Christmas With the Billionaire Rancher (6 page)

Her lips parted. She meant to respond to him, but all she could manage was a throaty moan. Nate shifted, rolling over her and coming to rest on his knees between her legs. He grabbed Chloe by the thighs and pulled her down until she was laid out on the bed. His gaze burned as he scooted down until his hips and legs dangled off the edge of the bed. Chloe's knees fell open and Nate's breath brushed her heated and sensitive skin.

“What about dinner?” Her voice went husky and thick.

“The only thing I'm hungry for right now is your pussy, Chloe.”

Holy crap. The things he said to her. Chloe's stomach did a backflip, lodging itself in her throat before floating down on a cloud of sheer bliss. He dragged the flat of his tongue from her opening and ended on a flick at the tip of her clit. Her back bowed off the bed and her thighs quivered. “Nate!” His name left her lips in a breathy rush. “That feels so good.”

He angled her hips up toward his mouth. The pressure of his fingertips indenting the flesh as he held onto her hips only pushed Chloe further toward the edge. He held her with purpose; every swirl, every pass of his tongue carefully orchestrated to give her the greatest amount of pleasure. Nate took her clit between his lips and sucked. Chloe's thighs tightened on either side of his head and she trembled. He reached to her thighs and spread them wide, holding her open to him. He refused to let her move, pinning her down with his mouth and his hands. Her breath came in wild pants as she tried to control her spiraling world. She knew that Nate didn't want her to be controlled or quiet. He wanted wild shouts and reckless abandon.

“Oh god.” Chloe thrashed her head from side to side. She was helpless to do anything but feel and Nate brought her to the cusp of release with every slow, methodical pass of his tongue. “Ohgod ohgod ohgod…” A cry that was half pleasure, half frustration built in her chest. “I want to come, Nate. I need to. I want you inside of me.”

“No.” The word vibrated over her clit and she shuddered. “I want you to come on my tongue.”

His words were the final push. Chloe toppled over the edge and Nate buried his face between her thighs, lapping unmercifully at her pussy as she came. He held her legs wide and every inch of her body quaked violently as wave after wave of intense sensation stole over her. Chloe cried out, deep sobs of pleasure that left her throat raw and dry. The orgasm seemed to go on forever, a violent storm of passion and sensation that left her weak and shaking.

Nate brought her down slowly, soft easy passes of his tongue that were goddamned luxurious. Chloe's body went boneless. She wouldn't have been able to move if she'd wanted to. “I think it's your turn,” she murmured on a deep sigh. The thought of taking Nate into her mouth stirred her flagging desire.

He kissed the inside of her thigh, downward to her knees. His kisses brushed the side of her knee and Chloe squirmed. “That tickles.”

Nate smiled against her skin. “Oh yeah? Next time I might have to find where else you're ticklish.”

“Nope. I said it's your turn.” She wasn't about to
not
reciprocate. Not after he'd given her one of the best orgasms of her life.

“Later.” He continued to kiss her. Warm, wet passes of his mouth.

She guided his head up to look at her. “Later?”

“Yep.” A slow smile grew on his full lips and Chloe's breath stalled as she realized she'd never seen him give a genuine, open smile before. Magnificent. “If I'm going to fuck you all night, I need to fuel up.”

Dear lord
. Nate Christensen was going to be the death of her.

Six

“So, I'm assuming you don't live in Dallas.”

Nate couldn't take his eyes off of her. He'd never met anyone like Chloe. His intensity had a tendency to scare people away. But she responded to it. Matched it, even.

“No. I live in Sanger. It's a couple of hours away.”

“I've never been there, but I'm familiar. What does a newly moneyed billionaire do in a tiny town like Sanger?”

Nate took a bite of his cheeseburger and chewed. “Run cows,” he responded before washing it all down with a swig of soda.

“Really?” Chloe smiled. Blinding and brilliant as the sun. “You're a cowboy?”

“Sort of,” Nate said with a snort. “Trying anyway. My ranch isn't big. And I'm not a billionaire,” he said as an afterthought.

“Okay, a multimillionaire?”

He pursed his lips. “I won't be that either, if I get my way.”

Chloe's brows knitted. She swirled a fry around in her ketchup before popping it in her mouth. She'd devoured most of her BLT already. He wasn't the only one who'd needed to tank up. “Is it true that you joined the Navy to get away from your dad?”

Nate cocked a brow. “Doing your homework on me, Miss Benson?”

She averted her gaze and shrugged. “People talk.”

“Only in certain circles.”

“With my line of work, I have a tendency to butt into those circles.”

Nate laughed. Chloe certainly wasn't the sort of woman who tiptoed into any situation. “Tell me about your work.” He knew he shouldn't go there. It would be best to keep their relationship impersonal. Sex and nothing else. He wasn't interested in settling down and sooner or later, the high of being with Chloe would wear off and he'd move on. Curiosity won out over good sense, though. She intrigued him. How could he not want to know more about her?

“There's not much to tell.” Chloe's demeanor changed. Her gaze wandered, no longer focused on him and she picked at her sandwich as though looking for a distraction. “I started working for the Make-A-Wish Foundation right out of college. It was great, but I wanted more control. The work was rewarding, but
hard
. So much sadness. I wanted to make kids' lives better, but I wanted to shift my focus to underprivileged and at-risk kids. Sports were always a really big part of my life growing up and I wanted to share that with kids who might not know how good it feels to be an athlete. So I rounded up a few donations and started my own organization. We've kept it local so far. It takes a lot of money to keep a charity afloat. I'd like to branch out eventually. Go national. Or global. This isn't about recognition for me. I just want to make the kids' lives better in any way that I can.”

“Sounds like a sweet gig,” Nate remarked. “Doing what you love.”

She gave him a soft smile. “The foundation means everything to me.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Nate was too wrapped up in his own head—to preoccupied with Chloe—to talk. Unlike Nate, her passions ranged far and wide. Her intensity in the bedroom didn't come from a need to quiet her mind and live strictly in the moment. She had a passion for life. For her job. And that fire translated into the way she kissed, touched, fucked. Nate envied that fire. On his best days all he felt was a gnawing desperation and numbness that he couldn't escape. He hadn't loved anything—or anyone—in a long damned time.

“How about you, Nate?” Chloe's soft voice pulled him from his thoughts. “What gets a soon-to-be non-billionaire fired up?”

“You,” he replied without guile.

Chloe's cheeks flushed. Damn, he loved the way she looked. “I'm serious.”

“So am I.”

“Did you love the Navy?”

Nate's gut knotted up. He'd started this. Drawn her into conversation to learn something about her. Now he was agitated that she wanted to know more about him? “I loved the challenge,” he said after a while. “The excitement. And the thought that I was serving a greater good and protecting people. The SEALs were my family for six years.”

Chloe studied him. Her green eyes were round and wide. Her kind, caring expression damned near gutted him. “Why did you leave?”

Nate swallowed against the golf-ball-sized lump that rose in his throat. “I could have reenlisted,” he said. “But I lost two team members and an asset during an extraction mission. Nothing was the same after that, so I got out.”

“I'm so sorry, Nate.” He didn't want her pity. Couldn't stand the compassion shining in her beautiful eyes.

“Don't be.” He immediately regretted the harshness of his response. “It comes with the job.”

The last time someone asked about his time with the SEALs, Nate had answered with a resounding, “Fuck off.” Chloe wasn't just some curious asshole who thought the job was one big action movie. He sensed her sincerity. The lump in his throat grew bigger.
Goddamn it
.

“I can't imagine what it's like to lose someone in that situation. You prepare for it, sure. But when it happens, it still blindsides you.”

Exactly
. Jesus, she understood him like very few people did. “It does.”

“I used to see it a lot. The families that came to Make-A-Wish—they were at the end of the line. They knew what to expect. They'd spent months, sometimes years preparing but when they lost their child, it was always a shock. It still hurt.”

Nick rubbed at his sternum. The familiar anxiety slowly crept up on him, tightening his chest and constricting his airway. His ears rang and his heart pounded. If he didn't get some air, he was going to throw up. Or pass the hell out.

He shot up out of his chair with enough force to send it toppling to the floor behind him. He didn't look at Chloe—couldn't—as he rushed past her and threw open the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. He gripped the back of his neck and laced his fingers together as he took several deep, cleansing breaths. There wasn't enough fucking oxygen in the world to clear his head. His world was slowly unraveling.

“Nate?” Chloe's voice caressed his ears, so gentle it speared his heart.

“I need a second.” What a way to make an impression.

“It's an anxiety attack. It'll pass.”

“I know it will.” Snapping at her wasn't going to help anything. She was trying to help, for shit's sake.

“Come inside. I'll help you take your mind off of it.”

Nate let his head drop between his shoulders. She could see right through him, couldn't she? Two nights together and Chloe had his number. Knew why she was here and what he was using her for. Shame welled hot in Nate's throat. He was a son of a bitch for allowing this to happen in the first place. And he was a low-life bastard because he was going to go back in that room and fuck her again. Fuck her until his brain and body were too spent for anything else. In letting Chloe distract him from his past, Nate feared that he was developing a far more debilitating addiction. Because after tonight, he didn't think he'd be able to let her go.

*   *   *

Chloe should have never broached the subject of his enlistment. She knew better than to open festering wounds. Had dealt with countless families who lived with grief, loss, and helplessness on a daily basis. The more they talked, the wilder Nate's expression had become. Like an animal caught in a snare with no other choice but to chew its own leg off or die. She'd pushed him too far.

She reached up and wrapped her fingers around his elbow. He wouldn't let her coax him to relax his grip. His hands were locked behind his neck, the knuckles turning white. Tense didn't begin to describe the way his muscles bunched at his back, fanning out from the solid wings at either side of his torso and tapering down to his narrow waist. He wouldn't budge and so Chloe changed her tactics, stepping behind him to lay her palms to the muscles she'd just been studying.

She'd ease his anxiety and tension whether he wanted her to or not. It was going to take more than a pit bull expression and a few barked words to scare her off.

Chloe reached out and gripped the mounds of muscle that rounded his shoulders. She massaged in slow circles with the pads of her thumbs, kneading every individual knot until she felt them loosen. Nate let out a slow breath and his hands relaxed their grip a fraction of an inch. Downward, she traced each vertebra until she got to the small of his back where it met the gentle swoop of his ass. So much power in his body. He exuded strength. The man could have been cut from marble.

Outward to his torso, Chloe focused her efforts on his laterals, pressing with the pad of her thumb and allowing her fingertips to splay out over his ribs. Nate's breathing grew deeper, more even, though he refused to release his grip on the back of his neck. For almost a half hour, Chloe continued. Over his shoulders, down his spine, up the sides of his torso, and then she started again. When he finally unlaced his fingers and let his arms drop, Chloe knew he'd finally calmed down.

She rose up on her tiptoes and spoke close to his ear, “Let's go inside, Nate.”

Without a word he turned and followed her back into the room. She grabbed his hand and led him to the bed. “Lie down.”

Again, as though he had no choice but to do as she said, he eased himself down onto the mattress. Chloe knelt down beside him and began to massage the solid muscles of his arms and across his chest. “It's okay to freak out, Nate.” He let his eyes drift shut but she knew he was listening. “No one could go through that and just brush it off. You can't beat yourself up for it, either. It's okay to
feel
. And you don't ever have to be embarrassed about it. Especially with me.”

His body relaxed into the mattress and Chloe soothed him with gentle touches and smooth passes of her palms, interspersed with harder concentrations of her thumbs and fingertips. His breathing grew more even and the deep furrow that marred his brow eased until he no longer appeared distressed. She thought that maybe Nate had fallen asleep until his hands reached out to grip her wrists.

Chloe paused and her heart began a wild rhythm in her chest.

Nate's eyes opened, the intense hazel depths boring straight through her. Her breath caught as he sat up. He released his hold on her wrists and unbuttoned her shirt before dragging it down her shoulders. Chloe shrugged it the rest of the way off and it fell to the floor with a rustle of fabric. Nate reached up and cupped her cheek as he brought her mouth slowly to his. The kiss was slow, sensual. A lazy caress that drew Chloe's stomach tight and caused her blood to race through her veins. When he pulled away, Nate simply stared for a long moment before pulling Chloe down beside him on the bed. He tucked her body against his and the heat from his chest nearly burned against her back. A long, exhausted sigh escaped from between his lips. Nate wrapped his arms around her, hugging Chloe tight to him as though he was afraid she might try to get away.