Rich, Rugged Rancher. Joss Wood

kiss. Fee found herself surging to her feet, her arms looping around his neck, her breasts pushing into his chest. She felt his big hand on the top of her butt, pulling her into a very thick, concrete-hard erection, and she whimpered in delight.

      He was so big, everywhere. Fee found herself on her tiptoes, straining to align their mouths, knowing they’d both have cricks in their necks at the end of this make-out session. Clint solved the problem by placing his hands on her hips and boosting her up against his body, holding her weight with ease. What else was a girl to do but wind her legs around his trim waist, hook them behind his back and slide her most sensitive spot over his impressive bulge?

      Fee heard Clint’s moan of appreciation and then his hand encircled the top of her leg, his fingers on the inside of her thigh, and Fee wished he had his hands on her naked flesh, that she could feel his clever mouth sucking her nipples, maybe even going lower.

      His mouth, as she was coming to learn, was a weapon of mass temptation. Fee knew that if he asked, she’d eagerly follow him into his house and down the hallway to his bedroom, or whether he decided to stop. She would take whatever he’d give her, grateful to be the recipient of the profound pleasure he managed to pull to the surface.

      They didn’t need to talk, their bodies were better at communicating than they were. Fee felt Clint take a step and she felt the hard coolness of wood through her jeans, dimly realizing he’d planted her on the wide sill of a window.

      He lifted his hands to hold her face, his thumbs caressing her cheekbones as he feathered kisses across her eyelids, down her temple. Fee closed her eyes, enjoying the moment of tenderness. Then Clint covered her right breast with his hand, and her nipple tightened, rising against the fabric of her sweater to press into his palm. Clint jerked his head back, looked at her with stormy eyes and muttered a quiet obscenity.

      “Why aren’t you pushing me away?” he hoarsely demanded.

      “Why would I, since you kiss like a dream?” Fee responded, her voice just this side of breathy. Hearing his sharp intake of air, Fee decided to rock his boat a little more. “You are abrupt and annoying but, God, you know how to touch me.”

      Clint ran his knuckles up her ribcage and across her nipple. “Like this?” His fingers burrowed under her sweater and landed on her bare skin.

      “Exactly like that,” Fee murmured. Then Clint pulled down the lacy cup of her bra and pulled her nipple with his fingers. Fee couldn’t help crying out.

      Fee put her hand behind his head and shook her head. “No, don’t stop! Do it again.”

      Clint’s repeated the action and Fee arched her back, dropped her leg and banged her heel against the back of his lower thigh, just above his knee. Instead of bone and sinew, the heel of her boot bounced off metal hidden behind the fabric of his jeans.

      Clint reacted like he’d been scorched. Leaping backward, he put a healthy amount of distance between them. He stared down at the floor as Fee tried to make sense of why he stopped.

      The answer came to her on a quiet whisper: she’d kicked his prosthetic leg.

      Well, okay then. No big deal…

      “Come back here and kiss me, Rockwell,” Fee suggested, wanting, no, needing his mouth on hers. She wasn’t done with him, not yet.

      Clint had frozen, his big arms folded across his chest, his face a blank mask. She didn’t like the lack of emotion in his eyes, in his expression. She could handle pissed off and irritated, turned on and taciturn, but she didn’t like this cyborg standing in front of her, acting like she was a fly he was getting ready to swat.

      “I think it’s time you went home,” Clint said, in the blandest of bland tones. “You can take your gag money with you and start arrangements to pay me the twenty thousand we agreed upon.”

      They were back to this, really? “That number is just something you pulled out of your ass to piss me off, we both know it’s stupidly excessive. As for leaving…”

      Fee jumped down from the windowsill and walked up to Clint until her breasts brushed against his arms. She saw the flare of heat in his eyes and knew he was nowhere near as unaffected as he was pretending to be.

      Good to know.

      “I don’t like mixed signals, Rockwell. You can’t devour me one minute and ask me to leave the next.”

      “On my spread, I can do anything I damn well like,” Clint muttered.

      Fee cocked her head at his statement. “Now you’re just sounding petulant. It’s not a good look on you, Rockwell.”

      Clint rubbed his hand over his face. “Will you just go? Please?”

      “No, not until we talk about why you jumped away from me like you were hit by a bolt of lightning.”

      Annoyance and frustration jumped into Clint’s eyes and Fee didn’t mind. She could deal with those emotions. She far preferred anger to his impassivity. “Let’s break it down, shall we?” she continued.

      “Let’s not.”

      Fee ignored him. “You touched my boob and I banged the back of my heel against your prosthetic leg. Now, because I know that couldn’t hurt you, there has to be another reason why you’re overreacting.”

      Clint handed her a hard stare, his eyes reflecting confusion and more than a little fear. At what? What was the real problem here?

      “You know I have a prosthetic leg.”

      Yes, she did. It was the least important thing she’d discovered about him. “I also know you are a billionaire, you were some sort of super soldier and now you are a semi-recluse, much to the dismay of the Royal residents, who’ve placed you somewhere between God and Friday-night football.”

      Finally, a hint of amusement touched his lips. “That’s a huge exaggeration since I have little to do with them.”

      “Trust me, ten minutes dealing with your sarcasm and general orneriness would have them reevaluating your wonderfulness,” Fee said, her tone tart. She slapped her hands on her hips. “But we’re getting distracted from the point of this conversation.”

      Clint looked past her at something beyond her shoulder. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

      Damn straight. “No.”

      “I lost my left leg above my knee. When you kicked it, I realized I should stop this, now.”

      “Why?”

      “To save both of us the embarrassment of you running out of here squealing when you see me, and it, fully exposed. It’s not a pretty sight.” Clint’s smile was hard and his eyes glittered with pain-laced fury. “I don’t need your sympathy or your pity. I just need sex.”

      Fee felt anger boil inside of her. She was angry at the people who had so obviously hurt him by making him feel less than, and angry at him for projecting those people’s feelings onto her. Yes, she was a reality TV star but she wasn’t shallow, dammit.

      To make her point, Fee gathered a handful of Clint’s T-shirt in her fist. She knew with a quick twist he could be free of her grasp, he did have a hundred pounds of muscle on her, but she was trying to make a point here.

      “You just keep pissing me off, Rockwell. It’s quite a talent,” Fee murmured.

      “Just get to the point, Seraphina. I’ve got work to do.”

      Fee pulled him over to the steps and pushed him down two of them so they were eye to eye, face to face. “That’s better. Now, listen up because I’m only going to say this once…”

      “Man, you’re bossy.”

      “If I were a man, you’d call my behavior assertiveness,” Fee quipped back.

      “If you were a man, I would’ve had you in a headlock by now.”

      Fair