Courting Her Rebel: (Taken by Cowboys: Part 2) A Billionaire Western Romance by A.L. Loire Read Free Book Online

Jess, and letting him give you an intimate massage is also “friendly”?
    Her good side knew better. But that other voice was already speaking up, loud, clear, and impossible to ignore. She wanted Nate’s hands on her. In fact, she’d wanted them on her since the moment they’d set out this morning. At this point, she felt powerless to resist. She raised her chest off the table, pulled her tee shirt over her head, and let it fall to the floor.
    She was too nervous to meet Nate’s eyes as she relaxed onto the table again, fearing that her own would betray her excitement. She hadn’t given him a chance to see much, but she could feel him looking at her, the atmosphere between them suddenly charged.
    “You’ll enjoy this much more,” he said. She closed her eyes as he ran a finger down her spine, sending a shiver through her abdomen. He gently dug his fingers into the muscles along her vertebrae. The feeling was a mixture of deep physical release and another, more acute feeling—her desire coming to life.
    “When we were talking about something missing,” he said, returning to her shoulders, “were you talking about a person, too?”
    Her heart skittered.
    “I’m sorry if that’s too personal,” he said, interpreting her silence as offense.
    “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just a painful topic for me at the moment. I was hurt pretty badly by someone not long ago. A man I thought I loved, who I guess didn’t love me back.”
    “That’s terrible,” he said. “I can’t imagine why any man could do such a thing to you. He must have been a monster.”
    For a moment, she wondered if she was in a dream. The small, dim room, the aromatherapy candles, this stud giving her the best massage of her life and berating her ex. It couldn’t possibly be real. “That sounds an awful lot like flattery,” she said finally.
    “Not flattery,” he said. “It’s simply the truth. If a man wronged you, it was because he didn’t deserve you and he knew it. You’re the total package, Jess. Smart, funny, real, and sexy as all get out.”
    “Wow. Thanks,” was all she could say. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. The biggest compliment she’d gotten from her ex was a lame “you look nice.” “What about you?” she asked.
    She heard Nate sigh. “I haven’t had the best luck with women.”
    “I find that hard to believe,” she said.
    “Oh yeah? Why’s that?” he asked.
    She laughed. “Well, you aren’t so bad to look at yourself, for one thing. And you’re nice, funny, fun to be around . . .”
    The image of Spencer’s half-lit face when he’d come to her cabin the night before flitted over her consciousness. He had pleasured her and then held her all night—and now she was getting increasingly intimate, both emotionally and physically, with his best friend. She recognized these facts as clearly as if they were spelled out in front of her, but it made no difference. His words were having their way with her, sinking into her bare skin and coursing through her veins, heating her up from the inside out. This had to be wrong. Or did it?
    “You’re sweet,” he said. “It’s true that I never had much trouble attracting a woman’s interest. But it never progressed much further than that. After a while, they all figured out that I was more interested in money than in them. Plus, most of the New York girls who went after me just seemed so soulless. They wanted to go to fancy restaurants and cocktail bars, but never for a nice walk in Central Park. I didn’t really connect with any of them.”
    “I know what you mean,” Jess said, remembering the failed blind dates she’d been on since breaking up with Todd, her ex. The men seemed okay at first, but after a while, she realized they didn’t really care about her as a person.
    “Though I have to say, I wasn’t the best boyfriend, either, at the time,” he continued. “They were right—I was too caught up in my career, in