Winner Takes All Read online

  She wasn’t his. She would never be his. The sooner he accepted that, the better for both of them.

  They had one morning left when they would be forced to be together. One morning when he had to pretend that he didn’t want her, that he possessed no feelings for her. Then it would be over, and he’d never have to see her again.

  He would survive it. Somehow.

  Needing to move before he punched his fist into the wall, he walked through the dark barn. All the grooms were still at the bonfire and wouldn’t be back until dawn. Only one of the horses swung its head over its stall door in curiosity that he was there, then decided he wasn’t worth the attention and turned back inside its stall. Shaw checked that the slide bolts on each of the stalls were secure for the night, that all lanterns and lamps had been extinguished—

  The tack room door stood open and unlocked. Cursing whatever groom had left it that way, he crossed the wide aisle to close it.

  “Running away again, are you?”

  The soft voice floated to him through the shadows, and Shaw froze with his hand on the door, ready to push it closed. He glanced over his shoulder toward the front of the barn.

  Frankie stood just inside the open doorway, lit by a slant of moonlight. A vision of ebony and silver, she resembled a ghost wandering the night. But wasn’t that truly what she was? A ghost from his past who still haunted him, a reminder of all he could never have?

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he dodged as he turned to face her. He crossed his arms over his chest in a pose that should have been a battle stance but in the end only felt defensive. Yet he couldn’t help himself, because open arms meant arms capable of reaching for her, holding her, and making love to her the way his soul ached to do.

  “Uncle Jonas is making excuses for me. I won’t be missed until morning.” Undeterred, she pressed softly, “But you…you’re running away, just like you ran away from Willow Wood.”

  Her accusation grated. “I left Willow Wood to start my own business.”

  The moonlight washed over her shoulders as she stepped slowly toward him like an angel emerging from the midnight darkness. Her eyes gleamed at his attempt to walk that knife’s edge between admitting the truth and saving his pride.

  “You ran away from Willow Wood,” she corrected, taking another step toward him. Her ankle was healing, but she couldn’t hide a faint limp. Of course she’d ridden all the way here on her own, despite that. The little minx was as stubborn as ever and refused to be ignored. “You’re doing it again tonight.”

  “Exactly,” he bit out, staying where he was, just out of reach of the moonlight. He didn’t dare come closer, didn’t dare stray into the light where she could see his feelings for her on his face. “I ran away to keep from killing that bastard.”

  “I don’t mean the fight.”

  His heart jolted against his ribs. He knew what she meant, and the truth of it rubbed at him like a raw wound.

  “I did run away,” he admitted quietly, “but not from Willow Wood. I ran away from you, Francesca.”

  She remained still and silent, like one of those carved statues of angels in Westminster Abbey. Those weeping angels, frozen in stone, in time and place. Unearthly. Wholly unobtainable.

  “I had to leave, don’t you understand? For the same reason I had to leave tonight. If I’d stayed, everyone would know how I feel about you.” He raked his hand through his hair to keep from reaching for her. “If I’d stayed at Willow Wood, I would have taken your innocence. You would have been ruined, I would have lost my position—God help us if your father had learned of what we’d already done.”

  “Did you care about me?” she whispered. The tears in her eyes shone in the moonlight.

  So much more than you’ll ever know. Instead, he confessed hoarsely, “I cared enough about you to leave.”

  With a pained gasp, her lips parted delicately, and a tear slipped slowly down her cheek. “I was devastated that next morning when I’d learned that you’d gone without even saying goodbye.”

  A bubble of formed in his chest. “I couldn’t tell you that I was leaving.” No, she would have tried to entice him to stay, and he wouldn’t have had the strength to refuse her.

  “I wanted to marry you.” Her voice was so soft that it was almost lost beneath the sounds of the horses growing restless in their stalls. “I loved you.”

  With that, the bubble burst inside him, and he flinched at the brutal pain of it. “You were never meant for me.”

  “I was always meant for you, Jack.” She reached behind her back and unfastened the short row of buttons on her bodice. The dress fell loose around her bosom, and she slowly pushed it down, off her shoulders and arms, to fall to the floor in a puddle around her feet. “I still am.”

  His eyes trailed over her. The cotton shift was so thin that the moonlight shined through it, silhouetting her waist, hips, and legs. The temptation of what she was offering burned low in his gut, and his blood hummed with desire. He’d seen her in just her undergarments before, that night at Willow Wood when she’d also removed her dress, when she’d whispered against his lips that she wanted to make love. When he knew he had to leave her.

  But that was years ago, and the sight of her now took his breath away. The lovely nineteen-year-old she’d been had transformed into a breathtaking woman. Confident, determined, so very tantalizing…When she reached up slowly to untie her corset, his pulse spiked, and each hard and fast beat pounded with a deafening roar in his ears and with a throbbing ache along the length of his hardening cock.

  The stays fell away to join the dress at her feet and left her in nothing but her shift and stockings. Her breasts pressed full and unfettered against the thin material, revealing the dark points of her aroused nipples beneath the silvery white cotton.

  “Let me have you, Jack,” she whispered, the soft sound echoing faintly through the barn around them, still and silent except for the mulling horses and the fierce tattoo of his heartbeat. “The way I have always wanted you.”

  With a groan of surrender, he charged forward to scoop her into his arms and carried her into the tack room. He kicked the door shut behind them.

  Chapter Six

  Frankie clung to Shaw as he placed her sideways onto one of the leather saddles slung over the short row of sawhorses. Her heart pounded. Tonight, finally, he would be hers.

  He leaned in to kiss her heatedly as his hands caressed up her legs and pushed the hem of her chemise along with them, slowly up her thighs to her waist. The cool evening air brushed against the warmth of her bare flesh, and a wave of goosebumps raced across her skin.

  Not breaking contact as his mouth possessed hers, he gently nudged her legs apart. His breeches scraped against her inner thighs as he stepped between them, and a heated longing flared at her core in response.

  He tore his mouth away from hers to place a lingering kiss to her ear. “The first time I realized that you were more than just a viscount’s spoiled daughter,” he confessed in a hot murmur as he flicked the tip of his tongue against her earlobe, “was the morning when you were riding a chestnut gelding who decided to buck you off.”

  The memory fought for space in her mind with the delicious sensations his hands created inside her as they swept up her body to cup her breasts through the thin shift.

  “You didn’t scream in fear or cry out for help. You brought the horse under control yourself.” As he caressed her breasts and caused her nipples to harden, he gave a long lick around the outer curl of her ear that made her shiver. “You were so quick and confident, so sure in your seat and skills.”

  She tilted back her head to give him more room to place hot, open-mouthed kisses down her neck and arched herself into his hands as they teased at her breasts. “I was terrified.”

  “You never let it show.” His lips brushed down her neck and across her collarbone. “Instead of being afraid to ride the horse again or taking a whip to him, you worked with him…slowly, calmly.”

  When the
strap of her shift blocked his way, he gently nudged it off her shoulder with his mouth and down her arm to expose her right breast to his searching lips. He closed his mouth over her nipple and sucked.

  She gasped and stiffened beneath his ministrations for only a moment before softening. With a long sigh, she ran her fingers through his hair, keeping his mouth on her even as his hands caressed teasingly over her legs. They slipped down to brush along her bare inner thighs until he caressed the folds at her aching center. His thumbs traced over her in a wanton pattern of exploration and desire, and with each pass, his fingers delved deeper, making her soaked and heated and tingling.

  He mumbled against her breast, “You spent time with that horse until he did everything you asked of him.”

  “I couldn’t…let him think,” she panted out as his fingertip tantalizingly circled her throbbing core, “that he’d won…”

  “Of course not.” He smiled against her breast and slipped his finger inside her.

  “Jack!” Her hands gripped his hair as the delicious sensation of having him inside her shot through her, and when he began to slide decadently in and out with long, slow strokes…“Oh, Jack….”

  With a shuddering moan, she shifted back on the saddle to tilt her hips toward him and claim the pleasure he was giving to her. The aching tingles inside her flamed in both intensity and frequency, yet shamelessly she craved more.

  A second finger slipped inside with the first and doubled the wonderful sensation each silken slide in and out shivered through her. Her soft folds throbbed around him, in such hard and echoing beats of her heart that she was certain he could feel her desire for him at his fingertips.

  He’d done this to her once before, all those years ago in their hidden cottage at Willow Wood. She knew what to expect, knew how her body would clench around his fingers and bear down, to eventually break with a wave of delight that rushed over her and out to her fingers and toes. She yearned for it with every stroke into her tight warmth, and a begging whimper fell from her lips.

  “So you convinced him to trust you,” he rasped out as he lifted his head from her bare breast, “slowly but surely, until you’d broken him. Until you’d tamed him completely.”

  When he slipped his fingers out from her warmth and moved his hand away from her, she cried out at the loss, and her arms and legs tightened their hold around him. No! He couldn’t leave her. Not now, not after all these years—

  But he didn’t leave. Instead, he lowered himself slowly onto his knees in front of her, her trembling thighs still open wide around his broad shoulders. Her heart leapt into her throat. They’d done this before, too, just once on the night before he left. It had nearly undone her then, to have his mouth on her so intimately yet not be able to have him fully the way her body and heart longed for. If she couldn’t have him tonight, the loss would simply end her.

  He stared up the length of her body into her eyes, and the comforting reassurance she saw in his dark depths eased away her worry. “That’s what you’ve done to me, Francesca.”

  Not breaking eye contact, he brought his mouth between her legs, his lips so close that his warm breath tickled against her wet folds. So tantalizingly close, yet so frustratingly far…

  He murmured, “You’ve broken me.”

  “Jack—”

  He lowered his head, and his mouth claimed her.

  His name transformed into a whimper of unbearable need on her lips.

  Oh, she was wrong! This wasn’t at all like before. This time was so much more intense, so much more confident—this time, they both knew that being together wouldn’t stop when this wonderful moment of exotic kissing ended. It was only the prologue to so much more, yet she couldn’t tamp down the rising ache pulsing hotly against his lips. She couldn’t stop the delicious tingles of electricity sparking at her toes. And when the kissing turned even more intense, when the tender kisses transformed into seeking licks, greedy nibbles, a hard suck at her throbbing little nub—

  “Jack!” Her hips bucked against him, but his hands on her thighs held her in place beneath his mouth. He sucked again, long and deep, branding her forever as his with his lips.

  An electric flash jolted through her, and she cried out as her body stiffened and then released into quivering bliss. Pleasure pulsed through her and stole away what little was left of her breath.

  She collapsed bonelessly over the saddle. She could barely keep her breath, and the trembling in her arms and legs was uncontrollable. The pleasure that had gripped her so intensely now moved through her in undulating waves that made her feel deliciously wanton and left her wanting more.

  He gave one last worshipping kiss to her inner thigh, then rose to his feet, placed both hands on either side of the saddle, and leaned in to rest his forehead against hers. His breath came labored, and he shook just as much as she did as he fought for control.

  He warned in a hoarse rasp, “If we don’t stop now—”

  “We are not stopping.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, doing her best to convey how much she loved him. “I want this. I’ve always wanted this. With you.” She choked out around the knot of emotion in her throat, “Only with you.”

  He scooped her into his arms and carried her into the dark farmhouse, up the stairs, and into his bedroom.

  When he placed her gently on the bed, her heartbeat pounded hard enough that he must have been able to hear it. Countless times over the years she’d fantasized about this moment, but now that it was happening, her fantasy paled against the reality. His eyes were so much brighter than she’d imagined, gleaming at her rakishly as he shifted away to stand at the edge of the bed where he unbuttoned his waistcoat and let it fall to the floor. His shoulders were so much broader as he yanked his shirt over his head and revealed his bare torso…the sprinkling of dark blond hair over his hard chest as it trailed down the ridges of his abdomen and disappeared beneath his waistband. He smiled at the way he had to sit on the edge of the bed to yank off his boots, then removed the rest of his clothing piece by piece until all he wore were his breeches.

  He was magnificent…strong and hard, as untamed as the horses he trained to do his bidding. When he straightened once more to unfasten the fall of his breeches and push them over his hips, down his legs, and off—

  Dear heavens.

  “Wait,” she ordered gently as she sat up and locked her eyes with his.

  He froze instantly, his face inscrutable in the shadows. “Have you changed your mind?”

  “No,” she confessed breathlessly. “I just…I’ve never seen you like this before. I want to look at you a while longer…if that’s all right.”

  A pleased grin crooked at his lips, but he did as she asked and remained standing in front of her so she could rake her eyes over him, down his chest…and lower. She caught her breath at the sight of his arousal, then moved her gaze down his legs which were sculpted from hours spent in the saddle, all the way to his bare feet. Then slowly back. This time, she couldn’t help but let her gaze linger at his waist and witness at the effect she had on him. She trembled.

  He sat on the bed beside her. “My turn now to look at you.”

  He took her shift and lifted it up her body, over her head, and off, leaving her in nothing but her stockings. His heated gaze swept over her, and everywhere he looked, goosebumps spread across her flesh. Then he trailed his hand along her neck and over her breasts, across her belly to graze at the curls guarding her feminine core, and then down her thighs to the lace hem of her stockings.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured as his fingers teased at her stockings. He untied each and rolled it down her calf, over her foot, and off, tossed away to join the rest of their clothes on the floor.

  Nothing remained between them now as he leaned in to kiss her and slowly lowered her onto her back. She tasted his unspoken feelings for her in the tender kiss that grew in intensity until she was meeting his demanding kisses lick for lick and bite for bite, until her arms wrapped a
round his neck as he slid himself over her, until she parted her legs beneath him to let him settle into the cradle of her thighs.

  His hand slipped between her legs to caress her once more, and she instinctively arched beneath him, ready to give herself to him. Now and always.

  His name fell from her lips in a breathless, pleading whisper.

  As he held himself poised over her on one elbow, he took his length in his hand and guided himself inside her.

  Frankie stiffened with a gasp as he stretched her wide and filled her completely. But he drank up the sound with a kiss and eased the discomfort by moving slowly as her body adjusted to his. His hips gently swayed forward and back, side to side, and her discomfort melted into a singular sensation that was pure heaven.

  As he lowered himself to claim her tight warmth and then retreat, then again and again in a steady but tender rhythm, the night around them vanished until there was only Shaw and the wonderful pleasure he was giving her. The rest of the world plunged away, and she soared toward the heavens, wrapping herself around him and never wanting to let go.

  A new wave of pleasure began to lick at her toes and move up through her, spreading liquid heat in its wake. Her body tensed, and all the tiny muscles inside her clenched down tightly around him as if to bring him even deeper inside her, as if to find a way to make them part of each other forever.

  “Francesca,” he murmured, the pained restraint clear in his voice. “I love you.” He swirled his hips into hers, taking himself even deeper and brushing against the sensitive point buried in her folds that throbbed in time with her heartbeat. “I always have.”

  She broke with a cry. Pleasure poured through her, engulfed her body, and saturated her heart.

  Burying her face in his neck, she clung to him as he slipped from her warmth and squeezed his still-hard length between their two bellies, every muscle in his tall body taut and strained. With a soft groan and a small jerk of his hips, he spilled himself against her, then collapsed on top of her, fully sated and spent.