Jaycee leaned against the wooden column of her front porch. It was late. After midnight. Too late. She knew that she should be in bed. After a fitful evening, she had finally managed to get Angel down. She should have gone to bed then. But she needed to check on the horses one more time. Or so she told herself.
There was also work to be done for a new client. A divorce. It would not be an easy case. But this one was troublesome at best. Her client claimed domestic violence against her husband of almost fifteen years. That would be bad enough but she also claimed that he had abused their daughters. That alone ripped Jaycee's heart out.
But the worst part of it all was the lack of evidence of any abuse because her client had dared not call the police...when her husband was sheriff of the small town they lived in. She had come to Jaycee because she was another woman, a divorced mother and lived two counties over. But Jaycee knew that offered the woman or herself little protection.
Texas still had its 'good ole' boy' network. A phone call or two would be all that it took for the woman's husband to locate the domestic violence shelter where she had placed her and the children while she filed the legal paperwork for the restraining order. A restraining order that even she knew was useless against a determined abuser, especially one this powerful. It was a dilemma that she had been pondering for days. Even if the woman could bring herself to flee, to beg the family that she had been estranged from since the early years of her marriage for help, to take the children across state lines without their father's approval was custodial interference at the least...and possibly kidnapping.
Jaycee shook her head. Sometimes she hated her job that was nothing about justice or fairness. She laughed as she half remembered some line from the ancient philosopher Plato's Republic. One of her first year law professor had written it in big letters across the blackboard on the first day of class. "Justice is serving the interests of the stronger." It was a lesson that she never seemed to learn. She let her shoulders slump for a moment, almost anticipating the long hard fight that would likely end in some sort of horrible compromise that kept her client under the man's control through the children.
She was just about to turn and head back into the house. Climb into bed and try to sleep. But sleep had become both friend and enemy. Since Angel's first seizure it was nothing more than a simple necessity. One that she tried to get by on the least of that she possibly could. But now as her practice was beginning to grow again and the burdens piling higher and higher even that necessity was becoming a burden.
If that was not bad enough, every single time she closed her eyes she found herself caught in the silky spider's web of erotic dreams about HIM. Rex Ranger. The damned man had become some fucking addiction for her. Since that first encounter in the courtroom she could not get him out of her mind. And his visits every couple of days to check on the horses did not help.
Since she had woken up almost at dusk that night to discover, the horse safely ensconced in the corral and everyone talking and laughing on this front porch over bowls of Lupe's mole, she had felt... Honestly, she was not sure what she felt. On one hand the man was proving his point about being there. He usually managed to make his 'animal welfare checks' at the end of his work day. He would complete that duty then he would find some excuse to remain.
Angel gave him plenty. She might remain reluctant to accept his presence in their lives, but her daughter was not. The little traitor usually managed to convince him to assist her with a pony ride using the excuse that Mommy and Hector were too busy, not that she had even bothered to ask either of them earlier. If not a ride then she wanted to hear another of his stories about 'Grandfather' or his ranch. Over half of the time, those big brown eyes would turn to Jaycee and beg, "It's okay if Rex stays for dinner, right, Mommy?"
If her daughter's puppy eyes were not bad enough, she usually had to contend with another set of big sky blue ones. She often wondered how a man that looked more like a Viking warrior could in fact be Native American. But that was not all she wondered about. Because at some point almost every visit, the man would manage to sneak a kiss somehow. A kiss? What an understatement!
It was those kisses that made her whole body ache with a need that she had never thought herself capable of having that seemed to fuel her dreams. They would begin almost the moment her eyes closed with a slow motion, instant replay of the latest kiss. But they never ended there. It became a configuration of the taste of those kisses, every naughty book she had ever read and her darkest fantasies.
Until she woke up sweating with her skin on fire, her nipples hard and her thighs sticky from her juices that had leaked until they practically soaked her sheets. And the realization that it was more than just a dream somehow as her body still thrummed with the after-effects of the dream-induced orgasm.
"Damn the man! I should just sleep with him to get it out of my system. There is no way in hell he can be that good." Perhaps the disappointment of the reality of making love with Rex Ranger would free her mind...and body to focus upon the things that she needed to...like her daughter and career?
But it was getting later and there was no point in delaying the inevitable any longer. She was turning to go back into the house when she heard the dog bark, followed by the high-pitched and frightened whiny of a horse. Jaycee felt the fear shoot down her spine like lightening. She froze where she stood.
