Page 47 of Over the Line

Still, she didn’t say no. Instead she drummed her fingers on her thigh. Have I won?

“What about that mangy little—?”

“Dwarf. She’s a Nigerian dwarf goat,” he told her for the second time. “And she’s not mangy. She gets bathed regularly and groomed often.”

“She takes baths?”

He liked their easy banter, along with the fact that Sydney seemed to be in no hurry to get away from him. “Either me or Jeb, my foreman, give them to her.”

“You do?”

“As I mentioned, Melanie and my nieces don’t make it up here often, so I get the honors.”

“You could braid her hair and tie it with ribbons, and she’d still be a menace to society.”

“Some females are,” he agreed easily.

She lanced him with the knife-edge of a glacial stare.

With a grin, he relented. “Present company excluded.”

“I can’t have your pampered pet eating any more of my belongings.”

“We can put your belongings high enough in the branches so that she can’t reach them.”

“Are you coming in with me?”

“Someone needs to twist your nipples.”

“Ah…” Her eyes now took on a glossy, sensual hue. “In that case, yes. It actually does look inviting.” She scampered from his lap and bent to pull off her hiking boots.

Obviously once she’d made up her mind, she didn’t entertain second thoughts.

She peeled off her socks, shoved them in the boots, then she tied the shoelaces together and looped them over a branch.

“Chewie can climb that rock.” He pointed.

“She’s a pain in the ass.” Shaking her head, Sydney stood on tiptoe and selected a higher branch.

Michael grinned.

No matter how skilled or determined, the goat probably couldn’t have reached the first location. He was sure she would try, but he was convinced she’d never succeed. But he was a red-blooded male and he’d wanted to watch Sydney stretch and rise up.

It didn’t take her long to take off her remaining clothes, and she hung them on the tree, too.

Without waiting for him, she headed for the water’s edge, picking her way over tiny rocks.

Still, she looked upstream before surveying the rest of the river. Sydney was cautious, not nearly as reckless as her reputation suggested.

“There’s a little pool here.” She crouched to stick her hand in the water. “It’s not as cold as I expected.”

Hell of a way to start the day, a pot of strong coffee waiting and looking at a beautiful woman—a beautiful, naked woman—who’d given him a hell of a blow job and whose ass had been reddened appropriately. He could get used to this, real fast.

By slow measures, she entered the stream. “Damn!”

“Not that warm after all?”

“It’s deeper here,” she said, forcing out a breath and rubbing her arms. “And because it’s so early, the sun’s not warming my skin.”