Roped In. Crystal Green

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СКАЧАТЬ He shouldn’t be thinking about Nicki Wade.

      He shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than every woman in the room who might like to spend some time with an outlaw tonight in a hideaway, where he could forget just about everything else for a few precious hours.

      HOW COULD SHANE CARTER just amble back into town and rile her up like this?

      God, all Nicki wanted to do was show him he was wrong…and to make him see her.

      Every bit of the woman she had become while he’d been away.

      She watched how the girls in the room—brides, dark seductresses, even a slave Princess Leia—gravitated toward Shane now. It was just as it’d always been with him—he moved toward the edges of the dance floor but stayed off of it altogether, as if outlaws never danced.

      Whatever the case, she didn’t want to stand around until he inevitably changed his mind and scooped a girl into his arms, making his choice for the night. Even picturing him with another woman turned her stomach.

      Why, though? What was he to her?

      Nicki made her way across the room, to where her ride, Manny, was raiding the buffet table, stacking biscuits, cornbread and cookies into a network of large paper napkins.

      “Hey, Manny.”

      Her thirtysomething ranch foreman turned around, offering a gap-toothed smile. It complemented his “costume,” which consisted of him sticking some straw into his beat-up Stetson and calling himself a “scarecrow.”

      Nicki glanced at his overloaded napkins. “I’m ready to go home whenever you are.”

      “Any time,” he said, grabbing another stack of corn bread and piling it on the rest. “Just came here for the grub, anyway.”

      “Thanks, Manny.” She would leave a message on Candace’s cell phone to tell her she’d left. Candace had planned to stop drinking after one champagne and drive their pickup home, anyway, so it wasn’t as if Nicki was stranding her.

      She could tell that Manny was trying not to check out her costume, but he sure had a bit of a brotherly frown on his face. Any employee on the ranch would probably be doing the same if they saw her, and Nicki just wanted to get out of sight before too many got the opportunity.

      Manny fetched a couple of beers from an ice-filled aluminum tub for good measure and stuck them under his armpits before they left the ballroom, going out of the Grand Hotel’s Old West lobby, with its scarred cherry wood furnishings and oil portraits of the town’s founding fathers.

      After finding his blue pickup, which featured cloudy areas where the paint had faded, they hopped in. Nicki left that message with Candace on her voice mail, telling her that she would be waiting up with the company of a good book in her room if there was anything exciting to talk about.

      Soon enough, she and Manny were at her two-level colonial ranch house that had seen much better days, its white facade in need of paint just as much as Manny’s truck.

      Nicki hugged him good-night then got out. The porch protested under her footsteps as he drove away toward the employee cabins.

      She went to her second-floor room, realizing that she was tired—too tired to even read or wait up for Candace. Not bothering to turn on the lights before taking off her ankle-high saloon girl boots, she fell forward onto the bed.

      Resting her forehead on her arms, she started to chide herself for leaving the party. What she should’ve done was stayed, showing Shane Carter that a mild confrontation with him wouldn’t ruin her night, even if it had.

      Damn it—she and those books. She and those dreams. What was it about Shane that had the power to resurrect them tonight? Books were supposed to let her escape, not bring everything into crummy focus.

      Her mind couldn’t stop meandering back to Shane in that outlaw outfit, though. To make matters worse, her anger at him boiled her blood even now, heating her up in a way she didn’t want.

      Even so, she ached, deep in her belly. She felt the needled pressure of desire between her legs, just from picturing him as that long, tall shadow in the saloon doors, pausing there as he saw his saloon girl waiting by the bar.

      Wrong. So wrong to think about him like this.

      But the wrongness made her want to do it all the more, and she remembered how he’d looked at her across the room, the first time he’d seen her tonight. How she’d sworn that he’d been stripping off her dress with his gaze, piece by piece.

      And then he’d looked again after they’d been talking; slowly, with a languid visual caress that had felt as good as anything physical.

      Scorched by the thought, Nicki rolled to her back and raised her arms over her head, holding to the memory of those long glances, feeling them stroke her.

      Shane had wanted her, if only for a moment. And in that fleeting time, she hadn’t been that cowgirl next door. She’d been someone entirely different—more powerful, holding the reins.

      Nicki stared toward the ceiling; she could see the white expanse of it in the darkness. She should’ve tested Shane, should’ve found out if he would’ve responded to an overture from her. But in her mind…

      Well, in her mind she could make sure that he did want her, couldn’t she? In her mind, she could have it any way she wanted it.

      Outside, the wind flirted with the shutters and hushed through the half-opened window. She closed her eyes, picturing the outlaw in her head, and her body hummed. As she breathed, her dress whisked against the covers, a soft, sensual sound.

      Shane…

      No one would know if she touched herself right now, pretending it was him. She was here, alone.

      No one would ever know.

      She ran one hand down her neck, over a breast, which felt round and ripe under her palm. Sexy under the satin. Tracing the outline of it, she thought of him.

      I’m sorry for what I said back at the party, he would tell her if he was here now.

      But she would quiet him right up, arching under his hand, just as she was doing now. She would urge him to undo her corset.

      Nicki pulled on one of the lacings, trying not to think about the reality, the chances she would be taking by opening herself up and letting an actual man do this.

      As she opened the corset, fantasy enveloped her, the air breathing over her exposed skin.

      What would he say if he saw her like this?

      What would he do?

      She pictured Shane’s face with the bandanna covering the lower half of it.

      The outlaw. The bad boy who had a chance for redemption…

      Feeling free, she slid her hand lower, pushing up her dress and pressing against her sex, pretending it was his hand. She rocked her hips slightly, pressing harder, circling her fingers over her clit.

      He was the one stroking her, his face СКАЧАТЬ