Broken Hero

I smooth my thumbs up her ribs, just barely grazing the underside of her breasts. “Is that a good kind of whoops?”

Lucy blushes further, and I’ve changed my mind. It’s not a sunrise over a distant, foreign desert. It’s this; Lucy with tousled hair and flushed cheeks, nestled in my arms.

“I didn’t mean to come on to you,” she says.

“Does it seem like I mind?”

She laughs and extricates herself from my hold. She stands, reaching out to hold onto a tree trunk as if she’s unsteady. My hands are still warm from holding her.

“Lucy?”

“Wow,” she says, and I want to tell her that I feel the same way. That nothing has gotten my heart pumping like that for ages; that I want to kiss her until I can’t see straight.

I get up too, but she steps past me when I reach out to take her hand, grabbing Ginger’s reins instead. She murmurs something to the horse and runs a hand down the speckled neck, her back turned to me. I stand there and watch her for a long moment. My heartbeat slows, and it takes a few painful breaths before I get my desire under control.

I can take a hint. “Do you want to go back?”

“I think that’s for the best. It’s probably getting late.”

Judging by the sun, it’s not even five o’clock, but I humor her. “Sure. Lead the way.”

We stable the horses in silence, and although it’s not strained, it’s not exactly companionable, either. Somehow, I seem to have fucked it all up, and I don’t even know how it happened. We’d been so close at the ridge.

She turns to me with a smile. It’s carefree, but it doesn’t really reach her eyes. It pains me to see.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Right. You’re doing the trial class with the girls?”

“Yeah.””You’ll do great, Lucy.”

We walk out of the stables in silence. My hand aches to take hers, to pull her close and make sure she doesn’t think it was a mistake. To know that she feels the same way I do. She’d been so soft, so responsive in my arms-I had been so sure she wanted what I wanted.

Lucy stops by the courtyard and looks up at me with those wide, green eyes. “I’m sorry again, Oliver.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“It was unprofessional. I-”

“If it was unprofessional, then we were both to blame,” I say. “I don’t regret it and I hope you don’t either.”

Her eyes warm and she bites her lip, looking up at me. She’s so unexpectedly sexy that it feels like a punch to the gut. I need to get a grip.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“Okay,” she murmurs. “Then I don’t regret it either.”

“Good.”

She shoots me a final smile. It’s a little shy. “Bye, Oliver.”

“Bye, Lucy.”

I watch as she climbs onto that deadly bike of hers-she stopped letting me give her a ride weeks ago-and disappears in the distance. I stand there for a long time, watching the dust rise from her tires and then settle.

It’s not fair, what I do then. I know I’m a piece of shit for even contemplating it. But there’s just no other way to get rid of my impossible hard-on, and believe me, I’d tried reasoning with it before. But where Lucy is involved, it refuses to listen to logic of any kind.

It’s basically soundproofed to facts.

I head to the farmhouse and close the door to my bathroom. Making quick work of my jeans and my t-shirt, I turn on the shower head and fit my hand around my shaft. I’m already throbbing-I’ve been aching for release since she sat in my lap.

Need is pounding through my hips, my pelvis, so strong I have to brace myself against the shower wall as I start to stroke. Images of her flash before my eyes. Bright eyes and tight shorts. I imagine sliding them down her hips, rewarded with the image of dainty underwear. I would slide her panties to the side and reveal the most beautiful pussy I’d ever laid eyes on. I don’t even have to see it to know that Lucy’s will take the prize.

I grip my cock harder and imagine that it’s her gripping me, welcoming me into her slick warmth, that I can feel her soft body pressing against mine. Her breasts had been soft through the shirt, pressed against my chest.

My balls ache and contract as need races through me. It’d been a long time since I’ve been this painfully hard.

Lucy’s body would twist and twine underneath mine, soft and willing. I could practically see it. Hell, I still felt the softness of her lips on mine. My hand tightens and I’m pumping fast now. I should go slower, make my grip gentler, but I have no control. I need release.

Fantasies dance before my eyes. Lucy in her soaked dress. Lucy in my arms. Lucy whispering my name. Lucy’s tight, sweet pussy accepting all of me.

I groan loudly as tingles start at the base of my spine. Every part of me feels electrocuted. I come so hard I see stars, shooting ropes of cum. I watch as they’re washed down the drain. My legs are wobbly and my chest heaving as I give the sensitive head one final stroke.

Fuck.

She’s my employee, she’s so good, and so decidedly out of my league. She pulled away after I kissed her and she was clearly here to escape from something in her past. I know all of this.

Still, I also know that the need I’d just released would return. I glance down at my sated cock, hanging thick between my thighs, and sigh.

This feels doomed to become a daily routine.

My heart is pounding, and not just from the bike ride up to the Ranch.

I want to see Oliver again. I know I shouldn’t-I know that starting something with him could jeopardize everything, my job here, my place in Claremont-but it’s impossible not to want him. I’ve been replaying the kiss over and over since yesterday.

I’ve never been kissed like that before. It felt like I was all he wanted and all he needed. Like he’d rather die than stop for air. His hands on my waist had gripped and tugged, pulled me onto his lap-I’d been able to feel his hardness. Being in his arms had felt more right than anything had for months.

A not so small part of me is angry that I pulled away. The other part likes to remind me of what happened at my old job, of the accusations of improper behavior. They hadn’t been true then, but if I started something with Oliver, they would be this time.

You make an easy target if you sleep with the boss.

That unfortunate fact remains true even if that boss is a hot-as-hell ranch owner with muscular arms and a crooked smile. Even if he has blue eyes and thick, golden hair.

When my client propositioned him yesterday, I listened with bated breath to see if he took her up on the offer. A man who looks like that… but he hadn’t. He hadn’t seemed remotely interested and flat-out denied it when I tried to make a lame joke about it.

Oliver’s pride seems unbending, and he’s a man of his word. I know enough about him to see the high standards he holds himself and the people around him accountable to. The man might be handsome as sin, but inside he was beautiful.

Mandy and Sarah are already sitting on the porch when I arrive.

“Hi, guys!”