Chapter 2

2

Miles

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Those are the same six words I say to myself every night when I walk in the door to my bunkhouse—and goddamn, are they true.

I had no right to give Cassie that piece of jewelry tonight. Had no right to study the curve of her throat while her father spoke to me.

Trusted me.

The man should not trust me.

My thoughts are depraved and wicked when it comes to his daughter and they flame to life now, urging me to take my cell phone out of my back pocket. I open the photo library and find the one from earlier tonight. Cassie sitting on the kitchen counter in her party dress, her thighs open just enough to show off her pink panties, her head thrown back with laughter.

“Fuck.” I mash the screen against my mouth, growling in pain as my cock swells to life in my jeans. “FUCK!”

I should delete it. I should delete it now.

I absolutely should not lay the device down on my pillow and fuck my own hand while imagining it’s her innocent pussy locked around my dick.

Knowing it’s only a matter of time before I give in and jack myself into oblivion, I nonetheless make an attempt to be civilized, throwing my phone with a clatter across the kitchen table. Immediately, I miss Cassie’s image. Miss her, period. “You’re old enough to be her father, you sick prick,” I growl, starting to pace.

Fine, that’s a stretch.

I’m thirty-six, so I’d be a pretty young father, but that is exactly double her age and there is no excuse for the lust she stirs in me. None. Especially considering how long I’ve known the girl. She did quite a lot of growing up before I started noticing she’d changed into a woman, but when I noticed, I noticed hard—and there’s no escaping this obsession now.

She occupies my mind every minute of the day.

Every morning, I start fresh, swearing I’m going to stay away from her, but I break the vow within an hour. I’ll be taking stock of cattle and suddenly, there’s Cassie, running toward me in slow motion with her braless tits spilling out of her flimsy tank top, her eyes shining with youth and excitement.

Can I ride, Miles?

I might be well aware she’s referring to riding a horse, but every morning, it takes every ounce of my control not to drag her into the barn and teach her how to ride a man, instead. This man. Her man.

You are not her man. You can’t be.

Cassie’s father is my oldest friend. The employer who trusts me.

I cannot fuck his eighteen-year-old daughter.

It would be the ultimate betrayal of trust and I value my honor.

I treasure the trust I’ve been given by him, to run his farm, protect his beautiful daughter and keep his mind at ease.

Still.

My eyes tick to the cell phone across the room where Cassie’s picture still lights up the screen. I’m kidding myself if I think I’ll ever make it through tonight without blowing my usual load, pretending it’s the one that’ll get Cassie pregnant with my child. I have to do it. My throbbing cock gives me no choice.

On my way to grab the phone and bring it to bed, there’s a knock at the door and I stiffen. “Who’s there?”

A long pause ticks by. “It’s me. Cassie.”

My loins grow heavy, tight. What the hell is she doing here? I’ve never allowed her inside my bunkhouse—for good reason—and she’s never tried to come in, especially after dark. Especially after I’ve had a couple of beers that could impair my judgment. “You shouldn’t be here, Cassie. Get on home.”

“I-I’m eighteen now, Miles,” she stammers, hurting my heart. “I can be wherever I choose.”

Unable to help myself, I move toward the door, laying my forehead on the coarse wood. “Yes, but it isn’t a good idea.”

“Why not?”

Because I want too badly to see what my cock looks like sinking into your pretty mouth. And I’m just buzzed enough to find out. The fact that I haven’t been with a woman since I started working on this farm isn’t helping matters. I’m horny, hard up, aching. My body wants relief, but it only wants it from Cassie.

“Why isn’t it a good idea?” she prompts again, through the door.

“You think your daddy would want you in here with me, girl? Alone and after dark? It’s not appropriate.”

“Nobody has to know,” she murmurs. “Don’t you want to see what the necklace looks like on me?”

Yes, angel. Fuck yes I do.

I know I shouldn’t have given her something so personal, so symbolic, but I burn to see Cassie in something I paid for. Something I chose. It’s a fantasy of mine to have total control of Cassie’s clothes. To make her plans and reward her for executing them like a good girl. When I saw the choker, I almost went insane with the need to wrap it around her neck. Tie it tight. Let everyone know she’s mine.

She’s not. She can’t be.

“Go home, Cassie—”

“Miles…” Her voice trembles and I’m instantly on alert. “I-I think there’s a coyote out here—”

The door is unlocked and opened instantly. Heart hammering, I pull her into my arms and turn her protectively, scanning the dark for a predator that would dare to put her in danger. Of course, there is none.

I kick the door shut and turn to face my too-young, too-beautiful obsession.

She giggles.

“Brat.”

Cassie gasps, but she’s still smiling. “You can’t call me names on my birthday.”

“Oh, now she wants to follow rules?”

Sexual frustration gives my voice a harder edge than intended and her face falls a little, making me want to kick myself. “Don’t be mad at me, Miles. Please?”

“I don’t know how to be mad at you.”

“I know,” she says softly.

When there was a possibility she might be in danger, I was distracted. But that distraction fades fast in her presence, and for the first time, I see what she’s wearing. An oversized coat, no shoes…and the choker I gave her.

My cock was already stiff when she arrived but it stretches the denim of my jeans now and I turn away quickly and pour myself a glass of whiskey, hoping she didn’t notice the state I’m in. The same state I’m in frequently throughout the day, causing me to jerk off in dark corners of the barn, behind the bunk house, out in the field. This girl has me fucking my hand five times a day and I need that relief now.

“You need to go, Cassie. Now.”

“I love the necklace. There’s something about it…” I can feel the heat of her breath in the middle of my back and I have to bite down on my tongue to keep from moaning. “Wearing it makes me feel like we have a secret.”

“We don’t,” I growl, slamming down my drink. “Don’t read anything into it.”

“What about the way you watch me? Or when boys come knocking on the door and you put the fear of God in them? Should I read anything into that?”

“No,” I rasp. “Of course I’m protective. I think of you as a…”

Moments slip by. “You can’t say it. Because you don’t think of me as a daughter. You never have.” Her palm skims up the center of my back. “Do you, Miles?”

If she keeps touching me, I have no idea what I’ll do. I’ve hugged her before and that almost killed me. Tonight is different. Tonight her touch has intent. She wants something—and I’m still in disbelief that something is me. Has she felt like this long? Or is she just confused by her eighteen-year-old hormones. “What did you come here for?”

She’s silent so long, I have no choice but to turn slightly and her expression makes my heart lurch. She’s nervous, trying to gather her courage. I should tell the girl she’s on a fool’s mission and send her home, but I can only hold my breath and watch like a perverted old man as she opens the jacket and lets it fall to the ground, leaving her totally, breathtakingly naked.

“Cassie,” I choke out, semen rifling from the head of my erection. Ah, sweet motherfucker. I fist the spasming flesh through my jeans, squeezing until the pain halts my flow of pleasure. It fires right back through, as soon as I let go, my mouth turning as dry as dust. How? How can she be so perfect? How can she be better than my fantasies?

Her tits are high, round globes, tipped with nipples the color of her blushing cheeks, the ends of her long blonde hair brushing those perky points. Her hands flutter around her hips nervously, as if they weren’t sculpted by God himself, curved and smooth and glowing like the rest of her, connecting to lithe thighs I’ve imagined locked around my head and hips countless times.

Don’t look at her pussy.

Jesus help me. Don’t look.

I never stand a chance.

“Fucking Christ,” I breathe, my knees dipping. “Look at that sweet little cunt.”

It’s a smooth, succulent mound that could fit right into my palm, a shallow valley running up the center. So shallow that the pink hood hiding her clitoris peeks out at me, shyly letting me know it would be so easy to play with. Letting me know if I was a man with no honor, Cassie’s virgin bounty would be mine for the taking.

And ah, fuck. I want so badly to take.

I want to feel her hymen pop, hear her gasp in response. Comfort her through the pain. Talk her through our first time. Ride her harder, harder, harder until I can’t tell where one of my thrusts finishes and the next one starts.

“Say something,” she whispers, trailing her fingers up her rib cage. “Please?”

“Cassie…” I drag a hand down my face. “There’s nothing and no one in this world even half as magnificent as you. You’re an angel. Like nothing I could have imagined. But I can’t do it. I can’t take what you’re offering.”

Her lids flutter. “You can’t. But…you want to?”

“Want to?” I reach down and adjust the steel behind my fly, frustration making my tongue loose. “Little girl, if you weren’t my employer’s daughter and half my goddamn age, I’d already have you crammed full of dick where you stand.”

Cassie’s lips pop open and she falls back a step.

I curse. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I was just…shocked.” She twines a strand of blonde hair around her finger, mesmerizing me. “I’ve never heard you talk that way.”

My swallow is heavy. “I’d kill a man for speaking like that to you.”

“I know,” she whispers, stepping closer.

For the life of me, I can’t move away. I can only stand there and let Cassie press that sweet, too-young body up against mine, flattening her luscious tits on my abdomen. Her palms rake up my chest and settle on my shoulders and it takes all of my self-restraint not to wrap her legs around my hips and go for broke bouncing her up and down on this aching cock until I come.

“Don’t tempt me like this,” I growl, curling my shaking hands into fists. “I’ve been trusted with your protection, but there is no one to protect you from me. You hear? I am not your innocent schoolgirl crush.” I press my hot mouth to her temple. “I would need to own you in ways you don’t understand, Cassie. That choker is only the beginning.”

Her nipples turn to such tight spikes, I can feel them through my shirt and it does nothing to bolster my willpower. “Tell me everything, Miles,” she says, coaxingly. “I can decide for myself.”

“No.” I take her shoulders in my hands, intending to push her away from me, but I end up crushing her closer, instead, inhaling her magnolia scent like a fiend. “I won’t confess my depravities to you. You’d never look at me the same way again and I couldn’t bear that.”

“You don’t know how I look at you. You have no idea.” She tilts her head back, slaying me with her baby blue eyes. “I thought…I thought you’d at least give me my first kiss. I’ve always imagined having it with you.”

Goddamn, that mouth is so inviting. “Cassie…”

“Please?”

Her breathy plea is my undoing. My control withers away. I can feel myself being sentenced to hell as I lean down and brush my hard, damaged lips across the sweetest pair ever created. A groan fires up from deep inside of me. Even better than I dreamed. She’s soft and supple and delicious. She waits for me to teach her, eyelids heavy, mouth parted. Ordering myself to go slow, I lick into her mouth and she whimpers, going up on her toes, plastering that virginal body against mine, slipping her smaller tongue out to tease mine hesitantly—and I feel that stroke of her tongue deep in my cock.

Mine.

You’ve always been mine.

If I continue to kiss her, I’ll be riding her untouched pussy within minutes.

Nothing will stop me.

I’ll have ruined this girl—and sentenced her to a life of dealing with my over-the-top fascination with her. Because I would never let Cassie go once I’ve had her. Never. So I have to resist the urge to take her at all costs. I’m not going to betray her father and sentence her to a life with my obsession in one fell swoop.

Though it causes me pain, I break the kiss that leaves both of us panting. “You had your first kiss, now go,” I rasp, bending down to swipe her coat off the floor, wrapping it around her trembling body. She doesn’t want to leave and she’s making it obvious. Her mouth is swollen, her eyes bright with arousal. If I want her to save herself, I have to be harsh, even if it kills me. “I said, get out, Cassie.” I push through the agony of watching her eyes flood with tears. “You’re just a child.”

As expected, that statement stings her pride. Especially today, when she legally became an adult and was so proud of that fact. I hate myself as she runs crying from the bunkhouse into the night, but I don’t chase after her. As badly as I want to. I will always do what’s best for her, and this is one of those times.

I’m saving you, Cassie.

I believe that. I do. So why is my chest splitting down the middle?