Stabled (The Stables Trilogy #1) by Penny Lam Page B

breathe. He didn’t know, couldn’t know or understand what she was beginning to realize; that maybe fate had brought her here. Unlike Bane, she really was deserving of punishment. J.B. merely needed to lift the smiting hand.
     
    Instead, his face, pale and strained, pulled away. He stepped back quickly.
     
    “I’m sorry,” he muttered. J.B. wasn’t the kind of man to apologize, and the words rang more like they were directed at him, at his own memories, than at her. When he managed to look at her, everything about him was haunted. The straight line of his shoulders. His ragged inhales. The sharp cut of his jaw and clenched teeth. “This conversation is over, though. If you go near Bane again, you’re fired.”
     
    She was making this worse. Somehow, Maple was pushing him away. Tony had seen inside her and had captured her, ensnared her. Now she was seeing inside of J.B. and she wanted to do the same to him. To seduce him and make him hers.
     
    The parallel between her and Tony made her sick.
     
    Their argument stalled, neither willing to continue. As she raced through everything that had happened, she saw J.B. lock down. Get control of his emotions. It made her envious. She’d been able to do that once. Now she was a derailed train, bent on demolishing everything.
     
    The memory of the bite, of being pinned under him on the bed, came back. It was filled with poison and Maple saw what J.B. had seen; a little girl, possessed by venom and lust. Disgusting.
     
    Who acted that way? Who, while dying on a man’s bed, spread their legs, hoping to be fucked? In the deep recesses of her memory, Tony’s toxic laugh started bubbling up. The anxious voice that she was used to hearing disappeared. His malicious one took its place.
     
    You wanton little slut.
     
    Tony was right.
     
    She shivered, hard. “I need the bucket.”
     
    Maple started vomiting again, wishing the rattlesnake had just killed her.
     

     
    Soft breaths woke her. J.B. was beside her on the bed. Oh, he’d shoved a pillow between their bodies, but she felt him, the weight of him dipping the mattress. The awareness of his close proximity wasn’t unpleasant.
     
    He was sleeping, his masculine face relaxed. He’d shaved. Longing, almost irresistible, to touch his hair, forced her to clench her fists.
     
    Most of the nausea had passed but she still felt like she’d been tossed at sea, slammed against rocks, and thrown on shore again.
     
    Maple was scared to move.
     
    J.B. had saved her life. She should be grateful. She wasn’t sure she was anymore. 
     
    What did he think of her now? Was he appalled? She was. She couldn’t not think of it, replaying her moaning, arching body over and over. It was a thick sludge, worming its shameful imagery through her until her stomach cramped and her skin burned. Every push of her hips to his. Her wrists ached with the memory of his rough hands.
     
    She’d need to call her mother and come home, of course. Maple’s heart broke. She hadn’t expected to love this job or life on the ranch. But her little room had started to feel like home. She liked her friendships with Raúl and Mariela. Maple felt comfortable here, something she hadn’t felt since Tony.
     
    God, he’d done a number on her, hadn’t he?
     
    That wasn’t completely fair. The desires, the dark needs had been inside her all along. Tony had merely ripped them to the surface and claimed them.
     
    Maple had grown up comparing romance and sex in books against the marriage her parents had. In that aging, weathered home there’d been hushed-whisper arguments. Eyes that never made contact. Conversations that never went more than six or seven sentences. Quiet and stoic, she didn’t think her parents weren’t in love. She just thought maybe the weren’t in love , either.
     
    That couldn’t be her. She’d craved passion since she’d first started reading. In those books were the love affairs, the spicy sex, to open her eyes to the