Hot and Bothered

by Lori Foster

  A few of the cowboys laughed at that.

  “Well, show’s over, so one of you on the rail pluck his stupid hide off the next time he gets close enough!” Monty shouted.

  Just then, with a yank of his free hand, Luke released his rigging and went airborne with the bull’s last buck. Luke landed on hands and knees, then jumped up and took his Stetson off to wave it in victory at the crowd. Undertaker spun around, lowered his head, and charged. If Shay had been scared while Luke was on the bull, it was nothing compared to what she felt now. The last bullrider to die on the tour had been gored in the liver by a bull’s horn.

  Luke reached the fence just ahead of the bull, who’d been distracted by one of the bullfighter’s colorful bandannas. The bull rammed into a wooden section of the fence, reducing it to splinters and catching part of Luke’s chaps with his horn. Luke leaped over the fence to thunderous applause and the congratulations of his fellow bullriders. He looked at Shay through the crowd and held his hands palms up.

  Shay shook her head as they announced Luke’s score of 92, putting him in first place and untouchable. Suddenly a possibility flashed through Shay’s mind; quickly she turned around in search of Monty. She found him high on the fence, yelling at the bullfighters to get the bull out of the arena. The Undertaker was still pummeling what was left of the wood piece with his horns.

  “That’s not normal,” she observed.

  “No, it’s not. Most riders would’ve accepted the re-ride.”

  “I’m talking about the bull,” Shay said. “I think you ought to have the vet pull some blood.”

  Monty turned to her in shock. “Why?”

  “I think the saboteur could be screwing with the livestock as well as the riggings.”

  Monty’s face hardened; the thought that the livestock were being manipulated would mean bigger trouble for the WBP. “Bulls do unpredictable things, but if it’ll make you happy, I’ll have it tested. I’ll let you know at the dance tonight.”

  “I’m not going to the dance.”

  “I would if I were you,” Monty warned. “When the beer’s flowing, tongues get mighty loose.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Sonora’s Dance Slab was perfect for a night of honky-tonking: lots of loud live country music, lots of blinding neon, lots of fresh sawdust on the dance floor. And, of course, lots of smiling women in push-up bras, tight shirts, and second-skin blue jeans.

  For the first time in his life, Luke didn’t take note of the individual assets of any of those women because he was looking for the face of one woman in particular.

  That fact alone made him angry. Shay McIntyre had messed with his head, and he couldn’t shake it. Add to that the snub she’d given him after his ride at the rodeo that night and he knew he ought to snub her worse, find the curviest cowgirl in the place and dance as close to her as Wranglers would allow all night long. There were two reasons he knew he wouldn’t do that, one being he didn’t want to, the other being he wasn’t entirely sure Shay would care.

  He might fluster her temporarily, but it seemed she always kept an upper hand and her distance, unless she was throwing potshots at his emotional armor. Luke hated to be controlled by anyone, but for some reason he couldn’t seem to keep his mind off the one person who was controlling him right now.

  Night brought a cooler breeze carrying the pungent scent of approaching rain through the covered open-air area, refreshing the group after a day of relentless dry heat.

  “You’re as much fun as a June bug in December,” Cody informed him, doing a three-finger grab on his long-neck and draining it. “I don’t know why you insisted Karen and I come with you. Since when do you need a chaperone?”

  “I just thought your wife deserved a dance or two for hanging out with your gimpy hide all day,” Luke said, eyes still scanning the crowd.

  “Right. Since when did you think I deserved anything but heartache?” Cody’s petite blond wife asked with a good-natured laugh.

  “You’ve got me all wrong, Karen,” Luke said, swinging her out into a two-step.

  “‘Fess up,” Karen said as they danced. “What’s going on?”

  “I want to dance but don’t want to do it with one of them.” He nodded to an assembled group of women on the prowl. He recognized one of them as Tim’s sister, a groupie who followed the tour and had been one of the first to stroke Luke’s machismo after his stunt in the arena that morning. She wiggled her fingers at him. He smiled vaguely.

  “This is a first, destined for the history books.” Karen teasingly put a hand to his forehead. “Are you sick? Did the bull injure some vital parts when he threw you?”

  Luke just shook his head and missed a step as he caught sight of Shay talking earnestly with a bunch of bullriders. They broke up laughing, and one of them, Tim, led her out on the dance floor. Cody ground his jaw when the cowboy put his arm around Shay’s waist.

  “Oh, I get it,” Karen said, seeing the look in his eyes. “It’s that woman, that reporter Cody told me about. She’s gotten to you, hasn’t she? Good for her. Maybe she’ll dump you to pay you back for all those hearts you’ve broken.”

  “She can’t dump me if she hasn’t picked me up yet,” Luke said under his breath, his gaze following Shay as she glided across the floor. She smiled up at Tim. Luke’s stomach knotted.

  Karen laughed. “Smart woman.”

  Luke maneuvered them through the couples dancing on the floor to get near Shay and her partner. Just as the band’s lead singer belted out the last note of a Wynonna hit, Luke leaned over between Shay and Tim. “I’m cutting in.”

  Shay turned her head in surprise and drew them too close. Her amber eyes revealed her sexual awareness of him in the instant their gazes met and held; then she stepped back. “I don’t think so.”

  “There’s a matter of paying a debt,” Luke said.

  Her eyes flashed with stubborn fury, and Tim seemed reluctant to let her go. He glared at Luke.

  Luke shrugged. “You know payback, Tim.”

  “Yeah,” Tim said as he stalked away, a proprietary hand on Karen’s shoulder. “For you, payback is a bull, Luke.”

  Dismissing Tim from his mind, Luke looked back at his dance partner, who was watching him with narrowed eyes and hands on her hips in that way of hers meant to be intimidating. “Why did you ride that bull tonight?” Shay demanded.

  “He was the top of the pen, a guaranteed forty-five- to fifty-pointer.”

  “He was also acting like he was possessed by the devil himself.”

  “What better way to prove I’m not a killer than to be killed?”

  “You don’t need to prove anything to me.”

  “Forget need. What if I just want to?” he asked quietly, leaning into her.

  Her gaze softened long enough for him to see the fear behind the anger. She’d been afraid for him. Just like he’d been afraid for her.

  It was too psychologically intimate for him, so Luke pushed the thought away and concentrated on shaking her up physically instead.

  Sliding his hand into hers, Luke pulled Shay to him, claiming the small of her back with a possessive hand, and tried not to sigh, she felt so good. As soon as their bodies drew together, Shay pulled back, putting a foot between them just as the band began to play Garth Brooks’s “Standing Outside the Fire.” Luke chuckled at the irony; Shay glared. Their sexual electricity had sparked the moment their gazes had met, and already a fire was smoldering. Shay might not like him, but she wanted him, and she hated that.

  Good; that made two of them, Luke thought.

  Shay cautiously hooked her left thumb into his back belt loop, keeping the rest of her hand well clear of him. Luke felt like he was wrestling instead of dancing as she struggled to keep a ruler’s length between them during the two-step. Her feet followed the music with a natural dancer’s intuition, but her stiff body and his own need to feel her against him frustrated him. Her long-fingered, silky hands began to relax in his by the end of the song, so that when the band
started a new song he’d gotten her close enough to feel her heat and smell that rich honey scent of her. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, Luke reflected as he forced his escalating libido from being displayed clearly in his Wranglers.

  The song was fast and fun, and Luke spun her out a few times, watching her dark hair fan out behind her. She was a sensual dancer, fluid and expressive, following easily as Luke tried more and more complicated steps. Their bodies and feet communicated without words. Halfway through the song she couldn’t keep from flashing a reluctant smile. By the end of the song, she was breathless, and he spun her out one last time, drawing her back into his arms. Only then did Luke notice that the couples around them had stopped to watch their fancy footwork. When they clapped appreciatively, Shay looked up at him, surprise in her eyes. They hadn’t noticed anything but each other.

  As the other couples found their places on the dance floor again, Luke savored the feel of her back, deliciously rounded backside, and long, strong legs plastered against the front of his body. He held her hands in his, their arms crossed over her rapidly rising and falling breasts. Luke dropped his face down to take a deep breath of her hair—honey and ginger.

  Sweet and spicy.

  Suddenly realizing the position she was in, Shay wrenched herself out of his arms just as the next song began. She spun to face him, blowing her wild-child hair out of her eyes. She went from wanton to composed so fast it made his head spin. “That settles the bet then,” she stated.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t,” Luke said, stepping closer.

  “You got your two dances,” she countered, turning to go back to the sidelines through the couples already dancing on the floor.

  Luke walked up behind her, catching hold of her hands. He whispered in her ear, relishing the slight shiver that ran through her, “The deal was slow dances. Those weren’t slow.”

  Shay shot him a look of frustrated fury and not a little fear. “Slow is a relative term, cowboy. You’re used to a ton of bull going a thousand miles an hour. A two-step with the opposite sex is slow compared to that.”

  “I can do a lot of things slowly with the opposite sex, girl,” Luke said into her ear.

  “And I bet you can do them standing up, too,” she returned.

  “That, and ways you’ve never imagined.” Luke turned her around and drew her against the length of his body, expecting her to be stiff and unyielding, but sometime in the last thirty seconds she’d given up the physical fight. Shay was supple, warm, and undulating in his arms. He ran his hands down her shapely back. It would be too much to hope she’d stopped fighting him altogether, he warned himself, as he enjoyed the sensation of the perfect fit of her body against his.

  As they moved together to the music, Luke wondered how a man so wound up and hot for release could feel so peaceful and whole at the same time.

  “One more dance,” Luke said in her ear at the end of the second slow dance.

  Shay shook her head against his shoulder. “No, cowboy, I’m not so far gone that I can’t count.”

  “I can fix that.”

  Shay stepped out of his arms and looked at him with a rueful, honest smile. “You’re trying your damnedest to.”

  He gave her his best earnest look. “You owe me one more song. You argued for the first half of the first dance, so it didn’t count.”

  “You only play by the rules when it works to your advantage.”

  “Is there any other way?”

  Shay knew she was playing with fire. He was a suspect and that should be enough to stop her. But Luke was just too damned sexy to resist, even with his idiot recklessness, his emotional calluses, his macho mouth. As soon as she got mad enough to stomp off without a backward glance, he’d give her a tender touch, flash that rascally grin, or deliver a smart rejoinder that would draw her back. Something about the way he held her was hypnotic, beyond their sexual attraction that was now so hot it likely glowed brighter than the Dance Slab’s neon.

  But Shay had never backed down from a challenge, and she’d never seen one as bold as this one. She could admit her attraction to him and still refuse it, couldn’t she?

  As the strains of Faith Hill’s “Breathe” began filling the room, Luke held his arms out. She stepped into them and felt the thrill of desire sharper than before. She’d thought her body would get used to being exposed to him, kind of like developing a higher tolerance for alcohol. But no, he was more intoxicating with each touch, each look.

  She felt drunk, and she hadn’t even had a sip of beer.

  Shay put her hands around his neck, her hips echoing the movement of his.

  Luke let his hands leave her back, trailing down her sides, grazing the swell of her breasts, easing in at her waist, flaring out at her hips, guiding them closer until she could feel his hard length again filling the hollow between her hipbones like he was laying claim there. The slow burn that had been building since their first dance took flame, and she felt herself meeting his pressure with her own. He cupped her buttocks. Shay bit her bottom lip to keep from moaning against the hollow at his throat and sucked in a breath full of the rainy oak scent of him now thick with the promise of sex. Then his fingers danced back up the sides of her hips, his thumbs edging between their bodies as he retraced his path back up. His thumbs grazed her suddenly tender abdomen, up her ribs, just barely teasing the edges of her hard nipples, throbbing for his touch. His hands cupped the underside of her arms, tickling her until she wriggled. He moaned then and rested his lips on the shell of her ear. Shay almost didn’t hear him for the way desire was deafening her.

  “Shay, stop moving or I’m about to embarrass us both.”

  It was the first time Luke had called her by her name. She looked up into a face that was naked with need, eyes that had darkened to a gunmetal gray. It was a glimpse into his soul. Shay wondered how long she’d get to know this part of Luke before it went back into hiding behind that reckless cowboy facade.

  Her decision was made then.

  She brought her hands to cup his jaw, and his mouth met hers. He drew her against him, kissing her deeply. It was a hungry kiss, but not frantic. It was hungry for something beyond sex.

  It was hungry for making love.

  When they drew apart, Shay realized the other couples were two-stepping to a new song that had begun no telling how long before. Without speaking they both moved to the edge of the dance floor, his hand at the small of her back but not touching her anywhere else. Shay looked up at him as they found a table. Apprehension showed in a tightness around his eyes; their kiss had moved him as much as it did her.

  The only difference was it had moved her to acceptance and him to trepidation.

  “I’ll go get us something to drink,” Luke said quickly, pulling out her chair for her. The emotional armor was up; she knew he wouldn’t be coming back. But then he turned suddenly to leave and collided with a drunk trying to weave around the table. The old man’s whole sixteen-ounce cup of beer cascaded down Shay’s back and shoulders.

  She jumped up to keep the beer from soaking into her skirt.

  Luke looked like he might like to escape anyway for a moment, then went to the neighboring table and grabbed a handful of napkins and began wiping the liquid from the skin at her neck and chest. His eyes met hers and flashed with the passion he couldn’t run away from.

  “Why is it I always end up wet around you?” she said in a low voice, this time fully intending her double entendre.

  “Maybe you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Luke said, his face guarded, the sensual hurricane raging in his eyes belying her effect on him.

  “Or maybe it’s just the opposite,” she said and waited a beat as that hung in the air between them. “Regardless, I’m going to need help getting out of these clothes.”

  He raised his eyebrows but didn’t respond. He handed her the rest of the napkins, using the other half to clean the table.

  She could sleep with him and still ask her questions, couldn
’t she?

  The trouble was, now she wasn’t sure she wanted all the answers.

  Walking her hands across the soggy napkin-littered table, she leaned across, pinning him with a look of raw sexual promise. Shay lowered her alto: “Time to cowboy up, Luke.”

  CHAPTER 5

  As Shay slid her key into the lock of her motel room, Luke covered her hand with his, turned her around with her back to the door, putting his other hand behind her head. He kissed her again, long and deep. A serious kiss that held desire in check. Shay’s heart swelled. He could’ve ravaged her mouth and she would’ve relished it, but instead he tested another kiss that promised her a night of making love.

  Rainwater ran down the side of her cheek and dripped onto his back from the brim of his Stetson. The thunderstorm had caught them as they ran to her Mustang and, as summer storms do in West Texas, was blowing through with violent speed. Lightning ripped through the night sky now, followed by a bone-shaking clap of thunder. The air around them was thick with steam from the pavement and their own arousal.

  “Why did you decide to do this?” he asked.

  “You called me Shay instead of ‘girl.’”

  “Is that all it took? I would’ve called you Shay in that mud puddle this morning and spared myself all this hard work.”

  She laughed. “Why did it take you so long to say my name?”

  Luke tightened his jaw and watched another jagged bolt of electricity light the sky. “I never say a woman’s name,” he finally said. “It’s always ‘darlin’,’ ‘girl,’ ‘sweetheart.’”

  “Why?”

  “Because it makes them easier to forget.”

  “So I guess you’ll have to remember me at least until tomorrow.”

  “Shay, with the way you dance, I’ve got enough to remember ‘til next week at least,” Luke said with a teasing grin. “How about working on building my memory for a little longer?”

  His mouth closed over hers as she worked her fingers to open the door. This kiss was raw and opened all the barriers to their desire. Thunder rumbled as the door swung open. Once they were in, still kissing her, Luke pushed her with his body against the wall and kicked the door shut. Shay was squirming with a seemingly insatiable need. She threw off his Stetson and watched it fall on a manila folder that hadn’t been on the floor when she’d left. Ignoring it, she buried her hands in his thick dark hair as his hips kept her pinned to the wall. Luke ran his lips down her neck as he inched her skirt up.