“Home,” she mutters.

“Perfect. Get some gear together. You and I are going camping for the rest of the weekend.”

She comes to an abrupt halt and turns to me. “What?”

“Camping,” I say slowly. “You know… tent, fire, sleeping bags. It’s supposed to get pretty chilly tonight, but I figure we can find ways to stay warm.”

That was the truth. Even though we’re approaching the end of June, it’s been known to snow at this time of year, but personally, I like camping in cold weather. Like I said, I expect we’ll be buried in the sleeping bags.

“You want to go camping? Right now?” she asks in disbelief.

“Why is that so hard to understand?”

She chews on her bottom lip a moment before saying, “I don’t know. I guess… I just thought that you and I were only… I mean, you want to go camping?”

My hands come to her shoulders. Callie may not understand what’s going through her head, but I do. We didn’t talk about it last night, but I suppose this is a good segue. “I want to spend time with you, Callie. If you’re thinking that you’re just a fuck, you can get that right out of your head.”

She still seems confused for just a moment, but then her chin tilts up. “Well, what am I supposed to think, Woolf? You haven’t exactly been receptive to my charms in the past, so it’s a little disconcerting that I have your attention now. And let’s face it… you own a sex club. You have a gazillion women at your disposal. Why in the world would you want to go camping with me this weekend?”

I would think that ordinarily, most guys like me would be inclined to clamp down on their feelings. People like me, who have no experience in relationships and what makes them work, would think the safest route is to be non-committal. To keep things close to the vest.

But I’ve never been that type of person. I speak what’s on my mind, and I’ve also learned, at least in business, honesty is always the best policy. And let’s face it… relationships are like business.

So I try to be as truthful as I can with Callie. I try to at least let her know what’s in my head right now. My fingers massage into her shoulders, and I say, “Callie… I’ve known you most of my life… little sister to my closest childhood friend. I’ve put frogs in your bed. When you were seven, you kicked me in the nuts when Richard and I got into a fight and I pushed him down. You offered me your virginity, and you trusted me with it. The reason I didn’t take it wasn’t because I wasn’t interested. It was because I cared about you and knew that I wasn’t the type of man to be given that gift. I’ve always cared about you, and I’m going to go ahead and lay it on the line… I’ve fucking lusted after you for a very long time. I’m finally giving myself permission to act on it because I can’t fucking help myself. I want you too much, and yes… you and I have done an awful lot of fucking the last few days, but that’s not all there is, okay?”

She nods at me, her eyes looking at me in wonder and with a bit of wariness.

“So to answer your question,” I continue on. “I want to go camping with you because I like being around you, I love fucking you, and I could use some time away from the grind. Let’s go saddle up our horses, head out to Willow Bend, and let’s just enjoy each other.”

I think that was a pretty good speech. I think it was honest and hopefully put her at ease. But I’m a bit stunned when she asks, “But this is just sex. I mean… that’s the ultimate goal, right?”

“Um,” I hedge, because damn… now I’m on the spot. “I don’t know if it’s the ultimate goal, but it’s definitely the immediate goal.”

“Okay,” she says with confidence, but I see a little bit of hurt in her eyes. She was definitely hoping for something more. “But as long as you’re fucking me, you are not fucking anyone else. I don’t share.”

“Agreed,” I say emphatically. I wince a little internally because I hadn’t really thought about that. I mean, sure… I was going to follow Bridger’s advice and give this a try. He said start with the awesome sex, so that’s what I was doing, and yeah… if it developed into something else, I’d roll with it. But honestly, I really don’t expect it will because I truly can’t see me giving up that lifestyle for good. And Callie said she doesn’t share, so I think at some point down the road, I’ll have to make a choice if my appetites aren’t being satisfied by just one very beautiful but very vanilla woman.

I look over at Callie, and this is the girl I remember from our childhood. Her dark hair in one thick braid and a straw cowboy hat on top of her head to shield her from the sun. Faded jeans that mold to her spectacularly, a cream-colored Henley, and a gray fleece North Face jacket tied around her waist. A beat-up pair of boots hug her feet as she sits casually in the saddle atop Crazy Izzy, a feisty quarter horse that requires a sure hand, and I think she may be the most beautiful creature in existence. Like me, Callie’s been riding horses since she was a wee thing. She even raced barrels competitively for a while but gave it up when she was in her early teens when her horse broke its leg coming around the last barrel and had to be put down. It broke her heart so badly, she said she was never going to do that to another horse again.

We plod lazily along an overgrown trail about two miles from the main house at The Double J. Willow Bend is a section of a small offshoot of the Snake River that cuts an almost horseshoe-type curve into the land and forms a deep hole where you can swim. We’re not in a rush and why would we ever be in a hurry when we have scenery like this to look at?

No matter where you go on the ranch, you can’t ever escape the shadow of the Teton Mountains. The Double J sits on the eastern side of the range—which runs north to south—where there is a distinct lack of foothills to obscure your view. Instead, the slopes of the mountains rise up sharply from the valley in which the Double J sits and with elevations of eleven, twelve, and thirteen thousand feet, there’s still snow sitting atop the peaks throughout the summer months. In my humble opinion, there is no place more spectacular in the world. It’s why even though I’m CEO of a major corporation and really have no business doing it, I still try to ride range at least once a week just so I can soak in the splendor. It’s almost like my Zen place.

We make it through a long pasture where there’s a border fence that’s locked. I have to dismount to unlock it and Callie does the same, just to stretch her legs a bit. She looks out over the Tetons with a dreamy smile on her face.

“God, I missed this,” she says softly. “I mean, sometimes… I would actually ache with longing for these mountains.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I tell her as I pull the chain loose and swing the gate open. We both walk our horses through and as I secure it, she hops back in the saddle. I try hard not to stare at her ass as she does so.

“Does Tenn miss it?” she asks as I walk back over to my horse, Vlad. He’s a biter and he’s not happy unless he draws blood, but for some reason, he’s never tried to take a nip out of me. I think he knows I’d bite him back.

“Yeah,” I tell her as I swing up into the saddle. “I mean, he loves living in North Carolina. He and Casey have a great place right on the ocean, but you can see it when he gets back here to visit. First thing he does is hit the stable and saddles up so he can soak it all in.”

We’re not too far from Willow Bend and I almost suggest a race to the other side of the field, but she stops me when she says, “What does Tenn think about The Wicked Horse?”

A sharp stab of guilt hits me low in my belly as I admit to her, “He doesn’t know.”

She turns to me and levels a scowl. “What?”