“Here you go,” I say, setting his coffee on his desk.
“Thanks.” He removes his hat and grabs his cup.
I know Jake is more reserved than I am and it sometimes takes him longer to articulate things, so I decide to give him a nudge.
“Man, your sister should have warned us. I thought Allison was going to end up being a high-maintenance princess who expects to eat sushi and edamame three times a day while living on the ranch. I didn’t expect this friendly and warm person. And I surely didn’t expect her to look like she does.”
“Neither did I, buddy.” Jake jumps to his feet and paces the room, rubbing his hand through his hair. “She caught me totally off guard with her charm, her wits… and her body. Those curves…” Jake presses his lips together and shakes his head.
“I know. I couldn’t stop staring at her huge tits. I can only imagine what they must look like if you rip that bra off of her. When she’s on all fours, they must hang low, heavy and inviting as hell. Fuck.”
“Hunter. You can’t talk like that. Allison is here as Riley’s assistant. She’s not your plaything.”
“Be honest. Tell me you didn’t think the first time you laid eyes on her of fucking her from behind so you could cup her tits while you drive your cock deeper into her wet pussy.” The imagery makes me instantly hard and I grab my crotch to tame the temptation. Jake can lie to himself, but he can’t fool me. I’ve seen that hungry look in his eyes too many times in the past when he’s interested in a woman.
“Thinking about something and acting on it are two different things, buddy.”
“You know better than anyone what life is around here for single men. We might own a successful and lucrative ranch, but it gets lonely at the top. It’s not like when we were living in Silicon Valley or New York.”
“Hunter, relationships are a lot of work, and energy, and time,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee. “We haven’t had a lot of spare time because we’ve both invested our time in getting the ranch off the ground and learning everything we had to learn. You know as well as I do it’s hard to find a good fit in a small town when you’ve lived your whole life in cities with millions of single women.” He puts his cup on his desk. “Casual relationships are tricky here. And it’s been a challenge finding a woman who… you know…”
“Who would be willing to give in to our kinks?” I finish his sentence.
“Yes.”
“Maybe we don’t have to look much further. Maybe Allison is the one. It surely would make things easier since she’ll be living with us.”
“We thought the same about Cynthia, remember?”
“All right, so Cynthia turned out to be a conservative good-girl who was saving herself for marriage—no wonder she’s off on a missionary trip to Africa. I didn’t get the vibe that Allison is a goody two-shoes. There was something about the way she looked at me from under her lashes.”
“I hear you. I felt the same. The way she looked at me when she first arrived… and throughout the time we spent getting to know each other before you got back. Cynthia has always been oblivious to us and to the twelve men who come to work on the ranch every single day. Even in the midst of summer, when most of our guys are walking around shirtless, she never risked a peek, but I saw something flash in Allison’s eyes that suggests she’s not as innocent as my sister’s former assistant.”
“This might turn out to be a problem,” I say, rubbing my late-afternoon stubble with the tips of my fingers.
“How so?”
“I mean, it sounds like we both find her attractive. How do we approach this?”
“We shouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“But we are.”
“You got me there.” Jake looks so torn. It’s as if he’s resisting the natural urge to lose himself between a woman’s thighs. In my world, there’s nothing more sublime.
“Mind you…” I allow my sentence to hang to torture him a bit more into admitting he wants Allison as much as I do. “We’ve shared a number of irresistible women in the past when we were both attracted to the same beauty. We’ve even had a few wild weekends when we’ve been back to San Fran on vacation and left Dirk Edwards, our manager, in charge of the operations for a few days, but we’ve kept it to one-on-one sex for the past few years…”