The Bad Boy's Bride Read online

  He smiles. “You smell amazing, do you know that? Like cinnamon and citrus. Do you taste like it too?”

  A blush rolls across my entire body, and he lowers his mouth to mine for another kiss.

  Gentle, teasing brushes of his tongue against mine send pleasure zinging along my nerves. His hand leaves my pussy and he breaks away from our kiss. He’s smirking when he brings his fingers to his lips and tastes. Clayton groans. “You taste amazing.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  He lifts his head and raises an eyebrow. “You’ve tasted yourself?”

  “No, I just know that most men don’t…appreciate that.”

  “I’m not most men,” he says, his voice rough. And then he pops his finger in my mouth and I taste myself for the first time. And it doesn’t taste like cinnamon, but it’s also perfectly fine, and any inhibition I may have ever had about a man going down on me is gone. I start sucking on his finger, and I can tell by how hard his cock is against my leg, and the way he starts grinding into me, that his mind is on me sucking other things right now.

  “Fuuuck,” he groans before claiming my mouth with another kiss, and then he slinks down my body. He sinks lower, licking his way down my body until he’s down by my thighs and I can feel his breath on my pussy. He grins when I lift my hips toward his mouth, wordlessly asking for what I want.

  Clayton’s eyes don’t leave mine as he places his hands high on my thighs and slowly pushes them wide. They still ache, and I feel the pain even deeper when he pushes against them. But I’m even wetter than before, and his gaze is daring me to tell him that I’m not enjoying it.

  And then he devours me.

  So much for slow. Clayton feasts on me like I’m a five-course meal. Deeper and deeper, licking the wetness from my thighs and dipping his tongue inside my pussy before sealing his mouth over my clit and sucking deep. Stroking and circling and focusing all of his energy of that tiny bundle of nerves.

  I can’t hold myself back. My hands fly to his head, holding him in place. My only need, my only desire right now it to keep his head right fucking there. I grab at his hair and hold on. I don’t care if I hurt him. I don’t think he cares, either, because he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t slow down. His tongue flicks at my clit again and again, in the perfect pattern that will make me come. He drives me up and over the edge, and I cry out as my orgasm breaks. It shakes me to the core, pleasure shimmering and peaking and bursting. When I can open my eyes again, Clayton is naked and standing at the foot of the bed. He’s grinning as he strokes himself, a condom in his hand. In one smooth movement, he dives on to the bed next to me. After a passionate kiss, he grabs me by the hips and lifts me, positioning me so I’m practically sitting on his face. His big hand rubs from my waist up my back, and then he firmly presses down on me, until I’m lying flat on him, getting my first up close look at his very hard cock.

  He’s glorious. Long and hard and ever so slightly curved upward. I’m already falling back into pleasure, but he’s given me the chance to give it back. So I dive down on him, taking him completely.

  Any other time, I would start a long, slow exploration of his cock. Just the thought of taking my time and making him squirm the same way that he did me sends another burst of wetness from my pussy directly into his mouth, and Clayton groans underneath me.

  But I’m distracted by his clever tongue and lips, and the way he seems to know exactly how to tease me, and how different he feels from this angle, that I don’t have time for subtlety.

  So I suck my husband’s cock.

  Hard.

  I’m mindless with the pleasure of his mouth and the feeling of him sliding deeper as he thrusts up into my mouth. I’m losing myself to that same perfect chemistry that took over earlier. It’s inevitable.

  One of Clayton’s hands locks on my hip, holding me securely in place as he ravages my sensitive clit. I’m so close, only stopped from grinding on his tongue and coming by his firm grip.

  His other hand snakes up my back, until his fingers are tangled in my hair. He presses on the back of my head, guiding me as I suck his cock. The way he’s tugging at my roots tells me he likes what I’m doing, so I take more of him. Clayton fucks my mouth faster, but never stopping the assault on my pussy, and I start to come again.

  The second orgasm crushes me like a tidal wave, bright and shining. Overwhelming. I let myself go, surrendering to the sensation and to him. He thrusts up into my mouth again and again as I come, but he doesn’t come. Not yet.

  He rolls himself out from underneath me to reach over to the condom beside the bed. Just as I’m catching my breath, his hands are on me again, turning me around and lifting me on top of him. I watch him roll on the condom, his erection sticking straight up in the air. I’ve never wanted a cock inside me so badly. With a knee on each side of him, I lower myself down onto him, enjoying the sting of him stretching me, watching his cock disappear inside me. I lower myself slowly, until he’s entirely filled me. I don’t care about the soreness and the fact that every muscle in my body still aches with every movement. It’s so worth it.

  His hands are on my hips, locking us together, pulling me toward him, using my own body to fuck up into me. The possessiveness in his eyes makes me shiver, and not with fear. It’s the deep kind of ownership that comes with love and acceptance and wanting. He’s claiming me the same way he did this afternoon, but somehow it feels deeper than that.

  He reaches up and grabs my shoulder, pushing me harder onto him. I know he’s getting close now because his shoulders and head are raised off the bed; an impossible position for a man who’s not as fit as Clayton. I ride him like that, admiring the chorded muscles tensing in his arms. I lean forward, trying to rub my clit against him, but I’m too impatient, and sneak a hand between us, rubbing myself. When he spots me playing with my clit, something takes over in him, and his grunts grow louder and his thrusts stronger. I’m nothing but a sparkling star, bathing in perfect ecstasy as he fucks his way to his own climax. He shouts his climax, cock jerking deep inside me, and my finger speeds up until I’m coming too, and collapse onto his body.

  We lie there together, sweating and panting, catching our breath. “So much for long and slow.”

  Clayton laughs, the sound a rumble in his chest under my ear. “I think we have some energy to work out before we’re capable of long and slow,” he says, slipping out of me and away to deal with the condom. But he’s back in a second, wrapping me in his arms and pulling my back to his chest.

  His hands are stroking down my body, helping to ease the lingering aches and pains. It almost seems…strange, after the deep and dominant fucking he just gave me. And the one this morning. But after that one he’d drawn the bath. I’d never experienced that level of both confidence and compassion at once.

  Men have always been takers with me. From my father to the few boyfriends that I’ve had, and most recently, Solomon, trying to take what he wanted from me. But Clayton…

  He makes my pleasure come first, and he enjoys it. Revels in it. And in the aftermath, he isn’t leaving. He’s staying to take care of me. I feel closer to him in this moment than I can ever remember being to someone else, and that is a little terrifying.

  I can’t stop touching him the same way that he’s touching me. Turning over, I face him. I need to see the look on his face. He’s sleepy but content, continuing to drag his fingers over my skin.

  God I love the feel of him, and I finally get to explore his abs with my fingers the way I wanted to earlier today. Clayton pulls me in for a long, slow kiss. All it does is warm my body up, but I’m too exhausted to move anything other than my hands.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen a more gorgeous pair of legs,” he says roughly, hand wandering down my hip and pulling one of my legs over his. I like the closeness.

  “I highly doubt that’s true.”

  Clayton’s fingers tighten on my hip. “I know that we don’t know each other very well yet,” he says softly, “but I don’
t lie.”

  I blush. “Sorry.”

  “No reason to apologize,” he says. “Like I said, you don’t know me. But when I give compliments, I mean them.”

  “Okay.” I bite my lip. It isn’t easy for me to believe things like that about myself, but I can try.

  “So why are you here?”

  “At the ranch?”

  The corner of his mouth tips up into a smile. “Yeah. As fun as this is, it doesn’t seem like this was your plan back when we last saw each other.”

  I shake my head. “No…I—” How do I say this? “I quit my job. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have a choice. My boss—” I swallow. “He wanted something that I didn’t want to give him, and when I told him no, he tried to ruin my reputation with the rest of the staff. It didn’t work, but I couldn’t stay there.

  “I needed to get away for a while, and I wanted to see all of this.” I duck my head. “Though I guess I should have called to make sure that you were okay with it.”

  A small smile again. “That would have been nice, but you’re not wrong, you do own half of this place. You have every right to be here.” Then his eyes go hard. “And if that man ever puts his hands on you again, I’ll break those hands so thoroughly he’ll never be able to use them again.”

  “How did you—”

  “Not hard to guess, even with you leaving out the details,” he says gently.

  I stare at him for a moment, knowing what I want to ask, but desperately afraid to. What if he says no? But I don’t have to speak because Clayton is already speaking. He lifts his hand to cradle the side of my face and threads his fingers into my hair. “This isn’t something I expected,” he says quietly.

  “Me either.”

  “I want to know you, Rachel, if you’ll stay for a while. There’s something between us, and I’m not ready to give it up. We deserve time to figure it out. Maybe finally get to the place where we can do long and slow.”

  My stomach flips, and my heart skips a beat. There’s something devastatingly sexy about a man laying out his feelings so plainly. No games, no having to ask questions to get vague hints about what he wants. And I want that too. Already the idea of leaving makes me panic. “I’d like that.”

  Clayton rolls on top of me, my leg still wrapped around his hip. But he doesn’t bother to brace himself; he pins me to the bed with his weight. It’s steadying. Comforting. His lips are so close, I’m tempted to kiss him before he pulls back just far enough that I can’t reach.

  “I want to lay out some ground rules.”

  I smirk. “Oh?”

  “Honesty,” he says. “If we’re figuring this out, there isn’t any room for lies or leaving things out. On both sides.”

  I can agree to that. “Okay.”

  “Here on the ranch everyone pulls their weight,” he says. “If you’re going to be here, you’re going to have to do your share. We’ll give you a few days to explore the place, try some things, and recover from the soreness before throwing you in, but it’s only fair.”

  “I agree,” I say, nodding. “Any more rules.”

  “Just one,” he says, “and it’s less of a rule and more of a …negotiation.”

  Reaching up, I wrap my arms around his neck. “Intriguing.”

  “I’m a modern man even if I do live on a ranch in Wyoming,” he says. “I don’t give a shit who does the cooking or the cleaning or whatever anyone else thinks men and woman should do.”

  “Where is this going?”

  I realize that he is moving so slowly that I hadn’t noticed his hand is on my neck, thumb hovering over my pulse. His voice is low. “In the bedroom, I call the shots.”

  I shudder underneath him, my reaction visceral. It’s a good reaction.

  “I told you I wanted your consent in everything, and I do. I would never take something from you that you weren’t willing to give. But when you’re in my bed…” he lets the sentence hang, so I imagine all the possibilities, and there are many.

  It feels like all the air in the world has disappeared and I can’t breathe. He’s stolen all my breath. I need more. “What happens once I’m in your bed?”

  Clayton lowers his mouth to the bruise from this morning and brushes his lips across it, a delicate reminder of what he’s already done to me. “You’re mine for the taking,” he whispers. “If I want to hold you down and fuck you till you scream, I will. If I want to tie you to the bed and tease you for hours, I will. If I want your mouth on my cock, that’s where it will be.”

  The matter of fact way that he says it has heat flowing down my spine. Spears of pure arousal. All those things sound…amazing. The idea of not having to think or worry about what will happen is almost relaxing. And if it leads to the kind of blinding orgasms that I’ve had today…I have no problem with it.

  “And if I need to stop?”

  “Then we’ll stop.”

  I smirk up at him. “And what if I disobey you in the bedroom?”

  Clayton’s smile is rich with mischief. “Then I’ll get to come up with an appropriate, delicious punishment for you.”

  “Fuck.” The word slips out of my mouth before I can stop it, and he laughs. “Yes,” I say. “Absolutely.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Fire lights my cheeks. One hundred percent honesty. “I’ve never been so turned on by anything in my life,” I tell him. “But I don’t know if I could do it if it wasn’t you.”

  The sound from his throat is nearly a growl, and he seals his mouth over that bite mark, sucking hard. There’s no chance it won’t be a bruise tomorrow. “People will be able to see that.”

  “Let them.”

  “I wanted to ask…” I say, changing the subject. “Do people know I’m your wife?”

  He nods. “Well, they know that I got married. Only Jenna—the concierge—knows who you are so far.”

  “Are you going to tell people?”

  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”

  I bite my lip. “But what if we…” The rest of the sentence dies on my lips. I can’t make myself voice the possibility that this won’t work.

  Clayton kisses me, hard and hot and possessive, erasing all thoughts of failure. He doesn’t want to voice that either. The sound of his stomach growling breaks us apart, and I laugh. “Guess we forgot about dinner.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Too late to grab anything in staff dining, but dinner will still be available in the guest dining room.”

  Suddenly my stomach growls too, like talking about food has suddenly reminded my stomach of exactly how much nothing I’ve eaten today. “Yeah that sounds nice.”

  “Your suitcase is right outside the door. I brought it back for you.”

  “Really?”

  He smiles. “Of course.”

  It seems like a simple thing, but it feels significant. Like a sign of who he really is. “Most men I know wouldn’t even have thought to wonder if I had luggage.”

  Clayton is grinning as he stands and grabs his jeans off the floor. “I told you, I’m not most men.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” I mutter under my breath.

  “Get dressed. We’ll head over in a few.”

  I retrieve my suitcase and put on a fresh set of clothes. Nothing fancy—I didn’t bring anything fancy with me—but comfortable. I may have chosen the shirt I brought because it has the lowest neckline. Afterall, I was thinking about Clayton when I packed.

  When I decided to fly out here, in my mind it wasn’t a serious possibility, hooking up with him. It was a fantasy, and once I couldn’t kick. But I still prepared to be sexy. And thank God that I did. I don’t put my bra back on and the silky shirt rubs at my nipples luxuriously. By the time I’m putting on my boots, my nipples are hard peaks.

  When I step into the hall and Clayton’s eyes devour me, I know I packed just the right clothes for my Wyoming get-away.

  Clayton whistles. “You make it very difficult to want to leave.”

  I smirk. “In charge in
the bedroom or not, if I don’t get some food in me, I won’t have energy for anything else.”

  “Then let’s go.” He takes my hand and pulls me into the warm evening air.

  Just that simple gesture has the butterflies in my stomach swarming.

  The guest dining room is in the large main lodge where I left my luggage this morning, but I hadn’t seen anything beyond the lobby. The actual dining room is clean and modern and open, with large walls of windows that let in the light of the setting sun and look out over the property. It is truly beautiful.

  There are a few people still eating, but it is late enough that the place is mostly empty. Clayton chooses a table and waves to one of the waitresses. He makes no move to let go of my hand, holding it across the table. So we are really doing this.

  “Hey, Clayton,” the girl says as she approaches.

  “Emily, this is my wife, Rachel.”

  The girl’s eyes widen. “Wow, it’s nice to meet you!”

  “You too.”

  “Is Martin still cooking?” Clayton asks. “We were hoping to sneak something in.”

  Emily rolls her eyes. “You know he’ll cook whatever you want.”

  “Two specials will be fine,” he answers.

  The girl disappears. “Sorry for ordering for you, I figured it was easier since the kitchen is near closing.”

  I squeeze his hand. “I very much get it.” There’s been no sign that Clayton knows that I’m a chef, and I’m not sure that this moment is the right time to put that kind of pressure on him.

  But the conversation that we do have is nice. Simple, first date type stuff. What we’ve been reading and watching, where we grew up. Things that are light and breezy compared to the…enormity of what we talked about at the house.

  The food comes. Chicken with lemon and garlic mashed potatoes. A small salad and a side of vegetables. It’s perfectly fine. Not stellar at all, but I’m so hungry that really anything is satisfying.

  “You work in the culinary arts,” Clayton says.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “What do you think of the food?”