Kayla & the Rancher, Paige Tyler [story read aloud TXT] 📗

brought his horse around in front of her, forcing her to bring her own mount to a sharp halt.

“Dammit, Abigail, I told you to stop!” he said. “Couldn’t you hear me?”

Her brow furrowing, she shook her head. “No. What’s wrong?”

He gestured with his arm in the direction she had been headed. “You can’t go this way. It’s too dangerous,” he told her. “I want you to promise that you’ll never even try to go that way.”

He saw that she was looking toward the tree line in confusion. “Isn’t that the way down to the house?” she asked.

“Yes, it is, but you’d be lucky to live through it if you went that way,” he said.

“The slope turns into nothing but loose rock halfway down. Once your horse goes into that, you’ll slip and slide al the way to the bottom, probably bringing half the slope with you. If that isn’t enough, the walls start to rise up tight on either side so that you couldn’t turn around even if you wanted to.”

“I didn’t know,” she apologized. “I thought this was the fastest way back to the house.”

He shook his head. “It’s my fault, real y,” he said. “I should have pointed it out to you when we rode out here.”

They rode back to the house the long way around, and at a much more

leisurely pace. In the barn, Cord unsaddled both horses, and then brushed

down his big bay while Kayla did the same to her mare.

“You ride very well for a beginner,” Cord said, glancing at her as he brushed down his horse.

She didn’t answer for a moment. Abigail might not be a horsewoman, but

Kayla had ridden all of her life, and was quite comfortable in the saddle. She couldn’t admit that to Cord, though. “I love riding,” she said simply, running the brush over her horse’s glossy coat.

“You can ride any time you’d like, you know,” he told her. “Just let any one of the hands know, and they’l saddle your horse for you.”

She gave him a smile. “I don’t need anyone to saddle my horse. I can do it myself,” she said, a chal enge clear in her voice.

He lifted a brow. “Really? Well, that might be the case, but ask for help

anyway.”

After giving the horses both feed and water, they made their way to the far end of the barn. In one corner, several of the hands were seated around an old crate, and as she and Cord drew nearer, Kayla could see that the men

were playing poker.

One of the hands, a stocky, blond man named Joss, looked up from his cards as they approached. “Want to join us, Boss?” he asked Cord.

Beside her, Cord shook his head, declining the offer, but he must have seen her look of interest because he leaned close to whisper in her ear.

“Don’t even think about it,” he warned softly.

Cord’s words sent a delightful little shiver through her, and for the next few days his warning not to play poker with the hands was all she could seem to think about. What if she deliberately defied him and played cards with them?

Kayla wondered as she lay in bed one evening. Would Cord real y give her

another spanking? And would she get aroused from it again? Though she

was almost certain that he would indeed spank her, she finally decided that the only way to know for sure if it would excite her would be to try out her theory. The thought that she was going to intentionally provoke Cord into

spanking again her made her pulse race excitedly and she had a hard time

getting to sleep that night.

Since it wasn’t unusual for the hands to play cards after finishing work for the day, Kayla found a game going on when she walked into the barn the

following afternoon. The men looked up at her entrance and greeted her

warmly. Having met all of the hands by now, she knew most of them by

name, and smiled at the group seated around the makeshift card table.

“Are you looking for Cord, Ma’am?” one of the men asked. His name was

Harold, and he was tall and thin with a mop of curly red hair.

She looked at each of the men in turn before answering. “Actually, I was

hoping to play cards,” she said with a smile.

Harold blinked in surprise. “With us?”

She laughed lightly. “That was the idea, yes.”

The other men laughed, but looked at each other uncomfortably. Putting his cards face-down on the table, Harold hastily got to his feet. “Uh...Ma’am, I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea. I’m not sure the boss would like us playing cards with you.”

“Of course he wouldn’t mind,” she assured them. “He just didn’t want me

playing cards in town because it was not safe. But I’ll be perfectly safe playing cards with you gentlemen, right?”

The men nodded at the logic of her words. And besides, she knew the men

would enjoy her company. All of them were unmarried and didn’t often get a chance to spend much time with a beautiful woman. She thought they would

be willing to take a chance for the privilege of her company.

Harold must have thought so, too, because he said, “I’ll get you something to sit on.”

Kayla didn’t know if Cord would come in before the men finished playing, but she was pretty sure that at least one of them would mention to their boss that she had played poker with them that afternoon. As it turned out, however,

Cord walked into the barn after they’d played only a few hands.

She wasn’t aware of his presence behind her until the men she’d been

playing cards with abruptly got to their feet in the middle of a hand and

excused themselves with a polite, “Good day, Ma’am.” As one, they hurriedly left the barn.

Suddenly realizing the reason for the men’s