Claiming The Rancher's Heir (Gold Valley Vineyards #2) - Maisey Yates Page 0,20

his shoulder. “Is everything all right?”

He turned and saw Wren. Louisa wasn’t looking at him, not even with the full force of his anger turned in her direction. But Wren had seen him.

“Fine,” he responded.

“You look like you’re about to start a fight.”

“No,” he said, turning away. “I’m not.”

“Good.”

Suddenly, the feeling inside him went from hungry to ravenous. And he needed this damn thing to be over so he could lose himself in Wren’s body.

He lived with the mistakes of his past every day. But having to stare them down was a particular kind of torture he was never quite prepared for.

And he needed something, anything, to find a little oblivion. If it wasn’t Wren, it would be the liquor on the table, but he would rather have her.

It was strange, the exchange they’d had back in the tent, and this one. Because it wasn’t as sharp and hard-edged as most of their interactions.

But it was still tinged with that same kind of raw grit. Which he recognized now as just desire. Only not desire like he’d ever known it before.

The closest thing that came to it was that sixteen-year-old lust haze he’d found himself in with Louisa. But that had been born out of inexperience. Out of desperation to know what it felt like to be inside a woman.

Well, he knew what it felt like now. That wasn’t why Wren created this wildness in him.

It wasn’t about knowing what it was like to be inside a woman, but what it was like to be inside Wren.

He knew the answer to that now, but a simple answer wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted her.

And that want began to eclipse the pain in his chest.

He was desperate for it. Because the promise of it—of her—was so big, so intense, with the capacity to take away this hurt. And he wanted that. He damn well did.

Needed it. Especially now.

He bent down slightly, careful to make it look like they were just having a business exchange, and not like they had shared any kind of intimacy.

If you could call sex against a wall intimacy.

“I can’t wait until you’re naked beneath me,” he said.

She arched a brow. “Who says I’ll be beneath you? I was kind of thinking I might like to be on top.”

“There’s time for that,” he said. “There’s time for a whole hell of a lot.”

“So many promises.”

“I promise you one thing—you’re going to be screaming my name all night.”

She looked up at him, her eyes glittering a challenge. “You’ll be screaming mine.”

“I plan on it.”

They parted then, the tension between them so intense it would combust if they didn’t release their hold.

So they did, because they both knew they were in a public setting, and a professional one. And whatever the hell he thought of Wren, whatever she thought of him, they were both damn good at their jobs.

He turned away then. From the direction that Wren walked. From the place where Louisa stood with her family.

A piece of his family. A piece of his heart.

He would focus on getting through all of this. And then he would focus on getting Wren into bed.

That was his life.

Work. Sex.

What the hell else did he need?

Everything was done, everything was cleaned up, and Wren was sitting in the driveway of Creed Cooper’s house. She had made her excuses to her family about being tired, having a headache and a few other things she couldn’t readily remember, and scampered off almost immediately after the last guest left.

She knew Emerson thought she was acting strange, but Wren didn’t much care.

Wren was obsessed with Creed.

And if she were honest with herself, she could admit she had been obsessed with him for quite some time.

She might have couched that obsession in irritation, but the fact of the matter was, it had been deeper than that.

He hadn’t annoyed her at all today.

No. Quite the opposite. He had been wonderful at his role during the event, and more than that, she had seen humanity in him that she didn’t particularly want to see.

She had no idea what had been going through his mind when he had been standing there staring into the crowded party right before she had come up to him. But she had seen that it was something. The intensity that had come off him in waves had been palpable, at least to her.

She wasn’t entirely sure whom he had been looking at, but she thought it might have been Louisa Johnson, a woman Wren