Fated for Love (16 page)

It felt like a hug. She didn’t know she could feel anything like that from a horse. She petted Trina. “Hi. She is sweet, isn’t she?”

“She is. She likes you.” Wes pressed his cheek to hers. “She feels what you feel. If you remember that, you’ll connect with her. If you’re fearful, she’ll be fearful. If you’re calm, she’ll be calm.”

She was trying to be calm, but his warm breath brushed against her neck, and she had no chance at being calm with that going on, or with his arms wrapped around her middle and his hips against her butt.
Oh boy
.

Callie turned around, hands pressed flat against his chest.
Oh, that’s worse!
“Wes, I’m not sure I can calm down with you teaching me to ride.”

He grinned, and his head fell back with a deep, sexy laugh that made her smile and feel a little silly.

“Well, then, we just might have a problem.” He kissed her forehead before she banged it against his chest.

“What am I going to do?” He was laughing, and she was so damn turned on that her nipples were hard. This was not good. She had to get past this crazy desire to tear his clothes off so she could function like a normal woman.
Serious. Be serious
. She looked up at him and—
damn it
—between his playful smile and the desire in his eyes, she was a goner.

“I can’t do it.” She took a step back and regretfully peeled her hands from his chest. He took a step forward and she held her palms out. “No. Stay there. Just…stay there. And if you could somehow become uglier, that would be good.”

He arched a brow.

She ran her eyes down his godlike body. “Ugh. And can you maybe get fat or something?” She spun around and looked at the horse.

“Cal.”

She heard him take a step toward her, felt heat radiating from him. “No. Stop. Don’t come closer. I can’t be calm with you near me. Can’t you have someone else teach me?”

His hands found her hips, and she closed her eyes. His stubbly jaw pressed against her cheek, and she breathed him in.

Okay, forget it.
Just stay right here forever. I don’t need to ride the darn horse
.

“I can get someone else to teach you,” he whispered.

She heard regret in his voice, cushioned by a thin layer of understanding. She should be adult enough to deal with this, and as much as the rush of new feelings excited her, this particular issue made her feel weak. She might be shy, but Callie didn’t like feeling weak. This wasn’t fear that was holding her back; it was lust. She could handle lust.

Couldn’t she?

Damn it
. She had to be able to.

She faced him again, and the feel of him against her drew a disastrously wanton groan from her lungs.

No I definitely cannot do this
.

Wes laughed again and brushed away the hair that had fallen into her eyes.

“Let me get Butch.”

“No. This is stupid. I should be able to calm down. Do you really think the horse will feel a difference?”

He looked at Trina. Callie swore the darn horse was smiling.

“I think it’s more about you than the horse. You need to be comfortable and confident when you climb on her. If you can’t focus, and you startle or kick her in the ribs, she probably won’t run like the other horse did, but she’d definitely pick up her pace.”

“Okay. You know what? This is stupid. I can totally handle this.”
I think. I hope
. She pushed away from him again and drew her shoulders back. “I can do this. I don’t need Butch.” She glanced over her shoulder at Wes. “I need you. I just need to get my own…thoughts”—
desires, lust
—“under control. I can do this.” With determination, she concentrated on the horse.

“You sure?”

“More than sure.”
I think
. “Just don’t look at me like you want to kiss me.”

He arched a brow again.

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, or it’ll be dark by the time I get up on that horse.”

After a few embarrassing minutes, Callie made it up onto the saddle. Wes stood sentinel beside her, and surprisingly, Callie felt confident. The round pen was too small for the horse to take off at full speed—or at least she hoped it was. She reminded herself not to dig her heels into the horse’s ribs and to hold the reins loosely.

She could do this. She refused to be the girl who needed a chaperone on a horse forever. So what if she was in the library club throughout elementary school, and while her friends were taking horseback riding lessons she was making lists of her favorite authors and pretending she was Snow White or Cinderella? That didn’t mean she
couldn’t
learn to ride. Even if it wasn’t her favorite thing to do and it wasn’t as safe as books and reading chairs or walking in a park on solid ground. It was something Wes loved, and for him, for them, she could do this.

“Are you ready? I’m going to walk with you. Remember to handle the reins gently. When you want her to turn, you need to guide her, give her the clues she needs. Your body is the steering wheel. Tighten the leg on the side you want her to veer toward, lean slightly that way with your head and shoulder, and loosen the reins on that side.”

Callie nodded. “Look, lean, ease up in the direction I want to turn, give a little squeeze with that leg and tighten up the reins on the other side. I can do that.”

“Impressive. Ready?”

Not really
. “Yes.”

“You’ve got this, Cal.”

She didn’t think as she leaned down and kissed him. “Thank you.”

“I think I should be thanking you.”

“Not for the kiss, silly, for this. For believing in me enough to put up with my ridiculous fears to help me.”

His smile softened. “Put up with? I hope you’re kidding, because if this is the worst thing I have to
put up with
where you’re concerned, I’m a lucky man.” He glanced at Cutter heading toward the barn. “I have a feeling that watching men gawk at you is going to be far more difficult than helping waylay your fears.”

A lucky man
. That sent a little thrill through her. The muscle in his jaw twitched, and she knew he had been referring to Cutter.

“Wes, Cutter didn’t act inappropriately with me. He was telling me about how much he loves working here and how much he respects you.”

Wes knitted his brows together again. He shifted his gaze to Cutter, and when he brought his attention back to Callie, his eyes were dark and serious.

“Let’s walk,” he said.

Trina was a graceful horse. Callie could feel the power beneath her, the shifting of the horse’s muscles even with her slow gait. Callie felt more in control of her body and her actions. Wes’s eyes shifted between the horse and Callie as he walked alongside them, and she knew her confidence was bolstered because of his faith in her and his desire to help her experience more than the inside of a library and expand her world—
with
him. It occurred to her how similar that was to the reasons her friends had brought her to the ranch in the first place, and the similarity comforted her.

“I think I’m okay.” She watched his eyes turn serious again. “Really. I feel good about her, and I think I can do it.”

“I
know
you can.” He went to the edge of the riding ring and watched her.

Callie sat up tall, and as the minutes passed, her confidence grew. She guided Trina to the left, then to the right, just to be sure she had the motions down, and half an hour later, with Wes beaming up at her with pride in his gorgeous dark eyes, she leaned forward and hugged Trina’s thick, powerful neck.

Thank you
.

She felt empowered and proud that she’d taken the chance to get up on the horse. As Wes lifted her down from the horse, her newfound confidence and excitement coalesced. She jumped into his arms, wrapped her legs around his waist, and kissed him. She didn’t hesitate as she deepened the kiss, and when his hand slid to the curve of her butt, she shivered with the thrill of it all. She drew back and ran her hands along his cheeks.

“I did it.” She felt her cheeks stretched tight with a smile.

“You did it.” He kissed her again. “I never had any doubt.”

“I didn’t really want to do it on my own when it was so much fun riding with you wrapped around me.”

“I have a feeling I’ll be wrapped around you for a very long time, Callie Barnes.”

When she kissed him again, she felt as though she’d loved him for a hundred years, and when he tightened his grip on her, she wanted to love him for a hundred more.

CALLIE COULD BARELY believe she was riding a horse, much less riding it down a mountain. Granted, the trail was wide and felt more level than sloped, and she was nowhere near the edge of the mountain, but still. She was actually riding a horse. She’d always thought she was happy with her life. She had a job she loved and friends she adored, parents who loved and protected her, and a peaceful life in general. What she hadn’t taken into consideration, and apparently her friends, and now Wes, had, was how much more there was to life than the safe corner where she’d tucked herself away. Her world was expanding right before her eyes, with activities and with Wes, and she found herself wondering how she could have closed herself off for so long.

She thought about her parents. Her mother worked in the administrative offices of an oil company, and her father was the director of a health care company. Family vacations were two weeks of city travel, where they’d visit museums, libraries, and historic institutions. They weren’t outdoorsy people, but they were a happy and loving family. Callie had never felt as though she were missing out on anything. But as she rode down the mountain on a horse that seemed to enjoy the ride as much as she was, surrounded by miles of wildflowers, brush, and tall trees, with the scent of pine and earth filling her lungs, she realized that there was much more out there to experience. Wes had been right. If she’d given in to her fears, she’d never have known what she was missing.

Wes glanced over his shoulder and smiled, and she knew there was more she couldn’t ignore. She was falling hard for him, in a way that had the feel of permanence. That should scare her into hesitation, but instead, it filled her with hope.

They followed the trail around a bend, and a line of white tents came into view.

“Look! We made it!” Christine hollered.

Callie wondered if she’d thought they might not and wrote it off to Christine being Christine. Always the jokester. She felt like they were riding into a postcard with the sun riding low in the sky, casting its last streak of sunlight through two mountain peaks in the distance. The trail gave way to a field of grass, beyond which were acres of tall grass and a forested mountainside to their left and a glistening lake, complete with a rocky shoreline, to their right.

Callie guided the horse across the grassy area between the lake and the mountains to a dirt clearing, where four thick tree trunks, stripped of their bark and cut to ten feet, served as benches around a rocky fire pit. At one end of the clearing was a long picnic table. An enormous orange cooler sat on the ground beside the table, and on the far side of the clearing, constructed against a backdrop of thick forest, were several tents. Some tents were built in the style of tepees; others were rectangular in shape with a tall peak in the center. The flaps of the tents were tied open, and where there might be metal poles on a typical structure, there were thick branches secured to the canvas tents with rope. There was a cot in each tent, and as the horse strolled closer, Callie noticed that some tents had two cots.

Callie glanced at her friends, then at Wes, who was a living, breathing fantasy sitting in profile on a black horse. She hadn’t connected the idea of camping to sleeping—or rather, not sleeping—in tents with the overnight trip. She thought of the naughty possibilities. Slipping into his tent after dark, or maybe he’d sneak into hers. She glanced back at Kathie, who flashed a knowing smile that made Callie’s heart beat faster. Obviously, she was a little slow on the uptake, because when she looked at Christine and Bonnie, they also had a look of mischief in their eyes. Callie ran through a quick mental checklist, just in case they decided to take their relationship to the next level, and boy, did she ever hope they would. She was on the pill. She was wearing lacy panties and a matching bra. Who was she kidding? She only owned lacy panties and bras. They were her guilty pleasures. She should buy stock in Victoria’s Secret. Callie liked to feel feminine, and she liked the lace and frills that Victoria’s Secret was known for. She had never been a thong girl, like Kathie and Christine. Even the idea of a thong up her butt crack was uncomfortable.

She was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice everyone else had dismounted their horses until Wes was standing beside her with his arms outstretched.

“Ready, babe?”

She nearly fell into his arms at the sound of
babe
in his deep voice. He made the word sound sexy and rugged at once. When her feet hit the ground, she was still thinking about the tents—and Wes. Naked.
Oh, good Lord
. Her body flashed hot.

Wes leaned down and whispered, “You’re blushing.”

She whimpered a little, and that made her cheeks heat even more.

He held her against him. “You seriously cannot make those sexy little noises, or I’ll never be able to keep my hands off you.”

Holy. Cow
. There was so much promise in his voice that Callie had to clench her eyes shut to keep from whimpering again.

“Okay, lover boy. What now?” Christine stood by her horse with her arms crossed, tapping her foot.

Callie stepped back, giving Wes room to do his job. And giving herself room to remember how to function. How would she make it until tonight with that promise in her head? And what if he didn’t come to her tonight?

She’d never wanted to be touched and to touch a man so desperately in her life.

“Tents, food, drinks.” He pointed to each area as he spoke. “You can choose whichever tent you’d like. The cooler is full of food and drinks, and we’ll cook over the fire tonight. Tomorrow we’ll go down to the river to go fishing, and if you’re up for it, we’ll go for a hike.” He pointed to the far corner of the camp. “There are chemical toilets behind the tents.”