breathing man crazy would so casually get in a truck with a complete stranger. Worried and angered him, too.

That chin of hers lifted a notch and she looked at him with brown eyes dancing in irritation. “Such a man would find himself in grave danger. I meant what I said, Mr. Stevenson, I can take care of myself. Have been for a very long time.”

“A ‘very long time,’ huh? You’re what twenty-two, twenty-three?”

She opened her mouth to tell him her correct age, he thought, but suddenly snapped, “Stop! Stop!” She motioned toward the other side of the road where a suitcase and a box sat next to the sign announcing “Templeton.”

Seth gaped in surprise and quickly did a u-turn to stop a few feet behind the piled items. “Yours?”

She was out of the truck before he finished his question. She marched indignantly toward the suitcase, grumbling under her breath about someone named Tyrone. Something about she was going to kill him the first chance she got. Something about him butting into her business again, playing matchmaker or some other such nonsense. Seth couldn’t quite catch it all because she seemed to be muttering half in English and half in some language he didn’t understand. But she was ticked off, that he knew for certain.

He ambled over, tipping up his hat to study the box filled with a peculiar mix of a couple of fancy cameras, a hair dryer, a book on Kama Sutra, and the biggest box of condoms he’d ever seen. Damn interesting stuff she toted around. Of course, his brain immediately began flipping through what kind of pictures would be in that book. And his cock started thickening, lengthening. He could make good use of some of those condoms.

“Guess you aren’t as innocent as you look,” he said in a husky tone, trying to look away from that box but unable to do so.

“What are you talking about?” She glanced at him in annoyance, and then followed his gaze to the box. Her eyes widened and she bent over it to hiss, “Dead! He is soooo dead!”

“This Tyrone person you mumbled about?” Seth forced his gaze away, focused on Teri, which was a mistake. She looked incredibly sexy all puffed up with irritation, her cheeks pink in anger and possibly embarrassment, her pretty mouth pursed in a pout. He wanted to rip open that box of condoms and try one on for size. And he wanted to take her back to his truck, lower the door to the truck bed and bend her over it to sink himself deep into her sweet body. ‘Course he envisioned all of that with her being naked.

She snapped her fingers in his face. “Wherever you’ve gone off to, cowboy, come back!”

Heat shimmied up his face and he scowled. He didn’t just think about nailing every woman he came across. There was something different about Teri Pennington, something that made him stop using his brain and made him think with his dick. And that pissed him off. He needed to find some place to dump her off, let her be someone else’s problem.

He bent down to pick up her suitcase and thrust it at her. Then he lifted the box, forced himself not to look inside it, and strode back to the truck. He set the box in the truck bed, fought down another flash of her bending over the lowered door. “I don’t know what the hell happened to your car, or why your belongings were left here. But I’ll take you back to town. Maybe Maybelle can help you out somehow.”

She struggled to lift her suitcase high enough to put it in the truck bed and he tugged it out of her hands. The mere touch of their fingers sent a jolt of awareness from his fingertips straight to his dick. Damn thing swelled up and stretched the limits of his jeans. “You’re a powerful lot of trouble,” he growled and shifted awkwardly before he walked to the driver’s door.

“So I’ve heard many times over the years.” She scurried around to the passenger’s side and climbed in, slamming the door. “You know, you’re the worst white knight in history.”

They didn’t speak further as Seth raced back into town. Worst white knight? Damn right he was! A true white knight would want to rescue the damsel in distress and then be pleased he’d done so. He wanted to do some hot and naughty with said damsel in distress. To hell with rescuing her. She brought out the animal inside him, the one desperate to mate.

Maybelle was just about to get into her battered, ancient Cadillac when Seth pulled up beside it. He flung himself out of his truck and stormed over to her. “Her car was gone, weird thing that. She’s got her suitcase, though. And a box.” His face heated again as he thought about what was in the box. “She needs somewhere to stay or a phone to use or something.”

Teri pranced up next to him and his nostrils flared at her now familiar scent, something soft, something sensual…something different. He inched away from her. “You got room at your place?” he asked Maybelle.

She shook her head and looked regretfully down at Teri. “Sorry, honey, but my kids and my grandkids are staying with me for a week. I’m full to capacity.” She looked straight at Seth. “You’ve got plenty of room in that big old house of yours.”

His heart pounded in panic. “It wouldn’t be right.” It wouldn’t be safe, for either of them.

Maybelle rolled her eyes. “Your last housekeeper lived with you.”

“I won’t go where I’m not wanted,” Teri stated and spun back toward his truck. She went up on tiptoes and attempted to reach for her suitcase in the truck bed. “Maybe I can get someone else to help me. I’ll set my things in the alley next to the diner and go to that bar. The Boot Scoot or whatever it was.”

“The hell you will!” Seth barked, shocking himself. He might not want her close to him for obvious reasons, but he sure didn’t want one of them yahoos who’d be there tonight at the bar anywhere near her either.

Maybelle chuckled and climbed into her car. “Believe I’ll head on home. You two can work out this little problem.”

She backed up and gave him an odd smile, then waved happily at Teri as she drove off.

Teri went back to trying to reach into the truck bed. He swatted her bottom. “Stop that!”

“You hit me!” she accused, glaring at him, but something flared in her eyes. Something more than anger, almost sensual.

“Smacked your sweet butt,” he corrected. “Because you’re acting nuts. You can’t reach the stuff and you’re going to hurt yourself if you keep on trying.”

“What do you care?” she said in a pouty manner. Her eyes shimmered with heat. Desire?

Just as he was about to answer a horn honked and his neighboring rancher leaned out of his pickup to yell out, “You coming to the Boot Scoot?” He grinned at Teri and winked. “Bringing the pretty little blonde? Can I have a dance with her?” He winked again.

Seth bristled and nudged Teri around the other side of his truck. “I’ve got other plans tonight.”

Teri glowered back at him. “Stop pushing me.”

“Need some help, sweet thing?” his neighbor questioned hopefully.

“I need—“

Seth took her elbow and escorted her to the passenger’s side. “You need to get in the damn truck.” As she gave him a look meant to shrivel him to nothingness, he was sure, and climbed inside, he called back to his friend, “Show’s over. You can head on to the Boot Scoot now.”

He heard the other man chortling as he drove away. Shaking his head at his idiocy, Seth walked back around the truck and got inside. She sat waiting for an explanation. He just wished he had one. “You can stay at my ranch until we get your car reported as stolen and arrange for a rental or something.”

She sighed. “It wasn’t stolen.”

Cranking on the engine, he gaped at her. “Looked like it to me.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

Didn’t he know that! He was a perfect example of it. But he had an odd feeling she was talking about much more than her missing car. He was too tired, too confused to press her about what she meant. “You okay with staying at my place? We don’t have any hotels in Templeton, not even in the next town over. And I don’t particularly want to drive all the way into Emporia or back to Topeka.”

“You’re inviting me to stay with you? Really?” She glanced at him, clearly shocked.

He should change his mind. He should suck it up and drive her to Emporia. Yet he couldn’t spit the words out. Idiot man. “At least for tonight.” He’d make damn sure she was gone the next day.

Chapter Two

Living with any man could be a trial sometimes and over the long years of her life Teri had been with many men and suffered through many “trials.” Being around Seth, with his moodiness and his keeping a distance from her, had her at wit’s end. She’d been at the Double S Ranch for just over two weeks now. She thought about moving on every day, but didn’t. He’d told her she could have his battered, old ranch truck when she left. But, though he avoided her as much as possible, he hadn’t pushed her about going. Actually, she thought he liked having her at the ranch, but he would never admit it.

Teri sat next to him in the big new dual-cab truck he’d recently bought and tried to enjoy the ride back from town. The rolling hills with its tall grass that blew gently in the almost constant breeze usually soothed her. She hadn’t been around cattle and horses much in a long time, but Seth’s ranch had a lot of both.  She liked seeing them roaming the hills of his 7,000 acres, liked them at a safe distance. Today, though, even the scenery couldn’t settle her nerves.

Seth was upset with her. Again.

Never had she been around a man who could be so volatile, at least around her. With his men, he was the clear leader; confident in everything he did, and all of the dozen cowboys working at the ranch respected him. One of the men, though, made her nervous sometimes: Walker Fremont, the foreman. She felt something dark and dangerous about him. He held secrets inside him, just as she knew Seth did. He kept his distance from her most of the time…from the other men too. The one exception was Seth. The big man was fiercely protective of his boss, although she couldn’t imagine Seth ever needing protection.