Wild Cowboy Ways

by Carolyn Brown

  She flipped around until she was sitting in his lap, her arms around his neck, fingertips toying with his wet hair, and legs wrapped around his waist. Then she moved one hand down to turn off the water and the other one slipped between them to guide him into her.

  “Are you sure?” he asked her. “We can wait for protection.”

  “That feels too wonderful to stop.” She arched against him and brought his lips to hers, latching on to them in a hungry kiss. “Besides, I trust you. And I can’t have children anyway.”

  She saw a cloud of sadness flash through his eyes and rolled her hips to keep him distracted. “Allie…God that feels good.” He moaned and clasped her hips with his hands, his mouth seeking hers again.

  They rocked together until she arched backward so far that her hair dragged into the water, and then an explosion like she’d never felt before consumed her body, leaving her limp. Satisfaction was instantaneous for both of them. He growled her name, all of it—Alora Raine—as he came into her.

  She laid her head on his chest and melted against him. “That was wonderful.”

  “That was only the opening credits. Now we’ll take this to the bedroom and have the full movie.” He rose up from the water like a warlord of some ancient country, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her, soaking wet, to the bedroom where he kissed her butt before he flipped her on the mattress and dried her body with the top sheet.

  “I’m ruining your bed.” She tried to wiggle away.

  “It’s all washable.” His mouth found hers again and the second round started with less foreplay and a lot more pure old wonderful, wild cowboy sex. She could hardly believe it when they both reached the edge of the cliff at the same time for the second time in an hour and dove into that gorgeous afterglow together. So much for a one-time satisfying of the itch she had for Blake Dawson. She hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of the yearning down deep in her body.

  He rolled to the dry side of the king-size mattress and pulled the bedspread up over them. Holding her with one arm and stroking her face with the other, he said, “There are no words. Is this what you girls call afterglow?”

  “So you were an afterglow virgin until now?”

  “I guess I was,” he answered.

  “Me too.” She yawned.

  She awoke to the click of the clock as another minute passed. With a start, she sat straight up in bed, only to find herself alone. It was straight-up five o’clock. Had she dreamed the whole afternoon? If so, she didn’t want to wake up.

  “Hey,” he said from the doorway. “We got so involved that I forgot to tell you that my brother, Toby, is on the way for a visit. He’ll be here in half an hour.”

  “Oh my God, I had no idea we slept so long! I’ve got to go home.” She was frantic. She didn’t want to be there when his brother arrived, especially not with a smile that she couldn’t wipe off with a dose of alum-laced lemonade.

  “You don’t have to.” He wore his jeans but no shirt and held a brown robe in his hands. “I got it for Christmas and I promise it’s never been on another woman.”

  “It’ll have to wait. I really have to get dressed and go home.” She hopped up from the bed and stood before him, comfortable in her nakedness. “And before you offer to drive me, I think it would be best if I walk. I need to have a reason for the blush on my face.”

  He opened his arms and she walked into them. “You are amazing as well as beautiful, Allie. Can you come back later and meet Toby? He’s staying all weekend and I want him to meet you.”

  “Of course I want to meet him, but not right now,” she said. “Bring him to church on Sunday. It will show the folks in Dry Creek that y’all ain’t as wild and hot as they heard. I hope they don’t ask me any questions. I’d hate to lie right there in the church house about how hot and wild you are,” she said.

  He laughed out loud. “Please let me take you home.”

  “No, sir. I meant it when I said that about this blush on my face. It screams sex and Lizzy will bitch until she runs out of breath. It’s not that far and my knees aren’t so weak that I can’t climb a fence.”

  “I’ll build a stile over it next week,” he said.

  “You will not! Everyone in town would talk about why. Besides as wonderful as this was, we both need to think about it, Blake. It might be smart for us to stop now before one of us kills the other one.”

  “What?” He frowned.

  “A few more weeks of something that hot will set one or both of us on fire and all they’ll find will be ashes and teeth,” she said as she grinned.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Bent Spur, a cowboy bar that Toby and Blake found just over the border into Wilbarger County, Texas, was hopping that Friday night. The parking lot was full enough that they had to park Toby’s truck at the outer edge and the music so loud that Blake felt the ground pulsating under his boots.

  “We’ll have to remember this place. I already like it,” Toby yelled above the din when they pushed open the double door and joined the noisy crowd.

  A tall blonde dressed in skintight jeans, a top that dipped low enough to reveal two inches of cleavage, and a provocative look in her eye quickly crossed the floor in a man-teasing wiggle and ran a hand down Toby’s forearm. She looked up at him, batted her blue eyes, and smiled brightly.

  “Hey, cowboy. Wanna dance?” she asked in a husky voice.

  “Absolutely, sweet darlin’, but let’s get a beer first,” Toby said.

  The woman looped her arm in Toby’s and wove her way through the line-dancing couples to the bar with Blake bringing up the rear right behind them. Toby ordered two beers and the woman asked for a double shot of Jack on the rocks.

  “Hey, what are you doin’ here?” Deke turned around on the bar stool.

  “Toby, this is Deke. Deke, my brother Toby. And this is?” Blake nodded toward the blonde sitting beside him.

  “This is Lisa,” Deke said. “That would be her twin sister with the double shot of Jack sitting beside Toby there.”

  “Fine way to start the night,” Toby said.

  “Depends.” Blake sipped his beer.

  “You sick or something?” Toby asked.

  Blake smiled and held up his beer in a toast. “Been workin’ hard all week.”

  Toby frowned. “You’ve never been too tired to party after a week’s work before.”

  The blonde wrapped her arms around Toby’s neck. “Forgot to tell you my name and here you already bought me a drink. I’m Laney, darlin’, and I understand that you are Toby. If you ain’t the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Come on and dance with me, cowboy.”

  Toby set his beer down on the bar, winked at Blake, and two-stepped across the floor with the woman who’d pressed her body so close to his that air would have had a hard time wiggling its way between them.

  Conway Twitty’s voice sang “I See the Want to in Your Eyes.” When Twitty mentioned that he saw the sparkling little diamond on her hand, Blake instinctively looked for a ring on Laney’s finger.

  “Neither of them are married,” Deke said. “Hey, girl, this here old cowboy’s feet are aching to dance.” He held out his hand to Lisa, she threw back the rest of her drink, and they disappeared in the crowd of dancing folks.

  A short redhead popped her butt on the bar stool Lisa had vacated and smiled at Blake. “You must like Conway.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You’re keeping time with your thumb on your beer glass.”

  “I do like him.” Blake nodded. The lady was a cute little thing and her eyes said that she was interested, but something wasn’t clicking.

  She leaned closer to him and touched his cheek with her fingertips. “Well, darlin’, so do I and for the next half hour that’s what we’re going to hear because I plugged a bunch of money into the jukebox. Buy me a drink to celebrate our mutual love of Mr. Twitty?”

  Blake held up a hand and the bartender quickly made his way to that end of the bar. “This C
onway-lovin’ lady would like a drink.”

  “Long-neck Coors, in the bottle,” she said.

  Blake laid a bill on the bar and pointed to his glass. “Refill, please, of the same.”

  “I’m Kayla. Thanks for the drink. You could ask me to dance,” she said.

  “Got two left feet,” Blake said. What was the matter with him? He should be already on the dance floor with Kayla wrapped around him like a pet python.

  She took his hand and tugged at it. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t say you wasn’t warned.” He took another sip of his beer and let her lead him out onto the dance floor.

  She melted into his arms as the jukebox played “Rest Your Love on Me.”

  She rose on her toes and breathed into his ear. “Like the words of the song says, I’d like to put my worries in your pocket and rest my love on you all night. I see some sadness in those green eyes, cowboy. Let me make you happy tonight.”

  “I bet you tell all the old ugly cowboys that,” he said.

  “Darlin’, whoever told you that you are ugly has shit for brains.” She laughed. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

  “Blake Dawson.”

  “Blake and Kayla. Goes together real good, at least for one night.”

  A tall brunette moved into Kayla’s place and looped her arms around his neck when that song ended and Conway started singing “House on Old Lonesome Road.”

  “It’s my birthday and my friends dared me to come over and dance with you,” she whispered. “I have a boyfriend at home.”

  He twirled her out and brought her back to him and even dipped her at the end of the dance. “Happy birthday, darlin’. Your boyfriend is one lucky feller.”

  Blake made his way to the men’s room where he checked his reflection in the mirror. It was the same face that he shaved every morning, same dark hair, and same green eyes, so why in the hell wasn’t he having a good time. He felt his forehead. No fever so he wasn’t sick.

  Singing, “I May Never Get to Heaven,” Conway’s voice came through the speaker above his head. The lyrics said that he might never get to heaven but he once came mighty close. Blake shut his eyes and visualized Allie lying next to him on the mattress/bed. Could that have really only been a few hours ago? It seemed like nothing more than a dream or a little taste of what Conway was singing about. Any of the women he’d met that evening would give him a good time, but all he wanted was to go home to Allie.

  “Where you been?” Deke motioned him to the end of the bar and pointed at the empty seat on the other side of Toby when he returned to the bar. “Me and Toby been havin’ us a good time.”

  Six weeks ago, he would have been in heaven, but that night, even with the toe-stomping line dancing, he felt as out of place as a hooker on the front row of a tent revival. Then of all things that Mama Fate could throw at him, Blake Shelton started singing “Home.”

  Blake fished his phone out of his back pocket even though it hadn’t vibrated or rang. “Excuse me. I have to take this, so I’ll step outside.”

  He sucked in the cold, clean night air and leaned against the porch post. The lyrics of the song said that he felt like he was living someone else’s life, that another day had come and gone and he wanted to go home. He talked about being surrounded by a million people and yet he felt all alone.

  What in the hell was wrong with him? He should be in there flirting with all the women, making passes at the ones who were across the room with another cowboy, and picking out the three he would choose among. The lucky one would go home with him. He didn’t usually run from women and yet there he was thinking of going home without even a telephone number.

  And why did every damn song remind him of Allie in some way?

  Another song started but the last one about going home was stuck in his mind so strongly that he couldn’t hear anything else. He wanted to be home with Shooter, maybe working alongside Allie. Hell, pulling nails out of the ceiling made him happier than he was right now.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “I’ve turned into the designated driver.”

  Toby poked his head out the door and asked, “Something wrong? The redhead said you got an important call.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” He paused. “Actually, everything’s wrong. Think you could catch a ride home with Deke? I’m just gonna head home,” Blake said.

  “Sure thing. I know he won’t mind. We might even leave here and go find a quieter place with Lisa and Laney,” Toby said.

  “Have fun,” Blake said. “See you at home. Keep in mind that you’re sleeping on the couch.”

  “I don’t mind stackin’.” Toby laughed.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Lizzy had flat out sabotaged Allie and she was miserable as hell sitting in the living room watching a damn old boring movie with Grady and Mitch, but there wasn’t anything she could do to get out of it. And it was Friday night! She could be at Frankie’s with Deke and Blake like last week.

  As luck would have it, Granny had even turned in early and wasn’t wandering through the room. She’d tried to get her mother to stick around and watch the movie with them but oh, no, she went to bed with a book. So now Allie was stuck on the sofa with Grady’s arm around her.

  She made an excuse to go to the bathroom and slid down the back of the door, sitting on the floor with her knees up and her face buried in her hands. Three hours earlier she’d been sleeping in Blake’s arms with the most beautiful afterglow in the whole damn world surrounding them.

  “You okay in there?” Lizzy asked from the other side of the door.

  “No, I think I’m getting that bug you had,” Allie said.

  “Well, crap! And you and Grady were having such a good time. I guess you’d best go on up to your room so you don’t give it to him and Mitch,” Lizzy said. “I should’ve known you were catchin’ it when you came in from the Lucky Penny with scarlet cheeks. I’ll tell Grady. He’ll be disappointed.”

  “Sorry,” Allie lied.

  She waited to stand up and sneak up the stairs to her room until she could hear the drone of Lizzy’s voice in the living room. Once inside her room she couldn’t sit still. Pacing from one side to the other, she wondered what Blake was doing right then. Were he and Toby watching some old western movie and drinking beer? Was Shooter as glad to see Toby as he was to see her nearly every day lately? Or were they all three out with a flashlight showing Toby all the work that Blake had gotten done the past few weeks?

  She turned on the radio to the classic country music station and curled up in the old overstuffed rocking chair in the corner, slinging her legs over the arm. Granny had rocked her to sleep in this same chair when she was a little girl and it always brought her comfort to sit in it, but not that night. She went to the window, pulled back the curtain, and looked outside and then picked up a book from her nightstand. It didn’t interest her so she put it back.

  The DJ announced that the next hour would be a tribute to Alan Jackson and if anyone had requests to call in. Then he started playing, “Small Town Southern Man.”

  She couldn’t listen to the song because it was too sad in light of how badly she wanted Blake Dawson to be that small-town Southern man who’d be content with a wife and small-town living. She turned the radio off and hit the POWER button on the television remote.

  “Well, shit!” she mumbled as Alan Jackson’s video for the same song showed up on CMT. “Evidently, I’m supposed to listen to this.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she watched the video from beginning to end. She wanted what those two people had in the video portraying their lives from the time they danced together the first time until the day that death came calling for the small-town Southern man.

  She wondered if Blake Dawson could ever be tamed into a man who’d only love one woman. And if he could, would she ever trust him? It seemed as if everywhere she looked these days, someone was cheating on the person they’d vowed to love forever.

  The next video was Blake She
lton’s “Goodbye Time.” Every single word scared the crap out of her. She had to see Blake tomorrow, to explain that the sex they’d had could never happen again because she couldn’t bear to spend years with him only to wake up one day and have him tell her that the feeling was gone.

  Someday when she was an old woman with gray hair, sitting on the porch and watching the seasons come and go, she would remember this beautiful day when a man made her experience that wonderful thing called afterglow. She’d smile and hold it close to her heart and be grateful that it was untarnished and beautiful.

  She fell asleep in the chair as Miranda Lambert sang, “The House That Built Me.” Her last thought as her eyes drooped was that Audrey’s Place had built her and it was where she belonged…forever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Blake awoke to the sounds of giggling women in the living room on Saturday morning. Two weeks ago he hadn’t even known Allie Logan and he’d been dreaming of her when the sound of women awoke him. He reached for her in that drowsy moment before sweet dreams become cold reality. All he got was a handful of pillow.

  The laughing turned into conversation and he heard his brother’s name and then Deke’s mentioned. Surely they hadn’t brought those two sisters both back to the Lucky Penny.

  He sat up so quickly that the room did a couple of spins before it came to a stop. “Dammit! I didn’t drink that much.” He reached for his jeans and tugged them up over his naked body.

  Two women were in the living room giggling about how much fun they’d had the night before. Toby was singing in the bathroom—an old tune called “I Always Get Lucky with You” at the top of his lungs—off key and out of tune but with the gusto of a drunken cowboy. He raised his hand to knock on the door and Toby slung it open. Wearing nothing but a towel around his waist and a smile, he winked at Blake, stood to one side, and motioned him inside.

  “You missed a damn good time,” he whispered.

  “It sounds like it.” Blake took a long time washing his hands and combing back his dark hair, hoping the whole time that the women would be gone when he finally went to the living room.