Texas Hellion
BY
Jordan Silver
Copyright©2015 Alison Jordan
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Prologue
GRANT
“Hey, you, get your ass outta there.” Why is this kid always messing with me? I turned around so I didn’t see any more of her than I already had, but I was afraid the damage had already been done. As if the last few weeks hadn’t been hard enough on my ass, she had to go and pull this shit.
I heard the water splash as she climbed her naked ass out, and as tempted, as I was to turn around and take in more of her barely legal body, I fought the urge. From what little I’d seen though, I knew I was going to be seeing that shit in my minds’ eye for a long time.
Thank fuck she was heading off to school soon, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep up the façade. She walked by me with her head down. I guess she wasn’t expecting me to be riding range on this side of the property, and that’s why she was skinny dipping in my creek. But what if I’d been someone else? What if one of the ranch hands had seen her instead of me? The thought pissed me the fuck off as I watched her slink away.
I bit my lip to keep my tongue still, just a few more weeks before she went off to that fancy school of hers. She didn’t need to know that I wanted to fuck the shit out of her. That it took all my self-control here lately not to say fuck it and just take her.
She cried out and picked up one of her feet and I walked over. She was bleeding like stink. “What the hell did you do?” I knew I had to pick her up but she was barely dressed. Why the fuck was this happening to me? I had no choice in the end but to pick her ass up and mount her on my horse before getting on behind her.
I rode to my place since it was closer than her parents’ next door. “Sit here let me go get the stuff.” I sat her in a kitchen stool and went to the bathroom to get some supplies. When I came back she was looking at her foot and trying to clean away the blood with her fingers.
I moved her hand away and tried to ignore the tears in her eyes. “It looks like you stepped on a piece of broken glass.” I cleaned the wound and bandaged it with my heart in a vise. She looked so pitiful, and nothing at all like the eighteen I knew her to be. And what the fuck was that look in her eye?
***
Oh boy Camille this is it, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. I saw the look in his eye and closed my eyes just before our lips collided. It was sweet and mind blowing and…when he pulled away and jumped back like a scalded kitten it was like being doused by a bucket of ice-cold water.
I was mortified by his reaction, and that’s why I threw the first punch. I’ve always been a fight or flight kind of girl. “You crazy…cut it out.” Good, I’d caught him a good one in the kisser, that’ll teach him to go around kissing unsuspecting females and then acting like they had the plague.
“Unhand me you oaf before I get my gun and shoot your balls off.” He singed me with a look before letting me go and stepping away. I took a hasty breath while his back was turned, but inside I was a bundle of nerves. I wanted so badly to run my fingers over my lips, but I couldn’t, not with him there.
He walked over to the other side of the island and I sat there like a fool, not knowing what to do with myself. Could this day get any worse? I knew this would happen, had been afraid of it for a long time. Well, you’d better pull yourself together missy, can’t let him see you mooning over him, that’ll just add insult to injury. I didn’t dwell too much on the hurt I felt from his rejection, instead I schooled my face the way I always did, the way I had taught myself to do to hide what was really inside me where Grant Colfax was concerned.
***
GRANT
After the kiss I’d ran like hell back to the other side and hidden my dick behind the cover of the island. We hadn’t said two words to each other until I’d found my balls and manned the fuck up. I’d apologized for the kiss, but after she went back to being her usual ornery self I figured no harm done. In short I’d played the fucking coward, choosing to let her believe that her acid tongue had scared me off, when nothing could be farther from the truth. But how could I start something I was almost positive she wasn’t ready for? If she only knew the half of what I wanted to do to her she’d run.
No matter what I told myself now, the memory of that kiss was always going to be at the forefront of my mind. Now here alone I can take that shit out and dissect it. Did she have to taste like that? Did she have to shatter my hard won control in a million pieces? How was I supposed to stay away from her for her own good when she got under my skin like that?
Chapter 1
CAMI
“Cami, you have got to calm down, you can’t go doing anything rash here. You’re still trying to live down your last episode remember.” I calmly listened to my best friend of fifteen years while I took a sip of my gin and tonic. Inside I was a fuming mass of destruction ready to detonate; outwardly I was the same debutante princess my daddy had raised me to be.
My old trick of counting backwards from a hundred was wearing thin, and quite frankly there wasn’t much keeping me from letting loose. I knew everyone was probably watching and waiting to see what I would do next, but I wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction. I felt like an ass sitting here among half the town with my life in shambles.
Daddy wasn’t here to pick up the pieces as he usually does whenever I get myself in a jam. Daddy, he was going to be so disappointed, I hate disappointing daddy. He’s always giving so much and never asking for anything in return. He’s my staunchest supporter no matter what, always in my corner.
It was probably time I stopped making rash decisions like the one that had led me to where I am at this very moment, but sometimes life just screwed with you and you had to do something about it. Poor daddy, he’d shelled out all that money and now it was all gonna go to waste. I chugged the last of my drink as I gave one last thought to my daddy and what my latest escapade was gonna do to him.
Thinking about my daddy also reminded me of something else he’d raised me to be. He wouldn’t want me to sit here and wallow in self-pity. I could almost hear him in my ear. ‘Well Cami girl, us Sutherlands are a resilient bunch. We like to take life by the balls and hang on ‘til the end’.
I slammed the glass down on the bar top and hopped off the stool tottering on my sky-high heels. It was a wonder they’d served me. At five feet nothing and about ninety pounds, I didn’t look a day over twelve. That was a whole eleven years younger than my actual age of twenty-three.
I eyeballed the other patrons who had the good sense not to even break a smile at my dilemma, not that most of them would, I was very well liked if nothing else in these parts. But I was sure there were a few who was more than happy to see the town’s reigning princess fall flat on her face. The thought made me see red and I straightened my shoulders and headed for the door with my head held high.
“Oh boy. Where are we going Cami?”
“Mary-Joe you sit your squeamish ass down on that stool. I’ll be back lickety-split.” She grabbed for my arm but I was already gone. Heading for the exit in my four-inch heels, hip hugging jeans and my specially made satin and lace Henley that made my girls look damn near perfect.
The night wasn’t chilly enough to warrant a jacket so my ass was on display
. I usually hid it beneath my fringe jacket that was the envy of the county, because I wasn’t too fond of putting my goods out there like that, and my derriere was a little rounder than most, though that seemed to be the new in thing. I guess it was a testament to how far gone I was that I wasn’t paying too much attention to such things, and who could blame me?
I could hear the murmurs behind me as I was sure everyone and their mama had already heard the news. That just burned me up even more. I hated the idea of anyone whispering about me behind their hands, worst I hated the thought that some of them might even be feeling sorry for me. That was a fate worse than death if you ask me. One thing I’ve never been is a poor soul, and I wasn’t about to become one on account of some no-account jackass who didn’t know when to keep it zipped.
I hotfooted it to my little powder blue convertible that daddy had got me for my last birthday to replace the pastel pink one I’d had since I was eighteen. Daddy! If, no when he heard about this, there was going to be hell to pay. I figure better me than him. Brady Sutherland is not known for his warm and fuzzy side. There’s no telling what he would’ve done if he’d been here when the story broke.
The last thing I needed was for my daddy to end up in jail for something I’d done. It was high time I took responsibility for my own shit and act my age. Maybe I should get toasted more often, it seemed like I only thought with any kind of rationality when I got like this. Huh, it was a thought.
I saw Mary-Joe scrambling to her vehicle but I wasn’t afraid. She might know where I was headed, but she’s afraid of going above thirty on the highway so there was no way she was going to catch me in my little speedster. I pressed down on the gas and let the evening breeze blow through my curls.
The more road I ate up on my way to my destination, the more pissed I became. It had only been a few hours since I’d learned the truth after all, since my whole world had been knocked off kilter through no fault of my own, and I haven’t had time to let it all sink in. Every time I thought of the shame of it all I could just scream. Who would ever have believed that someone like me would ever suffer such a thing? Things like this just did not happen to people like me, and that’s why it was so hard to swallow.
Some might say that I’m full of my own importance, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Except for that one semester in high school when I’d fallen under the spell of this sociopathic bitch, I’ve pretty much been an exemplary human being.
I’ve always been a good girl. Mama and daddy had instilled in me from an early age how important it was for someone in my position to have an upstanding reputation. I was raised to look out for those less fortunate than me, to always show kindness no matter who I was dealing with, and to never look down on a person because of their financial situation.
I’m naturally kindhearted everybody says so. People from two counties over sing my praises because of how I go out of my way to serve others. I’ve never done anything to shame my family name, always mindful of the rules of etiquette that had been drilled into my head since birth.
I’ve held fast to those teachings all my life, except for that one slip in judgment when I was a teen and well now, until today, until Joel Campton made a G.D. fool out of me. Him and that rotten twat skank he was caught bare ass naked with two days before my wedding. I started hyperventilating again and had to slow down before I wiped out on the damn highway.
How did I not see this coming? And why is this shit happening to me? If anyone was less deserving of this it was me dammit. I help the elderly, I volunteer to feed the homeless and every quarter I take a shitload of designer wear down to the Salvation Army. Still and yet messed up shit keeps happening to me at an alarmingly rapid rate here lately.
If I stopped to think about this latest debacle I would keep driving past the state line until I ended up somewhere where no one knew me or had ever heard the Sutherland name. I thought I was so smart. I was going to eliminate one problem by burying my head in the sand and going full tilt ahead into another.
It didn’t matter that I wasn’t in love with Joel; we both knew what we were getting into and what we had to look forward to. People of our class hardly ever wed for love anyway, so it wasn’t like I was asking him to do the impossible.
He had promised me that he was okay with our little arrangement. So what if I broke out in a sweat every time I thought of the wedding night, I’m sure I would’ve got through it no problem. I mean women have been doing it for centuries so how hard could it be?
I’d been willing to make the sacrifice, and Joel’s family would’ve benefited from the money daddy was willing to fork over to his new son in law to help out his family’s dying business. No one, not even Joel knew the reason behind my proposal and I aim to keep it that way. But now with this turn of events things were up in the air again and I was in danger of losing more than my pride if something wasn’t done.
I shouldn’t have come back here after graduation. I should’ve headed out east somewhere where someone with my credentials would be in high demand. But I couldn’t fathom the idea of being that far away from him, what a fool I was. After all these years I still mooned over a man who didn’t even know I existed.
When I’d overheard momma and daddy talking about his plans to settle down and start a family, I thought I would die from the pain. Up until that point I had still allowed myself to daydream about the two of us professing our undying love for each other one day. I’d weaved so many dreams around the two of us over the years that sometimes it was hard to separate dream from reality.
With the news of his impending nuptials, that had all gone up in smoke and I was left with nothing but seven years of unfulfilled dreams. I hated him for doing this to me, for causing me to make a decision that had ended in disaster. And the worst of it was not just that he was getting married, but just who it was that he was planning to spend the rest of his life with. Asshole!
It wasn’t fair that I should lose in love not once but twice. Granted I wasn’t in love with Joel, neither was he with me, but couldn’t he have kept it zipped until after the honeymoon? I’d been willing to overlook even that after a decent amount of time had passed. It was worth it, at least it was in my mind back then, as long as I had the cover of marriage to a respectable man to shield me from my own private hurt when the man I was really in love with hitched his wagon to someone else’s.
Now it was all screwed up and I got egg on my face in the bargain. I could either lick my wounds and keep on taking these hits as they came, or I could take a stand and decide not to take the shit that life threw at me any more.
I looked over at the twelve-gauge shotgun my daddy had given me for my sixteenth birthday. You see, along with being taught how to be a lady, my daddy had taught me how to shoot the balls off any motherfucker that dared mess with Brady Sutherland’s little girl. Maybe I shouldn’t just stop with Joel and his sidepiece, maybe I ought a keep going and put an end to my misery once and for all. One of those ‘if I can’t have you no one else can’ type things. But how would mama and daddy ever show their faces in public again?
I saw the turnoff up ahead and geared myself up for what was to come. This wasn’t because that idiot Joel had cheated on me and had the bad taste to get caught. It wasn’t even because I knew the little titmouse librarian had done it on purpose to get back at me for being perfect. No, this was because all my plans to be married before my unrequited love interest had been thwarted.
I wanted to be Mrs. Joel Campton by the weekend, because even though his family was cash poor, their name was almost as exalted as mine. The woman my…what the hell did you call the man you’ve been secretly in love with since your teens anyway? Anyway the woman he who shall remain nameless was rumored to be walking down the aisle was of no account.
Her family was not on the same level as mine, but that was no reason to hate her. No I hated her because she had something I wanted, something that can never be mine. He was the only thing in my life that I had failed at. It was only
when he was involved that all my teachings went out the window. On top of that I was sure that she’d purposely gone after him because she knew I was in love with him.
Granted the one and only time I’d told her that we were both sixteen, and that was a few weeks before mama forbid me to ever even speak to her again on account of she was the one who had turned me from a sweet little thing into something not even my granddaddy would recognize.
The thought that she was even sharing his bed was enough to put me in a mental institution. No wonder rumors of their impending nuptials had sent me over the edge and caused me to be in the predicament I now found myself in.
It was only when it came to him that I lost all sense of self and made a fool of myself. I can just see him now shaking his head in that way of his when word of my latest shame reached his ears. He’d probably just say ‘poor thing, better luck next time.’ It just burned my ass to think of the smug condescending ass thinking it much less saying it.
I took the corner off the highway on two wheels doing ninety, with my anger refueled by my thoughts. I hope sheriff Carson wasn’t anywhere around, him or any of his mealy mouthed deputies. I wasn’t in the mood for any niceties and I’m in just the right frame of mind to shoot anyone who tries to get in my way.
I saw the little rundown house coming up ahead. Okay it wasn’t rundown, but it wasn’t on my caliber either. The little hot crotch librarian that lived there had fooled everyone into thinking that she was as innocent as her job title intimated. I was the only one who had seen through the mousy little tart’s charade and for that, she had sought to destroy me.
It wasn’t like I had tried to out her for the fraud she was or anything like that, but I had made a personal choice to steer clear once I determined that she was full of shit. Somehow she had caught on and my indifference had prompted her to betray me in the vilest of ways. I had ignored her subtle potshots taken whenever we had the misfortune to be in the same place at the same time. I had even been big enough not to spread her business all over town once I went digging to satisfy my curiosity, and this is the thanks I get.
Texas Hellion Page 1
