Hold Me, Cowboy

Two

The absolute worst thing was the fact that Sam’s words sent a shiver down her spine. Sam McCormack. Why did it have to be Sam McCormack? He was the deadly serpent to her Indiana Jones.

She should throw him out. Throw him out and get back to her very disappointing evening where all orgasms would be self-administered. So, basically a regular Friday night.

She wanted to throw herself on the ground and wail. It was not supposed to be a regular Friday night. She was supposed to be breaking her sex fast. Maybe this was why people had flings in the spring. Inclement weather made winter flings difficult. Also, mostly you just wanted to keep your socks on the whole time. And that wasn’t sexy.

Maybe her libido should hibernate for a while. Pop up again when the pear trees were blooming or something.

She looked over at Sam, and her libido made a dash to the foreground. That was the problem with Sam. He irritated her. He was exactly the kind of man she didn’t like. He was cocky. He was rough and crude.

Whenever she’d given him very helpful pointers about handling the horses when he came to do farrier work at the estate, he was always telling her to go away and in general showing no deference.

And okay, if he’d come and told her how to do her job, she would have told him where he could stick his hoof nippers. But still. Her animals. So she was entitled to her opinions.

Last time she’d walked into the barn when he was doing shoes, he hadn’t even looked up from his work. He’d just pointed back toward the door and shouted, out!

Yeah, he was a jerk.

However, there was something about the way he looked in a tight T-shirt, his muscles bulging as he did all that hard labor, that made a mockery of that very certain hatred she felt burning in her breast.

“Are you going to take off your coat and stay awhile?” The question, asked in a faintly mocking tone, sent a dart of tension straight down between her thighs.

She could not take off her coat. Because she was wearing nothing more than a little scrap of red lace underneath it. And now that was all she could think of. About how little stood between Sam and her naked body.

About what might happen if she just went ahead and dropped the coat now and revealed all of that to him.

“It’s cold,” she snapped. “Maybe if you went to work getting the electricity back on rather than standing there making terrible double entendres, I would be able to take off my coat.”

He lifted a brow. “And then do you think you’ll take me up on my offer to show you a good time?”

“If you can get my electricity back on, I will consider a good time shown to me. Honestly, that’s all I want. The ability to microwave popcorn and not turn into a Maddycicle.”

The maddening man raised his eyebrows, shooting her a look that clearly said Suit yourself, then set about looking for the fuse box.

She stood by alone for a while, her arms wrapped around her midsection. Then she started to feel like an idiot just kind of hanging out there while he searched for the source of all power. She let out an exasperated sigh and followed his path, stopping when she saw him leaning up against a wall, a little metal door fixed between the logs open as he examined the small black switches inside.

“It’s not a fuse. That means there’s something else going on.” He slammed the door shut. Then he turned back to look at her. “You should come over to my cabin.”

“No!” The denial was a little bit too enthusiastic. A little bit too telling. “I mean, I can start a fire here—it’s going to be fine. I’m not going to freeze.”

“You’re going to curl up by the fire with a blanket? Like a sad little pet?”

She made a scoffing sound. “No, I’m going to curl up by the fire like the Little Match Girl.”

“That makes it even worse. The Little Match Girl froze to death.”

“What?”

“How did you not know that?”

“I saw it when I was a kid. It was a cartoon. She really died?” Maddy blinked. “What kind of story is that to present to children?”

“An early lesson, maybe? Life is bleak, and then you freeze to death alone?”

“Charming,” she said.

“Life rarely is.” He kept looking at her. His dark gaze was worrisome.

“I’m fine,” she said, because somebody had to say something.

“You are not. Get your suitcase—come over to the cabin. We can flip the lights on, and then if we notice from across the driveway that your power’s on again, you can always come back.”

It was stupid to refuse him. She knew him, if not personally, at least well enough to know that he wasn’t any kind of danger to her.

The alternative was trying to sleep on the couch in the living room while the outside temperatures hovered below freezing, waking up every few hours to keep the fire stoked.

Definitely, going over to his cabin made more sense. But the idea filled her with a strange tension that she couldn’t quite shake. Well, she knew exactly what kind of tension it was. Sexual tension.

She and Sam had so much of it that hung between them like a fog whenever they interacted. Although, maybe she read it wrong. Maybe on his end it was just irritation and it wasn’t at all tinged with sensual shame.

“Why do you have to be so damned reasonable?” she asked, turning away from him and stalking toward the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

She stopped, turning to face him. “To change. Also, to get my suitcase. I have snacks in there.”

“Are snacks a euphemism for something interesting?” he asked, arching a dark brow.

She sputtered, genuinely speechless. Which was unusual to downright unheard of. “No,” she said, her tone sounding petulant. “I have actual snacks.”

“Come over to my place. Bring the snacks.”

“I will,” she said, turning on her heel, heading toward the stairs.

“Maybe bring the Yahtzee too.”

Those words hit her hard, with all the impact of a stomach punch. She could feel her face turning crimson, and she refused to look back at him. Refused to react to that bait at all. He didn’t want that. He did not want to play euphemistic board games with her. And she didn’t want to play them with him.

If she felt a little bit...on edge, it was just because she had been anticipating sex and she had experienced profound sex disappointment. That was all.

She continued up the stairs, making her way to the bedroom, then changed back into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt as quickly as possible before stuffing the little red lace thing back in the bag and zipping everything up.

She lugged it back downstairs, her heart slamming against her breastbone when Sam was in her line of sight again. Tall, broad shouldered and far too sexy for his own good, he promised to be the antidote to sexual disappointment.

But an emotionless hookup with a guy she liked well enough but wouldn’t get emotionally involved with was one thing. Replacing him at the last moment with a guy she didn’t even like? No, that was out of the question.

Absolutely and completely out of the question.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s go.”

* * *

By the time she got settled in the extra room in the cabin, she was feeling antsy. She could hide, but she was hungry. And Maddy didn’t believe in being hungry when food was at hand. Yes, she had some various sugar-based items in her bag, but she needed protein.

In the past, she had braved any number of her father’s awkward soirees to gain access to bacon-wrapped appetizers.

She could brave Sam McCormack well enough to root around for sustenance. She would allow no man to stand between herself and her dinner.

Cautiously, she made her way downstairs, hoping that maybe Sam had put himself away for the night. The thought made her smile. That he didn’t go to bed like a normal person but closed himself inside...not a coffin. But maybe a scratchy, rock-hewn box that would provide no warmth or comfort. It seemed like something he would be into.

In fairness, she didn’t really know Sam McCormack that well, but everything she did know about him led her to believe that he was a supremely unpleasant person. Well, except for the whole him-not-letting-her-die-of-frostbite-in-her-powerless-cabin thing. She supposed she had to go ahead and put that in the Maybe He’s Not Such a Jackass column.

Her foot hit the ground after the last stair silently, and she cautiously padded into the kitchen.

“Looking for something?”

She startled, turning around and seeing Sam standing there, leaning in the doorway, his muscular arms crossed over his broad chest. She did her best to look cool. Composed. Not interested in his muscles. “Well—” she tucked her hair behind her ear “—I was hoping to find some food.”

“You brought snacks,” he said.

“Candy,” she countered.

“So, that made it okay for you to come downstairs and steal my steak?”

Her stomach growled. “You have steak?”

“It’s my steak.”

She hadn’t really thought of that. “Well, my...you know, the guy. He was supposed to bring food. And I’m sorry. I didn’t exactly think about the fact that whatever food is in this fridge is food that you personally provided. I was protein blind.” She did her best to look plaintive. Unsurprisingly, Sam did not seem moved by her plaintiveness.

“I mean, it seems cruel to eat steak in front of you, Madison. Especially if I’m not willing to share.” He rubbed his chin, the sounds of his whiskers abrading his palm sending a little shiver down her back. God knew why.

“You would do that. You would... You would tease me with your steak.” Suddenly, it was all starting to sound a little bit sexual. Which she had a feeling was due in part to the fact that everything felt sexual to her right about now.

Which was because of the other man she had been about to sleep with. Not Sam. Not really.

A slow smile crossed his face. “I would never tease you with my steak, Madison. If you want a taste, all you have to do is ask. Nicely.”

She felt her face getting hotter. “May I please have your steak?”

“Are you going to cook it for me?”

“Did you want it to be edible?”

“That would be the goal, yes,” he responded.

She lifted her hands up, palms out. “These hands don’t cook.”

His expression shifted. A glint of wickedness cutting through all that hardness. She’d known Sam was mean. She’d known he was rough. She had not realized he was wicked. “What do those hands do, I wonder?”

He let that innuendo linger between them and she practically hissed in response. “Do you have salad? I will fix salad. You cook steak. Then we can eat.”

“Works for me, but I assume you’re going to be sharing your candy with me?”

Seriously, everything sounded filthy. She had to get a handle on herself. “Maybe,” she said, “but it depends on if your behavior merits candy.” That didn’t make it better.

“I see. And what, pray tell, does Madison West consider candy-deserving behavior?”

She shrugged, making her way to the fridge and opening it, bending down and opening the crisper drawer. “I don’t know. Not being completely unbearable?”

“Your standards are low.”

“Luckily for you.”

She looked up at him and saw that that had actually elicited what looked to be a genuine grin. The man was a mystery. And she shouldn’t care about that. She should not want to unlock, unravel or otherwise solve him.

The great thing about Christopher was that he was simple. He wasn’t connected to her life in any way. They could come up and have an affair and it would never bleed over to her existence in Copper Ridge. It was the antithesis of everything she had experienced with David. David, who had blown up her entire life, shattered her career ambitions and damaged her good standing in the community.

This thing with Christopher was supposed to be sex. Sex that made nary a ripple in the rest of her life.

Sam would not be rippleless.

The McCormack family was too much a part of the fabric of Copper Ridge. More so in the past year. Sam and his brother, Chase, had done an amazing job of revitalizing their family ranch, and somewhere in all of that Sam had become an in-demand artist. Though he would be the last person to say it. He still showed up right on schedule to do the farrier work at her family ranch. As though he weren’t raking in way more money with his ironwork.

Sam was... Well, he was kind of everywhere. His works of art appearing in restaurants and galleries around town. His person appearing on the family ranch to work on the horses. He was the exact wrong kind of man for her to be fantasizing about.

She should be more gun-shy than this. Actually, she had spent the past decade being more gun-shy than this. It was just that apparently now that she had allowed herself to remember she had sexual feelings, it was difficult for her to turn them off. Especially when she was trapped in a snowstorm with a man for whom the term rock-hard body would be a mere description and not hyperbole.

She produced the salad, then set about to preparing it. Thankfully, it was washed and torn already. So her responsibility literally consisted of dumping it from bag to bowl. That was the kind of cooking she could get behind. Meanwhile, Sam busied himself with preparing two steaks on the stovetop. At some point, he took the pan from the stovetop and transferred it to the oven.

“I didn’t know you had actual cooking technique,” she said, not even pretending to herself that she wasn’t watching the play of his muscles in his forearms as he worked.

Even at the West Ranch, where she always ended up sniping at him if they ever interacted, she tended to linger around him while he did his work with the horses because his arms put on quite a show. She was hardly going to turn away from him now that they were in an enclosed space, with said arms very, very close. And no one else around to witness her ogling.

She just didn’t possess that kind of willpower.

“Well, Madison, I have a lot of eating technique. The two are compatible.”

“Right,” she said, “as you don’t have a wife. Or a girlfriend...” She could have punched her own face for that. It sounded so leading and obvious. As if she cared if he had a woman in his life.

She didn’t. Well, she kind of did. Because honestly, she didn’t even like to ogle men who could be involved with another woman. Once bitten, twice shy. By which she meant once caught in a torrid extramarital affair with a man in good standing in the equestrian community, ten years emotionally scarred.

“No,” he said, tilting his head, the cocky look in his eye doing strange things to her stomach, “I don’t.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend. Not an actual boyfriend.” Oh, good Lord. She was the desperate worst and she hated herself.

“So you keep saying,” he returned. “You really want to make sure I know Christopher isn’t your boyfriend.” She couldn’t ignore the implication in his tone.

“Because he isn’t. Because we’re not... Because we’ve never. This was going to be our first time.” Being forthright and making people uncomfortable with said forthrightness had been a very handy shield for the past decade, but tonight it was really obnoxious.

“Oh really?” He suddenly looked extremely interested.

“Yes,” she responded, keeping her tone crisp, refusing to show him just how off-kilter she felt. “I’m just making dinner conversation.”

“This is the kind of dinner conversation you normally make?”

She arched her brow. “Actually, yes. Shocking people is kind of my modus operandi.”

“I don’t find you that shocking, Madison. I do find it a little bit amusing that you got cock-blocked by a snowbank.”

She nearly choked. “Wine. Do you have wine?” She turned and started rummaging through the nearest cabinet. “Of course you do. You probably have a baguette too. That seems like something an artist would do. Set up here and drink wine and eat a baguette.”

He laughed, a kind of short, dismissive sound. “Hate to disappoint you. But my artistic genius is fueled by Jack.” He reached up, opening the cabinet nearest to his head, and pulled down a bottle of whiskey. “But I’m happy to share that too.”

“You have diet soda?”

“Regular.”

“My, this is a hedonistic experience. I’ll have regular, then.”

“Well, when a woman was expecting sex and doesn’t get it, I suppose regular cola is poor consolation, but it is better than diet.”

“Truer words were never spoken.” She watched him while he set about to making a couple of mixed drinks for them. He handed one to her, and she lifted it in salute before taking a small sip. By then he was taking the steak out of the oven and setting it back on the stovetop.

“Perfect,” he remarked when he cut one of the pieces of meat in half and gauged the color of the interior.

She frowned. “How did I never notice that you aren’t horrible?”

He looked at her, his expression one of mock surprise. “Not horrible? You be careful throwing around compliments like that, missy. A man could get the wrong idea.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right. I just mean, you’re funny.”

“How much of that whiskey have you had?”

“One sip. So it isn’t even that.” She eyeballed the food that he was now putting onto plates. “It might be the steak. I’m not going to lie to you.”

“I’m comfortable with that.”

He carried their plates to the table, and she took the lone bottle of ranch dressing out of the fridge and set it and her drink next to her plate. And then, somehow, she ended up sitting at a very nicely appointed dinner table with Sam McCormack, who was not the man she was supposed to be with tonight.

Maybe it was because of the liquored-up soda. Maybe it was neglected hormones losing their ever-loving minds in the presence of such a fine male specimen. Maybe it was just as simple as want. Maybe there was no justification for it at all. Except that Sam was actually beautiful. And she had always thought so, no matter how much he got under her skin.

That was the honest truth. It was why she found him so off-putting, why she had always found him so off-putting from the moment he had first walked onto the West Ranch property. Because he was the kind of man a woman could make a mistake with. And she had thought she was done making mistakes.

Now she was starting to wonder if a woman was entitled to one every decade.

Her safe mistake, the one who would lift out of her life, hadn’t eventuated. And here in front of her was one that had the potential to be huge. But very, very good.

She wasn’t so young anymore. She wasn’t naive at all. When it came right down to it, she was hot for Sam. She had been for a long time.

She’d had so much caution for so long. So much hiding. So much not doing. Well, she was tired of that.

“I was very disappointed about Christopher not making it up here,” she said, just as Sam was putting the last bite of steak into his mouth.

“Sure,” he said.

“Very disappointed.”

“Nobody likes blue balls, Maddy, even if they don’t have testicles.”

She forced a laugh through her constricted throat. “That’s hilarious,” she said.

He looked up at her slowly. “No,” he said, “it wasn’t.”

She let out a long, slow breath. “Okay,” she said, “it wasn’t that funny. But here’s the thing. The reason I was so looking forward to tonight is that I hadn’t had sex with Christopher before. In fact, I haven’t had sex with anyone in ten years. So. Maybe you could help me with that?”

Three

Sam was pretty sure he must be hallucinating. Because there was no way Madison West had just propositioned him. Especially not on the heels of admitting that it had been ten years since she’d had sex.

Hell, he was starting to think that he was the celibacy champion. But clearly, Maddy had him beat. Or she didn’t, because there was no way in hell that she had actually said any of that.

“Are you drunk, Madison?” It was the first thing that came to mind, and it seemed like an important thing to figure out.

“After one Jack Daniel’s and Coke? Absolutely not. I am a West, dammit. We can hold our liquor. I am...reckless, opportunistic and horny. A lot horny. I just... I need this. Sam, do you know what it’s like to go ten years without doing something? It becomes a whole thing. Like, a whole big thing that starts to define you, even if it shouldn’t. And you don’t want anyone to know. Oh, my gosh, can you even imagine if my friends knew that it has been ten years since I have seen an actual...?” She took a deep breath, then forged on. “I’m rambling and I just really need this.”

Sam felt like he had been hit over the head with a metric ton of iron. He had no idea how he was supposed to respond to this—the strangest of all propositions—from a woman who had professed to hate him only a few moments ago.

He had always thought Madison was a snob. A pain in his ass, even if she was a pretty pain in the ass. She was always looming around, looking down her nose at him while he did his work. As though only the aristocracy of Copper Ridge could possibly know how to do the lowly labor he was seeing to. Even if they hadn’t the ability to do it themselves.

The kinds of people who professed to have strengths in “management.” People who didn’t know how to get their hands dirty.

He hated people like that. And he had never been a fan of Madison West.

He, Sam McCormack, should not be interested in taking her up on her offer. No, not in any way. However, Sam McCormack’s dick was way more interested in it than he would’ve liked to admit.

Immediately, he was rock hard thinking about what it would be like to have her delicate, soft hands skimming over him. He had rough hands. Workman’s hands. The kind of hands that a woman like Madison West had probably never felt against her rarefied flesh.

Hell, the fact that it had been ten years since she’d gotten any made that even more likely. And damn if that didn’t turn him on. It was kind of twisted, a little bit sick, but then, it was nothing short of what he expected from himself.

He was a lot of things. Good wasn’t one of them.

Ready to explode after years of repressing his desires, after years of pushing said desire all down and pretending it wasn’t there? He was that.

“I’m not actually sure you want this,” he said, wondering what the hell he was doing. Giving her an out when he wanted to throw her down and make her his.

Maddy stood up, not about to be cowed by him. He should have known that she would take that as a challenge. Maybe he had known that. Maybe it was why he’d said it.

That sounded like him. That sounded a lot more like him than trying to do the honorable thing.

“You don’t know what I want, Sam,” she said, crossing the space between them, swaying her hips just a little bit more than she usually did.

He would be a damn liar if he said that he had never thought about what it might be like to grab hold of those hips and pull Maddy West up against him. To grind his hardness against her soft flesh and make her feel exactly what her snobby-rich-girl mouth did to him.

But just because he’d fantasized about it before, didn’t mean he had ever anticipated doing it. It didn’t mean that he should take her up on it now.

Still, the closer she got to him, the less likely it seemed that he was going to say no.

“I think that after ten years of celibacy a man could make the argument that you don’t know what you want, Madison West.”

Her eyes narrowed, glittering blue diamonds that looked like they could cut a man straight down to the bone. “I’ve always known what I wanted. I may not have always made the best decisions, but I was completely certain that I wanted them. At the time.”

His lips tipped upward. “I’m just going to be another at the time, Maddy. Nothing else.”

“That was the entire point of this weekend. For me to have something that didn’t have consequences. For me to get a little bit of something for myself. Is that so wrong? Do I have to live a passionless existence because I made a mistake once? Am I going to question myself forever? I just need to... I need to rip the Band-Aid off.”