yanked it from his pants, desperate to find hot, sexy, olive-toned skin. Her fingers danced across a set of impressive washboard abs, and she pushed her fingers between that hard stomach and the band of his pants, seeking and finding the tip of his erection. Daniel released a low hiss, sucked in his stomach and suddenly she had more of him against her fingers, hot and oh-so potent.
“I want you, Lex,” Daniel muttered, smacking her bare butt cheek and pulling her into him, squashing her hand between her body and his erection. Needing more, needing everything—she’d missed him, missed this so much—Alex lifted her thigh and wrapped it over his hip, grateful to yoga for making her supple. Then nothing but fabric separated her core from his shaft, and she rocked her hips and lifted her mouth up to his to be kissed.
This time he didn’t hold back and his tongue swept between her parted lips, branding, rediscovering, wiping away any doubts that reliving the past was foolish and dangerous.
There was only Daniel, his taste and heat and power, the adult version of the boy she’d known so long ago. Standing in his arms, panting and with soaked panties, her only thoughts were of how much she’d missed his touch, missed his kisses. In this moment they didn’t have feuding grandparents, unforgivable betrayals or hurt and pain between them. There was only desire—hot, potent and demanding.
Daniel wrenched his mouth off hers, and in the moonlight his eyes, normally so shuttered, were as deep and dark as a desert night. “Come home with me, Lex.”
She had to be rational...and she couldn’t be, not when she had her hand in his pants. She couldn’t think, breathe. Alex pulled her hand from between their bodies and tried to step back, but Daniel’s hands on her hips kept her up close and very personal. “Dan, don’t ask me that.”
“Why? Because you are scared you’re going to say yes?”
It was a typical no-frills Daniel response. He never beat around the bush, and although he was the strong and silent type, when he did speak, people listened. Her ex just had a way of cutting through BS to get to the heart of the matter, and as per usual, he was right. She was terrified that she was going to say yes, but even more scared that she was going to force herself to say no.
“I’ve been watching you all evening and you’ve been watching me, too,” Daniel murmured, lifting his hand to trace patterns on her jaw. “We’ve both been wondering what it would feel like to be together again. Especially now that we’re older, more experienced...confident in how to satisfy one another in bed.”
She was sexually confident? Oh, she was anything but. She might be older and wiser, but she was still more girl next door than femme fatale.
“Come home with me, Lex. Let me peel that ridiculously sexy dress from your gorgeous body and replace it with my lips and hands. I’ll make it good for you, I promise.”
He’d make it too good, and yeah, that worried her. “Daniel, this is madness.”
“So let’s be mad, just for a night. In the morning we can go back to being a Clayton and a Slade, opposing forces in this long, futile war that we never started.”
Alex closed her eyes and shook her head. She wanted him but she didn’t like wanting him, found herself wishing instead that she could put him in the past, where he belonged. Maybe she did need to sleep with him again to flush him out of her system. After all, reality was never as good as fantasy, and then they could both finally move on.
“So, yes or no?”
Alex thought she saw apprehension in his eyes, the fear that she’d reject him, but the emotions flashed across his features too quickly for her to be sure. “Yeah, I’m coming with you.”
Daniel stared down at her, his handsome face serious. “Your place or mine?”
Alex thought about their options, knowing that the ranch house at the Lone Wolf was out of the question and, as she’d heard, Daniel had converted an old barn on The Silver C. While his house was a better option than Gus’s mansion—Daniel might be met with the working end of her grandpa’s shotgun if they were caught—their chances of discovery were still too high.
Which left only one other place available to them...
“Sarah’s tree house.”
Daniel’s hand tightened on her hip and she knew that he was remembering, just as she was.
A long time ago, the tree house had been a boys’ fort and a girls’ secret club. It had held sleep outs and camping trips and overnight sleepovers. Much later it had been the place where Daniel took her virginity, where they’d spent stolen afternoons and blissful starry nights.
“You remember where it is, right?”
Daniel rubbed his jaw. “Of course I can find it. I just haven’t been there since...”
You left, Alex filled in the words for him. The tree house was deep in Slade land and Daniel had no reason or wish to be on Slade land. Land that had once been part of The Silver C spread.
The river-fronted land was one of the first parcels of land Gus bought from Rose when times had got tough, and Alex knew that Daniel mourned the loss of the property. The Silver C had once been the largest spread in four counties, but it was now on par with the Lone Wolf in acreage, a bit of a comedown for the once-mighty Claytons.
“I’ll meet you at the tree house,” Daniel said, his voice clipped. He lifted his wrist to look at his expensive watch. “In half an hour?” He rubbed his hand over his jaw and shook his head. “I can’t believe that I am risking getting splinters in my butt to have you again. Nobody but you, Alex Slade, would tempt me to do this...”
His words shouldn’t make her smile but they did. She opened her mouth to explain that the tree house wasn’t as bad as it had been... No, she’d let it be a surprise.
“Are you going to walk there?” Daniel asked.
In moonlight or bright sunshine, she always walked to the tree house. “Yes.”
“I’m going to go home, pick up my dirt bike and I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Daniel told her, his eyes steady on her face.
Good, that gave her some time to think about what she was doing, to talk herself out of this madness.
Daniel narrowed his gaze. “Do not stand me up, Alexis.”
Although it unnerved her how he’d been able to read her thoughts, she couldn’t suppress the shiver of excitement that tap-danced up and down her spine. He was gorgeous and determined and he wanted her.
No, she wouldn’t stand him up. She couldn’t; she wanted this, wanted him. “I’ll be there.”
Daniel nodded, swiped his mouth across hers in a brief but molten-lava-hot kiss. “See that you are.”
Mid-November
Daniel Clayton released a low curse and buried his head in the soft pillow, cursing his early-morning alarm. Unfortunately, neither cattle nor his ranch hands cared that he’d spent most of the night making love,
