Free Pride (In Wilde Country Book 1) by Sandra Marton Page A

of giving a man some kind of power over her, and how come instead of not liking that she had to do that to look at Luca’s face she’d—she’d found it a turn-on?
    Was it that he’d stood up to her? Men never did. They were always as eager as puppies to please her. To impress her.
    Bellini hadn’t tried to impress her at all.
    In fact, she was pretty sure he hadn’t liked her any more than she’d liked him.
    All he’d wanted was to get inside her panties.
    Which was what she’d wanted, too.
    Okay. So those things made him a little different, but they didn’t explain why the sex had been so hot.
    A possibility nibbled at the edges of her mind, one she didn’t like, but one of the things she’d always believed in was honesty. With herself, anyway.
    Cheyenne let the water wash away the last vestiges of shampoo.
    She’d had the feeling that he’d held back. That he’d wanted to take her instead of letting himself be taken. Well, nothing unusual in that. There was almost always that to contend with, a man who’d let her do her thing and then try to take over, but she never let it happen and they were cool with it.
    Bellini hadn’t been cool with it.
    She’d sensed that need in him. The hunger to reverse their positions, to pin her beneath him and ride her as a stallion rode a mare.
    But she wasn’t into me-Tarzan-you-Jane sex.
    That was why she’d sneaked out of the room while he slept, because she’d known that things would be different once he woke, that he would not tolerate having control wrested from him again, and the amazing thing was that the thought had not so much frightened her as it had…
    As it had excited her.
    “Crazy,” she said, as she shut off the shower. Totally, completely crazy.
    Why would a woman want to be taken? Want to give herself up to a man’s touch, his body, his control? Why would a woman want to bend to a man’s domination? To anyone’s domination?
    Been there, done that, thank you very much—and what was the point in reliving what had happened hours ago with a stranger in a cheap motel room?
    Dr. Will was right about one thing.
    What mattered was getting on with your life.
    And she was doing exactly that.
    The ranch in Texas. That was getting on with your life, wasn’t it? Maybe she wasn’t in such demand as a model anymore. So what? She’d made a fortune, a veritable fortune starting when she was seventeen, and she’d had the brains to invest it wisely. She was twenty-nine now, and she had one huge pile of dough.
    Cheyenne wrapped herself in an oversized bath towel and stepped onto the heated bathroom floor. She dried off briskly, hung the towel on the rack and reached for her hairbrush.
    She had not spent her money on drugs or clothes or bling. No fancy cars. No Manhattan townhouse.
    Instead, she’d turned it over to the smartest broker she knew and she’d watched it grow.
    The result was that she owned this condo as well as a small house on a lake in upstate New York where she kept her beloved pair of Thoroughbred horses.
    She’d purchased them on a whim—amazing, because she wasn’t given to whims, but she’d been on a shoot at a horse farm in Kentucky and a stable hand had spoken casually about a pair of horses kept in a small barn by themselves. He’d said that they didn’t win races, that one had some kind of hoof problem and the other was off its feed.
    “Bad investments,” the guy had said, and shrugged.
    “So what happens to them?” Cheyenne had asked, because, right away, she’d had a bad feeling.
    “The owner will cut his losses.”
    “How?”
    “Best of all worlds? Sell ’em to a riding academy. Otherwise, who knows? Dog food factory. Or maybe, you know, they’re insured for a lot of money.” He’d given her a sideways glance. “Sometimes, horses like them just, you know, they just get real sick…”
    “Would the owner actually…”
    The guy had looked at her as if she were an idiot. And she had to be, to ask the question. The