Claiming The Rancher's Heir (Gold Valley Vineyards #2) - Maisey Yates Page 0,50

as hard as he could to avoid it, but all that work had been for nothing. Because here he was, and the inevitability of Wren, and his desire for her, suddenly seemed too big to ignore, too great to combat. And he was struck by his own cowardice. He had told himself so many stories about this woman that he had now seen weren’t true, so many different things about the way he felt for her, that he could have easily examined and found to be lies.

He could tell himself he hadn’t wanted this.

Because intensity had led to ruin all those years ago, and because he had failed.

Had failed as a father. Had failed as a man.

All because of desire. All because of wanting. The wrong woman. The wrong time.

But this was the right woman. The right time.

He gritted his teeth, rebelling against that thought as Wren’s hand wrapped tight around the base of his arousal, squeezing him, sending his thoughts up to the stars and making it impossible for him to concentrate on anything else.

Impossible to do anything but feel.

She was a study in contradictions, so delicate and feminine as she destroyed his resistance with a kind of filthy poise he’d never imagined might exist.

He’d had sexual partners in the past. But he hadn’t had a lover. Not really. Wren had become his lover. She’d learned his body, learned where to touch him and how, though he wondered if all these paths had been blazed by her hands, by what she wanted, by what she liked, because she seemed to conjure up sexual necessity out of thin air, make it so he couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t think.

Wren had a spell cast on him that was unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

He had been smart to avoid it. Smart to try to turn away from it.

But he couldn’t anymore. Not now.

Because she was here, and she was his wife. And everything she did was dark velvet perfection that took his control and ground it into stardust, glittering over the blank, night sky of his mind until she was all there was.

And without her, there would be only darkness.

And then what would he be?

Pleasure built low inside him, and he could feel his control fraying to an end.

“I need to be inside you,” he ground out, lifting her up and away from his body, pulling her into his lap. Her knees rested on either side of his thighs, that slick, hot heart of her brushing his arousal. He brought her down onto him, over him, the welcome of his body into hers like a baptism.

Like something that might be able to make him new. Make him clean.

Even as he lost himself in a hedonistic rhythm, he knew many wouldn’t call this salvation. But he did. Because the shattered glory he felt was the closest thing to pure he’d ever had.

And he reveled in it. Needed it.

She flexed her hips and rode him like an expert, and he was enrapt as he watched her. Watched her take her pleasure, watched her give pleasure to him. Her head thrown back, her breasts arched forward, the burgeoning evidence of her pregnancy echoing with deep, primal satisfaction inside him.

And when she came apart in his arms, her orgasm making her shiver and shake, he couldn’t hold back anymore. He gripped her hips, pounding his need into a body that felt created for it. Created for him. Until the rush of release roared through him.

Then she collapsed over him, her hair falling over them like a curtain, her heart pounding fast against his.

“Creed,” she whispered. “I love you.”

She could feel it, the tightening of his muscles, the resistance in his body. What she’d said was the last thing he wanted to hear.

He wasn’t happy to hear her say the words at all.

It was what she had been afraid of, except worse.

Because she had hoped... She had hoped that even if he wasn’t going to say them back right away, he wouldn’t resist them, or reject them.

That he would at least accept what she was offering freely, that he would let the words reach him, let the emotion touch him.

But the way those muscles went taut, it was like he had built a brick wall between the two of them.

A shouted rejection could not have been any louder.

With a firm grip, he set her away from him, putting her naked on his couch, the chill in the air feeling pronounced after she had been cradled so close to the warmth