Roped In. Crystal Green

thought of her favorites—vampires in moody foreign castles, storm-tossed shipwreck islands and faraway desert tents. All fake, all so appealing, anyway.

      She wouldn’t dare confess any of it, though.

      But looking at Shane now, with his chiseled features, deep blue eyes and imposing frame garbed in black, she longed for…more. She yearned to be taken to another world, to have his hands and mouth all over her, as if she were the only person who drove him to the intensity she’d experienced in him tonight.

      “That’s none of your business,” she said.

      Nicki didn’t have the heart to utter the rest: Were you here for just the sex or because you thought you’d be having sex with me…?

      As he stood there, he looked just as needful as she felt, his gaze a little hazy as he kept watching her.

      Her pulse jerked, and she loosened her grip on the covers.

      It was as if she was in that outlaw dream/fantasy again—a place where she’d had no responsibility, where she wasn’t the Nicki who had so much going on in reality.

      But she’d been nothing more than a mistake tonight, and even if he wanted to talk about fantasies now, she wouldn’t give in.

      Nicki pointed toward her door.

      He paused, and she wondered what was going through his mind, especially since he seemed…

      Was “rejected” the right word?

      He—Shane Carter—the one all the women had gathered round tonight at the party?

      Before she could absorb that, he fixed his hat back on his head, nodding to her. When he grinned, it was as if he was trying to show that it didn’t matter, but it struck her as wrong.

      “Again,” he said, “sorry about the trouble.” He paused. “And, if it makes any difference, I’m glad it happened. Real glad.”

      Glad?

      With that piece of news, she watched him go through her door, then shut it behind him. Her pulse fluttered like a dying thing as she sat on her bed, her brain finally catching up to everything that’d just happened.

      Shane Carter, asking her about her fantasies, seeming as if he would make more than a few of them come true for her.

      Shane Carter, glad that he’d been fooled into being here, in this bed…

      Downstairs, she thought she heard the door close.

      As her skin kept tingling, Nicki lay down on the mattress. And, even though she knew he’d gone, she kept listening for any footfalls outside her door, wishing she would hear the outlaw coming to his hideaway just one more time before the sun rose.

       4

       What other fantasies do you have…?

      After a round of chores the next morning, Nicki sat on the back porch swing near the kitchen exit, fixing the seam on a Halloween princess costume for one of the ranch kids.

      She couldn’t forget what Shane had said to her.

      What he’d done to her.

      She blew out a breath as a zing of remembrance flew through her, playing electric havoc in her belly, then tingling lower. Just the thought of him made her shift a little on the swing, sending it to creaking.

      It was an addiction, running last night over and over again in her mind, reconstructing what it’d been like to feel his mouth near her neck, his hot breath in her ear.

       Not a word…

      The porch screen door slammed open and three kids spilled out, giggling and waving at Nicki as they ran past, rousing a couple of Australian shepherd ranch dogs who’d been poking around an old oak tree.