Swoon (23 page)

“I agree,” I said. “The next place looks interesting. But it’s going to be a lot of work.”

She turned toward me and stood on her toes to kiss me playfully. “Good thing I don’t mind a little work. Plus, I need a little time to develop my business plan anyway. No way am I ready to start this right away.”

“We.”

She looked up at me.

“We need to work on a plan. You’re not in this alone.”

She nodded her agreement, thankfully, and we walked back to my truck and climbed in. I copped a feel again as she stepped up, because, well, just because.

It was about ten minutes farther down a winding road to reach our next destination. We slowly pulled in the driveway, looking each way. There were brick pillars with a black iron gate that had been cleared and maintained, but the rest of the place was… overgrown. The gravel on the driveway was washed out in several places where the culverts had clogged and failed. The fencing had several boards down, but it wasn’t terrible.

We pulled up to a large stucco barn attached to a huge indoor riding arena. This was what I knew would be a winning feature. Essentially, clients could go from the barn directly into the ring to ride without having to brave the elements in the dead of winter or the heat of the summer. In a therapy-type situation, this was necessary. You didn’t want to have to back out of a session because it was raining or snowing.

The barn needed paint and weeds needed clearing. Poison ivy was creeping up the sides and through some of the open windows. Fortunately, none of the glass in the window panes was broken. Just dirty. After walking through the barn and opening doors and kicking walls, most of the issues seemed to be cosmetic, resultant from lack of use. We smiled at each other as we each grabbed a handle of the two large sliding doors that opened into the indoor arena. And stared out in awe.

It was immaculate and seemingly brand-new. Dusty, but otherwise clean and unscathed, with no dents on the walls or cracks in the mirrors. The eaves overhead harbored some bird nests, but even those seemed orderly, and the metal fastenings had no rust or wear. The rubber footing still had the long, smooth lines from the drag being raked along at some point. We walked silently across, both of us treading softly as if we didn’t want to mess up this giant Zen garden. There was a door at the opposite end of the long rectangle, a large mirror stretching to the left of it. It opened with a creak, revealing an immaculate viewing room. That large mirror was one-sided so you could comfortably watch the arena and sit in an air-conditioned room that gleamed with polished pine walls and floors, a minibar, and two bathrooms. An overstuffed leather sofa sat abandoned in the middle of the room, facing the window.

We hadn’t spoken a word this entire time. It was just too strange.

In silence, we walked out and shut the door to the viewing room. I left Steph behind staring at the door and walked to stand in the middle of the arena. Hands on my hips, I turned a circle.

“There must be a hell of a story to this place,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper because it was like a ghost town.

Steph stepped up to me and turned her own circle. When her back was to me, I reached around to place a hand on her abdomen, taking a step forward to bridge the gap between our bodies.

She leaned her head back on my chest. “Think we can breathe some life back into it?”

My hand skated a little lower, playfully dipping beneath the waistband of her jeans. “I don’t know about breathing, but I can think of some kind of life to put into it.”

She scoffed and flung her hand back to smack me, unfortunately connecting with my nose.

“Son of a…” I gripped my face in both hands, blinking rapidly to ease the burn between my eyes.

When I finally opened them, she was standing with both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide in apology. But the sputtering coming from her mouth, and the trembling in her shoulders gave her laughter away.

I wiped my eyes and checked that my nose wasn’t broken before giving her a stern look.

“I thought you liked it when I put life into you,” I said, thoroughly enjoying the ability to freak her out.

She pointed at me as she began backing up toward the exit. “That’s not funny. It’s downright disturbing, presumptuous, or gross. I’m not sure what. But it’s not right.”

My long strides caught up to her easily when she reached the in-gate. I braced my arms on either side of her as she leaned back against the wall, her chest rising and falling in what was possibly anxiety from my last comment.

I leaned the lower half of my body against her and bent over to trace the graceful outline of her neck with my lips and my breath.

“Relax, queenie. You’re getting ahead of yourself.” I chuckled when I sensed her rolling her eyes. But she didn’t push me away. One hand released the wall to palm her hip, my thumb reaching to skim over her belly. “I didn’t mean creating a life inside you.”

She froze, breath halting.

“Though I won’t lie and say I haven’t thought of it.”

Still no breath.

“I simply meant that I’m alive, and I love nothing more than to be inside you, living inside you.”

Her stomach softened as her breath released. She started to slide down the wall a little as her knees weakened.

Our lips met softly at first, but the pent-up frustration from not being naked together in several hours soon took over. I tangled my fingers in her ponytail, wrapping it around my hand to tug her head back, exposing her neck. I raked my teeth along her skin, soothing with my lips, and her knees weakened even more. Her breath was coming in little pants, and I groaned when she wrapped her legs around me, pressing her back into the wall.

I pulled back to look in her eyes, which were dark and shining with mischief. A corner of my mouth rose, and I held her gaze as I reached down to flick open her jeans. She dropped her legs to the ground and struggled out of her boots and shimmied out of her jeans, kicking them off to the side. She stared at me brazenly, pulling her tank top and bra off and tossing them aside as well.

My eyes were wide as I took her in, as she stood fully naked in the middle of an abandoned property, resting her hip against the side of this weirdly expansive arena that might be ours someday.

“You wanna christen this place?” I asked, stepping out of my boots.

She nodded with a smirk.

“Pretty bold move,” I said, pulling my shirt off and tossing it onto my boots. We were going to be so dirty after this. Well, actually in about thirty seconds, we’d both be goners.

She bit her lip and ran her eyes over my chest, letting them linger on my jeans. I raised an eyebrow and unbuttoned my pants slowly, pushing them down along with my boxers and holding them to the side with a straight arm. We smiled at each other when my hand released them and they dropped to the footing with a soft thud.

“You asked for it.” I shook my head.

Taking a long stride up to her, I reached out to let my hand caress from her ribs, down and around to cup her ass, pressing my hardness into her with a sigh. Our foreheads rested together as we reveled in the feeling of being skin to skin. It was something special every time. It was like we were magnets that only relaxed when we were stuck together.

I leaned farther into her, bending her back against the slanted wall. I felt that the ledge was wide enough to support her, and with my hands at the backs of her thighs, I boosted her up onto it. She hissed in a breath, no doubt at the contact of the hard wood, cool from the shade despite the warmth of the day, on her bare ass. Her legs wrapped back around my waist, and she used the strength of her leg muscles to pull me tight. I ran my fingertips all over her body, leaving no part untouched. And I mean nothing. She was flushed pink, and damp, and about to claw the skin off my back by the time I slid into her. My shoulders were burning with each rake of her nails, and the feeling just spurred me on. My feet were buried in the mixture of shaven rubber and sand. Like we were on a beach. Kind of.

The sounds of our skin meeting, our breaths and our groans synchronizing, echoed throughout the warehouse-like building. Her hands traced the definition between the muscles in my shoulders, up my neck to my jaw. When she cupped my face in her hands, I let out a long breath into her. I folded my arms around her back to envelop her in me, our releases making us tense and shudder together.

A silly and playful moment had become something so much deeper. I wasn’t sure if it was the place, or it was just her. Us. Every time we were together, this happened. There we were, naked and primitive, and we should have been laughing. But we weren’t. Maybe it was knowing that I was leaving tomorrow. We were making plans for a future, but it was all so up in the air. I was ready to jump in with both feet, and I knew that scared her. Then we threw a business into the mix, buying property, all adding to the crazy. It would be smart to go slow, to have a plan, to work this out methodically. But fuck if I didn’t care right then.

Chapter 24

Steph

“O
kay!” I clapped my hands after slapping two spiral notebooks down on one of the many packing boxes cluttering my living room. I handed one pen to Lawrence and twirled my own between my fingers as I sat next to him and grabbed my pad of paper. “Let’s get started.”

My knees were bouncing up and down as I began my list, rattling off all the steps we needed to work through to get to our end result. I was three-quarters down my first page when I realize Lawrence had yet to pick up his notebook.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Don’t you want to write all this down?”

He was looking at me with unconcealed amusement. “Not really,” he said. “But I thoroughly enjoy watching you do it.”

I poked his chest with my pen. “Come on. Let’s get this done tonight. We have so much work to do to get ready. We need a good plan. A time line!”

With a dramatic sigh, Lawrence leaned forward to reach for his notebook, then aborted the mission, stood, and walked out of the room. I barely had time to be irritated before he returned carrying two beers and wearing his glasses. My concentration and enthusiasm for list-making was officially shot. He stood over me, passing down one of the bottles before opening his own and taking a long swallow. I watched his throat move above me, the condensation rolling down the neck of his bottle, making me think—

“All right. Let’s make a time line.”

Let me see… lick drops of moisture from Lawrence or work on a business plan? Licking it is.

He sat back down, this time with a pad of paper in his lap, literally cock-blocking. I’d already tossed my own notebook aside and was halfway straddling him, trying to tug his shield away from him. But he held it tight as I kissed my way up his neck and over to his laughing lips.

“Time line. Time line!” he said into my kiss.

“Fuck the time line,” I said, clearly not myself.

A firm grip on my shoulders pushed me off and back onto my side of the couch.

“No means no.” He looked at me sternly through his glasses. “I’ll reward you by letting you lick me anywhere you want, only after we finish our work.”

I blinked a few times. “What’s happening here?”

He winked at me and started jotting notes.

“No really, did you honestly just turn me down?”

“I’m trying to show you that I can make plans, my queen.”

I rolled my eyes. “Anyone can make a plan. It’s follow-through that counts.”

“I’ll show you follow-through.”

“Will you wear the glasses?” I asked hopefully.

“If you behave.”

I snorted a little but gave in, opening my notebook back up.

“Okay,” I began. “Let’s work backward. When should we open, ideally?”

“Well, we can put some feelers out, especially through Bob, to see what the current interest level is. I say as soon as possible.”

“How soon is possible? I’m out of a job and a home here pretty soon.”

“You’re not out of a home. You can just move in with me.”

I blew out a breath. “Lawrence, is that smart? It’s really soon. And your house is in Kentucky.”

“First of all, you need a place to stay. Nothing is keeping you here. Stay with me until we’re ready, and then we’ll move down. Together.”

I nodded in agreement. “Point taken. So… when? I feel like there’s a rush to get things done before winter.”

“If we buy that place, and I think we now have to”—he glanced sideways at me and we both smiled—“there’s an indoor. So the weather won’t matter.”

“That’s true. I don’t want to rush it so much that we aren’t organized, but how about… October?”

“That gives us three months to purchase the property, fix it up, form a client list, and make it all legal. With Bob’s help, and maybe my parents, I think we can do it. Can you contact some of your old clients?”

I shook my head furiously. “No way. I want to stay far away from that. I don’t even want to deal with kids. At all.”

He looked at me, slack-jawed. “No kids? That’s a pretty big demographic to rule out.”

“Please, Lawrence. Don’t fight me on this. Not right now.”

He regarded me for a long time before finally letting out a long breath and nodding. “Okay. For now. We’ll make it work anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“One other hot-button issue, then I’m done. I promise.”

“What?”

“That money your dad left you. It’s just… sitting there.” He held up a hand when I started to interrupt. “Remember. Rational.”

I slumped back but kept my mouth shut.

“I know you don’t want to use it personally. And I completely get that. But… what if we used it to set up some sort of fund for people who can’t afford all the services? That way it goes to some good use.”

I sat silently for a while, thinking. Then let out a breath. “I want to be childish about it and say no. But when you put it like you did, that just makes me as much of an asshole as my dad, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “Kind of.”

I started to laugh and elbowed him in the side. “Okay. You win.”

“Finally.”

We went back and forth for the next couple of hours, bantering, offering ideas, nixing others, and planning everything from licensing to who would clean stalls to the possible need for camper hookup so we could have the option of clients staying over for intensive work. By the time the sun had disappeared completely in the sky, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing.