Instead, he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips, kissing the tender skin on the inside of her wrist gently, knowing full well that his stubble scraped across her skin there. He felt her shiver. Her blue eyes were wide, full of questions, but she didn’t ask any of them. And then, he set the sugar cube in her hand.
“You’re not the only one who knows how to lay bait, Sammy Marshall.”
He took the cup of coffee off the table and lifted it as he stood. “I don’t need any bacon this morning. I have work to do. I will see you later, though.”
That was a promise. Both to him and to her.
And he knew Sammy was a smart enough woman to know that he always kept a promise.
He didn’t know exactly what the end goal of this game was. But what he knew for sure was that they were finally playing his, and not hers.
And that was a victory he was going to take.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SAMMY’S WRIST STILL burned hours later where Ryder had kissed it.
She had the sugar cube in her pocket, and her head felt fuzzy.
She had been filled with resolve this morning. She had laid a trap, very calculated. And she had spent all night planning that. She hadn’t even slept. Because she needed to make sure that she was in the house before anyone else got up, and she had needed to be sure that she was on hand to cook their bacon. A way to get back on the right footing. Almost a restart, she had purposed.
Because she had a lot of apologizing to do. And she was very good at apologizing. Because when you lived your life using spontaneity as a weapon you often had casualties, and she was just used to that.
Overstepping, stepping back, saying she was sorry. And as long as she smiled broadly enough people tended to be okay with it.
But he wasn’t... He wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do.
He was a rock. And he was hardheaded. But he was a smart man, and she had been certain that he would see sense.
She shifted where she sat, all her jewelry laid out in front of her on a blanket outside her camper, and her top scraped against her nipples.
Arousal coursed through her body and she let out a frustrated growl.
He had turned her into some weird sex fiend.
She had always considered herself sensual. Somebody who liked touch. Somebody who was completely relaxed about it, in fact. And until he had gotten in her face about orgasms she had thought that she was neatly organized on that score.
That she knew where to have them and when, and that sex itself served the kind of spiritual function of creating human connection.
But Ryder had taken it and he had melded those things, and when he had done that he had stolen her control. Her neatly ordered way of looking at things.
She felt absolutely vile about it. And she wasn’t someone who normally kept things to herself. But her confidantes were all deeply tied to Ryder, or they were Ryder himself.
If there was anything more annoying, she couldn’t think of it.
She heard the sound of footsteps and looked up. But it wasn’t Logan or Ryder, and for some reason she had expected it to be either of them. No, it was a red-faced and angry-looking Rose, picking through tall grass.
“What’s wrong?” Sammy called.
“Did a calf wander this way?” Rose asked. Her cowboy hat was askew, her dark hair falling out of its braid. Her white tank top was dirty, and so were her jeans.
“No,” Sammy said. She scrambled to her feet, setting her jewelry fixings down. “But I can help you look.”
“You look pretty,” Rose said, not as a compliment but in kind of a regretful tone.
Rose was dressed for practicality and sweat. Sammy wasn’t. But she always dressed like this and all of her clothes were machine washable anyway, so it didn’t matter.
“Oh, I wear skirts every day. I’m not particularly dressed up.”
“Well, fine,” Rose said skeptically. “But at your peril.”
“What happened?”
“A calf must’ve gotten through the hole in the fence, and I’m just really hoping that that’s what happened, and a predator didn’t take him. But I went charging down the hill back there, and I fell on my face, so now I’m just mad.”
“Where’s Logan?”
Rose waved a hand. “Oh, I told him to go look in the other direction.”
“You know, it’s not a crime to take