Controlled Burn by Delilah Devlin

things he’d done to her there beside the stream with his hands, his mouth…and his wicked, wicked tongue.
    Last night, she’d been tempted half a dozen times to creep down the hallway to his bedroom, but didn’t want to seem too desperate. If she’d heard him knock on her door, she would have let him in, but he hadn’t.
    Her fingers tightened, she squeezed. Nothing happened. She tried again, this time squeezing harder, but only made the goat bleat louder.
    A soft chuckling came from beside her. “Are you giving up? I can show you how.”
    Carly aimed a glare up at him. “Fine. Show me. The sooner I get this done—”
    “I know. The sooner you can get the hell away from me.”
    He said the words like the idea rankled with him. Were his feelings hurt? She frowned as he settled behind her, so close the heat of his skin warmed her back. “Put your hands on her teats.”
    She really hated that word. Teats. Like it was more polite than tits. So why were her own nipples tightening? She gripped the teats as she had before, her thumb and forefinger holding the appendages close to the udder.
    His arms encircled her, his hands closed over hers, his fingers aligning atop her fingers. “Squeezing at the top traps the milk in her teats.”
    “I know that,” she muttered. “Show me something I don’t.”
    “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” he asked, his mouth beside her ear.
    She squirmed on the stool. “I slept great.”
    “Funny,” he said, his voice dropping deeper. “I didn’t. I kept thinking about what happened. I kept wishing you’d slip into my bed. Why didn’t you?”
    Carly grew warm. Her skin prickled into goose bumps. She should laugh and tell him she hadn’t thought about him at all. But she liked the way he felt, wrapped around her, his hands holding hers. Laughter would be a kind of rejection, and the last thing she wanted was to push him away. “You didn’t invite me,” she said, keeping her voice even.
    He chuckled. “Didn’t think I had to. I apologize. Neither of us should have spent a restless night.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, the milk is trapped, now you have to coax it down the—”
    “Teat,” she ground out, clamping her jaw tight.
    “You don’t like that word?”
    “It just sounds wrong. Especially the way Mayra said it with her accent.”
    His laughter rocked his chest against her back, and she leaned against him to keep from toppling.
    “You squeeze your fingers, one at time, moving down the tit ,” he whispered.
    A squirt of milk rang against the side the bucket.
    Success . Carly laughed and turned her face to Jeremiah’s. Her smile faded as she stared into his taut features. Her gaze went to his mouth, and he leaned toward her.
    The goat bleated.
    Carly jerked away. “We should milk her.”
    “Quickly,” Jeremiah said, continuing to coach her with presses against her fingers.
    The bucket filled, and the pungent scent of goat milk rose to surround them.
    “Think that will do it,” he said, and then stood, helping her with a hand at her elbow. He dipped down to turn the goat’s head and push her out of the stanchion.
    Penny trotted away, bleating as she rejoined her kids.
    Jeremiah picked up the bucket, and then grabbed for Carly’s hand. “Let’s drop this with Mayra.”
    She didn’t even try to tug away her hand. She liked the way his felt, surrounding hers, forcing her to follow.
    Mayra was nowhere in sight when they entered the kitchen.
    He set the bucket in the sink then moved through the kitchen doors to the living room, tossing his hat toward the sofa. Then he turned to head down a dark hallway. At the end, he opened the door of an office or a library, or maybe it was both.
    Books lined the walls floor to ceiling, shelves even framing the windows. A large walnut desk dominated the center of the room. Deep leather sofas faced each other across a large leather ottoman.
    Without speaking a word, he stood her in front of the