Page 57 of Always Been His

“You wanted to be entertained.” Another smack, and she squirms. “I’m entertaining you...”

“Put me down!” she protests.

I carry her to the wooden stable wall, and press her against it. Her legs wrap around my waist, and her arms circle my neck, and her braids are in my hands before I realize I’ve reached for them.

They’re still damp. Cool against my fingers. I twist one coil around my knuckle and tug gently, tilting her face up to mine.

“Two years,” I say, and my voice cracks on it. “Two years she kept us apart, and you’re here now, and you’re going to tease me?”

Her breath catches. Her pupils are blown wide, dark pools rimmed with amber. “You teased me.”

“That’s because you’re mine to tease.” I kiss her. “Mine to fuck.” I grab her ass tightly. “Mine to love. You’re mine.”

I kiss her again, deeper than the last time. I kiss her like I’m reclaiming territory, like every day without her was a drought and she’s the first rain. Her mouth opens, and her tongue meets mine, and the taste of her:salt and sweet mango from her lip balm nearly undoes me.

My hands tighten in her braids. Her legs clamp around my waist. The stable wall creaks behind her back.

I pull back, forehead pressed to hers, both of us panting.

“Can you still ride a horse?” I ask, and my voice is low, rough, the words dragging against something dark and hungry inside me that’s been sleeping for two years and is very, very awake now.

Her smile is wicked. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“Answer the question.” I smile, inches away from her lips again.

“I can ride anything you put me on, Grayson Douglas.” She quirks an eyebrow.

The stable door groans open in the breeze. I carry her through the doorway, her braids still wrapped around my fingers, her heartbeat hammering against my chest.

“Show me,” I say.

Sienna slides down off my chest when I set her on her feet, her hands still on my shoulders, her chin tipped up at me because she has always been a foot shorter than she thinks she is.

“Wait a minute,” she says, pressing her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Her eyes widen as she looks around the stable. “Did you say horses?”

“I did,” I smirk, moving down the aisle toward the stall where I now take care of the family horses are kept. “I know you had unofficial lessons in high school.”

“I wanted a horse so bad back then, but Grandma Mary couldn’t afford it and wouldn’t let your dad get one for me.” She huffs. “We argued about it for months.”

I hear her following me, the soft sound of her boots on the stable floor, and then the way her breath catches when she sees Juniper.

Juniper is in the third stall, her head already hanging over the door. She’s a chestnut mare with a wide white blaze running down the center of her face.

“Oh,” Sienna says softly. She steps forward with her hand up, palm flat, and Juniper drops her nose into it without being asked. “Juni baby, hi.”

“You know Juniper?”

“She was only my first love,” Sienna says, to the horse. “Back in middle school, I was there when she was born, Gray. Your sister and I waited for like three days straight for her to be born.”

“Now I remember. You guys had to be dragged home kicking and screaming every night.” I chuckle, scratching the back of my neck. “Well, I know you didn’t get to ride her, because she was never broken in enough.”

“Yeah, Juni’s a free spirit.” Sienna says, scratching behind the mare’s ear. “Aren’t you, baby?”

Juniper blinks at her with large, unbothered eyes.

I lean against the stall across the aisle and watch her for a second. She has both hands on the mare now, one on her nose and one working slow circles behind her ear, and she is talking in the low voice she uses with animals that I’ve never once heard her use anywhere else. Juniper has gone completely still under it, which means the horse is just as gone on her as the rest of us.

“You know, Juni has been broken in now,” I say. “Full training. Three years ago.”