by Helena Newbury
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© Copyright Helena Newbury 2015
The right of Helena Newbury to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, events, companies, organizations or products is purely coincidental.
This book contains adult scenes and is intended for readers 18+.
Cover photo: 4x6/iStockPhoto
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my editor, my street team and all my readers!
Lily
I use blackout drapes but Texas morning sun don’t give a damn. It crept around the edges and through the pinprick holes where the material had worn thin and lit up my sleeping face like a laser. When I blearily opened my eyes, it was with my hands up over them, trying to push away the morning like it was a dog licking my face.
It was going to be one of those days.
I figured I might as well get it over with, so I knelt up on my bed and lifted the drapes. I tentatively opened my eyes just enough to glimpse a massive Texas sky dusted with marshmallow clouds, the sun already hot on my face through the rear window.
I should explain rear window. My home is a Greyhound bus.
I needed a project, when I arrived in Texas. Buying the bus and converting it was perfect—complicated enough that I could immerse myself in it for weeks and forget what I’d left behind.
My bed is where the last four rows of seats would have been. A single bed, because that’s all I need.
Walk forward through a curtain and you get to the kitchen. I ripped out all the seats and added a counter, stove and sink. Water and power comes from the farm I’m parked on—the dried-up creek bed wasn’t any use to anyone, so the farmer’s happy to let me park there for a few hundred dollars a month.
Downstairs, I expanded the bus’s bathroom. You know the luggage bays under the bus where you stuff your suitcase? That’s where my tub and shower are.
Why a bus? Because it’s always ready to move.
My name is Lily, and I’m on the run.
***
People say that, when you move somewhere new, it takes a couple of days to acclimatize to the weather. It’s been two years and I’m still waiting. In winter, I long for snow and the slippery-smooth feel of a freshly-broken-off icicle. In fall and spring I hanker after those cool, comfortable days where the rain’s just cleared the air and everything feels fresh and new. And in summer, like it is now...I just want to be in civilization, where the outdoors is tamed—something to be enjoyed from behind darkened glass in the cool breeze of air conditioning.
I miss New York.
I left the drapes closed (have you any idea how many drapes you have to make for an entire bus?) and padded in my nightshirt downstairs to the bathroom. It was way too hot for a nightshirt, even with the bus’s a/c, but I’m not one of those women who’s comfortable walking around in her underwear, even when there’s no one to see.
I’ve rigged up a system of mirrors to bring sunlight down from the roof of the bus to the bathroom, so it feels almost like showering outdoors. I washed my hair, drawing conditioner through the ends so that—hopefully—it would freak out slightly less when the sun hit it. You would have thought raven-black, Italian-American hair would feel like it’s in its element in Texas, but not mine. Back in New York, I think I spoiled it with fancy salons and now it sulkily refuses to cooperate.
Ditto my skin. My ancestors, I’m told, came from some village in Sicily, so I know that in theory I can tan with the best of them. But my skin’s as pale as my name—Lily—suggests because….
Well, because I spend a lot of time indoors.
Part of that has to do with having too much skin. Too much flesh. I was never the slender, foxy girl, bouncing around New York from party to party. That’s the movie star role. I’m more like the comedy sidekick, the one who has to struggle into her plus-size jeans and is there to make the main character look good.
That was always okay with me; I knew my place.
But that slender, foxy girl I was best friends with? She’s dead. And I’m not anyone’s comedy sidekick, because I don’t dare become friends with anyone anymore.
***
When I’d finished patting the water from my body with a faded towel, I dressed in a blouse and jeans and got ready to go out. Not my favorite thing in the world. With grocery deliveries and an internet connection, I can go a week without leaving the bus and that’s exactly how I like it. But there was business to attend to.
I reached under my bed and pulled a lever and the whole thing folded up on springs. Beneath it is my work area.
On the underside of the bed, in little plastic pouches, were over thirty fake passports and driver’s licenses, all in various stages of completion. More pouches held my raw materials—the special paper and bindings, the holograms and electronic chips that are supposed to be impossible to fake.
I picked up the bag containing this month’s delivery: five of my special “All in One” packs (passport, driver’s license, social security card—buy together and save!) and I was ready.
Almost ready. Also attached to the underside of the bed, where I can grab it quickly in the night, is my gun, a cute little snub-nosed thing that fits in my purse. It has mother-of-pearl grips and looks like a toy, and it’ll happily chew up anyone I turn it on. In two years, I’d never had to use it. But I was ready to.
***
I hate crowds. Not in a social phobia sort of a way. I just get kind of antsy and breathless and irrationally angry and there’s never enough air….
Okay, maybe I’m on the social phobia spectrum.
Whatever, I don’t like crowds. Or the hooting, crowing war cries Texan men feel it’s necessary to give when they’re doing anything exciting. Or animals, which are big and unpredictable.
So a rodeo? Not my thing.
Gold Lake is a pretty small town and really doesn’t need a sports arena anything like as big as the one it has—I suspect some greasing of palms went on somewhere to get it built—but now that it’s here, the rodeos, Monster Truck shows and other events bring in big crowds. For the whole two years I’d been in town, I’d studiously avoided going anywhere near it.
But for some reason, that was where Francisco wanted to meet and I wanted to keep him happy. I’d been supplying passports to the Mexican cartel since I arrived in Texas and they’d become my biggest customer.
I paid and went in...and then realized my mistake. The message had said they were in Block Q. I’d come in through the wrong entrance and I was way on the other side of the arena. I’d have to thread my way between about a million people to get to them. I felt my skin crawling at the thought of all those bodies pressed against me. Plus, I’d be late. And I hate being late.
Then I spotted the stairs heading down under the arena. Some sort of backstage area—I could cut through and emerge on the other side.
I hurried down the stairs. It was dark down there and pleasantly cool. I passed storerooms and dressing areas and then the floor turned to bare concrete, dusted with hay. And then—
Oh crap. I’d reached a dead end. There was a wooden fence and, beyond it, an open area with straw on the floor, so big that the edges disappeared into the darkness to my left and right. S
ome sort of holding area for horses or something, although it seemed to be empty at the moment.
And there, on the far side was the exit. I could see the sunlight blazing in and hear the crowd roaring. I could cut across and be at my meeting in a few minutes.
I climbed inelegantly up the fence, swung my leg over and clambered down the other side. Then I started to trudge through the straw. It was further than it had looked to the other side.
My first sign that something was wrong was a snorting noise, like someone was trying to blow an obstruction out of their nose. It was much, much louder than it had any right to be. I spun around, trying to place it, but could see nothing.
Then two gleaming white horns emerged from the darkness.
Oh shit.
I’m 5’5”. The bull’s shoulders came to the top of my head. It was only walking at the moment, but each step was a pissed-off stamp. It was eying me with a look that said, what the fuck are you doing in my home?
I glanced around. I was roughly in the middle of the area, too far from either fence to get there in time.
Maybe if I keep still. Don’t antagonize it.
The bull pawed at the ground, sending straw flying. Shit! That’s bad, right?
It charged.
I froze for a split-second, by which time the bull had picked up a terrifying amount of speed. When I started running, the ground was shaking with the thunder of its hooves. I knew I wasn’t supposed to look back but I did—and saw the thing had its head down, its horns pointed right at me. It was easily going to outrun me, well before I hit the fence. And then I was going to be—my stomach lurched. Gored.
I raced for the fence, but with my body I’m not exactly nimble. The bull snorted and the sound was horribly close. I couldn’t stand the thought of it hitting me in the back, of not knowing when it would happen, so I spun around, still stumbling backward. The bull was ten feet away, eight, six—
A man crashed into the bull from the side and gripped its horns. Any normal man would have been tossed aside, or simply flapped around like a balloon attached to a freight train.
But this wasn’t a normal man. His hulking body actually made the bull look small. He hauled on the bull’s horns, steering it away from me. The two of them missed me by inches and came skidding to a halt a few feet away.
“Now you,” the man told the bull, “cool your damn heels!”
The bull glared at him and snorted. I caught my breath, expecting it to charge him. But, as the two of them faced off, the bull seemed to lose confidence. And no wonder—the guy was massive. He looked as if he was ready to wrestle the thing to the ground, if he had to.
“Go on!” the guy told it. “Get!” With his accent, it sounded more like git!
The bull snorted a final time...and sulkily plodded away.
The man turned to face me and I looked up...up...up into his face. A black cowboy hat threw a shadow over his hair, but I could just make out that the curls were very dark brown, not black. His eyes were the same clear blue as the Texas sky, stunningly bright against his tanned face. He was breaking into a broad grin and those lips above that roughly-stubbled jaw looked...dangerously enticing. Oh Christ, he’s gorgeous.
“Well,” he said. “Lookee what we have here.” His accent was as broad as a prairie and as hard and unyielding as a cliff. It seemed to make my whole body vibrate and sing, as if I’d been crafted specifically to react to it.
I just...stared at him. There was a lot to stare at. He was a full head taller than me, well over six feet. And he was wide enough that I could barely see the retreating bull behind him—he blocked out the world. But it was all muscle. His pecs were like tanned, curving footballs, his abs a series of hard, smooth-edged ridges. And all of it was the same golden-brown tan.
I could see all this because he was—ulp—stripped to the waist. Black cowboy boots, tight jeans with a broad leather belt and then...just all this man, tanned and hard. My brain kept trying to process it but the sheer maleness of him kept overpowering it. He was too big, too close. Trying to study him from that distance was as impossible as studying a hurricane close up.
And yet...I didn’t move back. Couldn’t move back, even though he was so big and so close. You know that feeling you get when a guy invades your space and you get antsy and uncomfortable and you want to step back?
This was the opposite of that.
I was caught in his gravity, somehow, actually affected by his nearness. His presence was moving things inside me, sending energy twisting and spiraling down to my groin.
“They call me Bull,” said the man. Damn, that voice! Like gold-flecked molasses invading my brain. “And who, lovely lady, are you?”
Bull
Three goddamn minutes earlier
I was talking to a horse.
Don’t look at me like that. You’re goddamn straight I talk to horses, especially the ones I’m going to ride. If you’re going to put on a show with a partner, and that partner is going to spend most of it doing its best to kill you, wouldn’t you want to develop a rapport?
Besides, they make a lot more sense than people, most of the time. Especially the females.
When I heard Max snort I turned around, puzzled. I’d been around that bull for the best part of a year and he only got mad when there was a stranger around. But there was no one backstage except me, Max and the bronco I was talking to.
I hopped the fence and wandered across the enclosure towards Max. That’s when I saw her. She was standing dead still in Max’s area, her white blouse all lit up from the overhead lights. Her skin was creamily, richly white and it was set off by her long black hair. It hung right down her back, wavy and thick and glossy. The sort of hair you want to plunge your fingers into and wrap around your hands as you bring it up to your face. Somehow, I knew it was going to smell good.
Her skin was so pale and her hair so dark, and that white blouse she was wearing was glowing so much from the overhead lights, that she would have looked like a ghost...except that, as my eyes tracked down, I could see she was deliciously solid. Tight blue jeans hugged curving hips—ones that made me want to spin her around, now, to get a look at the incredible ass they promised. She wasn’t like most of the girls who hung around the rodeo, their shirts peeking open to show stomachs as taut as trampolines. She looked gorgeously soft and feminine, and that was before my eyes even got to her tits.
Oh, holy mother of Jesus, her tits.
Pressing out the front of her blouse were two full cantaloupes of womanly delight. When God sculpted her, he’d blessed her with generous scoops, firm and weighty, the sort you immediately want to stroke your hands up under and lift and just enjoy for a moment before you even touch the nipples. I didn’t even have her clothes off yet and I could already imagine how they’d feel under my palms. Goddamn!
This girl had to be mine.
And then the sound of Max pawing at the ground woke me from my little trance. Aw, hell.
I raced over there, trying my damndest not to get distracted by the way her breasts bounced as she ran. She hadn’t seen me yet, too focused on fleeing. But she wasn’t going to reach the fence in time. It was all over, unless—
I pulled Max away from her and hustled him out of there. Then I slowly turned around, savoring the moment. When it comes to getting a girl’s panties off, you can keep your billionaire yachts and your fancy champagne because there ain’t nothing better than saving her life.
I couldn’t stop myself taking a deep breath in when I saw her. I figured she was a couple of years younger than me: twenty-three, or so and damn, she was even better up close. She had big, dark brown eyes you could just fall right into, a slender, elegant nose that made me want to kiss my way down it and big, sensuous lips. That mouth was made for long, hungry kisses...or even filthier things.
“Well,” I said “Lookee what we have here.” And I gave her the Bull grin, which is certified to make any girl giggle and melt. I was already thinking about the table where we put the saddles
and reins for the shows. It was just the right height to fuck her on, with those creamy thighs wrapped around my waist. A couple of minutes, a little of the old Bull charm and—
But she just stood there, open-mouthed.
“They call me Bull,” I said, a little thrown. I stuck my thumbs into my belt as I said it. “And who, lovely lady, are you?”
She didn’t flush or simper or throw her arms around me. She just sort of gaped at me. Maybe she’s foreign. That’d explain it.
She seemed to be checking out my body, which I was used to, but it wasn’t accompanied by any of the normal flirting or smiles. I felt like I was trying to play tennis with myself. Eventually, she sort of shook her head as if to clear it and said, “I have to go.”
And then she turned and started to walk away.
What? Did she not understand we were meant to be having sex, now? I let her get about six paces before I reacted, partly because I was so shocked and partly because I got distracted by my first glimpse of her gorgeous, curvy rump.
“Now hold on a minute!” I said, jogging after her and catching her just as she reached the fence. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to say thank you?” You know, maybe on your knees, shaking all that dark hair back over your shoulders as you…
Except...that wasn’t the only thing I was thinking. It was the main thing I was thinking but, underneath it, something else was disturbing the dark depths, something I wasn’t used to. I felt a little...hurt, that she’d walk off so easily. That I didn’t seem to matter to her at all. It bothered me. And that made no sense. Plenty of women fuck me, but I don’t much care if they like me.
She turned around. “Oh. Sorry. Thank you.” It sounded genuine but she didn’t seem to want to look at me and, when she did, she was blinking as if confused. The combination of those deep brown eyes and her long lashes raised something like a mini-tornado inside my head, scattering my thoughts. She was goddamn beautiful. Gorgeous. And between those eyes, those lips, those tits—damn, she was the most feminine woman I’d ever met. I almost got tongue-tied.
Texas Kissing Page 1
