I’m Emma Jay and I’ve been writing for about five years, after Delilah challenged me to try my hand at some spicier writing, and I found it extremely liberating. I’ve written 17 novellas since, cowboys, firefighters and groomsmen.

I’m a teacher, which means secrets. It also means lots of testing. I was thumbing through a book while the kids were testing and read about this woman who was a rancher in Texas back in the day. Her cattle were rustled and she rode after them herself, into Mexico.

I was fascinated, and wanted to write about her. When Delilah put out the call for cowboy erotic romance, this story came to mind, though it’s historical and most of the others in the collection are contemporary. That’s how Mrs. Morgan and the Marshal came to be.

Here’s an excerpt. I’d forgotten how much I loved these two!

He collapsed beside her, one arm crooked over his eyes, the other tightening around her, pulling her to his side, unmindful of the mess he’d just made. When he caught his breath, he brought her close for a long, deep kiss.

“We should get married,” he murmured when the kiss ended.

The tension that had washed from her body with her climax, with his kiss, returned triple-fold, and she pulled away, rolling off the bed to deal with the mess. “I’ve no desire to marry again, to give any power to a man.”

“You give me power every time you come to my bed,” he said, rolling onto his side, not appearing the least bit offended.

“And you give it to me.”

“What’s to say that wouldn’t carry on in our marriage?”

“Because that’s not the way of the world.” She wiped her stomach with a rough towel dipped in water from the basin near the window.

“Sybil, we’re in Texas. The ways of the world don’t matter much here. You know that better than anyone.” He rose and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back against his chest.

She loved it when he held her like this, loved his strength and his heat and his tenderness. But not enough to give over the control of her ranch, her life.

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw you, riding hell-for-leather after those rustlers. At first I thought you were just a kid.” He cupped her breasts briefly and smiled against her neck. “Never was I so glad to have my powers of observation fail me.”

She remembered his surprise so well, first anger, then grudging admiration for a woman who took matters into her own hands. He’d joined her in her search for the rustlers, though she knew he’d wanted to send her home. She’d proved to him she could take care of herself, and anything else that came along, and saw the shift in his attitude.

And when he’d kissed her for the first time out on the trail of the bandits, well, she had let him. Who was she fooling? She’d loved it, and everything else he’d done to her. But was she ready for something more permanent?

“Don’t you want to stop waiting for a month to see each other? To stop sneaking around? To have children?” He curved his hand over her belly. “I would love for you to be the mother of my children. They’d be fierce and strong and loving.”

His words made her heart trip. She had thought about children—after all, why work so hard on the ranch if she had no one to pass it to? And children with him—why should the idea of growing large with his baby send this rush of pleasure through her, a pleasure almost as strong as when his body was inside hers?

Because she was in love with him. But she could never tell him, could never give him that ammunition. As soon as he knew that, he’d never give up on this crazy desire to marry.

I hope you enjoy Sybil and Addison as much as I enjoyed writing them!

You can find me online at emmajayromance.com, Facebook and Twitter at @EmmaJayromance. I hope you come visit!