His pace turned NASCAR worthy, and his talented fingers did a move that made her nerves sing. Her body rocked against the counter, her back arching, and the glowing ball inside her burst into a hundred flecks of illuminated sensation. She lost conscious control of her body. Her head lifted and a sound unlike any that had ever come out of her filled the quiet cabin.

A deeper groan came from Grant, and his grip on her arms turned demanding as he reached his own release. Her name tumbled from his lips, and she couldn’t ever remember her own name sounding so sexy. She closed her eyes and let herself fall into the afterglow with him.

Seconds—or maybe minutes—passed with both of them locked in that dreamy place of dwindling bliss, his body draped over her back. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to get up. But once the only noise in the cabin had returned to the droning fridge and the ticking clock, Grant freed her arms and slipped out of her. His voice was low. “Stay there. I’ll be right back.”

No problem. She wasn’t sure she could move. Her muscles may have dissolved.

Before she knew it, he was back with a warm, wet cloth, attending to her. Then his palm was sliding over the spots where he’d hit her, rubbing in some sort of balm that cooled her skin. She knew when she looked back at this moment, she’d probably feel embarrassed, but right now she was buzzing too much from the orgasm to care.

“Can you stand up, Charli?” he asked, his voice all soft, rounded edges now.

She pushed herself onto her elbows then rose. He wrapped a robe around her from behind and rubbed her arms, making them tingle and bringing some feeling back into them.

“You okay?” he asked.

She turned around to find him looking like she’d left him. Fully dressed and wearing a frown. For the first time, she registered that he hadn’t let her touch him or see him naked. He probably had only pushed down his pants and taken her. And he still hadn’t kissed her. She’d let him hit her, restrain her, and fuck her, yet they hadn’t had a first kiss.

The realization dampened her buzz. “I’m…fine.”

He put his finger beneath her chin and studied her face, her eyes. “You’re upset.”

“I’m not.” But the declaration sounded hollow even to her own ears. She didn’t know what she was. Confused, mostly.

He deepened his frown, staring at her for another moment and apparently confirming whatever it was he was sensing. He lowered his hand and sighed. “I’m sorry, Charli. This was a bad idea.”

The words sent a sharp snap of disappointment through her. She looked down and knotted the belt on the robe. “Always what a girl wants to hear after she’s gotten naked with someone.”

“I thought you would call the safe word from the get-go. Then I—” He paused, and she glanced up as he raked a hand through his hair.

“Then you what?”

“Then I couldn’t resist taking you over.” He shook his head and looked away, as if he was giving himself a firm lecture only he could hear. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

Because she’d kind of loved it. Because it was thrilling in a way that no sex had ever been for her. Because for some odd reason, she’d trusted him not to go too far. But no way she was going to say any of that out loud. She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up. “Because I need this training and wanted to show you I can handle it. I’m not scared of you, Grant.”

He glanced over at her, his expression darkening. “You should be.”

She conjured up a practiced nothing-bothers-me smile, ignoring the fluttering anxiety in her belly, and claimed her victory—though now it felt like an empty one. “Guess I’m your new trainee, cowboy.”

His lips parted, but she didn’t give him time to respond. She picked up her clothes and ugly undergarments and traipsed out of his cabin, taking his robe and her shredded nerves with her.

TEN

He hated losing control.

This loss had at least come with a naked, spanked Charli splayed across his kitchen counter and sex that had damn near blown his head off.

But still, his jaw had yet to unclench.

She’d baited him, thrown a gauntlet down to test his own self-control. And he’d failed. Sure, he’d been the one giving the orders and the swats, but it had been driven by pure emotion—something he worked hard at keeping out of his sexual encounters. And dammit, he’d hit her with a fucking belt with no contract, without even knowing her hard and soft limits. He’d barely managed to stop himself before he’d completely gone off the reservation and taken her to his bedroom—a place he’d never taken any woman. Charli Beaumonde had unraveled him.

And hell if he could stop thinking about her. Since she’d walked out the door, he’d done little else than replay the scene and invent new ones, imagining how much further he wanted to take her. His claim-and-conquer gene was on a rampage, and he wasn’t quite sure how to turn it off.

Plus, now Charli was apparently refusing to stick to his stay-safe rules until he agreed to his end of the bargain and took her on for training. Two days had passed since their encounter and she’d stopped checking in with him. He’d waited for her text this morning, knowing it wouldn’t come, and turned on the GPS tracker. Luckily, Charli hadn’t figured out where he’d installed it. Otherwise, he had no doubt that she would’ve disabled it.

Yesterday, she’d gone to the office and he’d been able to relax and get some work done. But today, she’d turned in the opposite direction, and he’d had to get in his truck and channel his old CIA persona to do a little surveillance. So now Grant found himself parked between two buildings across from a broken-down diner in some town he didn’t know the name of watching Charli eat pancakes with a guy who talked with his hands. Grant adjusted the volume on his phone’s earpiece, trying to stay focused on Charli while still listening in on the conference call with the Water’s Edge department heads.

“If we switch to a screw top and a cheaper bottle, we can lower the price a bit,” Lars, the head of sales, suggested. “We could get into some of the bigger stores.”

The others began to debate.

“No screw top,” Grant said, using his gavel-hit-the-desk tone. “I have no interest in going mass production. Our wines are an experience. As long as we keep producing the highest quality product, there will be a market for it.”

“But in this economy…” Lars protested.

“Our numbers have only gone up,” Grant said. “Next topic.”

He knew his team meant well. They saw the sales at Water’s Edge and knew the potential their wines had at becoming a mass-market brand, but Grant refused to sacrifice quality. His father had run a successful cattle ranch for decades using that philosophy, and Grant didn’t plan to veer from it in his own business. Plus, The Ranch now brought in enough money to fund him for as long as he needed. The wine business had turned into a mere bonus.

Lars moved on to another item in the agenda, but his voice faded into the background as Grant caught movement in his peripheral vision. Charli had parked her rental car in the alley between the diner and a pawnshop. The shiny rental was the only new model in sight and apparently, Grant hadn’t been the only one to notice that. The pawnshop blocked most of the sunlight, but Grant hadn’t missed the shift in the shadows behind Charli’s car. Someone was in the mood for a little grand theft auto.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Huh?” Lars asked.

Grant didn’t have time to respond. He pulled out his earpiece and grabbed for his glove compartment, which was, of course, locked. “Dammit.”

He yanked the keys out the ignition and unlocked the compartment, grabbing for his gun. He glanced back at the diner. Charli was stepping out, absently digging through her purse for something as she walked—her keys, probably. Shit. He definitely didn’t need Charli surprising a thief.

Grant hopped out of truck, checked the safety, and tucked the gun into his waistband. “Charli! Hold up!”

Charli looked up from her bag and paused as if verifying she’d heard what she’d thought she heard, and then turned her head in his direction. He jogged toward her. Thank God he hadn’t parked far away or he may have not been able to intercept her. When she realized it was him, she put her hands on her hips, her exasperation evident even from a distance.

“Go back inside,” he called, pointing at the diner.

She glanced back at the restaurant. “What?”

He hustled past her toward the parking lot. “Inside. Now.”

Whether she figured out there was danger or saw his gun, she listened. He turned the corner into the alley on full alert. Charli’s car was third from the street, and besides an empty can rolling in the breeze, everything appeared to be still. He crept forward, his eyes and ears in full scanning mode. But after one step, the backside passenger door on the rental car jolted open and someone barreled out, dressed in all black and running full speed in the other direction.

Grant drew his gun and climbed over the hood of the first car, trying to catch up or at least get a description. But the thief had too much of a head start on him. The guy reached the end of the alley and disappeared into the greenbelt that stretched along the back of the buildings.

“Fuck.” Grant ran to the edge of the trees but knew it would be pointless to go traipsing after him. No doubt the guy was a local and would know the landscape better than him. After one last fruitless search of the periphery for any kind of evidence, he headed back to Charli’s car to see if there was any damage.

The rear passenger door was still wide open, and as Grant frowned down at it, a creeping feeling raised the hairs on his neck. What in the hell would a car thief be doing hiding in the backseat? If he had wanted to hot-wire it, he would’ve been fooling around the driver’s side. Grant ventured closer and peered into the backseat. A shiny roll of masking tape sat on the floorboard. His grip on the frame of the door tightened, lividity burning a path through him. He looked back to the trees, ready to hunt the bastard down and show him all the torture techniques he’d perfected.

“Is everything okay?”

Grant backed away from the car, making sure not to touch anything else, and gave Charli, who’d poked her head around the corner of the building, a wary look. This was getting completely out of hand. This was more than someone trying to scare Charli. Someone was trying to harm her. And that shit was completely unacceptable. He wanted to grab her, put her in his car, and not let her out of his sight again until he could personally maim and dismember whoever the fucker was.

Even monitoring Charli this closely, he’d barely had time to step in before she’d gotten into the car with some kidnapping psychopath. Whispers of the night someone had broken into his and Rachel’s home prodded at his mind. No. Don’t go there. He swallowed past the panicky, choking feeling that always accompanied the memory. He didn’t have time to have a freak-out. Charli needed him operating at a hundred percent.

Time for a new plan.

Charli wanted training? Well, she was about to get the session of a lifetime.

He tucked his gun back in his waistband. “We better call the cops, freckles. I thought someone wanted to steal your car, but it looks like someone wants to steal you.”

Charli sat on Grant’s couch, trying to rub the chill from her arms, but the too-cold feeling wouldn’t go away. She stared out the front window, watching the rays of late-afternoon sun slant over the front yard. Someone had been hiding in the backseat of her car. If Grant hadn’t been there…well, she couldn’t stop thinking about the what-ifs. It had been stupid to go off on her own just to prove a point. She’d started to believe the threat wasn’t real, that everyone had been overreacting. But now she was thanking the heavens that her brother had a paranoid streak and that Grant was so relentless in his mission.