Luck Of The Draw

by Candace Schuler

  He wanted her hot and hungry. He wanted her avid and eager. He wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her, dammit!

  With that goal in mind, Travis ended his demonstration of horsemanship by lifting his mount into a flashy rear and holding the position for a moment so she could admire it fully. Then he brought the gelding down hard, urging him into a fast, flat-out gallop across the length of the corral that ended in a showy, sliding stop three feet in front of where Eve sat perched on the fence. It was the kind of move that always wowed ‘em at the rodeo, and made the buckle bunnies go all moist and dewy.

  Eve jerked back with a muffled scream, lost her balance, overcorrected by leaning too far forward and half tumbled, half jumped into the corral. She landed, flatfooted and semi-upright, practically under the horse’s nose. The well-trained cow pony didn’t move a muscle. Neither did the reckless cowboy on his back.

  And neither did Eve.

  She lifted her gaze to the horse’s rider, finding him sitting stock-still, still mounted, staring at her through the stanchions of the horse’s alert ears.

  “You okay there, darlin’?” he asked, his voice low and just a little sheepish.

  “Fine.” She straightened slowly, warily, scared to move too fast lest she startle the horse into trampling her, loathe to let the horse’s rider see how scared she was. Standing upright, eye-to-eye with the horse, she smiled nervously. “He sure is big.”

  “Fifteen hands,” Travis said, his lips twitching with amusement at the look on her face. Now she looked impressed—and she was looking at the damn horse, not him! “‘Bout average for a cow pony.” He shifted in the saddle, causing the horse to redistribute its weight.

  Eve stiffened and glanced longingly at the fence, but held her ground, refusing to take so much as even one step back.

  “He’s waiting for you to make friends,” Travis prompted.

  “Friends?”

  “Horses show affection by nuzzling each other’s faces and necks.”

  Eve didn’t think she could bring herself to nuzzle anything as big as a horse, but she raised one hand slowly, palm out, and placed it against Sangria’s nose, rubbing softly the way she’d seen the girls do. “Nice horse,” she murmured, hoping it wasn’t true that animals could smell your fear.

  Sangria lowered his head and butted it gently against Eve’s chest, moving her half a step back.

  Eve gritted her teeth. “Nice horse,” she repeated, determined to hold her own with the animal. And with the man on his back.

  Tough as a rank bull, Travis thought with a spurt of husbandly pride. She was nervous but not really scared, and hell-bent on not showing it. He decided to have a little fun.

  With a slight, subtle movement of his hard-muscled thigh, he moved the horse a step to the right.

  Eve shifted her stance, automatically taking half a step to the left to give the horse room.

  Travis moved the horse another step to the right.

  Eve moved again, to the left, out of the horse’s way, then checked as she realized that the big animal was in sinuating itself between her and the fence. The next move she made was pure instinct, two steps back, turn ing around and away from the horse, trying to gain the reassuring safety of the fence at her back. Horse and rider checked her again, blocking her, moving her further out into the center of the corral.

  She whirled abruptly, trying to get away. Travis saw a flash of real fear in her eyes as she turned, and immediately started to back off, signaling the horse to let her slip by when, suddenly, the fear in her eyes gave way to the realization that she was deliberately being maneuvered.

  She stopped short as the awareness hit her, the sudden lack of movement so abrupt that man and horse had to use all their combined skill to keep from stepping on her. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  Tough as a rank bull, Travis thought again, and grinned like a skunk eating cabbage. “Just showing you what a good cow pony can do,” he drawled innocently.

  “Uh-huh.” She glared at him through narrowed eyes, all fear of the horse forgotten. “Well, I’m not a cow, so knock it off,” she ordered, and tried to step around him and his mount.

  Travis nudged the horse with his knee and blocked her way.

  She took a step in the opposite direction.

  He countered her move again. And then again. And yet again.

  “I mean it,” she said as sternly as she could, fighting back the gurgle of exasperated laughter she knew would only encourage him. “Stop it right now!”

  Still grinning, Travis shook his head and reached for the coiled rope hanging over the right side of his saddle horn. Holding it and the reins in his left hand, guiding the horse with his knees and subtle shifts of his body, he dangled his right arm out to the side and began to build a small loop.

  Eve’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Travis just kept rotating his wrist, letting out rope, building himself a nice little woman-size loop, while Sangria herded her in the direction he wanted her to go as easily as if she were a little motherless calf. “Watch those horse droppings there, darlin’,” Travis warned as she feinted to the left, then darted right—just missing the aforementioned pile of manure—and ended up facing Sangria and his grinning rider dead-on.

  “A good cow pony can dog six steers at once,” he lied blandly. “You haven’t got a chance.”

  “What I haven’t got is time for this nonsense,” she said in her best Nurse Rachet voice. And then she broke and ran, straight at the horse, ducking under its head, making a beeline for the fence, half expecting to be jerked off of her feet like a calf at a rodeo roping event. She was two steps away from freedom when the rope sailed over her head, light as a whisper, and tightened around her waist. It went taut at once, pinning her arms to her sides, stopping her in her tracks without yanking her off of her feet. She whirled around to face her captor just in time to see him tug the rope free of the saddle horn and dismount.

  He smacked the horse on its rump, sending it trotting off to the other side of the corral, then turned and walked nonchalantly toward the barn, the rope slung casually over his shoulder, whistling aimlessly, forcing her to stumble along behind him.

  Breathless, indignant, half laughing and cursing under her breath at the same time, Eve squirmed against her bonds, pulling at the rope with both hands, trying to create enough slack to slip the loop over her head. She’d made a little progress, working the rope up as far as her rib cage, when it tightened abruptly, yanking her arms back against her sides. She lifted her head to see her unrepentant captor standing in the shadowed entrance of the barn, facing her now, feet planted wide apart on the rough plank floor, the end of the rope dangling from one hand.

  She glared at him.

  He grinned at her.

  “Come along, little doggie,” he crooned teasingly, and yanked on the rope.

  Instinctively, obeying some ancient feminine impulse that compelled her to resist, Eve reared back, digging her sneakered feet into the dust of the corral, fighting the steady, unrelenting pull of the rope—and the man.

  Travis ignored her struggles as if they were nothing, pulling his prize slowly, inexorably, inevitably toward him, hand over hand, out of the sunlight and into the shadowed, earthy coolness of the barn. When she was close enough he reached out, curled his gloved fingers under the slipknot that rested just below her breasts and hauled her up against his chest. Hard.

  The breathless laughter vanished.

  The indignation disappeared.

  The playful nonchalance evaporated into thin, heated air.

  “Gotcha,” he murmured, his voice low and seductive.

  Eve lifted her head and met his gaze under the brim of his hat. The intensity in his eyes was scalding. Intimidating. Exciting. Triumphant. Challenging. Hot. It spoke to something equally hot, equally excited, equally triumphant in her. Something she hadn’t even known was there. She leaned into her husband’s body and met the unspoken challenge head
-on.

  “And now that you’ve got me, cowboy,” she purred, “what are you going to do with me?”

  “I…” Something in Travis’s usually agile mind fogged over. All the pretty, practiced phrases meant to charm and flatter disappeared into the mist. All the teasing innuendo and sexy banter that usually came so easily got lost somewhere in his clouded synapses. He knew what he wanted to do with her, he just couldn’t get the words out while she stood there looking up at him with nothing in her vivid blue eyes but heated desire.

  He’d been courting her for a week—not even a week—and this was the first time she’d looked at him with more than just wariness and acceptance in her eyes. It fried what was left of his brain.

  “Eve,” he murmured, unable to think of anything else to say.

  He lifted his free hand to touch her face, disconcerted for a moment when he didn’t feel the softness of her skin beneath his fingers. Unable to shift his gaze from hers, unwilling to let go of the rope that bound her to him, he lifted his hand to his mouth, pulled off the glove with his teeth and dropped it on the floor. He touched her face then, gently brushing the fiery red curls back from her cheek with calloused fingertips.

  “Eve,” he said again and finally, helplessly, bent his head to kiss her.

  She sighed into his mouth and gave him everything he asked for, everything he needed. Freely. All her passion. All her heat. All her desire. He was her husband, she consoled herself. He had a right to the comforts of her body. But the truth was, she wanted to give, wanted him to take…everything.

  She lifted her arms as high as she was able, reaching for him, anchoring her hands in the soft chambray that sheathed his ribs. “More,” she murmured, unaware she’d spoken the word out loud.

  Travis groaned and slid his hand to the back of her head, tilting it, angling her mouth beneath his for a deeper, more satisfying possession. He could feel her heart slamming against the backs of his fingers where they nestled between her breasts, and he turned his hand, cupping her giving softness in his palm.

  Eve moaned as she felt her breasts fill and swell in response to his touch. She went up on her tiptoes and arched her spine, needing to be closer, needing the pressure of his hard hand on her flesh to relieve the ache, aching to feel the press of his bulging erection between her thighs. She slid her hands to his narrow hips, tangling her fingers in the fringe of his chaps to pull him closer to where she needed him, and rotated her hips against his.

  Travis forgot everything in that lush, heated moment, all his plans to tempt and tease and seduce her into mindless, avid surrender. He wasn’t even aware, just then, that he’d attained his stated goal. He only knew that he needed. And she needed.

  Still kissing her, nibbling and nipping and sucking at her open mouth, unable to stop long enough to lift his head and look where he was going, he put his hands on her hips and blindly guided her toward one of the empty stalls along the back wall of the barn. He intended to strip her naked, to lay her down on a horse blanket spread over sweet-smelling hay, to do what he’d been fantasizing about doing since the first moment he’d seen her standing in the kitchen.

  He meant to touch her, all over. He meant to taste her, everywhere. He meant to spread her long, luscious legs, bury himself in her to the hilt and ride her until they were both too exhausted to move.

  And she meant to let him.

  Ached to let him.

  But a loud rap sounded against the side of the barn and a voice, unnaturally loud, drifted in through the open door. “Travis, boy, you in there?” Gus called. “Miz Eve? Company’s a’comin’ down the road.”

  Travis groaned like a man mortally wounded and dragged his mouth from hers. “Damn,” he swore softly. His fingers bit into her hips as he pressed his forehead against her shoulder and fought for breath. “Damn, damn, damn.”

  “They’ll be here any second now,” Gus warned.

  Travis sighed raggedly and lifted his head from Eve’s shoulder, turning his face toward the open door. “Give us a minute,” he hollered.

  “A minute’s more’n you got. Bob Meyer an’ his missus just pulled to a stop behind your rig. He’s haulin’ a trailer with that bronc you bought from him last week. He’ll want to be bringin’ it down here to the barn.”

  “A minute,” Travis yelled again as he put his hands on Eve’s shoulders and gently put her away from him. She stood there looking up at him, her lips puffy from his kisses, her hair tangled from his hands. Her arms were still pressed to her sides by the rope he’d lassoed her with.

  “I’m sorry.” He reached for the slipknot that held it tight around her. “Damn, I’m sorry. This wasn’t the time to start this.”

  Helpless, wanting, confused by the emotions that had ripped through her, Eve could only nod in agreement.

  “It’ll take them a while to unload the horse,” he said as the rope dropped to her feet. “Ten or fifteen minutes, if they get right to it.” He smoothed the front of her blouse with trembling hands, brushing at the two damp spots that marred the front, clumsily buttoning a button that had come undone, tugging at her collar to straighten it. “And Gus’ll see that they don’t get right to it.” Having done all he could do to set her to rights, he cupped her elbow in his palm and turned her, gently guiding her down the length of the barn and through the tack room. “You can slip out this way and go around to the far side of the house.” He lifted the latch on a small door that opened on the opposite side of the barn from the main corral. “I’ll go out the way we came in, and no one will be the wiser. And, Eve?”

  She paused in the open doorway and looked at him.

  His eyes were dark and intense, still roiling with unresolved emotion and rampant male passion. He reached out and touched her face, brushing the thick tangle of curls back from her cheek, tucking it gently behind her ear. “We’ll finish this later.”

  “Yes.” Eve nodded and put a hand to her stomach where the nerves had begun to knot again. “Later.”

  10

  EVE MADE IT to the house unseen, slipping around the far side, past the vegetable garden and in through the front door without anyone being the wiser. She ducked into her room, stealthily, like a teenager sneaking in after a forbidden date and quietly, quickly closed the door behind her. She leaned back against it, her hands behind her on the glass knob, and closed her eyes, listening to her heart pound in her ears.

  She was appalled at what had just happened.

  And enthralled.

  And scared.

  She hadn’t meant to want like that. She hadn’t meant to leave herself open to need. She hadn’t meant to feel anything for him. Not like that. Not so that her insides were tied up in knots and her breath was sloughing in and out of her lungs, and her heart was still slamming against her chest.

  She’d meant only to fulfill her vows and give him his due as her husband. To do what it took to make their marriage work. But something had gone horribly wrong. There had been something so…appealing in the way he’d looked, standing there in the shadow of the barn, laughing at her from under the brim of his hat, his booted feet planted wide, with those ridiculous fringed leather chaps blatantly emphasizing his maleness, and his wide shoulders barely straining against the soft blue fabric of his shirt as he pulled her toward him. He was so unapologetically cocky. So brazenly, flagrantly male. It should have set her back up and turned her right off.

  It turned her on instead.

  And then he’d said her name, whispered it, like a prayer, as if he were dying for want of her. And he’d touched her face, oh, so gently and delicately, as if she were made of glass. His hands had trembled, as she was trembling now.

  And she had been…touched. Unbearably touched. Down deep inside where she’d vowed never to be touched by any man again. It wasn’t safe to let a man touch you like that. It wasn’t safe to let a man make you want and yearn and need.

  It wasn’t safe!

  She pressed her hand to her stomach and took a deep breath, and then another,
deliberately slowing her ragged breathing, methodically calming herself down. She had guests to see to, and the girls—they would probably be wanting her help with their hair—and Timothy would need to be changed after his nap. And nursed, she realized, lifting her hands to the dampness on her blouse.

  Her milk had let down when Travis touched her, filling her breasts to bursting, making them ache. The realization calmed her somehow, as her slow, deliberate breathing hadn’t, giving her a logical reason for the aching emptiness she felt inside.

  Her reaction to Travis had been purely physical, a natural response to simple biological stimulus. He’d touched her face and kissed her; she’d parted her lips and kissed him back. He’d caressed her breasts; they’d swelled and ached. He’d hardened against her; she’d softened and grown moist. A woman’s body was made to respond to the passionate, tender touch of a man, the same way it was made to respond to the hungry cry of a baby.

  The need he’d aroused in her was purely physical.

  Maybe when she’d assuaged that need, it would go away.

  EVE EMERGED from the bedroom half an hour later, her hair loosely tied back with a yellow print bandanna, a clean white shirt knotted at her waist, her gurgling son balanced on her hip, her calm restored. There were half a dozen vehicles parked in front and around the side of the house and more coming down the long road, sending plumes of dust into the still summer air. The yard was full of people and activity. Men in Western shirts and cowboy hats stood around, talking about ranching, weather and the latest Texas Rangers baseball game. Women in freshly laundered jeans or breezy summer dresses, carrying covered Tupperware bowls and plastic-wrapped casseroles, traded smiles and gossip with friends they hadn’t seen since church last Sunday. Children seemed to be everywhere, bubbling with the excitement of a party, chasing each other around and between the parked vehicles and the adults who’d brought them.