“You don’t have to do this, Johnny.”

I sensed him on the move but didn’t look at him.

“Izzy, I need you to listen to me.”

I kept shaking my head at the same time averting it. “It’s okay. I get it. You know I get it. You don’t have to do this.”

“Iz, baby, stop for a second and listen to me.”

I hit the door to the tack room, stopped and twisted only slightly to allow myself to look at his chest, a view I had because he’d gotten close.

He had a new tee on today, blue that had a faded American flag all in white on the front.

It was fabulous.

“Honestly, it’s okay. I’m fine. I expected that to happen,” I told him, though I didn’t expect to have to witness it.

“What to happen?” he asked.

I ignored that.

“And I’m still good with Mist coming here, if you are. I’ll go get him though and take care of him. It won’t be hard. Don’t worry. Just text me the address. I know someone who’ll let me use their horse trailer and Charlie has a truck that can haul.”

“Iz—”

“Thanks for coming, Johnny.” I started to open the door to the tack room. “It was sweet.” I lifted my eyes to his bearded chin and wanted to kick myself because my voice was starting to sound husky when I finished, “Be happy.”

I was going to disappear through the door but I didn’t.

The door that I’d opened nary three inches was slammed shut in front of me, and then I was turned around with a hand on my upper arm and I found myself backed up against the wooden wall to the tack room with a hand in my belly.

I looked up at Johnny.

He was angry.

I felt my wounded heart start beating rapidly.

“Need you to shut up, baby, and listen to me,” he growled.

“You really don’t have to do this,” I whispered.

“You really do have to shut up,” he returned sharply.

I stared into his angry eyes.

He was telling me to shut up.

And he was angry.

He was invading my land, my stables, my space with the driving bent to do the right thing and not thinking how I might feel, and he was getting angry that I wouldn’t let him.

And that made me angry.

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” I snapped.

“Izzy, I’ll repeat one more time, you need to listen to me.”

I got up on my toes to put my face in his and retorted, “I don’t need to do anything.”

“Right,” he bit off.

Then his hand was no longer in my belly.

It was an arm wrapped around my waist, his other hand became fingers bunching my hair tight in his grip, and his mouth slammed down on mine.

He kissed me.

I went still for a second in shock before I tried to push at his hold.

My hands encountered broad, strong shoulders and that was it.

I wasn’t Izzy.

I wasn’t in my stables.

I wasn’t angry at Johnny.

I wasn’t heartsore from him either.

My sister wasn’t up at my house with my nephew dealing with whatever it was she was dealing with at the same time having a mind to what was happening with me.

Shandra Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Was didn’t exist.

She’d never even been born.

I was something else, somewhere else, something foreign entirely.

But he was Johnny.

Johnny holding me and kissing me.

And I had become pure need.

I opened my mouth, his tongue slid inside with a groan that drove the burning hunger deeper into my flesh, the marrow of my bones, straight to my soul, and I couldn’t have stopped myself from acting on it if I’d tried.

My hands left his shoulders and went to the drawstring on my bottoms. I pulled it and the baggy material fell to my ankles.

I then went for his belt.

He broke the kiss, lifted his head and looked deep into my eyes.

Then he made a noise, that muted roar of his that now wasn’t angry or frustrated, but ravening.

If I wasn’t already drenched between my legs, that would have done it.

But instead, it made me sopping.

I worked his belt as he lifted my shirt and hooked a thumb in the side of my panties, his other hand reaching behind him.

He pulled my panties down to low on my hip, the nail of his thumb digging into my flesh, the feel of that reverberating right up my pussy, as he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.

I got his belt undone and went for the button.

I heard his wallet plop to the dirt before he put the edge of a wrapped condom between his clenched teeth and brushed my hands aside.

I focused on my panties, tearing them farther down and shimmying them until they fell to rest with my bottoms at my ankles.

Johnny dragged his jeans over his ass and the condom disappeared from his teeth.

Within seconds, his hands were at my ass, mine were to his shoulders, and I jumped up.

He kept hold, securing me aloft, taking a step in, pinning me to the wall.

Then he was inside.

I gasped.

He groaned.

And through all of this our eyes stayed bonded.

He started moving and I rounded his hips with my legs, using my calves and heels to dig in, giving me leverage, undulating into his strokes. My hands moved, one clasping hard at the back of his neck, one clenching tight into the thick waves of his hair.

He rounded my bottom with an arm, and his other hand bunched my hair tight against the back of my neck.

His labored breaths clashed with my wisping ones as he stared into my eyes and rode me.

There was nothing while he did.

Nothing for me in the whole world but his eyes and his cock and his hold tight on me and all the amazing, beautiful, wondrous things he was making me feel.

My wispy breaths came faster, whimpers eking through and his grunts started to sound as his thrusts grew in strength and velocity.

My hand at the back of his neck slid around and I caught him rough at its side when all I was feeling, all he was giving me made me start moaning.

“You there?” he grunted.

My arms shot around him, circling his head, yanking it to me, stuffing his face in my neck, and I cried out loudly and bucked in his arms when a climax, exquisite in its purity and intensity and the magnificence of its beauty, tore through me.

“You’re there,” I vaguely heard him whisper before he beat into me faster and rougher, and seconds later I heard and felt the rumble of his long, deep groan against my neck.

He slid in and stayed in, tremors shuddering through his long body, and through them he held me pinned to the wall, impaled on his cock.

I held his head in my arms, face shoved in my neck, my legs tight around his hips.

In Johnny Gamble’s arms. Connected to him. The only place I felt safe. The only place I felt right. The only place I felt free to be whatever me I wanted to be.

And then the world came crashing in.

I’d just fucked another woman’s man.

I was so mortified and utterly horrified that I’d done this, it didn’t even occur to me he’d fucked another woman being some woman’s man.

It was just me.

Me doing the wrong thing. Me hurting a sister. Not even thinking of the consequences. Me taking what wasn’t mine.

I unlocked my arms from around his head and put them to his shoulders.

“Let me go.”

“Izzy,” he whispered against my neck.

I turned my head to the side, away from him, not able to deal with this, not even able to be in my own skin.

It was dirty. Wrong. Revolting.

“That wasn’t right.”