Claiming the Rancher's Heir Read online

  Because that’s what this was.

  He needed to taste her.

  He had no control. His movements didn’t have finesse. It was a devouring. He had fallen upon her like a beast, like a man possessed.

  Because of her.

  Tension coiled inside her, and she just let go. When her orgasm broke over her like a wave, she cried out with her pleasure, completely unembarrassed by the sound that came from her body.

  She felt remade, and she wanted him to feel the same. She scooted herself back farther on the bed, her thighs open even wider, an invitation.

  “Take what you need,” she said.

  A shudder wracked his big frame, and he undid his belt buckle, sliding it slowly through the loops and letting the belt fall to the floor. He undid the closure on his pants, and took his shoes, socks, pants and underwear down to the ground. And then she could see him. Fully naked, fully erect.

  Hands down the biggest guy she’d ever seen.

  He was stunning.

  She’d thought so the first time, too. But now she had a moment to really look. And...

  Truly, he was beautiful. She couldn’t wait to feel him inside her again.

  He reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a condom. And something, a small alarm bell, went off in the back of her mind. She dismissed it. Pushed it to the side.

  He tore it open, rolling it onto his length before positioning himself at the entrance of her body. Those green eyes, her adversary’s eyes, meeting her as he slid inside her, inch by agonizing inch. She felt full, of him, of desire. Of need. She had been so ready for him that she let her head fall back, a deep sigh of pleasure on her lips.

  And then he began to move, slow and languid at first, letting her feel each delicious inch of him on his slow glide out, and back in.

  And then it all became harder, more frantic, a desperate race to completion. She wrapped her legs around his hips, letting him thrust deeper, harder. And she arched against him each time, meeting his every thrust, chasing a second climax, which before, for her, had been unheard of.

  But it was Creed.

  It was Creed making her feel these things.

  And when their eyes met again, and she saw the hollow bleakness there, she felt him all the way down in her soul.

  She kissed him.

  She kissed him deep and long and hard, and she tried to...to give him some of the wonder and pleasure inside her. Because if he could feel her pain, then maybe he could feel her pleasure, too.

  She didn’t want him to be hurt. And he was. She could see it.

  And even if it was over another woman... Well, Wren wasn’t his woman. Not really. This was just sex. And she would make it the best ever. She would make sure she took away some of his loneliness. Some of his bleakness.

  She got a perverse kind of pleasure out of that. That she, a woman he didn’t even like, might give him something that the woman he had once loved denied him.

  Wren was making assumptions. But she was pretty sure she was assuming right.

  He thrust into her, hitting the spot deep inside that sent sparks shooting off behind her eyes, made her come so hard she could scarcely breathe. And then he followed right along with her, shaking and shuddering his pleasure as he came deep inside her.

  And she just held him for a while. Pressed his head against her breasts as they both lay there breathing heavily.

  She didn’t want it to be over.

  “We’re just getting started,” he mumbled, and she wondered if she had said the words out loud.

  She was afraid she might have.

  “You wanted to be on top, remember?” he mumbled.

  “Yes, but I think you killed me. I’m too weak.”

  “I have food,” he said. “I have cake.”

  She lifted her head. “How do you have cake?”

  “My sister. She makes excellent cakes.”

  “Well, I could have some cake.”

  “If you eat my cake, I’m going to expect you to put out.”

  “I will put out for cake.”

  “Will you ride me?”

  “Only if you promise that later you’ll tie me to that headboard.”

  She was shocked by the words as they came out of her mouth. Because she’d never wanted anything quite like that before. And at first it had just been to dare him, but now she found she really wanted it.

  “I think that’s a deal I can stick to.”

  And some of the bleakness from his eyes did seem to be gone, so she supposed she had accomplished her goal.

  She wouldn’t think about what would happen after tonight.

  She didn’t want to.

  Tonight, she just wanted to be the Wren she was becoming with him. Tonight, she wanted to be new.

  Tonight, she wanted to be with Creed.

  Five

  It had been two weeks since he’d last had Wren Maxfield in his bed. Two weeks, and she was all he could think about.

  It was starting to impact...well, everything. His work, his sleep, his ability to be a halfway decent person and not be an absolute dick anytime someone in his family wanted to talk to him.

  He wanted her again, but he didn’t know how to justify it. Sure, they were going to be working together on that big cross-winery event, but it wouldn’t just be the two of them working on it.

  He didn’t know if that night after the party had been transformative because he’d been in a really dark place, or if... He just didn’t know. All he knew was that he wanted more. And Wren didn’t seem to be coming back for it. Which was a damn shame.

  And then, as if his thoughts had conjured her up, he looked through the windows of the tasting room and saw her standing outside. She was staring at the door, not moving.

  He watched her, without changing his position, until she turned and her eye caught his. There was something bleak and strange in her expression, and he didn’t know how to read it. So they just stared at each other through the window.

  If she was waiting for him to make the first move, she was out of luck. She was the one who had come here to knock on his door. She was the one who was going to have to close the gap.

  Finally, she did.

  Finally, she walked through the door, but then she stood there in the entry, her hands clasped in front of her. “We need to talk.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes. We do.”

  “I’ve been waiting to see you,” he said, “and I have to tell you, it’s not talking I want to do.”

  “Well, it’s talking we need to do. Creed...” She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “Creed, I’m pregnant.”

  Suddenly, he felt like he was falling into a chasm. A chasm that led to some moment eighteen years ago. A moment he didn’t want to relive.

  But you knew this might happen. You did. He pushed the thought to the side. You tried not to think about the fact that you screwed her without a condom, but you know you did.

  No. Wren was the same age as he was. It didn’t seem possible that the woman wasn’t on birth control. Or that she wouldn’t have said something about the condom if she wasn’t taking something.

  You didn’t say anything about it either.

  “I didn’t even think,” she said. “After the time in the wine cellar. I didn’t think. It didn’t occur to me until we were at your house and you took a condom out of your bedside drawer that I realized...that we didn’t.”

  “You’re not on...the Pill or anything?”

  “I haven’t been in a relationship in like a year and a half. And I... I didn’t really like the way I felt on it. It made me gain weight, so I quit taking it after I broke up with my last boyfriend.” She grimaced. “I’m not really somebody who hooks up.”

  “Well,” he said, his voice rough, “I am. I am, so I sure as hell should’ve thought of a c
ondom. Because I use them all the damn time. I... I’m sorry. I should have thought of it. I should’ve done better.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s stupid. I should have, too. I... Creed, I want to keep the baby.”

  Cold fear infused itself into his veins. “You want to keep the baby?”

  “Yes. I understand that it might surprise you. But I... I’m thirty-two years old. I would like to have a baby. And I’m at a point in my life where I don’t really know what’s coming next, what I want to do. And this pregnancy feels like... Well, it feels like a pretty clear sign of something that I could do to change my life. Because it’s happening. And I... I want it. When I found out a couple of days ago, I cried. I spent the entire day crying. I’ve been avoiding my family. Because I knew that I needed to tell you first. But I also knew... I knew immediately that I wanted the baby. I... I just do. And I don’t need anything from you. I’m completely fine and taken care of. I have a house, I have a business, and I don’t need you to be involved at all.”

  “I will be fucking involved,” he said, his voice hard.

  “I didn’t mean you couldn’t be,” she said. “I just didn’t want you to think I was making demands of you, or your money...”

  “This baby is mine,” he said.

  “Of course it is,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “You misunderstand me. That wasn’t a question. It was a statement. This baby is mine, and that means I will be involved. I am this baby’s father.”

  Echoes of everything that he had lost were shouting inside him. Because he knew how easy it was for a woman to take a child from a man.

  A girl to take a baby from a boy.

  That was the thing. They’d been kids. And everything about it had been messed up. All of it.

  But he was not a child anymore, and he would be damned if anybody took anything from him.

  His child.

  For his son, it was too late. He couldn’t have his son. Not now.

  He had just seen that boy with his...with the man he thought was his father, with his siblings. They were a family. Creed never could be. He was just a man who had donated the material that had created the boy.

  That wasn’t being a father. He could never have that back. That boy was grown.

  Even if he found out about Creed someday... He could never be the boy’s dad.

  No, he had lost that chance. But he would never lose that again. Never again.

  “You’re going to marry me,” he said.

  “I... I most certainly am not,” she said. “That is... It is not a good reason for people to get married.”

  “It is the only damn reason for people to get married. It’s legal protection, Wren. For both parties involved.”

  “That’s not how the world works anymore.”

  “It is damn well how the world works. What’s to keep you from taking my name off the birth certificate?”

  “I won’t.”

  “What’s to keep you from preventing me from seeing my baby?”

  “I won’t,” she repeated. “I won’t do that. We were both involved in this and...”

  “You say that, but you don’t know. You don’t know how it will go. You’re marrying me. You’re marrying me, and we’re going to live in the same house. I am not missing a moment of my child’s life.”

  “Creed, I didn’t say that you would. But we are not in a relationship. We don’t even like each other, let alone love each other.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with this. This isn’t about us.”

  “Be reasonable. I didn’t even think you would want this baby.”

  “Because you don’t know me,” he said. “Not at all. We were naked together, that’s it. But you don’t know me well enough to think that you know whether or not I want this child. I do.”

  He did. With every breath in his body.

  And the resoluteness he felt over what needed to be done was as intense as it was real.

  “I am not letting you take this baby from me.”

  “Creed, I won’t. But I don’t have to marry you to...”

  “We are getting married.”

  “Or what?”

  Everything in him turned to ice. If she wanted an ultimatum, he would give it to her.

  “Or I’ll do what I have to do to make sure that most of the custody is with me.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think it’s fair? For one parent to only be with the child on weekends? Do you think it’s fair for one of us to miss that much of the child’s life? Because I don’t. But if you think it’s fair, then you won’t mind if it gets flipped on you. Do you think it’ll be fair to miss a week of the baby’s life?”

  “I’m the mother,” she said.

  “And I am the father,” he said, the conviction in his voice shocking even him. “I’m the father,” he repeated. “I’m not missing this.”

  “Creed...”

  “You listen to me,” he said, speaking with all the firmness he could when his life had just been turned completely upside down. “You listen to me, Wren Maxfield. Either you become my wife, or I’m going to have to make this difficult.”

  “You listen to me,” she said. “You might be used to issuing edicts, but you don’t get to tell me what to do. Because I’ve lived my entire life walking on another path that was set out for me by someone else. By a man. I will not be dictated to. If you want to fight, I will give you a fight, Creed. You can bet on it.”

  And then, she turned on her heel, walking out of the room.

  And he could see that she was certain that she could get her way.

  All he could see was another woman walking off with his child.

  It wouldn’t happen. It wouldn’t.

  It wasn’t for another hour that the shock wore off.

  And that was when he clutched his chest like he might be having a heart attack and leaned against the wall of the tasting room.

  He was going to be a father again.

  And Wren Maxfield was the mother.

  And he had no idea how in hell they were going to survive this.

  Six

  She was a coward. She had run away from him, and she could see that whatever was driving him to be unreasonable, and make actual threats, came from a place she didn’t understand.

  She could see that, and still, she had run away from him rather than sticking out the conversation to see where it might go. And wasn’t that basically what he was saying? That he assumed she would be a coward when push came to shove? That she would keep their child from him because it was easier or less challenging, because she didn’t want to deal with him?

  And maybe... Just maybe it had been easier for her to assume he wouldn’t want anything to do with the baby. Maybe that’s why she’d been able to come here and tell him about the pregnancy.

  Before that, she had spent two days in agony.

  She hadn’t been lying to him when she’d said she cried. She cried enough to make a flood. It just wasn’t good timing. At least, that was what she told herself in the beginning.

  Wrong time.

  Wrong man.

  And then she thought... Maybe he was the right man. Because he wouldn’t want anything from her. Because he was not a paternal type, and there was no way he was secretly yearning for a wife and family.

  She had never considered herself particularly maternal, either, but when she looked at the situation objectively, she could see that, well, this was an opportunity.

  Because she had everything she needed to raise a child, including the assumed support of her family. She had job security. Money. A place to live. A great many things that people took for granted. From that standpoint, she was in a spectacularly great place to raise a child. And the more she thought about it, the more she had wanted to grab hold of this major life chang
e and see where it took her. The more she thought about it, the more she had felt...a sense of excitement, rather than one of despair.

  But her revelation had been selfish. Utterly and completely.

  It had never included him.

  She didn’t know how to include him in that.

  And then he demanded that she did.

  Honestly, he’d demanded it in the most extreme way she could have imagined. Even if she had let herself truly think about a scenario in which he wanted the baby, wanted to be in the baby’s life, she had not imagined that he would...demand marriage and issue threats.

  But that’s what he’d done. And it became clear that she really didn’t know all that much about him, and that lack of knowledge actually mattered.

  Having sex didn’t mean they knew each other.

  Oh, they knew things about each other. Creed knew things about her that no one else did. She had done things with him she hadn’t done with any other man.

  Including that moment of absolute loss of control. The lack of protection.

  But that didn’t mean they knew each other.

  And so she was now looking for the person she should have gone to in the first place.

  Emerson was at the house she shared with Holden, working from home today, which was something Wren could never have imagined Emerson doing before. Given that Emerson had been wholly and completely tied to the family home.

  But not only had she moved away from the estate, she seemed to prize the separate life she and Holden had built.

  Wren would be fascinated by it if she didn’t find it so annoying.

  She parked her car and got out, walking to the door. It took a couple of minutes, but her sister opened it, wearing a large, elaborate-looking robe, her hair piled on her head, her fingernails manicured to perfection, a giant wedding ring that she’d gotten from Holden glittering on her finger.

  “Well,” Wren said. “Good afternoon to you, too.”