In the Cowboy's Bed (Pleasure Ridge Ranch)

Erin James stalked into her office Monday morning still mad enough that she was pretty sure she was giving off a "Do
not
talk to me" vibe. When she reached her desk in the Chesapeake Insurance Company’s claims department, she dropped her purse in its designated drawer and plunked down in her seat. Heaven help anyone who actually wanted sympathy from her today.

"That good of a weekend, huh?" asked her cubicle mate, Hillary McEntire.

The third part of their trio, Amy Fenton, came around the edge of the fabric-covered cube wall, steaming cup of coffee in hand. "What’s wrong?"

Erin spun in her chair toward her friends, noting they still had ten minutes before they were officially open for business and had to start taking calls. "Adam and I were supposed to go out on his boat yesterday, but he called to tell me he had an emergency project come up at work. So, stupid me, I thought I’d surprise him at his office with a picnic lunch."

"Oh, hell, this isn’t going to be good," Hillary said.

"Yeah, he was surprised all right. So was the chick he was humping from behind on his desk."

"Asshole," Amy said. "I hope you stapled his dick to the desk."

"No, but that sure is an attractive idea." Erin braced her elbow against her desk and dropped her hand into her upturned palm. "I just turned and ran."

"You don’t need him," Hillary said. "It’s good you know what kind of creep he is before you got any more serious about him."

Erin sighed. "That’s what you said about Jason."

"Jason who stashed porn magazines in your bathroom? Well, was I wrong?"

"No," Erin said grudgingly. "Ugh, I have horrible taste in men. Sometimes I wish I could just buy the perfect guy, someone with a money-back guarantee."

Amy smiled. "Like a hunky cowboy who was romantic and catered to your every desire?"

"Yeah, just like that. Too bad they don’t exist."

"I think maybe they do," Amy said. "Let’s all go to lunch today." She looked at Erin. "I may have a cure for what ails you."

"Oh, no, you have that wheels-turning look," Erin said.

"Yeah, but you’re going to like where these wheels take you."

The phones began ringing, signaling that the overnight answering service had redirected calls to the office. Amy disappeared around the cubicle to her desk and Hillary picked up a call, leaving Erin to worry about what Amy had up her sleeve.

* * * *

By the time the morning passed, Erin was ready to walk away from not only men in general but also her job. It hit her anew that she rarely talked to people who were happy. Seriously, who was happy when they had to call the claims department of their insurance company? Despite her six years of experience, maybe it was time to figure out another path.

She forwarded her phone to voice mail and turned toward Hillary. "I’ll meet you all in the lobby in a few minutes. I’ve got to run by the restroom first."

"Okay," Hillary said as she made a note on a claim file.

After Erin went to the restroom and washed her hands, she stared at herself in the mirror, looking for some telltale sign of why she always attracted loser guys. Oh, it was a special kind of loser, the ones who looked great at the beginning. Successful businessmen, an up-and-coming musician, an attorney. But those were just façades for the intense jerkiness beneath.

She turned her head to the side, examined her profile and smoothed her long, blond hair. Maybe she should cut her hair off short, die it black and see if that changed her dating luck. She shook her head and wondered if her friends would believe her if she faked illness and skipped lunch. Whatever Amy had cooking up was likely to be crazy, crazy, crazy.

Well, what was wrong with crazy? She’d tried responsible and respectable, and look where that had gotten her. Twenty-nine with a job she realized she didn’t like and no prospects for happily ever after.

With a deep breath she headed down to the lobby to meet her friends.

A few minutes later, they seated themselves at one of the outdoor tables at Café by the Bay. It was a beautiful spring day in Virginia with the sun reflecting off the blue water of Chesapeake Bay. It was almost enough to make Erin forget the site of Adam humping that skinny girl like a dog. For a moment, she wondered what that was like, having a guy jackhammering into him from behind.

Good grief, what was she thinking? Thank goodness it was warm outside and she could blame the heat in her cheeks on the sun.

After they placed their orders, Amy pulled what looked like a brochure from her purse and slid forward in her seat. "Do you believe in fate?" she asked Erin.

"Ugh, I don’t know."

"Well, I do," Amy said. "Because a friend of mine from when I lived in California has a business that I think is perfect for you right now." She slid the brochure across the table.

Erin picked it up and admired the scenic shot of mountains and cowboys on horseback. A gold belt buckle label was overlayed with the words Pleasure Ridge Ranch. "What is this, a dude ranch?" She took a drink of her iced tea, but that proved a bad idea when she opened the brochure and saw some of the pictures inside. Scenic landscapes they were not. She choked on her tea and nearly shot it out her nose.

Hillary grabbed the brochure. "Well, hello there," she said with appreciation. "Now that’s my kind of dude ranch."

Amy snatched the brochure out of her hands and gave it back to Erin. Pictures of bare-chested cowboys, couples in bed obviously enjoying themselves and a silhouette of naked figures in a steamy shower stared up at Erin. She could almost hear the moaning and panting as the couples hurried toward climaxes. She squirmed in her seat.

"What is this place?"

"A place where your every wish and desire can be fulfilled," Amy said.

Erin spotted those exact words on the brochure, the motto of the Pleasure Ridge Ranch, evidently.

"You said you wanted to buy the perfect guy, and you can." Amy took a sip of her own tea and waggled her eyebrows.

Erin closed the brochure and leaned forward after checking that no one was close enough at the neighboring tables to hear her. "You’re telling me I should get myself a man-whore?"

"Only if you want to. If you read the brochure, you’ll see that sex doesn’t have to be part of the package. You can go all romance if you want to, candlelit dinners and such, but man, why would you want to? Did you see those guys in the pictures?"

"Kind of hard to miss them." In fact, she was a little surprised to realize there was text in the brochure. How was anyone supposed to be able to read the package options when the cowboys’, uh, packages were demanding attention? "I can’t go some place like this."

"Why not?"

"Because it’s...wrong."

"There you go, being the little goody girl again," Amy said. "Have you ever done something naughty just because it felt good? Don’t you think you deserve some real pleasure with no strings attached? Hell, guys do it all the time."

A little voice in the back of Erin’s head whispered that Amy was right. For twenty-nine years she’d done what was right, what was expected. What would it feel like to just toss responsibility out the window and go on pure animal instinct? Could she allow herself to find out?

"I think you should go," Hillary said. "You can always just ogle the hot cowboys and let your imagination go wild."

"Or more," Amy said, a wicked grin playing at her pink-frosted lips.

Erin looked up to make sure the waitress wasn’t approaching the table and tried to force herself to focus on the text in the brochure. But, damn it, her eyes kept going toward that couple in the bed, the look of ecstasy on their faces. Had she ever looked like that? Well, if she hadn’t, it was because that piece of male hotness wasn’t the one pressed against her, flesh to heated flesh, delicious friction sparking where their bodies met.

Good grief, she was going to have an orgasm right here at the table. She reached for her drink and downed half of it, causing Amy to laugh.

"Warm?" Amy asked.

Erin thumped the brochure on the table. "You gave me this thing. What do you think?"

"I think you need to go and ride one of those cowboys until he can’t walk home."

An image of doing exactly that made the heat flooding her body tick up a few degrees. What the hell? Hillary was right. She could go and ogle a little, maybe indulge in a kiss or two, heavy petting if she got truly adventurous.

"Okay, I’ll go."

"I’m glad you said that," Amy said. "Because I booked you a cabin for next week."

"Next week?"

"Yeah, and don’t worry about the price," Amy said. "My friend gave me the friends discount. All I ask is that you tell me all the dirty details when you get back."

And damned if a parade of dirty details didn’t start marching through Erin’s head.

Erin got out of her little rental SUV next to her cabin in the mountains an hour outside Reno and turned in a slow circle. Man, this place was beautiful. Craggy mountaintops, an impossibly blue sky, the pinks and yellows of early wildflowers, and the cleanest air she thought she’d ever breathed. In the distance below her hilltop cabin sat a small lake with a mirror surface. She imagined the water was frigid.

If she did no more in the next week than sit on the front porch and stare at her surroundings, she was glad she’d agreed to this trip. She could feel the stress and worries drifting away with the breeze. And quiet. Wow, had she ever experienced any place so incredibly quiet? She closed her eyes and listened. All she heard were birds chirping, the breeze rustling the low, scrubby vegetation, and...an approaching vehicle.

Her moment of tranquility ruined, she grabbed her bags and headed toward the front door. After she unlocked it, she sat the bags inside just as a big, black pickup truck pulled up beside her SUV. She stepped to the edge of the porch just as a petite woman with a long, deep red ponytail hopped out of the truck that dwarfed her.

"Hey," the woman said as she rounded the front of the truck. "Erin?"

Erin nodded. "You must be Heidi."

"In the flesh. I’m so glad Amy talked you into checking out the place."

"It’s certainly pretty here."

Heidi shaded her eyes and looked out across the surrounding mountains. "It is, isn’t it? I never get tired of just stopping and soaking it all in. There’s something new to see every day." She turned her attention back to Erin. "But if you think that’s great, wait until you meet Justin."

"Justin?"

"Yes, the guy who will be with you this week."

"I...um, I’m not sure about the..."

"Sex?" Heidi waved a hand. "Don’t worry. You are free to do as much or as little as you like. But trust me, when you see Justin, you’re going to want to do more than sit and admire the sunsets together."

Erin did her best not to squirm. She’d been having extra hot dreams for the past week. She’d wake up with her sheets tangled, sweat beading her body and gasping for breath as the image of the man in her dreams faded away. She couldn’t recapture his image no matter how hard she concentrated.

"So, um, what am I supposed to do now?" Erin asked.

"You can get settled in. The kitchen is fully stocked, or you can order food delivered from our chef. There’s an extensive menu in your kitchen. There are also directions to our stables, the pool and our movie theater. You have to reserve times on the latter two if you want privacy." Heidi smiled a little to get her point across. "Justin will be here to meet you in about an hour."

"So soon?"

Heidi leaned one hand against the hood of her truck. "We believe in customers getting their money’s worth. You pay for a week of pleasure, you get a week of pleasure."

At the rate she was going, Erin was going to have a heart attack well before the end of the week. Maybe before hunky Justin even arrived on her doorstep.

"Just take it one step at a time," Heidi said. "I think you’ll end up really enjoying your time here if you allow yourself to let go. No one is here to judge you, which gives you permission to try anything you’ve ever wondered about. We have a pretty vast acreage here, so the cabins are far apart for more privacy."

Erin imagined all the moaning and screaming that distance could swallow.

Heidi rapped her knuckles against the hood of the truck. "I’ll let you settle in. Remember, it’s called Pleasure Ridge Ranch for a reason."

Once Heidi and her big truck disappeared down the dusty road, Erin resisted the urge to toss her bags back in the rental car and hightail it back to the Reno airport. But the idea of going back to her cubicle and her solo life at home kept her where she was. Maybe she and Justin could explore some of the hiking trails, go for a horseback ride, have a picnic down by that lake. After all, Heidi had said she could do as
little
as she wanted.

She went inside and toted her bags to the bedroom. She stopped just inside the bedroom door and stared and the enormous bed. Man, did that thing look sturdy. Made of pine logs and covered with thick, white coverings and pillows, she imagined herself getting lost in that bed. But if she had someone to share it with...

Erin shook her head and turned her back on the bed. She started putting her clothes in the dresser drawers. When she opened one to put away her underthings, she saw a whip. Sweet merciful... She slammed the drawer shut. Even if she went wild, there weren’t going to be any whips involved.

She grabbed her toiletry bag and headed to the bathroom. Wow, the room was awesome. Gorgeous tan and ivory tiles on the floor and backsplash, huge sink vanity, and a whirlpool tub in the corner. She set her bag down on the vanity and crossed to the shower. The frosted glass reminded her of that silhouette in the brochure, and a little moan escaped her lips. She opened the door to the shower and looked at all the space. Plenty of room for two people, even three. Her eyes lit on something unusual and it took her a moment to figure out there were metal handles screwed into the walls of the shower. Her breath caught as she imagined fucking so hard that you had to have an anchor to hold on to.

Her entire body went up in flames and she fled the bathroom. She refocused on more mundane things like finishing her unpacking, checking out the view from the deck outside her bedroom, and taking an inventory of the food in the kitchen and the impressive menu. But damned if her mind didn’t keep going back to those handles in the shower.

She started going through the cabinets, hoping that glasses and plates and cans of coffee would wipe away the erotic images banging away in her head. But wouldn’t you know it, she found a couple of cans of whipped cream and immediately thought of licking it from some hot cowboy’s body.

Knocking on the front door caused her to yelp and fumble the can of whipped cream she hadn’t fully realized she’d pulled from the cabinet. She shoved it back onto its shelf and slapped the cabinet door shut. She pressed her palm to her forehead and wondered what would happen if she ignored the knocking.

Cripes, it wasn’t like the guy was going to immediately push her against the wall and start stripping off her clothes. When did she become such a chicken? With a shake of her head, she crossed the living area to the front door. When she opened it, she just about swallowed her tongue. Heidi’s words bounced through her memory.

Sweet merciful heavens, Justin was hot. She tried not to think about that whipped cream, the handles in the shower, or any of those pictures in the ranch brochure. Because it was oh so easy to picture herself and this hunk of luscious man featured in the ranch’s next brochure to potential customers.

"Erin?" he asked.

Oh...my...that voice. So deep, the kind of male voice that could make a woman orgasm simply by reading the U.S. tax code in her ear.

Damn it, she couldn’t think of ears because that brought to mind the image of Justin nibbling on hers, breathing into them, making her buck off a bed like some wild horse refusing to be tamed.

"Um...yeah, that’s me." Wow, did she sound like a dork or what?

"Settling in okay?" Did he know what kind of effect his low, rumbling voice had on women?

"Um hum." She was fully aware she was staring at the wide expanse of him, imagining the cut of his muscles below that denim shirt, but she couldn’t stop. Was she drooling on herself?

He tipped back his tan Stetson and smiled, shedding more light on a face she was never, ever going to forget. Angular lines, clean-shaven, green eyes staring straight at her.

"Little nervous, huh?" he asked.

She continued to stare like she’d been struck dumb for a moment too long. "Uh, yeah, you could say that. My friends talked me into coming here."

If he kept standing there like the Greek God of Sexy Cowboys, she was indeed going to come here. At that thought, heat rushed up her neck and into her face. Did his smile just get a little wider?

"How about we just go for a walk, get to know each other a little?" he said.

Like she was going to be able to walk without tripping over her own feet. Or her tongue.

Miracle of miracles, she was able to step onto the porch and pull the door closed behind her, then actually make it down the two front steps to the ground without face planting.

Justin pointed to the right of the cabin. "There’s a trail that runs this way along the ridge, gives you a good view of the valley below."

All she could manage was a nod while hoping she didn’t look like an addlepated idiot. It didn’t help matters one bit when he turned and gave her a view of how very nicely his jeans showcased his ass. She imagined it bare and tensed as he drove into her, over and over and over again.

She slipped on a rock and nearly landed on her own ass. Only two very strong hands were there to grab her.

* * * *

Justin felt the shiver go through the woman he’d just saved from falling on her cute little behind. He’d met all kinds of women in this job, still felt an anxious knot in his gut each time he drove up to meet a new client, worrying they’d be one of the really kinky ones. He liked sex as much as the next guy, but even he had lines he wouldn’t cross. Some of the other guys probably had no problem with that stuff, but he’d screw twice as many women as long as he didn’t have to go down certain roads. Heidi knew that, so she must suspect Erin wasn’t into the whips and chains and worse shit.

Erin righted herself and took a few steps down the trail. He fell into step beside her, adjusting his natural stride to match her shorter one.

"So, Heidi says your friends sent you here. Why? Birthday present?" he asked.

"Because I found my boyfriend having sex with another woman," she said as she shoved her hands in her jeans’ back pockets.

Did she know how that made her green cotton T-shirt stretch across her breasts? When he looked at her face, her thoughts were a million miles away, totally oblivious that she was giving a show that was sure to cause hard-ons to any man within sight of her.

"I’m sorry," he said, dragging his attention away from her full, round breasts, from their perfect size.

She shrugged. "Just the latest in my string of bad choices when it comes to men. I really think you all should come with warning labels."

He barked out a laugh. Five minutes with this woman, and he already liked her. Yes, she’d ogled him a bit back at the cabin, but he hadn’t minded. He was doing a bit of ogling himself and, he had to admit, hoping that she ended up wanting more than this traipse through nature. Time to start guiding her thoughts in that very erotic direction.

"Hard to imagine you having guy trouble," he said. "The guy who cheated on you must have been an idiot or blind. You’re beautiful."

"You’re paid to say that."

"Yes, but it doesn’t make it any less true."

Her step faltered for a moment, but she did an admirable job of covering it up. When they reached the point that overlooked the lake before the trail turned away from the ridge, Erin stopped and stared down. "Does it have a name?"

"Enchantment Lake."

She nodded. "Appropriate. It looks like something out of a fairy tale."

"Or a fantasy," he said, stepping closer. He caught a whiff of some fruity scent. He liked that it wasn’t overwhelming. Neither was her makeup, and her hair fell in soft, natural waves. And he’d bed a month’s pay that blond didn’t come out of a bottle.

She didn’t acknowledge his words, just continued to stare down at that picture-perfect lake. He let the moments stretch, allowing her to set the pace of whatever there would be between them. He flirted and tempted, but he never forced. He’d heard there were women who liked being dominated, but he wasn’t into that crap either.

"So, do you all specialize in different things?" Erin asked suddenly without looking at him.

"Some do, some are open to lots of options."

"What about you?"

"I’m not a bondage or punishment kind of guy. If that’s what you want, I’ll have Heidi send you someone else."

She stared at him them. "Good grief, no." She pointed back toward the cabin. "I found a whip in the dresser and jumped back about ten feet."

He laughed a little. "There are some people who really like that kind of thing."

"Yeah, well, they’re welcome to it." She shook her head and looked off into the distance. "I’ve never been what you’d call adventurous. I believe the technical term is goodygoody. But..." She took a slow, deep breath. "I’m wondering if maybe I should try to add a little adventure to my life."

"Want some help with that?"

For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer, that she might be regretting cracking that door even a little bit. But then she turned her head toward him. "Yeah, I think I do."

He took a couple of slow steps toward her. "Turn around."

Her eyes widened a bit. "What?"

"Turn around."

She hesitated before slowly turning her back to him. He closed the rest of the distance between them and leaned next to her ear.

"I’m going to make you a very happy woman."

By the jerk of his cock in his jeans, he thought maybe he might make himself a very happy man, too. At least as happy as he ever got.