Slinging the food sack over his shoulder, Dallas holds out his hand. “Come on.”
After no more than a moment’s hesitation, I take his hand. Apart from his touch when he tied my hair back, it’s the first contact we’ve had. His hand is lean and warm with the familiar calluses, similar to those on both Wade and Connor. Familiar and yet different and terribly exciting.
The path up to the lookout is steep and narrow and eventually Dallas releases my hand so that we can hike single file. Once we reach the top, I’m panting and I collapse on a tree stump, trying to catch my breath.
“Must be the altitude,” I joke.
“Must be. Because…” Dallas’s eyes roam over me before he continues, “…you look like you’re in pretty damn fine shape.”
I clear my throat and manage a squeaky, “Thanks.” Dallas may be young in years, but his manner and attitude make him seem much older.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For what?”
“For inviting me to join you.” He spreads a blanket out on the ground and opens up the food bag.
Moving onto the blanket beside him, I take the water bottle he offers me, drink and then pass it back. I watch him drink, his head tilted back, his throat corded with sinew, his skin golden brown. “It’s my pleasure,” I say, my voice sounding kind of husky.
He screws the cap back on the bottle and eyes me beneath the brim of his hat. “What is it about you?” He reaches for my cheek and grazes my skin with the back of his knuckles.
The contact, though innocent, keeps my breath coming faster than it should. I lean toward him and reach up along the inside of his arm, marvelling at the strength of his forearm muscles.
“Tess?”
“Mmm?”
“Can I kiss you?”
My breath is coming too hard for me to answer. So I nod and wet my lips.
But he doesn’t kiss me right away. He only looks at me with that deep, soul-searching look and those midnight eyes. Slowly, ever so slowly, he leans down. With a simple lift of my chin, he urges my face up to meet his.
Oh God. His lips are so soft. I melt against him, wrapping my arms around his neck. His hat tumbles off the back of his head when he slants his head to kiss me deeper, sweeping his tongue through my mouth and teasing my lower lip with his teeth.
He pulls away and presses his forehead against mine. Thank God I’m not the only one breathing hard now.
“You know,” I say softly. “When I first met you, I thought you didn’t like me.”
He moves back from me and reclines onto his elbows. “I didn’t,” he says without apology.
“What? Why not?”
Cocking his head to the side, he takes another one of his sidelong looks at me. “You showed up out of the blue and like that—” he snaps his fingers, “—you manage to snag the thing I’ve wanted for a long time.”
“Wade,” I say quietly.
He tugs on a loose thread in the blanket. “Yeah. Wade.” He looks up at me. “Wade and Connor together would be even better.”
Oh hell. Do I ever know the truth of that statement.
“Wade wants you, you know,” I say.
“No, he doesn’t.” He goes back to tugging on the string. “He’s made that perfectly clear.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
He considers my words for a moment. There is a hopeful sound to his voice when he asks, “Did he say something?”
“No. But he doesn’t need to. It’s obvious in his reaction to you. Whenever you’re around, he’s as tightly wound as a—”
“As a bronc behind the gate,” Connor offers, joining our conversation as he collapses onto the blanket beside me.
“I didn’t even hear you come up,” I say, startled.
“Sorry,” Connor says, leaning forward to give me a juicy kiss. “I was being quiet, hoping I might find you two in a compromising position.”
Laughing, I say, “You almost did.”
Connor shoots a smug expression Dallas’s way. “You owe me twenty bucks.”
Dallas shakes his head at Connor and picks up his fallen hat, settling it on his head.
“What?” I ask.
“I told Dallas he wouldn’t be able to resist you.”
“You made a bet?”
“It was before I met you,” Dallas says with a twinkle in his eye. “I pretty much despised you from the moment I heard you were coming. I didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think there was any way in hell you’d be attracted to her, did you?”
Dallas looks me straight in the eye when he shakes his head.
“And now,” I whisper.
“You know how I feel now,” he whispers just as softly, scorching me with the intensity of his gaze.
“You want to fuck her, don’t you?” Connor says, kneeling behind me, his hand coming around the front of me, undoing the top two buttons of my shirt.
My lips are parted. I still haven’t recovered from climbing the hill, though it is not physical exertion or altitude that’s causing my breathlessness. It’s Connor’s body pressed up against mine from behind, it’s his hands down the front of me and it’s Dallas’s heated gaze watching the whole thing with the hunger of a bear eyeing some juicy morsel after a long winter’s slumber.
Once my lacy bra is exposed, Dallas leans forward and kisses me between my breasts. The sight of his strong, callused hands on the black lace as he lifts my breasts from beneath is incredibly erotic.
But, as much as I want this, as much as I know all of our playfulness today has been leading to this moment, I can’t do it. Grasping Connors hands to keep him from finishing the last couple of buttons, I hold him still while I slide away from Dallas’s kisses.
“What’s wrong?” Connor asks, pulling his hands from mine and scooting around beside me.
“I can’t do this.”
Where a moment before Dallas was as readable as a storybook, his expression closes and his features turn to stone. I go up on my knees and cup his cheek. “It’s not that I don’t want this. Believe me, I do. I just—”
“You want Wade,” Dallas finishes for me.
“Yeah,” I say. “I want Wade…and Connor. And you.”
Dallas moves to the other end of the blanket and stares off into the distance. “Well, that’s not going to be happening any time soon.”
“Why not?”
“We all know why.”
“Wade,” I say.
Connor grunts in frustration. “Hell. It’s not like he didn’t have fun that first night.”
I glance at him. “So, what’s his problem?”
“He’s fucking bull-headed, that’s his problem.”
I lean back on my elbows, first thinking about the three men together. The way my brain works, I automatically place myself somewhere in the fantasy. With this new image—the three men and me in fully compromising positions—playing in high definition in my brain, an idea begins to form. Wade is bull-headed. Stubborn, stoic, uncompromising. He’s the kind of guy who’d give up everything to help someone else. He’d even sacrifice his own happiness if it meant happiness for another.
Despite all that, he was incredibly predictable.
“Don’t you ride bulls?” I say to Connor, interrupting their discussion of Wade’s stubbornness.
“Nah, I’m a saddle-bronc man. Dallas, here, he’s the bull rider.”
“Really,” I say. “And, you know how to break a horse, right? You broke Midnight Run,” I say to Dallas.
“Sure. Connor’s broken horses too.”
I nod slowly as I reach into the food bag and grab the sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. After distributing them I say, “You guys are experts at riding unwieldy animals. You know how to break them. Don’t you think it’s time we did something about Wade?”
Dallas twists his lips in a wry grimace. “It’s one thing when it’s an animal. Quite another when it’s my boss,”
I take his hand in mine. “Leave Wade to me. I’m
pretty sure I know what the man wants but he’s too friggin’ stubborn to go for.” Glancing at Connor with a raised brow, I say, “All I know is, if we work together, I’m pretty sure we can break this cowboy.”
*****
Step one in breaking a cowboy? You have to catch him first. Now, with Wade, that isn’t exactly a problem. As much as he likes to boss me around in the bedroom, the man will do pretty much anything I ask. So I’ve left him a note, telling him to meet us in the hot pool as soon as he’s back from his meeting in Calgary. Little does he know that Dallas will be joining us.
Not right away of course. We have to ease him into the idea, just like that stallion in the corral. Connor and I are sitting in the outdoor part of the tub, a cooler of drinks beside us, watching the sunset, when Wade arrives.
“Hey you two,” he says as he lowers himself into the pool. “How was your day?”
“Great,” I say and I lean over and give him a kiss. He tastes fresh and minty like he’s just brushed his teeth.
“Do you want a beer?” Connor asks.
“Of course,” Wade says after we’ve finished our kiss.
“How was your meeting?”
“Long,” Wade says, leaning back against the edge of the pool and taking a long pull of his beer. He proceeds to sum up the meeting. Another ranch’s bad news is good news for the Lazy L. One of the other stock providers went out of business this winter so the rest are going to pick up the slack. But for some reason, Wade still looks tense.
Despite the chilly April air, I sit on the ledge of the pool behind him and start to knead his shoulders.
“Damn, Tess, that feels good,” he says. I smile and keep massaging, thinking about what the men told me about breaking a horse. It’s important that the animal is as relaxed as possible. I can do that.
Leaning down, I taste a bead of moisture clinging to the side of Wade’s neck.
“Mmm,” he sighs and if I’m not mistaken, his rock hard shoulders ease just a bit. I catch sight of Connor over his shoulder and he smirks at me before handing me a freshly poured glass of wine.
“Do you know,” I say, after I’ve taken a sip of wine and set my glass down. “I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be right now.” The western sky is turning pink and gold as the sun lowers beneath the grey peaks of the Rockies. My hands slide up into Wade’s hair and I massage his scalp, digging my fingers in, doing my best to relieve his tension.
Wade lolls his head against my chest and he says, “How was your trail ride?”
“Lovely.”
I see his eyes crack open as he glances at Connor. “How many times did Connor fuck you?”
I dig especially hard and say, “Believe it or not, none.” I pause before I continue, “But I did get a chance to get to know Dallas better.”
I expect Wade’s reaction, which is to tense at the mention of Dallas’s name, so I lean down and lick the side of his neck. “He’s hot. I like him.”
Wade’s quiet and I half expect him to make some cruel remark like, ‘well why don’t you go fuck him.’ But like I’ve said before, Wade’s too much of a gentleman…when he’s not in bed.
With my hands still working magic, I whisper, “I hope you don’t mind, I invited him to join us tonight.”
Pulling out of my grasp, Wade turns a fierce look my way. “He’s coming here?”
“Yes.” I motion toward the door. “In fact, here he is now.”
Chapter Six
At first I think Wade’s going to bolt when Dallas joins us on deck all bare-chested, with a towel wrapped around his slim hips. Goddamn. The man is delicious and by the way Wade’s breathing deepens, I know he agrees.
All I can say is, thank God for Connor because, as usual, he has the ability to lighten a tense situation. “You’re late. I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show.”
Of course this is a ruse. We’d planned for Dallas to join us later so that we could get a couple of beers into Wade and relax him a bit. However, despite my best efforts, Wade’s as tightly wound now as he was when he first arrived.
“You went riding with Connor and Tessa?” His remark is a statement not a question.
Dallas nods as he unties his towel and hangs it on the peg. I catch my breath at the sight of him and a vision of him without his swim trunks flashes through my dirty mind.
“You better get in this pool quick before Tessa jumps you,” Connor jokes. But it’s Wade’s stinging gaze I feel on my face.
I’m determined to pretend like I don’t notice his reaction. “Lord have mercy, do you men have any idea how hard it is to be semi-naked with three such hot cowboys?”
“Three cowboys? Is that what you want, Tess?” Wade asks in a low voice.
I move over to him and, with one knee on the bench on either side of his thighs, I straddle him. Leaning forward, I whisper in his ear. “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now…I’m not sure I can handle three.” I kiss him but his lips don’t move.
Suddenly, Connor grabs my arms and yanks me off Wade. He keeps my wrists shackled behind my back. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s see just how much cowboy, little miss city-girl can take.”
The last thing I see before Connor wraps something dark and silky around my head, forcing me to shut my eyes, is a ferocious gleam in Wade’s eyes. What does it mean? Is he pissed? Is he going to leave? Is he going to make me and the other two pay for what we’re about to do? It’s hard to say.
“What are you doing?” I finally remember to ask. I’m supposed to pretend like I’m completely surprised by this whole blindfold thing.
“We’re going to conduct a little experiment. Just to see how well you know us.”
“Mmm,” I say smiling. “What kind of experiment?” I wriggle my fingers out of Connor’s grasp and reach for him behind me. Fuck me, he’s hard as a rock. For just a second he leans into my hands and lets me rub him through his trunks, then he moves away.
“How well do you know us, Tess? Do you think you can tell which one of us is touching you?”
Oh hell. We’d talked about this, but the thought of it and the actuality are completely different. My clit swells and chafes against my bikini bottoms as I wait for the kisses and caresses of the men.
“Here’s how it’s going to work. You need to guess which one of us is touching you. If you’re right, we drink. If you’re wrong, you drink.”
“Easy.” I say.
“Oh really?”
“Mmhm. I hope you’ve got full beers, boys. Because you’re going down.”
“I don’t think so,” Connor whispers close to my ear. He flicks the tie around the neck of my bikini top and, as easy as that, the top slithers down my chest.
“Hey!” I say, covering my exposed breasts.
Connor laughs and says, “Game’s started. Who was that?”
“You, you jerk,” I say, making as if to tie my top up again.
Connor stops me by taking my hand and placing a wine glass in it. “Drink, darlin’.”
“What?”
“That was Dallas who undid your top. And don’t even think about doing it up again.”
“No shit,” I say as I take a little sip of wine and hand it blindly back to whoever will take it from me.
“A couple of rules.” Connor says as he—at least I think it’s Connor—takes the wine glass out of my hand and kisses my palm. “No touching.” He places my hands on the edge of the pool, forcing me to lift my naked chest higher. “No speaking.”
Someone grunts. I’m not sure who. Damn. I thought this was going to be easy.
“Is everyone playing?” I ask.
“You’re just going to have to figure that out,” Connor answers.
The water moves around me, lapping around my breasts. Even though I can’t see, I know my nipples are peeking up just above the waterline because the cool air on them tightens them into rock hard points.
“When you said no talking, was that a rule for me or for—”
A pair of lips silence me. Whoever it is, they aren’t touching me anywhere but on my mouth and then just barely. A tongue flicks out to tease my lower lip. Just when I try to touch that elusive tongue with mine, the man moves, licking the corner of my mouth. I turn my head and his lips graze mine before moving away.
Shit. I’m not even playing at pretending I don’t know. “Connor?” I say tentatively.
Once again, the wineglass is placed in my hand and I drink. So, that must have been Dallas. Or was it Wade? Is Wade playing? Did he give in so easily?
“How do I know you aren’t lying?” I ask after handing my wine glass back. “Maybe you guys are just trying to get me drunk.”
Instead of an answer, the water shifts around me again and I feel someone moving close. Breathing in deeply, I try to use my sense of smell to identify the person. But it’s no good. Everything smells like pool-water and fresh air.
“Ahh,” I sigh. Someone has flicked my right nipple with their tongue. I raise my chest up and out of the water and teeth abrade my puckered flesh. Lips and teeth and tongue pull at one nipple and then the other and for the life of me, I can’t tell who it is.
It must be Dallas. But when I whisper his name, my wineglass returns.
“Shit,” I mutter but I have no time to wallow in my failure when someone slips a hand around the back of my head and holds me tight in order to kiss me. It should be easy now. It’s a full on lip lock, tongue-duelling kiss. Hot as hell, passionate, maybe even a little angry…
“Wade,” I whisper against the man’s mouth.
In a flash he’s gone and the wineglass is back in my hands. “I thought cowboys were supposed to be honorable? You guys have to be cheating.”
Connor laughs. He’s just off to the right of me. There’s a splashing sound and I sense someone right in front of me. So, it’s not Connor. Okay. I can do it. Surely I can tell the difference between Wade and Dallas. Somehow, this game has taken a different turn. It’s no longer about engaging Wade in a little foursome-fun. It’s simply about playing the game.
Something wet grazes my nipple and is drawn up my chest around my neck. It’s the dripping wet strap of my bathing suit. I’m just about to complain about the fact that whoever it is, is cheating again, when the man—Wade or Dallas—reaches around behind and undoes the rest of my top and removes it. Hands reach for my hips and lift me up, tugging on the ties on either side of my bikini bottoms. With the strings undone at my hips, the bottoms can be pulled through my legs and the movement of the wet material thrills my sensitive clit.
How To Break A Cowboy (Savage Shorts) Page 5
