Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 63469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“I don’t—”
“Take this off,” he prodded, working open the buttons on my shirt. “We all hoped, me included, when you started out with the restaurant, that it wouldn’t go well so you—”
“Oh?” I bristled, trying to move him.
“Stop wigglin’. You ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“I—”
“We wanted the Bronc to go up in flames so you’d come back to the ranch.”
“You did?”
“We all did. But now we see the success you’ve made of it, and we’re all real happy for you because it seems like when you’re there you’re in your element.”
“Oh?” His words were destined to give me heart failure, that’s how good what he’d said sounded.
“You’re real good with people.”
I was, as long as they weren’t related to me or foremen on ranches.
“You have a way of gettin’ folks to follow you, just like Rand does.”
It was a really nice compliment, and one I had thought myself—that Rand and I were more alike than I’d ever thought. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome,” he said, smiling at me. “But that leads us right back to what Rand wants, and that’s you on the Red.”
What he was saying was good, but more than that, to me, for me, was the way he was gazing at me with the softest expression I’d ever seen. It felt quiet and connected, like we had moved from somewhere apart to something closer, with just new moments between us. It was like every second something was changing right there in front of me, and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was fond of me, into me, wanting to spend time learning things about me and being around me. Now that I was certain of what I was seeing, could distinguish what true interest looked like on him, I’d never miss the possessiveness on his face or the heat in his eyes or the arrogant smile on his lips ever again.
“He wants you to move your restaurant onto the Red.”
“What?” I asked, lost in cataloging the signs of wanting on Mac.
“Rand wants the Bronc on the ranch,” he reiterated distractedly, helping me out of my button-down and the T-shirt underneath. “But barring that, he’d at least like you living there.”
“But I—”
“Zach wants that too, you right there, accessible. I do as well.”
“You?”
“Yes, me,” he growled, running a hand down my abdomen, tracing over the ridges of the six-pack I’d worked hard to achieve. “Because unlike the others, I can insist that you come stay with me.”
“Are you drunk? Is that what all this is?”
He scoffed, and his slow smile made those eyes of his glitter like mercury poured into a glass. “No, sir. I just want what I want, and I’m fixin’ to have it.”
“Oh? What is it you want?”
“That’d be you, Glenn Holloway. Just you.”
EIGHT
I couldn’t breathe. He was trying to kill me with naked confessions.
“Maclain, you—God.”
He’d reached under the elastic band of my briefs and drawn out my cock, hence my momentary loss of words.
“Every time I see you, and those blue-green eyes of yours settle on me, and my heart goes up in my throat, I know you’re supposed to belong to me.”
But how could he have his life figured out when I had no idea what had been happening?
“You’re so confused about things,” he said, leaning sideways to reach into his pack and retrieve a small bottle of lube, “that everything you face, all your issues, are in your head.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, honey,” he soothed, sitting up, reaching for my briefs and sliding them down and off my legs, leaving me as naked as him. “Damn.”
“Keep talking.”
I got a flashing grin in response. “Sorry. Your skin is very distracting.”
Mine?
“It is?”
He scowled at me, but this time, instead of irritating, I found it ridiculously hot. “I just realized something crazy. All that swagger and bravado I see all the time, that’s all fake. You have no idea what you look like at all.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Do I look like I am?”
He didn’t, no. “C’mon. I look like my father and Rand and Zach and my uncle—”
“No. You don’t.”
“Maclain, I—”
“Rand and the rest of the Holloway men are big, scary alpha-dog type guys, and you are not that.”
But I was.
As if reading my mind, Mac amended, “Maybe you were, when you were working the ranch and for the brief time you were shooting poison into your body, but now you—”
“How did you know about the steroids?”
He rose, and a moment later I had Mac where I never thought I would—straddling my thighs. I immediately moved to touch him, stroke his skin, and map the contours of roping muscle that made up his legs.
“Look at me, Glenn.”
But I was savoring the feel of him.
“Hey.”
I lifted my eyes to his.
“You don’t work on a ranch anymore, you work in a restaurant. It’s got a whole different pace. You don’t carry the same kinda muscle because you’re runnin’ now all day and all night. It makes sense to me that you slimmed down.”