Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(39)

He dismounted and went into the barn, where Kenny was just starting the evening chores. They worked together until the animals were put up and fed and they’d gotten everything prepped for the next day.

Then he crossed the yard and went into the main house. Shannon was at the desk, checking a couple in.

Three other people were sitting on the couches, chatting. By the look of these guests, Badger expected to be doing trail rides most of the day tomorrow. He didn’t mind that. He liked riding through the woods, even at the slow clop most trail riders could handle, and he never passed up a chance to get on Gypsy’s back. That horse was something else.

With a nod to Shannon, he headed to her office and knocked on the door to the manager’s suite.

Adrienne opened it with a bright smile. Damn, she was pretty. He thought that all the time, but it was so true. He loved her hair—thick and curly and red—and her freckles, and her deep blue eyes, and her perfect little body, and the cleft in her chin, and her smile that showed all the beauty she had inside, too. He loved everything about her.

He especially loved that she was standing there in a tiny beater t-shirt and a pair of his boxers.

He put his hands on her hips and walked her backward into the room. “Babe, what if somebody else was knocking?”

She put her hands on his shoulders. “Pfft. I knew it was you. Anyway, the only other person would have been Shannon, and she can see me in your underwear.”

It occurred to Badger that they weren’t really ‘official’ yet. Show knew and, considering the scene in the Hall, the rest of the Horde knew, but whether anyone had told Shannon, Badger couldn’t say. Badger hadn’t told anybody else. “Hey—anybody know we’re…together?” He tripped over the word, because it still felt surreal that it was true.

“I haven’t said, except to Show. But I don’t want to be private or whatever. Tell whoever you want.”

“Then let’s eat at the Chop House tonight. We’ll have a date. See if we can get the round booth. Make some gossip.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

Her smile positively beamed at him. “That would be awesome. They still have chicken, right?” Adrienne didn’t eat red meat. She barely ate meat at all.

“Think so, yeah.”

“Good! That sounds awesome! Let’s do that. But first…we got interrupted when you left.” She took his hand and led him to the little couch. Oh, f*ck, yeah. That would help the bees buzzing at the base of his skull. That would help a lot. Even being in the same room with her settled him down, but f*ck.

When she pushed him to sit and then started to kneel between his legs, though, he caught her shoulders and pulled her to sit on his lap instead. Too much like the clubhouse. “No, babe. Let’s go to bed.”

Her brow wrinkled. “We can’t. They gave me Daisy’s bed. It’s small. And anyway, it’s Daisy’s. We can’t do stuff on that bed. It feels wrong.”

Well, he couldn’t watch her kneeling between his legs, either. He looked around, thinking. Then he brushed her hair back and grinned. “Let’s camp out.”

“What?”

“Camp out. Put all the bedding on the floor. Make a nest. You got enough blankets for that?”

Now she was grinning, too. “Yeah. I think Shannon is expecting a cold summer, because she sent a whole big box of bedding over.” She got up and went to the bedroom, then came back pushing a very large cardboard box. “Pillows and blankets galore.”

When they had a cozy little nest set up on the floor behind the loveseat, Adrienne plopped down in the middle, looking sweet and sassy and not at all shy or nervous. Badger folded his kutte and hung it over the back of the couch, then kicked off his boots and stripped to his boxers before joining her.

“You don’t have to do this, babe.”

She looked down at his tented boxers with a smirk.

He lifted her head. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do anything.”

“I don’t. I told you—I want to do everything. Well, almost everything. A lot of things. Like touch you.”

She reached out, slid her hand into his fly, and wrapped her fingers around his cock. He couldn’t hold back his hiss or the flex that accompanied it. Her hand. Fuck. Adrienne’s hand, around his cock. He lay back.

“Tell me if I do anything wrong.” Her voice was low and husky. When she pulled on his waistband, he lifted his hips, and she rid him of his underwear.

At first, for several minutes, she touched him lightly, examining him with her hands and her eyes. She trailed her fingers all over him, tracing veins and ridges, feeling the curve of his glans and then sliding down to circle his root. She lifted his balls and when, at that touch, he made some kind of strained grunt he couldn’t help, she scratched lightly all over them.

Holy Jesus.

Needing to touch her, he reached out to lay his hand high on her thigh. He could feel her heat. Touching him was turning her on. But she was off limits to him tonight.

Then she wrapped her hand around him and squeezed a little, and his hips came off the blankets of their own volition. “Fuck, babe!”

“Was that wrong?” She’d stopped and now was looking into his eyes.

“No,” he laughed. “Not wrong. Right.”

Her smile made his heart ache deep in his chest. “Good. How about this?” Her hand still wrapped around him, she slid it up his full length, tightening her grip as she approached his tip, and then back down.