Back In The Saddle: Bachelor Auction - Book 2

she’d wanted me. I’d never touch her otherwise. That was why I’d stayed away all this time. She hadn’t wanted me. If she had, she’d have come to me.
She had, but after six years.
Sarah O’Banyon was my every fantasy come to life. Had been since she turned eighteen. I’d wanted her all those years ago, and I still wanted her now. I hadn’t been celibate since, but sex had been a release. To blow off some steam. Nothing more. Sarah’d had my heart once, and it had been destroyed.
I battled often with how I’d handled her dad. I should’ve told him to fuck off, then carry Sarah away on the back of my horse like some kind of sappy western. But he’d threatened to not only take away her college fund but disown her. He was an asshole, but I wouldn’t risk Sarah’s happiness for anything. So I’d stayed away.
I listened. The house was completely quiet. The crickets chirping through the open window were all I could hear.
She wasn’t coming back. The breeze did nothing to cool me down. My jeans were open, and my dick was out, hard and dripping pre-cum. I was handcuffed to the fucking headboard. The only person in the house was Alice—Claire was spending the night with one of her friends so all of us could attend the auction—and she was the dead-last person I wanted to come to my rescue.
It was one thing for everyone to learn about how Delilah had snuck through Sawyer’s bedroom window all those years ago, but this? Now? I was thirty-two years old. No one needed to know I gotten hard being restrained.
Hell, I hadn’t known I liked it until Sarah, in little scraps of lace and silk, dangled my cuffs from her finger.
“Fuck!” I growled, this time a hell of a lot softer.
She’d planned this. The seduction? Fake.
No. It hadn’t been fake. She’d been dripping wet. Eager. She’d rolled her hips over my face as I ate her out. She’d come, and hard.
No fucking way she’d faked that.
She’d taken what she wanted, then left behind what she’d intended.
A hard dick and the paper on my chest.
Claire’s not biologically yours.
She wasn’t. I remembered the looks around town when I’d brought her home. The whispers. Of course Huck Manning had knocked someone up. He was never going to amount to anything, especially when he had a child out of wedlock and who knew what had happened with the mother. They wouldn’t have believed the truth. They believed their own truth.
They hadn’t deserved to know what really happened. How I’d saved Claire from being raised by a horrible mother.
Outside of my family, the only person I’d wanted to tell never once looked me up. I’d stupidly hoped she might. It hadn’t mattered that I’d turned my life around, raised a girl I was fucking proud of. I was just the fuckup everyone said.
Years went by. The last person I’d thought to bid on me at the auction was Sarah O’Banyon. When she’d stood up in the crowd, I’d been stunned. Immediately I’d wondered… why? We hadn’t said much after I tugged her out of the packed auditorium and to my truck. All she’d said was, “Take me home.”
And I had.
Only three words and my dick had gone instantly hard. There had been a moment when I’d had clarity, when I’d stopped and told her we had to talk. We had too much unsaid between us, but she’d shut that down. She’d even said, “No talking.”
Yeah, my dick had liked that. And taken over.
Fuck! I should’ve at least tried to think about the why of it all. But no. Sarah had always led me around by my dick, and she’d done it again. I wanted her. Still.
She still wanted me, too. But she wanted something else from me as well.
The truth.
The paper on my chest told it all.
I realized where she must have gotten it. Kale’s accident. Her dad’s shop was the only tow in town and the one we used for police matters. She worked for him, ran the business side of it. She must’ve collected Kale’s things out of the truck, found the letter. Learned the truth. Wasn’t happy about it.
Obviously, based on the fact that my balls were aching, she’d had a plan to get back at me.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Sarah was scorned as shit.
Technically I’d broken up with her. But not by choice. I’d done it for her. I sighed, tipped my chin back, grabbed the wooden slat that held me prisoner, and tugged at it, but it didn’t give. “Fucking quality construction,” I grumbled to myself.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of this mess with my dignity intact. But that wasn’t all that important now.
Sarah was what was important. I’d hurt her. Enough to buy me at an auction so she could get me like this, to punish me. Payback for what she thought I’d done to her. I tugged on the slat some more. Gritted my teeth and yanked.
She still had feelings for me, although not the right ones. I had to make this right. She was out there mad at me. I couldn’t have that. The thought that I’d hurt her again, that she’d been hurting all this time was like acid in my stomach.
There was hope though. I tasted it on my tongue.
She might hate my guts, but she wanted me. If I had to get her in my cuffs and pleasure her until she talked, I’d do it. It was time to get shit straightened out. To make her mine once and for all.
As soon as I got out of these fucking cuffs.

6
SARAH
Saturday Morning
“You bought Huck Manning?”
I stalled at my dad’s question just outside the doorway to the service bay. Blinked.
Of course he would have heard about what I’d done at the auction. The Bend was small enough that word traveled fast. I hadn’t been subtle about