by Lilian Darcy
“Hell, Tegan,” he breathed into her mouth, and his hands came down to her butt and pulled her into his groin and she felt that hard package of man that had pulled her focus last night, and it was every bit as sizeable and satisfying as it looked.
“Hell, yourself,” she whispered back to him, then closed her eyes and let her weight drift in his arms, and kissed him until she was blue, or dizzy, or in paradise.
A long time.
He tasted perfect, and smelled perfect, and felt perfect, and kissing him made sense to her body and her heart in a way she’d never expected in a million years. He was beautiful, and she ached, and just wanted, wanted, wanted.
Wanted Jamie.
Shoot, they had to stop this! Problem was, she didn’t know how.
The horses had drifted away, in search of more grass. A big, fluffy cloud had crossed the sun. Their jeans were practically steaming, still pressed together at the groin, still fitting like clockwork.
“We going for this ride or what?” he said creakily.
“You tell me.”
“I have to do something or I’m going to fall over. Don’t think I could even drive.”
“You think you can ride?” She looked deliberately at the impediment, still stretching the denim to an impressive extent.
“Yeah, just give me a couple of minutes. I’ve never found saddling a horse that much of a turn-on. Especially Faro, cuz he bites if I girth him too fast.”
“A horse bite. That’ll do it,” she said, but then she made the mistake of looking down at his mouth, inches away.
“Don’t,” he growled.
“What?”
“Don’t make us go through another twenty minutes of that.”
“What, it was that bad?”
“You know what I mean. I’ll die.”
“Think I’ll die, too.”
“I would die for a bed, right now, but Mom’s not that vague, and she’d be shocked.”
“I’m not going to bed with you at eleven-thirty in the morning in front of your mom.”
“Damn right you’re not. Tonight, though… Or sooner.”
It was a threat. Best threat she’d ever heard.
She dragged in a breath and made herself step away from him. “I’m getting my saddle,” she told him shakily.
They had an amazing ride, when they were finally ready for it. How long was it since she’d really done this? Gone for a gallop across open terrain? Maybe once or twice at Bob Crannock’s, but not for months. It reminded her of home, when she would have a pony club friend – Natalie or Kathleen or Abby - bring a horse and stay for a few days, and they would just ride and ride and ride. She’d lost touch with everyone except Kathleen, now, and had forged new friendships here on the rodeo circuit.
Could she call Jamie a friend?
Faro and Shildara swept across the open rangeland, sure-footed and keen. The mountains looked unreal, like an artist’s vision too perfect to be true, and the grass was so much thicker than the grass at home, Tegan almost wanted to eat it herself.
She and Jamie had the wind rushing on their skin and the magical thud of horse hooves in their ears, and a couple of times they both let out a whooping yell because the exhilaration was so strong. It was only when they came over a rise and saw a pickup parked by a fence farther down the hill that Jamie slowed. “Hey, that’s Dad and RJ,” he said.
The two men had seen them. They were fixing fence, a tough job that Tegan knew well, but now they’d straightened from their coils of wire and were watching, suspiciously at first, it seemed, but then with a shout and wave of recognition.
“I guess Mom didn’t remember to call them,” Jamie said. He didn’t sound surprised. “Oh, well…”
They slowed more, and reached Jamie’s father and older brother at a walk, the horses stretching forward and down on a loose rein and seeming relaxed and content after their workout.
“You came for the rodeo,” Jamie’s dad said.
RJ just nodded, by way of a greeting, and muttered, “Jamie.”
There was a long moment of tension, then an apparent shared desire for this to go better. Jamie jumped down from his horse, strode up and gave both men something that was more punishing than a hug, but much more tender than a punch.
“Good to see you, son.”
“Good to be here.”
“You saw your mother?”
“Down at the house for coffee. I thought she might call. She seemed to think you had a phone with you.”
“No, she didn’t call.” He gave a half-smile.
“You want to give us some help?” RJ asked, and it was more of a challenge than an invitation.
Jamie looked at Tegan, then back at the men. “Well… Sure. For a bit.”
“Only got another hour more to do here.”
“If Tegan doesn’t mind.”
“Tegan, by the way,” Tegan said, “is me.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Jamie said. “Tegan, from Australia. Tegan, my brother RJ and my dad Rob.
She gave them a grin. “Hi, RJ, hi, Rob. I don’t mind if we stay, Jamie. I can help, if you want.”
“Help?” RJ was flagrantly skeptical, and Tegan was suddenly glad she’d made that dumb, defiant gesture to Jamie of putting on her old pony club state camp shirt. Jamie’s older brother would have been a heck of a lot more skeptical if she’d been wearing a dark pink satin shirt covered in fake diamonds.
“I’ve hammered in staples before,” she told him. “And twisted wire. And used a fence strainer.”
The men nodded, but she thought she would only prove herself once they’d seen her at work, which was fair enough. Anyone could talk up their own talents. You had to back it up with action before it counted for anything.
Which was an argument Jamie could have used about the whole talking thing, if he’d thought of it. She was kind of glad he hadn’t, because if she came up with many more such arguments herself, she’d end up conceding that he was right.
They loosened the saddle girths on the horses, crossed the stirrups over the top, knotted the reins out of the way and let Faro and Shildara graze with their bits in their mouths while they got to work.
She hadn’t seen this side of Jamie before, hadn’t seen him move this way. Around the rodeo, he seemed almost lazy in how he moved, a lot of the time, except for the short, intense bursts of action on the back of a galloping or bucking horse. He carried his saddles lazily back and forth, led Faro at an amble.
He stretched lazily before an event, too, using a repertoire of movements learned in physical therapy, or just from watching older riders. He pulled his elbow across his body a couple of times, across and back, across and back, with his opposite hand. He went down a couple of times in a deep squat, seemed to spend longer strapping a brace, after an injury, than stretching his muscles.
Here, Tegan saw how strong he was, and how good with his hands, hammering new posts into the ground, carrying heavy coils of wire, ratcheting the strainer back and forth as fast as his father did. And lord, did he look good doing it! Denim stretched tight across his butt every time he bent down, muscles knotted hard, mouth closing clean and pout-shaped over a drink bottle when they took a break for water.
Tegan wanted that mouth somewhere else, like on her skin, and those muscles knotting around her own body. It was crazy, and she didn’t even care.
RJ was right. It only took an hour to fix the damaged section of fence. They worked largely in silence, apart from instructions to each other when they needed. Nobody said, “Oh, so you really do know how to fence,” which Tegan appreciated. She didn’t need to make an issue of it.
She thought that all three MacCreadie men had begun to relax with each other a little, by the end. Families were complicated, and problems didn’t often get solved in one conversation.
Okay, another point to you, Jamie.
Robbie and RJ clearly still weren’t too happy that Jamie had taken off on the rodeo circuit, but they weren’t going to cut him out of their live
s because of it. They were just… mad at him. Silently. Beginning to let it go.
“We’ll head back to the barn,” they said, when it was done. “You staying for lunch?”
“We’d better not. Tegan has first go-round on the barrels this afternoon, and that starts at three.”
“What about you, son?”
“I’m even earlier. Steer wrestling at two-thirty, if we’re back in time. Saddle bronc late afternoon. The finals tomorrow, if I make it that far.”
Rob MacCreadie nodded but didn’t say anything.
“So we’ll come see you in the hospital tonight, then,” RJ said.
Tegan gave a polite laugh, but the humor had too much of an edge. RJ wasn’t saying it to be funny, he was saying it to make a point - one that Jamie didn’t need to hear, as he’d ridden the first two months of the season with his arm and shoulder strapped in an elaborate arrangement of bandage and brace. He knew the reality of rodeo injuries better than his brother did.
“Let’s grab those horses before they’re all the way at the bottom of the hill,” he growled to Tegan.
“Might see you in town, today or tomorrow,” said his dad. “If I can get your mom out of the house.”
“Yeah, that’d be good. It’d be great if she came.”
“I’ll tell her you said that.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
They arrived back at the rodeo ground at one-thirty, which meant they would both make their events this afternoon. They unloaded the horses, yarded them, then -
“Truck’s gone,” Jamie said.
“What?”
“Look.” He pointed to his and Chet’s trailer, where the front gooseneck section now jutted out into thin air.
He began to stride over there without a second’s pause, and Tegan followed him. Inside, they found Chet’s duffel bag gone and a note on the counter, anchored down with a dirty coffee mug. “Gone home to tell mom, back by Monday morning.”
“Well, I guess he’s scratching,” Jamie said. “I’ll have to see if Dawson can be my hazer in the steer wrestling.”
“Yeah?”
“Chet’s mom lives in North Platte,” Jamie reminded her. “That’s eleven hours away.”
They looked at each other. The trailer suddenly seemed very small, and very quiet, and very private. Tegan could hear the leather belt of Jamie’s jeans creak as he moved. “Do you know what’s different with us today?” she said. “This is the first time we haven’t had other people around. First time it’s been just us.”
Jamie dropped his voice low. “You think that’s why this is happening?”
“Why what’s happening?” she said stupidly.
Stupidly, because she was only pretending. She knew exactly what was happening.
He called her on it, muttering, “You know what it is,” with his eyes fixed on her face. “Do you want to?”
“Yes.” She took the six inch step that brought her right up against him, the sides of their boots nudging each other, and stretches of soft denim brushing together. She could smell him, delicious and salty and male, and she could feel his heat. “Yes, I do.”
“You want me to get out my junk right now and do you before the steer wrestling starts?” he drawled at her with a teasing quirk on his lips, eyes glinting.
She tucked in the corner of her mouth and rolled her eyes. “Jamie, that is the most romantic thing I have ever heard.”
He reached out and hauled her that final, critical inch, so that it wasn’t just feet and thighs touching now, it was pretty much everything. “I wasn’t going for romantic.”
“I got that, trust me. What were you going for?”
“Just keepin’ it real, babe,” he drawled again, mocking both of them.
“I think I like you much better when you’re not talking.”
“That can be arranged.” And he didn’t say another word, just lifted her butt onto the counter, unsnapped her jeans, pulled the zipper halfway down, and her pony club T-shirt off over her head, and began to kiss her everywhere.
They both knew there wasn’t a lot of time, if he was going to track down Dawson O’Dell for the steer wrestling and make his scheduled draw time. Tegan decided… raggedly… that she really wasn’t a proper girl, to be wanting it like this. Their first time, in a rush, broad daylight, cramped setting, smelling of dirt and leather and horse. But, apart from a weird taste for western bling, she’d never cared all that much about being a proper girl.
Jamie made love to her as if she was all woman.
He unhooked her bra and threw it on the lower bunk, closed his cupped palms over her breasts and buried his face in the deepened valley he’d made. He had rough hands and she loved it. The way they moved, clever and strong and single-minded. The way they felt, blunt and scrapy on her skin, but almost reverent.
He was good at this. Who knew? He was talented, incredible.
His hands slowed at just the right times. They went light as a feather before she could ask. He seemed to know how good the ball of his thumb would feel across her nipple, and how much the sucking moist heat of his mouth would make her gasp.
They really did not have much time.
She pushed him away and started fumbling at the front of his shirt. “You getting this off or what?”
“You getting off your jeans? I started ‘em for you.”
They both scrabbled at their clothes and then stood there naked. Grinned at each other for a stupid moment and then came together again. He had the best body. “I got protection,” he said.
“I was going to ask.”
“I know you were. You’re not dumb.”
“Shoot, you really are romantic.”
“I can be. You wait.”
“Till when?”
“Till next time.”
“You better be a little bit romantic this time, Jamie MacCreadie, or there might not be a next.”
“You going to just keep talking?”
“That’s right, you don’t like that, do you?”
“Neither do you, didn’t you just decide?” He pulled on her hips and brought the two of them together again, groin to groin, junk to junk. Did girls have junk?
Ooh, she had it now. She had his, hard and big and hot against her. She swelled and softened down there. It was unbelievably good, feeling this. He felt hard and big and hot all over. Mouth, chest, hands. She grabbed at him, feeling her breath shorten into impatient little pants. No time to waste. They both wanted to get to the heart of it.
He wanted to get to the heart of her, and he did, as soon as he’d rolled the condom on. He made it smooth and slippery with her own moisture from his fingers, then lifted her against his body. She wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck and he slid into her right where they were standing, and it took about three minutes for them both to climb to the top of the wave. He bucked into her, grazing her breasts against his chest, filling her full to aching point. Breaking point.
The wave broke for both of them at the same time, and the shuddering groan that built deep in his chest joined with the moaning sound that tore out of her. They were trying to be quiet, believe it or not. She ground her mouth into his shoulder to keep herself under control… well, her voice under control. He did the same, burying his sounds in her hair.
“Need to put you down,” he said, as soon as they settled.
“Sorry.”
“No. Don’t be.” He softened his hand against her jaw, the caress incredibly gentle for the short moment it lasted. “Shoot, you weigh nothing.”
“This was definitely not romantic,” Tegan said. And yet she felt shaken to the core. She felt changed.
New.
Awakened.
As if life had started all over again and gone off in a whole new direction.
Jamie looked at her sideways. “Real question, though - was it good?”
“Ohh, yeah!”
They grinned at each other again, satisfied with themselves, feeling awed and amazed and sort of guilty ab
out the possibility that maybe someone had heard and would be wondering who Jamie had in his trailer. “Bet they don’t guess it was you,” he said.
“We’d be the hot gossip item of the whole circuit.”
“You want that?” He gave her a sideways look.
“Not really.”
“Me neither.”
But he didn’t say what he did want, and Tegan wasn’t sure either. All she knew was that she’d liked it, loved it, and that her feelings about Jamie bloody MacCreadie had turned upside down almost as fast as a rider getting flipped by a bull.
She barely dared to breathe, barely recognized herself or the emotions churning inside. Everything seemed different. Everything. The slant of October sun through the window that needed cleaning. The sound of a horse being led past, outside.
He began to reach for his clothing, then shook his head and blinked as if something had made him dizzy and he needed to fight it off. “I have to get going. Dawson will ride for me, I’m sure, if I can get hold of him.” He was already pulling his phone from his jeans pocket. “Horse isn’t going to get enough of a warm-up, though.”
“Same here.”
“Think we had a pretty good warm-up, though.”
Another grin flashed between them, still full of secret amazement, and Tegan couldn’t think when she’d last felt this good.
Which was weird, because this was Jamie.
Forty minutes later, with champion tie-down roper Dawson O’Dell making him a more-than-capable partner, he and Faro shot out of the chute to chase down their steer. Tegan’s heart was in her mouth. She was proud, scared, aching for that strong, gorgeous, precious, denim-clad body so vulnerable out there.
It was going to hurt watching Jamie ride rodeo from now on, she realized.
He slid sideways off the horse, lay back and skidded across the dirt with his steer grabbed by the horn, and got it down in 3.8 seconds, a time that wouldn’t have shamed him at the National Finals. Then he jumped to his feet looking like a man who’d only just begun his day and who had a heck of a lot more planned. His belt buckle from a previous win gleamed at his waist.
