His fingers give my nipple a light pinch, and I have to bite my lip to keep from moaning so loudly the camera crew hears me. “Let me come in,” he says, his voice deep and husky in my ear. “You know we’d be good together.”
I’m pretty damn sure he’s right. But I can’t, not with the cameras watching. The cameras wouldn’t follow him in, but they’d get clear footage of me letting him in, which would be bad enough. It wouldn’t be fair to the other men to go that far with one of them this early on. The show allows for overnight dates later in the process, but we’re definitely not at that stage yet.
“Sorry,” I tell him, and I can hear how guttural my own voice has gotten. “You need to go.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, but steps back and sideways, into the shadows, where the cameras can’t track him. I can see just enough to tell he’s adjusting himself. I know exactly how he feels, and if the crew weren’t right there, I’m afraid I would have taken him up on his offer, if only to let off some steam.
When he and the cameras are gone, I go back to bed, and despite my desperation, I still can’t coax an orgasm out of my tensed-up body. After tossing and turning for who knows how long, I finally fall asleep.
I’m lucky enough to sleep in the next morning before my one-on-one date with James. I try to clear my mind of everything that happened yesterday, so I can focus on him when I see him. It’s easy to do once we’re together.
Even though I get to choose which men go on these one-on-one dates, the producers decide what we do together. Today, they’ve decided we’ll go horseback riding. That’s no problem for me – one of my cousins has a farm – but it seems pretty clear that they’re hoping to put James on the spot.
“I’ve never been on a horse,” he confesses, as we stand outside the stables. He looks a little nervous, which is understandable.
“Trail horses are chosen for their even dispositions,” I tell him. “Riding’s not difficult at all with a good mount.”
The stable owners go over the basics with him, and then lead out our horses. I’m riding a handsome bay gelding, and James has a sweet-looking dun mare. We follow one of the stablehands on her own horse down a trail, with the crew and cameras set up before and behind.
Our path winds through the woods, and our pace is slow. For the first couple of minutes, James still seems slightly ill at ease, but he quickly gets into the spirit of things, and before long he’s completely relaxed. “This is kind of fun,” he says with a grin.
“You’re doing great.” I sidle my horse a bit closer to his. Our guide has ambled on ahead, and the trail isn’t wide enough for the camera crews to be right next to us.
“My friends back home are going to get such a kick out of this. City boy, born and raised, riding a horse through a forest.”
If the producers were hoping to engineer some drama, it didn’t work. I love how open-minded and adventurous James is. The more I see of him, the more I like him.
He intimidated me at first, a little bit; I wondered what a big-city man would see in a small-town girl. But as we ride and talk, he seems completely down to earth, chatting easily about his life, family, hobbies, and anything else I ask about. There’s not a hint of pretentiousness about him.
The trail emerges into a meadow, where a picnic awaits us. Fruit and cheese and white wine, laid out like a feast. We settle on a blanket, and James offers me a bite of cheese. “Gotta keep me making those cheesy jokes,” he teases.
I laugh and feed him a grape. “Of course. So … what are you looking for in a relationship?”
“Honestly, I’m ready for something serious. I want to settle down, and eventually, I’d like children.”
“Have you ever been married?”
“No. It’s been a while, in fact, since I was serious about someone. We turned out to not be well suited, and since then, I guess I’ve let work dominate my life. You?”
“No marriages,” I confirm. “So it’s been a while since you were in a long-term relationship.”
He frowns slightly. “Well, depending on your definition of long term, I’ve never really been in one. I guess I tended to figure out pretty quickly if someone wasn’t right for me.”
“That makes sense.” I keep my expression neutral, despite the alarm beeping in my head. But before I can be too critical of James’ dating history, it hits me that I’ve never been in a committed long-term relationship, either.
I’ve been happy to splash around in the shallow end of the dating pool, having fun where I found it. Why should I be bothered that James has done the same? He seems serious enough now.