The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3) (11 page)

~*~

As they’d walked down the hill toward the white sand-filled arena and the two women and one horse inside of it, Aidan’s thoughts had been this:

              Okay, that was a big horse. And it danced around like…well, like it was dancing.

              The blonde was short, but hot. Nice shape to her. The sunglasses were very Hollywood.

              Okay, the brunette? Ten times hotter, and that was with a helmet on and nothing but a dark tidy bun of hair hanging out the back. Her face was stunning even from a distance. Nice tits – perky, not too big.

              Oh shit, was the horse supposed to do that? Was it…?

              Yeah, definitely not.

             
Oh fuck
, hot girl flying! Don’t break your hotass face, baby. Or your hot ass either, actually.

              She’s moving, that’s a good sign, right?

              Blonde girl just lost ten hot points for being a bitch.

              “No thanks to you idiots,” she said, and he got twitchy on the inside. There was hot-bitchy, and then there was straight up I-wanna-cut-you-bitchy, and the blonde was the latter of the two.

              He stepped forward, arms draping over the fence rail. “Is she okay?” he repeated. “Should I call 911?”

              “I’m fine.” The brunette sat up, and she was knock-him-out gorgeous this close. Even as she winced, took off her helmet, and stroked a hand across her sweaty, mashed-down hair. “I’m fine.” Her gaze lifted, and her eyes were blue.

              Really blue.

              Without warning, Aidan felt attraction tackle him. Not the subtle, easy attraction of seeing a beautiful woman and wondering what he could get her to do. But the visceral need to have this woman’s legs around his waist.

              In a flash, he was over the fence and offering his hand down to her. “Here, let me help. I’m so sorry about all this.”

              “Then tell your friends not to rev their engines like they’re in a freaking race,” the blonde said.

              Aidan ignored her. The brunette gave him a strange look, then grasped his hand. He saw her blood-red manicured nails, felt the softness of her skin, and he was sunk.

~*~

Emmie wasn’t actually angry with the Dogs. She was angry at the very real possibility that her richest, best-paying student would be so pissed off that she moved her horse, or worse, started making demands around the farm.

              Tonya, in a very unlikely move, let the dark-haired biker with the killer grin lead her up to the barn on the premise of “making sure she was okay,” and Emmie caught Chaucer, took him inside, untacked and hosed him off. She was putting him away in his stall for a hay snack and a calm-down when the two blondes from before approached her.

              Both were beautiful in different ways. One had the masculine, pretty-boy features of a former athlete and ladies’ man. The other had a funky haircut, lots of piercings, even more tattoos, and that almost hid his delicate feminine prettiness.

              The pretty one spoke, as she was latching the stall door. “Look, we didn’t mean for the horse to get scared and do that. Sorry.” He sounded and looked sincere, a graveness etched into his clear-cut features. “Is she okay?”

              Emmie sighed, braced her shoulder against the stall, and focused all her weak patience into offering them a halfhearted smile. “I didn’t mean to snap before,” she said. “I’m…kinda hungover. And situations like that with the horses can be so dangerous…” She’d seen horrible accidents, yes. And she had been upset in the moment. But her new reality involved bikers, and if she had to choose between noisy tailpipes and no Briar Hall at all, she’d pick tailpipes in a heartbeat. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s alright. The horses will eventually get used to the sound of the bikes.”

              Obvious relief in both of them.

              “We don’t know anything about horses,” the younger, more normal one said. “So…yeah. Sorry.”

              “Makes me wonder why your friend bought a horse farm,” she said, and didn’t mean it as an insult, was truly fishing for answers, because Walsh was a puzzle she wanted to solve.

              “Because he does know something about horses,” Walsh’s distinctive English accent said, and she glanced sharply down the aisle to see him approaching. “He was a jockey, actually, so he knows a lot.”

The sight of him set her face aflame. The skin heated until she knew her blush must be visible, even from this distance. Laying eyes on him – his blue and white plaid shirt, the battered jeans, the bedhead thickness of his hair and the narrow blue eyes – sent a keen awareness shooting through her. He’d touched her, carried her, been in her apartment, been next to her bed.

Her dream from a few nights before tumbled through her mind and made the blushing worse.

She cleared her throat and watched the other two guys step back, perplexed and amused expressions lighting their faces. They could feel the attraction coming off of her, and she hated that, but had no idea what to do about it.

“A jockey, huh?” she asked, and her voice sounded unnatural to her ears. God, what was wrong with her? Had to be the hangover. She didn’t get like this with men. Ever.

He met her flickering glance with a solid stare that told her he knew exactly how much her insides were churning at the moment. “Till I got too tall for it.”

“That’d do it.”

He shrugged.

“So you swapped to bikes instead.”

“More or less.”

This was stupid, inane chatter, on both their parts. Stupid, she told herself. She hadn’t expected anything to be different today. But had she wanted it to be? She wouldn’t allow herself to dwell on that; it felt too painfully like she was hoping for something, and given what had just happened with Tonya, that wasn’t a good idea.

Still…

She was suddenly more feminine, more lonely, more achy inside than she had been years, and for some reason, her body wanted this man. Maybe it was because he’d saved her farm. Maybe because of the way his shirt sleeves fit over his shoulders. Either way, she couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t wondering what his mouth tasted like.

“So you’ve met Tango and Carter,” he said, like he was getting things back on track. “Boys, this is Emmie, and you’re obviously bothering her, and you know what I said about that before. So.” He lifted his brows expectantly and both younger men lurched into action.

“Right,” the one he’d called Tango said. “We’ll go see if Aidan’s ready to leave.”

In the wake of their departure, Walsh closed the distance between them, hands going in his pockets, gaze raking over her in a calculating way. He was cold and hot all at once in his regard, and it stirred up a deep tug in the pit of her stomach. It was a horseman’s gaze, she realized; it had been all along. His mixture of intrigue and analysis was the careful, thorough look of someone used to measuring horseflesh.

And now he was measuring her, and trapping her back against the stall.

And Lord help her, she liked it.

“Problem with your student?” he asked, and his eyes were fixed on her mouth.

“Nothing an ice pack won’t solve. And you can tell your boys to be more careful driving in and out.”

He nodded. “I’ll do that.”

“You’re the vice president; they have to listen to you, right?”

“They do.”

“You put me to bed last night,” she said quietly. All the logic was fast draining out of her head, and she was powerless to make a last grab for any of it.

He stared at her a long moment, then tilted his head toward the door. “Take a walk with me.”

~*~

Dolly walked alongside them, her panting a sound that grounded them in reality, and in the farm. A sound that kept Emmie’s brain from going too far afield. Walking side-by-side, she could smell the remnants of shaving cream, and the tang of morning cigarettes. A dozen personal questions bubbled to life in her mind, things she wanted to ask Walsh about his past, himself. But she held her tongue, because he had something he wanted to tell her; she could sense it.

“Richards should have been paying you more,” he said as they moved slowly down the long outside of the barn.

She hadn’t been expecting that. “What?”

“I’m giving you a raise. All of you. Most of Richards’ cash was going…somewhere else. You ought to be paid more.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’m fine with my salary.”

Walsh shot her a sideways glance. “He should have been paying you a lot more.”

She frowned, and some of the arousal fog began to lift. “You looked at the finances?”

“This place could do better than it does, and I want you to make suggestions.” He halted, and she turned to look at him, shocked. “I’m guessing Richards didn’t take advice too well, am I right?”

“No, but…” She frowned. “He was a grumpy old man. Why are you doing this?” she added quickly. An unpleasant idea dawned. “You’re not trying to buy my favor or something, are you?”

God, that would suck if he was that shallow. If he resorted to all those lame tricks the men she’d known before had used.

He twitched a half-smile. “No, love. I don’t buy favors from pretty girls.” He leaned forward, close enough for her to see the dark filaments in his eyes. His voice: low and thick, sending shivers across her skin. “I want to fuck you, trust that. And it would be very, very good for you. But I won’t try to trick you into it. You’ll have to say you want it.”

Oh God, oh God.

He pulled back, totally composed, calm, dug a pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket and went about the business of pulling one out, lighting it. “Think about it,” he said, like he’d suggested she get her oil changed, or invest in a new lawnmower.

“Think about…” Her mouth was dry. She couldn’t repeat what he’d just said, too stunned.

“How much of a raise you want.” He flicked her a blank, heatless look. “Okay?”

“O…kay.”

The sound of a car door slamming drew both their attentions toward the parking pad in front of the barn. Amy Richards, dressed to the nines, sunglasses masking half her face.

“I wanna talk to you,” she said, and it was almost a shout.

Emmie gathered her composure and started forward.

“Not you,” Amy snapped, dismissing her with a wave. She aimed a jeweled finger at Walsh. “You, biker boy.”

~*~

Aidan had never really understood those
Penthouse
horse trainer fantasies. He didn’t see anything sexual about horses.

              But he was rethinking that thanks to the woman sitting across from him. They were in the “tack room,” she’d said it was, in the AC, on folding chairs facing one another, and he would have been having a much easier time unwrapping the Band-Aid in his hand if he hadn’t been so busy staring at her.

              Holy shit, she was hot.

              Tonya, she’d said her name was, with an O. Yeah, he could see that. He wanted to make her say “Oh!” Movie star perfect, all legs and tight-fitting clothes, her makeup flawless despite the dirt smudges, she looked exactly like the sort of girl who belonged on the back of his bike.

              “You really didn’t have to help me,” she said. “I’m capable of putting a bandage on my face.”

              She was snippy, and he liked that. He imagined she’d be feisty between the sheets, the kind of chick who’d be just as into the sex as him.

              “Yeah, but then I wouldn’t get to play doctor.” He gave her a wide grin and finally got the Band-Aid open.

              “Wouldn’t want to deprive you of
that
, would we?”

              “Nah, that’d be cruel.”

              She had a small split at her hairline, where her helmet had banged into her head, and it had only bled a little, but Aidan had insisted on patching her up. Mainly as an excuse to touch her.

              “Alright, hold real still.” He leaned forward, bandage held by both edges, getting closer, closer, there, smoothing the little strip down onto her skin. Skin that was satin-soft. He could imagine the smell of it, its texture beneath his tongue.

              He had to have her, there was no way around it. And lucky for him, he had ten years of chick-catching experience.

              “Come out with me,” he said softly, in that voice that always worked for him. He met her gaze head-on, the intent shining in his own.

              “Come where?” she asked, and unlike so many of his conquests, she wasn’t taking the bait so easily.

              He grinned. “Anywhere you wanna go, baby.”

~*~

Amy Richards was a pretty woman. The trouble was, she was the sort who knew it, and gave off the vibe that she’d used her looks to her advantage repeatedly. The cruel twist of her mouth, the dark misery in her eyes – this was a woman who bargained with her body, because there wasn’t much of use between her ears.