Free Handful of Sky by Tory Cates Page A

they had just shared. Hunt put her down and sucked in a deep lungful of air.
    “That is some horse.” He spoke each word distinctly.
    Shallie laughed, infected by the joy radiating from a man who had just put in the performance of a lifetime. “You rode Pegasus,” she marveled.
    “Pegasus?”
    “I’m calling him Pegasus,” she explained, as if it were a foregone conclusion that the horse would be hers. “I’ve been saving the name for him.”
    His hands still around her waist, he gazed into her upturned face while she congratulated him with her eyes, her smile. It seemed like nothing more than the logical extension of their shared joy when he pulled her to him. Her hands slid shyly up along his arms to the smooth bulges of muscle. She felt his power pulse beneath her fingertips. The glow from his accomplishment bathed them both in a golden radiance. He smelled the way his wild, whooping cry of exultation had sounded. Their bodies met at the two points where her erect nipples probed the shield of flesh that was his chest. The feel of his chest against the sensitive points of her breasts both disturbed and disarmedShallie. Before she herself was even fully aware of it, Hunt saw and responded to the longing that shone from her face.
    Lightly, tentatively, his mouth grazed hers. Her breath sounded with a ragged catch in her throat. It was the signal that triggered the release of Hunt’s passion. He gathered her to himself, crushing her lips with his, pressing her body against his. His thatch of springy curls tickled the palms of Shallie’s hands as she raked her fingers through it.
    Shallie clung to him. Never had a kiss affected her this way. She felt as if her legs wouldn’t hold her, as if her very bones had melted in the white-hot flame that smoldered in her belly, fanning waves of dizzying heat through her. It had been so long since she’d felt a man’s body burning against her, making her aware of the softness of her own flesh.
    Since rodeo had become her life, rodeo cowboys were the only men she met and the only men she absolutely could not allow herself to become involved with. That was the surest way she could imagine to become a standing joke with the men behind the chutes. She’d heard their crude jibes often enough to know that no bedroom conquest was sacred. She had no intention of ever allowing herself to be used as the butt of such locker-room jesting.
    As if reinforcing her resolution, Pegasus whinniedin the shadowed corner of the arena. She pressed away from Hunt.
    “We’d better get him back in the corral.” Her voice sounded as wobbly as she felt. Hunt’s arms around her were as secure as the bars of a prison. For a long moment he didn’t unlock them.
    Then, “You’re right. That outlaw nearly jerked my arm out of its socket. If I don’t soak it I’m going to feel like something that was ridden hard and hung up wet by tomorrow, and I’ll have to let you teach all those young studs coming for the rodeo school how to ride broncs.”
    When Shallie’s prize was safely corralled, Hunt asked, “Shall we drink to your find?”
    Shallie hesitated, afraid to speak. What was a simple invitation to Hunt represented much more to her. She wasn’t certain exactly what she felt for Hunt McIver, just that he stirred emotions in her which no man had ever touched before and that more time in his company would only intensify those dangerous feelings.
    While she was still grappling for an answer, Hunt took her hand in his. Shallie let him lead her up the hill to the dark stone house at its summit.

C hapter 6
    A maze of oak-lined paths led Shallie and Hunt past the fifty-year-old house’s main entrance to a separate apartment. Inside, it reflected a character far different from that of the main house. The low-slung sectional furnishings in a rough-woven charcoal fabric were stylishly modern. A thick pewter-gray carpet covered the wide expanse of the living room. A picture window opened into the night,