The Ranger's Rodeo Rebel

by Pamela Britton

  Would he follow?

  Lord, Carolina didn’t know.

  All she knew was she had to try. What if he was the man of her dreams? What if tonight was her one chance to hold him? What if she could convince him to stay?

  She knew it likely wouldn’t happen. Men like him didn’t give up entire careers for women like her. But what if there was a chance he might?

  He wasn’t coming.

  She stood in the middle of the trailer, waiting, her pulse speeding up with each passing second. If she couldn’t convince him to stay, so what? Chance was the most virile, attractive, sexy man she’d ever met. Unbelievably good-looking and thoroughly masculine. Was it wrong of her to want to spend a night with him? What red-blooded female wouldn’t want that?

  The trailer door opened.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her heart seemed to stop beating because the look in his eyes...

  The air gushed from her lungs. Her knees grew weak, literally weak. She swooned like a heroine in an old Western movie. “You can’t tell my family about this,” he said, his voice rough. “My brother would never approve.”

  “No,” she said, her skin tingling and igniting like a live wire because there it was again—a surge that hit her whenever he was near. A singe of heat seemed to sear her to the soul, telling her he would do things to her no man had ever had done before.

  “And it’ll only be this one time.”

  “I know.”

  Just quit talking.

  “Caro—”

  She made the decision for him, going to him, brushing her body up against his, nearly gasping at how good it felt to finally drop the barriers and set the attraction free.

  His eyes flared. She waited, hoping he would reciprocate. His head slowly lowered to her own.

  Bliss.

  The touch of his lips was like trick riding in front of an audience. Addictive. Electrifying. Crazy.

  Yes.

  The word sang through her brain as she tipped her head sideways and opened her mouth. Yes, she thought again, feeling his tongue slip between her lips and caress her own. Yes, she sang as he swirled his tongue around her own, stroking her, teasing her, taunting her.

  She pressed her hand against his chest. He was so physically fit. It turned her on. Everything about the man aroused her. She wanted to be with him. To touch him. To please him in a way he’d never been pleased before.

  “Chance,” she murmured, pressing herself against him, sliding up the length of him.

  “Jesus.”

  It was all he said, but it was enough. She grew bold, touching him there, feeling his pulse beneath her fingers as his whole body stilled. Everything inside her reveled at the fact she’d done that. She’d made him react.

  He pushed her up against the trailer wall. It should have scared her. It should have reminded her of James. But it didn’t. It turned her on because she wanted him against her.

  “What are you doing to me?” he mumbled.

  He lifted her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist, the center of him against her own core. Her whole body contracted and pulsed in response. He kissed her again, hard, and he was so strong he could have easily used brute force, but he didn’t. She loved that about him.

  She lifted her hips. He grunted, kissed her harder, and she knew that all he need do was continue holding her like he was and she would lose it. She would shatter into a million pieces. And only his arms would hold her together.

  Chance’s hand slid up her side toward her breast, and she almost shattered right then because the feel of him cupping her, squeezing her, melding her...

  She drew back, gasped, “Bed.”

  His eyes were a smoky black. “Yeah,” he said. “Bed.”

  * * *

  JUST ONE NIGHT.

  The words repeated in Chance’s head as he carried Carolina toward the trailer’s bedroom.

  God, he wouldn’t last, not if she kept kissing him like she did. And touching him and moving against him. Almost in self-defense he tossed her onto the bed, but if her body had set him on fire, the look in her eyes nearly drove him to the edge.

  Her hands tugged at the edge of her shirt, lifting it, teasing him with a glimpse of her flesh first, then all of it.

  He simply stood, watching.

  A part of him marveled, took a snapshot of the moment, fixing in his mind how she looked: tousled hair, glittering eyes, pouty mouth. She could have tempted a holy man to give up his vows, and he was no holy man.

  Chance didn’t want to move. He feared spooking her and inadvertently stopping her sexy striptease. She took the choice away from him, shooting forward, her gaze scanning him, her hand slowly reaching for him. Her palm landed on his chest, and he closed his eyes. Her hand slipped lower, and he knew what she would do. Still, he gasped when she touched him. She tipped her head sideways, pressed up against him, her tongue hot and warm slipping between his lips. Dear Lord. Sweet...so sweet. Like molasses and brown sugar and hot sauce. He couldn’t get enough of her.

  He slipped a palm beneath her bra. He felt bare flesh and heat, and he suddenly wanted more. He leaned her back against the bed and slid his lips against her bare flesh.

  “Chance,” she said softly, his name both a groan and a verbal caress. Her hips lifted upward.

  His hands found the waistband of her jeans, and he popped the button, slid the zipper free. He tugged them down, and the sight of her tiny pink underwear shot a fresh spurt of heat through him. They matched her bra, which her breasts spilled out of, nipples still hard.

  “You’re going to be the death of me,” he groaned.

  “What a sweet death,” she answered with a crooked smile.

  Something inside him flipped. He pulled her boots and her jeans off in one motion and then simply gazed. She had the body of an athlete and the beauty of a swan. He couldn’t wait to taste her. All of her.

  His head lowered. She arched upward again. His mouth found her thighs. His hands found her center, and she let out a groan that drove him almost over the edge. He tasted the salty sweetness of her flesh. He held her down because she writhed beneath him. The ache in his groin turned into a burn.

  “Chance,” she said, sitting up, her hands finding his. She pulled him up and he couldn’t resist.

  Their lips found each other’s again, but this time her hands were between them. She unbuckled his belt and then unbuttoned his pants. She slid his boxers down. He kicked off his boots, and a second later, his jeans and everything else. He was right where he wanted to be. With Caro. He opened his eyes and gazed into twin blue pools. He slid his fingers into the thick depths of hair, testing its weight and its silkiness.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

  Her eyes sparkled like stars. She slowly unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it down his shoulders. Her heat called to him, filling him with a feeling he didn’t know. It made him feel awkward, clumsy and inept. She challenged him to be his best, and he worried he would disappoint. “My turn,” she said, slipping her bra straps down one at a time.

  He helped her slide the garment off. She was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen with her hair fanned out beneath her. She never took her eyes off him, and he didn’t want her to. It made their act all the more erotic to have her begging him with her eyes.

  What are you doing to me? he silently asked.

  Almost as if she heard the question, she lifted a hand and touched the side of his face. His nipples grazed her chest and she gasped. He lowered his head, his lips finding her hardened nubs. Her hips thrust upward and it was almost his undoing, but somehow he held on to control as he nipped and suckled her. She groaned in pleasure.

  She pulled him up. He knew what she wanted. He wanted it, too, anticipa
ting their kiss as he’d never anticipated anything before. Her lips were like butterfly wings. He nuzzled them apart, and when they kissed once more, he knew he’d never taste anything so perfect again. He gently nudged her legs apart. She opened for him, welcoming his length. Chance closed his eyes because slipping into her was like coming home.

  She wrapped her legs around him. Hard. She moved her hips. Fast. She clutched him to her. Tight.

  Lord...

  He wouldn’t last. She moved beneath him as though she knew his every desire. He lost all sense of time, space and himself. They were joined not just physically, but emotionally, mentally and through a tenuous connection he couldn’t quite explain.

  “Chance.”

  He heard the same need for release he felt, and so he kept the rhythm going faster and faster and faster until her cry echoed his own. He spiraled down a well of pleasure he’d never experienced before.

  His breaths matched hers.

  That was his first coherent thought, which was amazing given she held him so tightly it was a wonder he could breathe. Slowly, her hold loosened until he was able to shift back and look into her eyes.

  She smiled.

  He couldn’t breathe. It was the smile of an angel, and it called to his heart.

  Chance knew nothing would ever be the same again.

  * * *

  CAROLINA AWOKE WITH sadness clinging to her heart.

  For a long moment, she simply lay in his arms, absorbing the heat of his body, listening to the steady drone of his pulse, admiring the taut smoothness of his skin. The sun had just started to rise. It cast a pale glow over them both.

  Sad.

  She’d known it was only for a night. She’d gone into this with her eyes wide-open. But as he’d held her, as he’d brought her to pleasure over and over again last night, each time had been a little more bittersweet, a little more heartbreaking.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  His words startled her. She looked up and realized his gaze was upon her. She lifted up on her elbows.

  “Long day,” she improvised. “We won’t get home until midnight.”

  His hands found her shoulders, his thumb brushing her bare skin in a comforting way. “We could always stay another night.”

  Everything inside her stilled.

  “I could call Colt and tell him the truck won’t start. We could hang out here until morning.”

  But as quickly as the rush of pleasure warmed her, it faded, leaving coldness in its wake. And then what? Delay the inevitable? She almost said those exact words, but she didn’t want him to know how much his suggestion tempted her. She’d made it clear last night that she understood their being together was a onetime thing. He needed to know she meant it.

  “Nah,” she said as dismissively as possible. “We should probably get back.”

  He would never know how hard it was for her to pull away from him, to get dressed as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, to slip on her clothes. Or how difficult she found it not to race back and kiss him once she was done. But she knew this man. She knew if she pushed him and gushed over him, he would run. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just did. So Carolina kept her cool as she headed out the front door, pausing and giving him what she hoped was an impersonal wave goodbye.

  He never saw her collapse against the door. Never saw her close her eyes, nor the way her lips silently formed the word damn.

  Chapter Eighteen

  She was true to her word.

  Chance didn’t know what to think. Carolina had ignored him for the rest of the day, simply going about her business and acting as if nothing had happened between them, and that left him...

  He tried to think of the word.

  Confused.

  When they performed later that afternoon, she did not give away their intimacy. She treated him like a prop—which he supposed, in a way, he was—completing her portion of the act and then dashing out afterward. By the time he drove back to their spot, she was already waving goodbye.

  “Gonna catch a ride back with the girls,” she said, barely giving him a smile before ducking her head into the truck and taking off.

  He almost called after her, wanting to tell her it was a bad idea, that she should stay with him and help him load up the panels because they never knew if James was around, but that was an excuse and she would know it. She’d be fine on the road with the girls. He’d made sure each of them carried pepper spray and at least one other had a Taser, the kind with ejectable prongs. Yeah. They’d be okay. And so he let her go.

  Just one night, but God help him, he’d begun to want two.

  Colt’s smiling face was the first thing to greet him as he pulled in to the ranch, something that surprised him. It was close to midnight. The Galloping Girlz trailer was parked alongside the hay barn, which made Chance feel moderately better. Carolina had made it home safely. The apartment above the barn was dark, however. She must have returned home well ahead of him and already gone to bed. He didn’t want to think about what she might look like in that bed. It would do crazy things to his insides.

  “Welcome back,” his brother said.

  “What are you doing up?”

  Sage and fresh-cut grass. That’s what it smelled like when he stepped out of the truck.

  Home.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” his brother answered.

  Colt headed straight for the back of the trailer. Teddy needed to be unloaded. Chance would take the panels off the trailer tomorrow. Too tired and too dark tonight.

  “Word on the street is your first solo performance went off without a hitch.”

  Chance smiled. “Went as well as could be expected.” Strangely, he didn’t want to let his brother know how much he had enjoyed it. “Still wish you could have been there.”

  “Nah. I needed to stay here, just in case. I knew you’d be fine.”

  Hard to believe B day was right around the corner, as he’d been calling it. Birth of his brother’s baby. “Natalie okay?”

  “She’s fine. Now tell me what you thought. Did you like it? Bill called, said you nailed it both times.”

  “It was good.” He flipped the trailer latch up, and the bar slid free on a nearly soundless hinge. Teddy lifted his head to peer over the divider as if asking, “Who’s there?”

  “That’s all you have to say?” his brother asked. “‘It was good’?”

  No. It’d been great. The most intense surge of adrenaline he’d ever had outside of jumping out of a plane, only this type of rush didn’t nearly kill him. But as great as it’d been, nothing compared to his night with Caro. Nothing.

  “Just tired.” He stepped inside the trailer, unlatching the divider. Teddy rode untied, the horse immediately turning and unloading himself. Colt caught him by the halter.

  “You mind telling me what’s going on?” His brother glanced at the Galloping Girlz trailer. “Caro came home, and I had to practically pry things out of her. She headed straight to the apartment, and I haven’t seen her since. And you don’t seem like a man who’d just nailed his first solo performance. You miss shooting people or something?”

  No. He didn’t miss that at all. He missed his military family. Dusty, his best friend. Mark, his commander. He still stayed in touch with them. Still saw them when he had time to video conference, but they weren’t going to be there when he went back. It was his first time thinking about that, and it put a new perspective on things. It wasn’t that he needed their camaraderie. He’d make new friends. It was just that things wouldn’t be the same.

  “I’m out of sorts,” Chance admitted.

  He and Colt had always been close. They’d looked out for each other when they were younger. When they were old enough, they’d turned their attention to Claire, protecting her, mak
ing sure she was okay when their dad fell into one of his drunken rages. They might be older now, but they were still close despite Chance’s longer stint in the army.

  “You know,” Colt said, “you don’t have to leave.”

  They’d reached Teddy’s corral, Chance pausing for a moment outside the horse’s pen to glance back at his brother. He rested a hand on the top rail.

  “I know,” he said, unbuckling Teddy’s halter. One would think the horse would be tired after the long ride, but the gelding shot off, bucking, running and shaking his head until he hit the middle of his pen, where he stopped and sniffed the ground. Chance knew what would come next. Sure enough, the horse carefully lowered himself down, then rolled with joyful grunts and flailing legs. Chance couldn’t help but smile.

  “You could take over Rodeo Misfits, you know,” his brother added. “Permanently.”

  Chance immediately shook his head. “Nah. Not for me.”

  “No, wait,” Colt said. “Hear me out.”

  They both leaned against the fence. Chance could barely make out his brother’s face, but he could tell by his voice that this was one of those serious moments in life. They’d had a few of them over the years. When their dad was sick. When they’d signed up for the army. The day Claire turned three and Colt had pulled Chance aside and sworn to protect her. He’d been five years old at the time, and he still remembered it like yesterday.

  “Natalie would never want me to give up Rodeo Misfits,” Colt said. “It’s part of her life. But we’re crazy busy right now. It’s all I can do to keep up with the work around here. We have Laney to help, but it’s not enough. There are horse shows and clinics and big international competitions coming up. Rodeo Misfits needs to take a backseat, but I hate to do that. It’s a family business, one that was started by our grandfather.”

  “I know.”

  Colt continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Our dad nearly ruined its reputation. It’s taken me years to get it back. I hate to let it all go while I go on hiatus, so why don’t you take it over for me?”

  “Colt—”

  “Ah, ah. Don’t talk.” His brother lifted a hand. “You can go back to private contracting at any point in your life. And I don’t want to give up the rodeo business if I don’t have to. I just need a little bit of time. You can give me that, right? Stick around for a while. Live in the apartment if you want. Or build your own place. I know you’ve always wanted to do that out by the pond. Go for it. This land is as much yours as it is mine and Claire’s.”