After the Sunset Read Online Free PDF

driving into me, thrusting deep, but our present position was his favorite.
    “You’re mine.”
    And there could never be any doubt of the ownership he demanded and which I blissfully gave.
    After we swam naked in the creek, we had climbed out, changed back into our jeans, shoved our underwear into my boots—they needed to be washed—and were lying there together on the end of the tiny dock, feet dangling in the water, baking under the late August sun. I could hear the lazy buzz of insects, a splash now and then as a fish hit the surface of the water, and the sound of the leaves on the trees as the breeze blew through them.
    “Best day ever,” I told him, turning my head so I could look at him, his fingers laced behind his head, eyes closed.
    His short, wavy, black hair was curling around his ears and sticking to the back of his neck, and his long eyelashes looked dark even against the tan of his face. The man spent his whole life outside in the sun, and only I had made him wear sunscreen and slathered his face at night with moisturizer. He thought it was stupid. I didn’t want him to get skin cancer and leave me. Leaving me was a big deal; he wasn’t going to let any other man have me. He carried sunscreen in his truck now.
    Looking at him, I couldn’t help reaching out and running my hand over the wide, muscular chest and down the deep groove in his abdomen to the hard, flat stomach. Rand Holloway did not have gym muscles like I did. I was toned and defined, my own physique reminiscent of the guys in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, purposely acquired, whereas Rand actually used his body every single day. He lifted and pulled and dragged things heavier than him. He wrestled animals to the ground, carried fence posts, and swung a hammer. There was a great physicality to his everyday life, and it showed in every carved, hard inch of his massive frame.
    “Come closer,” he drawled out, ending with a yawn.
    But I was engrossed with looking at him.
    The glossy black hair that fell into his bright turquoise-blue eyes, the thick eyebrows that arched dangerously, and his sinful lips that twisted into half a smile whenever he saw me turned me inside out on a regular basis. The man was strength and heat and sex wrapped up in thick muscles and warm sleek skin. I watched women, and a few men, respond to the raw physical presence of Rand Holloway and always understood their trembling reaction. He was powerful and sensual, and when he smiled, which he hardly did around anyone other than his family, his men, and me, it became suddenly hard to breathe.
    Everyone who had ever seen Rand Holloway smile wanted to see it again. They enjoyed watching the Technicolor-blue eyes glint, and witness the lines in the corner of those magnificent eyes crinkle in half. But if, by some miracle, he laughed with you, was comfortable enough to let down that barrier and just be himself, treated you like family, Christ, you were hooked for life. The deep rumbling laughter was a sound you never forgot, and he became a drug you had to have. Not that he ever noticed anyone’s reaction to him because he didn’t care if people liked him or not. The only things he cared about were his family, his ranch, the people who lived on it and called it home, and me. There was no way not to love a man like that, heart and soul.
    “Stef.”
    I lifted my eyes, and he caught me in his blue gaze.
    “Put your head down.”
    I stretched out, laid my head on his bicep, and slid my denim clad leg over his thigh.
    He grunted. “You know, I know why you don’t wanna use the joint checking account.”
    And just like that, we were back to our earlier discussion.
    I was quiet because I didn’t want to fight. I had worked all my life, depended on no one but myself for anything. My stepfather had thrown me out when I was fourteen. My mother had stood there and watched, slamming the door in my face. When I had pounded on the door to be let back in, it was thrown open and the