“What is it?”
“Nothing pharmaceutical. Just peppermint essence.” She held up a small, dark bottle.
“Do I snort it, drink it, or rub it on?”
She hesitated, her face coming into soft focus as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. “It works best if I do it.”
“You, me, and a massage?” He put a suggestive drawl in his voice. “That could definitely alter my state of consciousness.”
Her dimple winked in the silvery glow from the security lights outside. “You must not be hurting too bad.”
“If I couldn’t get horny while I was in pain, I wouldn’t have gotten laid for a very long time.”
She made a noise that was part laugh, part sympathy, but she didn’t move any closer. “I also wanted to talk to you about today. Before the rodeo.”
Aw, hell. He’d known they’d have to hash that out, but he would’ve liked to wait until he’d had time to get a better grip on himself. He set the guitar aside. “You were right to be mad at me for interfering. I should have let you handle it.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I wasn’t handling anything.” She blew out a long breath. “When I get blindsided that way…it sort of paralyzes me. Especially when my emotions have been tangled up with his for so long.”
Shit. He hadn’t considered that she might literally feel Jayden’s pain. “I’m sorry. I should’ve realized…”
“Why would you? And I appreciated the gesture, even if I did a crappy job of showing it. Thanks for letting me be the cool one for a change.”
“You’re welcome.” Damned if she didn’t make him feel almost noble, saving the damsel and all. “So we can forget about it now?”
She huffed a laugh. “That would be awesome.”
“Done. Now come on into my lair.” He patted the sleeper mattress. Like him, she’d changed into gym shorts and a T-shirt after her shower. As she eased into the space he’d made for her, he caught a strand of hair and brought it to his nose. “You smell like a maraschino cherry.”
“It’s my lotion and conditioner.” Her hand came to rest at his waist, safely above the worst of the bruises. “Other than your hip, what hurts?”
“Back and neck, mostly.”
“Can you lie on your stomach?” she asked.
“If I have a pillow under my hips. You want my shirt off?”
She gave another of those low, pulse-stirring laughs. “Always.”
His groan wasn’t entirely from pain as he rolled into position. God, this woman turned him on, in ways that went beyond physical. She challenged him, fascinated him, and somehow made him feel like a better man. He’d read that INFJs were called human chameleons, able to transform into whatever a person or situation demanded. It wasn’t a comfortable thought, that she might just be mirroring his own desire back at him.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Then he decided what the hell. “How do you keep other people’s feelings separate from yours?”
She sighed. “I don’t, especially if the feelings are about me. It’s like pouring cream into coffee—harder to tell one from the other the more they get stirred up.”
The idea that her crystal ball could get muddied was reassuring, if selfish. He rested his cheek on folded arms as she tipped liquid from the bottle into her palm. The scent of peppermint filled the sleeper and he was instantly transported back to Montana and hiking with Hank, their breath misting in the evening air—in freaking May—as they hiked up a boggy draw where the peppermint plants grew wild.
“Did you make that yourself?”
“Yes.” She rubbed her hands together, intensifying the aroma. “It’s a tea, not an oil. My dad’s aunt taught me how to brew it.”
“Not your grandmother?”
Her hair whispered along his arm as she leaned over him. “The healers are in Granddad’s family. Breathe with me.”
He closed his eyes and began to match the soft whisper of her breath. Her hands moved above him, not quite touching, creating an eddy that swirled peppermint into the still air.
Then she began to speak, her voice low, in a cadence as old as time. “Once there was a girl who loved the sky. Near her home there were mountains and lakes, rivers and forests, but she looked most often to the sky that stretched high and wide above it all, always changing, from the palest gray to deep, dark black, purples and pinks and every shade of blue in creation.”
“Is there going to be a moral to this story?” he asked, but already the spell she was weaving had smoothed the mocking edges from his words.
“Shhh. It’s just a quiet place for your mind to go while your body relaxes.”
The way she’d taken him out of the gut-clenching panic that afternoon. If she could work that magic again…
She picked up the thread of the story. “The girl would stare and stare, trying to pull the sky colors inside her head to save them forever. And she loved the clouds—strands that flowed like her horse’s mane, waves that rippled like whitecaps, fat beavers and herds of buffalo—even the wild wind clouds. At dawn, when the sun painted the sky, she would reach up to try and touch the brilliant red and gold. And when the clouds piled thick and high, she would sit and watch Thunder as he roared and danced.”
As she went on, Gil realized that even though she wasn’t touching him, he knew exactly where her hands were by the warmth that radiated over his skin. His blood rose to the surface as if drawn by a magnet.
“Winter, spring, summer, fall—she greeted the sky, the birds, the clouds, always finding something precious to store in her heart. But one day, when she had become a woman, she walked far up into the mountains, her gaze cast downward, until she reached a small, hidden lake. As she watched, the water became still and a shadow passed over its surface. She looked up to see a massive eagle gliding down to land on a nearby branch.
“‘What makes your heart so heavy that you cannot lift your eyes to the sky?’ the eagle asked.
“‘My brother must go into battle, and I am afraid for him.’
“‘As you should be,’ the eagle agreed. ‘But because you have worshiped the sky and its creatures, I will bring you a piece of it, inside a special stone, for him to carry for protection.’
“As the eagle took flight and disappeared, she settled upon the shore of the lake to wait. The sun sank behind the mountains and the moon appeared above her in the darkening sky. She had no food, no blanket, no defense against the bear or the wolf, but still she waited, shivering and frightened. As Morning Star faded and the sun painted the mountains in pink and gold, the eagle appeared far up in the sky, spiraling down and down until it once more perched on the branch above her, a plain, lumpy rock clutched in its talons. When she reached up for the stone, he dropped it onto a slab of rock beneath the tree, where it broke. She snatched up the halves and saw that inside its dull shell the stone held all the colors of the sky trapped in its glittering crystals.
“‘Give one half to your brother and keep the other for yourself. And when you sing to the spirits, they will fill your hands with the power of the sun.’
“The eagle flew away. The woman returned home, where she gave her brother his half of the stone and taught him her favorite sky song. He took both song and stone with him and survived many battles with their protection. And from that time forward, the woman could sing to the sky and gather power to use as she needed.”
Carma’s touch was so light that Gil almost thought he imagined her fingers circling each sore spot and plucking softly, pulling the pain out of his body the way she’d released his tension that afternoon. Again, and again, and again her fingers circled and stroked, until he stopped anticipating the next touch and sank into the sensation.
“How does it feel now?” she whispered.
Gil blinked. Had he drifted off to sleep? He had no recollection of when she’d stopped touching him, or how l
ong she’d been sitting motionless. He shifted, testing. There was still the sharp bite of the bruise on his hip, but the muscle spasms had been replaced by a liquid awareness, his body accepting the aftereffects of the trauma instead of fighting it.
“Better,” he said.
“Good.” Her fingers trailed the length of his back, from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine. “You should be able to sleep now.”
She shifted as if to rise. He caught her wrist and held tight, gripped by something close to desperation at the prospect of being left alone to stew. “Don’t go.”
“You need to rest.”
“I won’t. As soon as you’re gone, my brain will start up again.” And what about her? She’d had emotions dumped on her from every direction today—Jayden, Gil, even Quint. She must need a release of her own.
And Gil was just the man to give it to her.
“I bet your brain could use a break, too.” He stroked lightly up the tender skin of her arm, inside of the sleeve of her T-shirt, and was rewarded by her shiver. “It’s time to stop playing with each other, Carmelita. Come down here and let me make you stop thinking for a while.”
* * *
Carma drew in a quick breath, already so intensely aware of Gil that just the husky rasp of his voice was almost painful. The blankets rustled as he shifted onto his side and drew her in toward him, his arm hard and persuasive around her hips.
“Please?” It was as close to begging as she could imagine from this hard, proud man. This was more than lust. In the face of what could be a life-changing revelation, he needed contact. Connection. His fingers burrowed under the hem of her T-shirt, lifting it so his mouth could find the bare curve of her waist. “I want to taste all of you. Starting here.”
His words were hot against her skin, and her thighs clenched. His arm curled around her shoulders, tipping her back and turning her as he pressed openmouthed kisses along her ribs, working his way up to nuzzle between her breasts, making a deep sound of approval when he found them free of the bra she’d stuffed in her bag after her shower. He turned his head to kiss the swell of first one, then the other, the tickle of his hair as arousing as the glide of his tongue. She had to grab his arm to steady herself, only to be undone even more by the silk-over-steel flex of his biceps under her hand.
“I… Oh!” Whatever she’d meant to say ended in a gasp as he found her bare thigh. Long, slow strokes from the almost painfully sensitive skin on the inside of her knee to the cuff of her shorts. First one leg. Then the other. Then back. So excruciatingly slow that her teeth clenched against a moan of frustration.
Higher. Oh, God, just a little higher.
Driven beyond patience, she pulled away.
“Don’t—” he began to protest, then gave a low laugh when she whipped her shirt over her head and shoved her shorts and underwear off. “—let me stop you,” he finished.
“Now yours,” she said, kneeling on the side of the bed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He laughed again. “That almost sounds like a threat.”
“You don’t want to find out.”
“I dunno. I like a challenge.” But he gingerly stripped off his shorts.
He wasn’t wearing underwear.
Then he pulled her down onto the bed and they were pressed skin to skin, their mouths and bodies fusing, hot and hungry. She let her hands roam, reveling in his intensely male textures. There was no softness in him, only raw power, sharp angles, and the rasp of newly grown stubble as he dragged his teeth along the curve of her shoulder.
She had expected this first time—the release of months of pent-up desire—to be a wild ride to the razor edge of sanity. But she’d forgotten that this was a man who prided himself on attention to detail. And multitasking. Oh, dear God, he was good at that. Her body arched as his mouth and hands simultaneously inflicted intense pleasure.
Her nails dug into his shoulders and she had a vague thought that she should be doing more, but he didn’t leave her space to figure out what. He rolled her underneath him and she whimpered, drawing an answering groan as she rocked against him, driving them both farther into the madness.
“My purse…” she gasped, flailing one hand toward the floor.
“Got my own.” His weight pinned her down when he reached into the cupboard above their heads. Plastic crinkled and tore as he ripped the condom wrapper with his teeth. He slid down, teeth and tongue finding and torturing her nipples until she hissed from the need that screamed to be filled.
When he moved up again, he hooked her left knee with his hand, bending it and pushing it wide. “Keep that right there.”
So she didn’t bump his bruised hip, she realized hazily, as he caught her right ankle and pulled it up around his waist, leaving her fully exposed to the fingers that slid inside her as his thumb stroked, sending pulses of sensation rocketing through her, carrying her up, and up, until she was on the verge of coming undone. His fingers pulled out and he drove into her, so hard and full that the shock of it broke her into a thousand brilliant pieces that flashed behind her eyes as he took her again and again, every thrust a new, emphatic possession.
Tightening her leg, she drew him deeper, crazed by the desire to own him, if only for those few moments when he lost his grip on everything else. In that instant she tightened around him and held on as he shuddered in her arms, grinding nearly unintelligible words between his teeth. For several minutes they sprawled, chests heaving and muscles limp, unable to speak.
Then she gave a breathless laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
She turned her head to find his mouth and press a kiss at one corner. “You even swear during sex.”
She felt the wicked curl of his lips. “Only when it’s fucking awesome.”
Chapter 21
By Monday night, Gil was so wired he was practically levitating. Every outlet for his stress had been blocked since Saturday night, when Carma had gotten dressed and gone back to her own bed after what he’d figured was just the warm-up round. She’d insisted that his hip had had enough, even if he hadn’t.
Then he’d surprised himself by dozing off almost immediately.
But the next morning Tori had refused to let him drive the tow truck and Carma had taken the wheel of the rental car, over his protests that she didn’t have her new license yet.
“I am a very law-abiding driver. And this isn’t the powwow van,” she added cryptically.
Gil had no choice but to twiddle his damn thumbs in the sleeper, where he could stretch out and take the pressure off his sore hip. And think.
God, he wanted to stop thinking.
The standard Monday chaos had given him some relief. Then he’d run over to the hospital in Dumas for the follow-up MRI, and once it was done, he couldn’t shake the knowledge that the specialists in Boston were studying the results, deliberating his future.
He’d come to terms with the death of his rodeo dream a long time ago. What would he do if it was suddenly resurrected?
Normally he would have gone straight to his sponsor to spew it all out, but Tamela’s oldest was home for a rare visit and Gil wouldn’t steal any of that precious time from her. There were others in the group he could talk to if he was experiencing a true crisis. They didn’t know him the way she did, though. And until the verdict was in, he only had a list of maybes to consider.
Meanwhile, he couldn’t even sweat the stress out in the weight room. His right shoulder was feeling the effects of the fall, and Tori had banned even the elliptical bike pending the test results.
Carma had left after work Monday to finally visit the Brookman ranch and hadn’t come back until nearly eleven. Gil knew the time exactly. He’d heard every vehicle that approached on the highway, ears tuned for the distinctive rumble of her van’s retro tailpipes. Then she did come home and that was worse. Busting over there felt wrong, l
ike he was taking advantage of her living in his apartment. He couldn’t even text her some stupid GIF in hopes of getting an invitation, since she hadn’t got her new phone yet.
Besides, it would be too damn easy to spill his guts and invite her into spaces where no one other than Tamela was allowed. Not even Miz Iris. He was aware it wasn’t entirely healthy, but it worked for him. This was no time to go messing with success.
So he pulled up the Heartland Foods contract and tried to focus on the mind-numbing legal speak, designed to lull him into overlooking clauses that could bite Sanchez Trucking on the butt somewhere down the road. But every time he blinked, his head filled with Carma, and how good it would feel just to be touching her. The way she could siphon off his tension like a ground line drained excess static electricity from a tanker truck, preventing combustion of pent-up fuel vapors.
And then he’d have to offer to return the favor, and that felt too much like assuming that her proximity meant unlimited access to her body.
He really should’ve thought of that before offering her the apartment.
With a peevish sigh, he swiped back to the top of the page and started rereading all the bullshit he’d inadvertently skimmed. Maybe he could bore himself into oblivion.
* * *
When he finally walked into Panhandle Orthopedics on Tuesday afternoon, his stomach was a churning mess of hope and dread—and he still hadn’t decided which answer about his future would potentially do the most damage.
The receptionist greeted him with an unsugared version of the smile she used on most patients. Life hadn’t left Beth with an oversupply of sweetness, so she didn’t waste it on Gil. “I’ll let the aide know you’re here.”
“I’m supposed to see Tori.”
The smile sharpened. “We have to document everything for your file, so unless you want Tori to take pictures of your bruises…”
No damn way. He scowled at Beth.
She held up both hands. “Hey, I offered to sacrifice my virgin eyeballs…”
Relentless in Texas Page 17
