Alphas of Red Moon Ranch Complete Series Read online

  To: Apples4Days

  From: Bitesalot35

  Subject: Plans

  Then come out and meet me in person. This weekend. I’ll buy your train ticket.

  Holly stared at the message and then shut it, quickly. Her heart thumped in her chest. Even with her phone dark beside her, she could still feel his presence in the room. She tried to imagine his voice. She imagined what he would sound like whispering in her ear as his fingers brushed the hem of her panties.

  Her imagination was getting the better of her and her body was burning up. Finally, she couldn’t wait any longer; she kicked her panties off her legs and spread them. The wind from the fan felt cool as it hit her wet core and she gasped, arching into it. She hadn’t felt this turned on in—well—ages. Couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched herself for any other reason than to exhaust her body and put her to sleep. Yet now, she found herself reaching into her bedside drawer and lifting out her long-abandoned vibrator.

  Pink, sleek, discreet, she rubbed it between her legs to warm it up. She felt her body aching for something inside of her, but she left it on her clit for now. She didn’t expect her pussy to clench the instant she turned it on and let the vibrations purr through her. She gasped, her whole body rocking against the small vibrator, and her thighs tightened around it. Her clit hummed, sensitive, too sensitive, but even when it hit the point of painfully sensitive, she couldn’t get enough of it.

  Jacob had infected her. Some part of him had enlivened her veins and brought her whole body to life. She thought about his strong arms pinning hers down. She wondered how the scuff of his chin would feel on her face, or between her legs. She imagined him kissing her lips, her breasts, her throat, biting into that soft skin…

  Within seconds, she was whimpering, her heels digging into the mattress as she bucked—once, twice—then cried out and came, her body trembling.

  A couple heavy rise and falls of her chest later, Holly glanced over at her phone. Still no message. Not that she was expecting one. Not that she was going to talk to him ever again. Bad idea.

  Her lack of control surprised her and she shivered at the thought of meeting him in person. Better to not get involved with that. Better to stay where she was, grading papers, falling asleep to soap operas. She was thirty-nine now. Fantasies were for people who had the time and motivation to make them a reality. She’d had fantasies once. Fantasies of a husband and children and forever. But that was before she’d wasted her best childbearing years on a man who’d squandered them on another woman. Mr. Bitesalot was just another figment of her imagination that would dry up like old paper in the back corners of her mind.

  Well, it was a nice dream, she thought to herself before her exhausted body finally sank into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 4

  “It’s just that I’m running out of time,” the student said, gesturing frantically, “And if I don’t get a good grade in your class, they’re, like, not going to even look at my application for the study abroad.”

  “I understand,” Holly said, “Completely.” What Holly was thinking was: you really should have thought about that before you decided to skip a month of classes.

  “So can you help me out?”

  Holly glanced down at the student’s last paper and nibbled the end of her pen. No citations on her quotations. A book analysis copied and pasted from the web. A clear lack of understanding of any of Toni Morrison’s works. Holly looked up, offered a smile, and said, “Yes, of course.” With that, she plucked an extra credit assignment from her drawer and walked the student to the door of her office. “Hand this in to me by the end of the week and I’ll see what I can do.”

  A wide grin erupted over the student’s mouth, like she was getting away with murder (she was—metaphorically speaking, of course). “Thanks, Dr. Wright,” the student said.

  Across the hall, through an open door, Holly caught sight of Lacey Cardell at her desk. At she wasn’t alone. She had her arms around Chris Cardell, Holly’s ex-husband. And they were kissing. Passionately.

  “Yes, of course,” Holly said, absently, but the student had already dashed down the hall like she was making for the getaway car. Holly tried to sneak back into her office undetected, but—

  “Holly!” No such luck. Chris was already bounding across the short hall on long legs, cheesy grin plastered on his mouth, Lacey in tow.

  She forced a smile of her own. Good form. “Hi, Chris. Lacey.”

  “Hey, Holl,” Chris hooked his arm around her middle and pressed a kiss to the side of her face. The brush of his lips sent a flutter through her even now. “Your father says hi.”

  “Tell him hi back,” she said. When they’d been married, her father had been kind enough to set Chris up with a high-paying job at his hotel business. After the divorce, Chris had kept the house, the money, and the job. He also occasionally still passed brief Hallmark greeting card-style messages between the two.

  “Did you hear the good news?” he asked.

  “Um…” Holly glanced between him and Lacey, who was glowing beside him. Please don’t let it be another kid, Holly thought selfishly.

  “Lacey got tenure!” he said, extending his arms.

  Oh God, please let it be another kid.

  “What?” Holly said, her face white. It was hard to keep her smile on, but she fumbled to put it back. “That’s…great. Congratulations.”

  “I know, right?” Lacey smiled. “I’m officially the youngest tenured teacher here—how cool is that?”

  “Mm,” Holly said. Inside, she felt like her heart was being pin cushioned. Take my husband, take my house, but do not take my job. “Well, I’m happy for you two. I’ve got some papers I have to finish grading—”

  Holly tried to back up into her office, but Chris held the door ajar. “Holl.” She turned back to him—Lacey had retreated back to her desk and now it was just the two of them in her office. He was wearing that secret, boyish smile. “You don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, do you?”

  A weird jolt of excitement shot through her blood. Maybe it was just a phantom shudder from last night, something left over. “What do you mean?”

  He unbuttoned his black jacket and reached into his inside pocket. He pulled out a small box—thin, rectangular—and held it out to her. “Happy birthday.”

  She took it in her hands and glanced up at him, blinking.

  “Well? Open it up.” He laughed.

  Holly carefully slipped her nail underneath the seam of the wrapping paper and eased it open. When she finally got the package unraveled, she turned it over and saw—

  A wine opener. Because nothing says you’re going to die alone like a rabbit-shaped wine opener for your thirty-ninth birthday.

  “It’s supposed to be super easy to use,” he said. “I know how you wrestle with corks.”

  “Great,” she said plainly. “Now I can spend my nights getting drunk even when arthritis kicks in.”

  “Yes,” he laughed. “Exactly.” He didn’t have the empathy required to understand the punch line. She imagined gouging his eyes out with the easy-open lever.

  “Thank you,” she said and started to put it away.

  “Oh, Holly.” She glanced up at the sound of her name of his lips.

  He smiled at her. She’d loved that smile, once, and there were times, few and far between, when she saw a shimmer in him that reminded her of better times. “I’ve got to take Lacey out for a celebration meal tonight…can we do a rain check for your birthday dinner?”

  And then there were the more common, more frequent reminders of just how much she despised his smile. She smiled back at him. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

  Fifteen minutes later at her desk, she pulled up the MeetYourMate app and wrote:

  To: Bitesalot35

  From: Apples4Days

  Subject: Reply

  So if I took you up on your offer, would that be okay?

  She laced her fingers together, cellphone trapped betwee
n her palms, and pressed the plastic to her lips. Said a silent prayer.

  Her phone buzzed.

  To: Apples4Days

  From: Bitesalot35

  Subject: Yes. Of course

  I thought you’d never ask. Send me your details and I’ll book a ticket.

  She smiled and felt a quiet, secret thrill course through her.

  Chapter 5

  It was a nine-hour train ride from Sacramento to Etna, but Holly still couldn’t sleep. She spent the first couple hours putting the final touches on her end-of-the-year reports, then reading, then listening to the woman next to her tell her all about her son on his way to college (Oh, you don’t think you could put in a good word for him at Sacramento U, do you, dear?).

  Sporadically, when she wasn’t lulled by the thickening wall of trees blurring past them, Holly would break into a sweat and dash to the bathroom. She compulsively checked her legs for stray hairs, straightened her skirt (a faded purple, matched with an off-white long-sleeve top), and white-knuckle gripped the sink, trying to breath. It’d been years since she’d been on a first date—twenty, to be exact—and wasn’t sure she remembered how to do this.

  She was crazy, right? Insane. She was going through some midlife crisis; that had to be what it was. Chris had bought a new car and a new pair of tits for his twenty-eight-year-old girlfriend. She was travelling 282 miles to meet her potential future husband face-to-face. Could be worse. She could’ve bought a motorcycle.

  Pull yourself together, Holly. What did she tell her students when they were cramming for a test? Take a breath. Put pen to paper. Write down any questions you have.

  By time she exited the coffin-sized restroom and shuffled back to her seat, her travel companion was, blissfully, asleep, with a therapeutic sleep mask around her eyes. Holly squeezed into her window seat, unlatched the tray, and took out her notebook. Where to start? She began scribbling:

  Needs:

  - Employed

  - Good relationship w/ family

  - Faith

  - Not an alcoholic

  - Loyal

  Holly chewed the end of her pen and then circled loyal five times. She added:

  Questions:

  Who is your favorite author?

  Do you talk to your parents?

  Church on Sundays?

  What does a regular Saturday look like for you?

  How many children do you want?

  What do you look for in a woman?

  Tit or ass man?

  She snorted a laugh at her last question and nearly woke up the woman beside her, who grumbled in her sleep and turned over. Holly’s gaze found the window again. Dawn was breaking over the tips of the sugar pines and cedar trees, making the forest blush. Quietly, in back of her mind, where she kept unrealized dreams and guilty-pleasure reads, she thought: I could get used to this.

  After wishing her train-sister all the best with her son’s hunt for colleges (the woman was sweet, after all), Holly stepped onto the platform and felt a warm breeze sweep under her skirt, making it dance around her legs. She rolled her bag out and glanced around, feeling her throat tighten with nerves. What if she’d made a huge mistake? What if he didn’t show? Worse, what if he did show, took one look at her, and turned around and made a dash for his car—?

  “Holly Wright?”

  She whipped around like a startled deer and her breath caught. Oh.

  A tight grey t-shirt stretched across the muscles of his chest and red flannel hung over his broad shoulders. Faded black denim pants ran into well-worn work boots. The cherry on top, however, was the cowboy hat that rested on his head and, when he tipped it back, she could see him fully. His sun-tanned skin was framed with long salt-and-pepper hair that ran like wildfire down his jaw. His face had stayed young, sharp, but he wore his years in his eyes—dark and unending. Eyes that locked on Holly’s and made her insides flip.

  Holly couldn’t help herself—a laugh escaped her and she instantly covered her mouth with her hand. You’ve got to be kidding me. The professor and the rancher—this was a doomed pairing if she ever knew one. There was no way in hell this was going to work out.

  He blinked and—to his enormous credit—kept his composure, giving her a cool smile. “Good ride up?”

  She tried to scoop up the rattled bones of her poise and nodded, easing into a smile. “Yes. Sorry. I’m—” She extended a hand. Professional. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Bites.”

  Now he looked amused. He took her hand—his was large, rough palms—and gave it a squeeze. “Pleasure’s mine, Ms. Apples. Lemme get that.”

  He grabbed her luggage and his hand brushed hers again. She released the handle and flexed her fingers when the electricity of his touch lingered.

  “A gentleman,” she said.

  “I’ve got my moments.” But the skin around his eyes crinkled when he said it and she got the impression that there was a rogue under his gentlemanly exterior. He leaned over and pressed a small kiss to the side of her face. She felt his stubble brush her cheek and it sent shivers through her body, straight to her core. “I’m glad you made it,” he murmured into the shell of her ear. His voice was deep, strong, like a growl.

  She swallowed. Contain yourself, Holly. “Me too,” she said.

  Chapter 6

  Jacob drove an old dirt-red pickup truck and Holly gripped her seat as it rattled down the road. The ride was predictably awkward, and while he seemed perfectly content to linger in silence, his fingers drumming against his thigh to the 70s rock pouring from the radio, she couldn’t help but feel like she was doing something wrong. Before she left, Alice had grabbed her shoulders, squeezed, and told her, Don’t forget, you’re the one in charge here. He’s the one who invited you up. You can leave whenever you want. Take the lead; don’t sell yourself short.

  She started running through the questions she’d written down earlier in her head. “So,” she started. “MeetYourMate. What made you chose that site?”

  “A couple reasons,” he said, his eyes glued out the window. “I don’t have time to date. I work all day and I’ve got a large family to take care of. Etna’s also a small town. And it doesn’t have what I’m looking for.”

  “Which is?”

  “A wife. A partner.”

  “They don’t have wife material here?”

  His thumb rubbed into the leather of his steering wheel. “The women here tend to be looking for something a little less…permanent.”

  “Oh,” she said. In her mind, she made a pro and cons list. Title: Man-whore. Pros: experienced, knows what he wants. Cons: careless with intimacy, awkward encounters with ex-lovers while on dates.

  He took his eyes away from the road to turn his attention on her briefly. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “You. What makes a beautiful woman like you turn to an online mail-order service?”

  Her cheeks colored. “Um…well. I teach, so my hours are demanding. Doesn’t give me a lot of time to date.”

  Was it too early to bring up her fifteen-year-old marriage? It wasn’t exactly great small talk. As she ran through another pros and cons list, he asked, “Who burned you?”

  She blinked back at him. “What?”

  He gave her a knowing look. She sighed. “It’s, um…my high school sweetheart, Chris, and I…we got married a long time ago. We’ve been divorced for three years now, but…it’s complicated.”

  “It’s hard to let the past go,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.” She turned to look at him. “Do you have anything like that?”

  “Something that haunts me?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Fair used to come into town one year. Me and my dad would go to see it. He worked all day so we got in late at night, after most everyone had gone. We get in, I turn around…and I see the most terrifying thing my little nine-year-old eyes have ever laid sight on. This guy was dressed up in a clown suit, having a cigarette in the shadows. Wearing this b
ig, nasty frown. Scared me half the death.”

  It took her a second to realize he was teasing her. When she did, she frowned.

  “My dad and I,” she huffed.

  “Come again?”

  “You wouldn’t say: me went to the fair. You would say: I went to the fair. It’s my dad and I, not me and my dad.”

  “Ain’t you a barrel of monkeys, princess?” he said with a sly grin.

  Aren’t, she thought to herself as she crossed her arms. Aren’t I a barrel of monkeys. This was turning out to be one heck of a first impression. Holly just wondered how she was going to survive a full weekend of this.

  She looked out the window, caught a glimpse of something in the rearview mirror and looked over her shoulder. In the backseat sat a full-sized picnic basket on top of a neatly folded checkered tablecloth.

  “Are we going on a picnic?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Can’t keep anything from you, can I?”

  “I’m a teacher,” she reminded him. “It’s my job to ruin fun.”

  That got a low chuckle from him. “Well, professor, you’re about to get schooled.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This isn’t any picnic. This is a Jacob Westmore picnic.”

  Chapter 7

  He was right. It wasn’t any picnic.

  The classic red-and-white checkered picnic blanket lay strewn out on the ground. It was covered with food—a carton of berries (closed, to keep the ants out), a French baguette, a plate of Brie, spreadable chocolate. A bottle of white wine poked out of wicker basket.

  “Oh my God.” Holly’s hand clasped her mouth, covering her wide smile.

  “You like it?” Two minutes ago, Holly might’ve found that smug smirk on his face irritating, but right now, she had to hand it to him. He’d earned it.

  “I feel like Yogi the Bear is about to appear any second.” She giggled.

  “We better not stay long enough to attract him, then, huh?”

  Jacob picked up a pillow and put it down on the blanket, patting it to motion for her to take a seat. She obliged, lifting the fabric of her skirt so she could fold her legs underneath her.