“It is. He made our lives hell, and our poor mother, she didn’t know what to do. I hated him for that. I wish…”
When Alex didn’t say anything more, she volunteered to deflect his attention away from his hurt. “You know my stepmother’s daughter is getting married, right?”
“Yes?”
“She’s engaged to Gregg.”
Alex pulled the horse to a halt. “Gregg? As in your fiancé? That man cheated on you with your sister?”
“Ex-fiancé and yup,” she said shortly. “Fired me too. I helped him with opening the gym and worked with him there for almost three years.”
“He is a swine for doing this to you. What of your father?”
She shrugged. “My stepmother is an alpha female, and my dad is a beta male, no, more like a delta male. If that’s a thing. My stepmother ensured that her daughter was placed first, and my dad did whatever he could to stay in Teresa’s good graces. Whatever Delia wants, Delia gets.”
“No wonder you were mad enough to go after his car.”
She knew he was trying to make light of the situation, to lift the cloud that had descended upon them both. She desperately wanted it to work. “And look where that got me,” she mused. “Stuck on horseback in the beautiful south of France with a bottle of merlot in my saddlebag and nothing to do all day.”
“Thank God you’re crazy, then,” he said with a grin, and took off on his horse.
She shrieked at his receding back. “Oh, I’m crazy?” Orage followed Brute, seeming to understand there was a game on, and they trotted in chase until Alex led them to a secluded hollow at the edge of a deep wood.
They stopped without needing to discuss it, and tied up the horses at a spot where they could comfortably graze. Alex set about laying town a blanket while Jacyn proudly spread out her assortment of pastries, sausages, cheeses, bottled water, and wine.
“A feast,” Alex said admiringly. He poured the wine and offered her a glass. “Let’s toast.”
“To what?” she asked coyly.
“To being crazy.”
They took several deep sips, and then Jacyn grabbed her courage with both hands, doing what she’d wanted to do for days, despite all the warning voices in her head. “That’s not crazy,” she told him.
“Non?”
“Thisis crazy.” Still kneeling, she leaned forward with her hands on the blanket and planted a kiss on his lips.
Immediately, Alex set down his wine and kissed her back. The glass wasn’t well balanced, so it tipped over, rivers of red staining the white linen tablecloth.
Neither of them cared. Jacyn crawled into his arms, clambering over the meal spread before them, offering him her lips, her body, her everything. It was all she had been able to think about since that night they’d made love. It was the only thing that made any sense to her, this desire to be back in his arms. And now she was here, all she wanted to do was stay here forever, die here, despite the warning screams echoing in her head, the voice of her saner self.
She was drowning in his kiss, indulging in the taste of him. The puff of his breath against her cheek, the sensation of that damn stubble, which he never seemed able to get rid of. Rasping against her skin.
His hands were upon her body, questing, insisting. They cupped her breasts over the fabric of the light sweater she had worn, and then in impatient frustration, ventured under it, to encounter the fabric of her bra. Her nipples pressed up against the flat of his palms, and all she could think about was how they would feel against his bare skin.
Alex reached for the clasp of her bra, grunting in frustration when it didn’t give in to his demands.
“Easy there, caveman,” she chided. “You can’t keep tearing off all my clothes like that.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t wear stuff that’s so goddamn difficult to—”
With a snap, she unclasped her bra, shutting him up. She raised her arms to allow him to remove the sweater, enjoying the look of sheer greed in his eyes when he encountered her bare flesh. Like a gourmand at a rare feast.
He fell upon her, tilting her back onto the blanket, shoving aside anything that was in their way.
“Yours now,” she insisted, and he let her pull his own shirt off, leaving his broad, muscled chest bare to her gaze. He was masculine perfection itself; tanned and toned, with a sprinkling of dark hair that felt crisp, almost alive, under her fingertips.
Their mouths were pressed against each other even as he lowered his full weight upon her body. She could feel the insistent ridge pressing against her mound, and lifted her hips to push back, seeking relief from that hot, aching burn between her legs even though they were still partially clothed.