Hot and Bothered

by Lori Foster

  Reflecting on the look on his face when she’d asked the question, Shay decided maybe he already had learned at least one thing about himself.

  “The dare is,” Shay said, looking from him to the tall oak tree next to them, “for you to climb the tree, hang upside down from that limb.”

  “OK.” Luke took his Stetson off, placed it tipped back on her head, slipped off his boots and socks, and scaled the trunk. Sitting down, he grinned down at her from the branch, showing her a glimpse of the little rascal he once was and still was in so many ways. Too many. He flipped upside down, hanging on with his iron-strong thighs. He crooked his finger.

  “Come here to check.”

  Shay came hesitantly, knowing there was a trap in this somewhere. He reached out, cupped her head in his hands, and pulled her lips to his. Her first kiss with an upside-down man. Shay would’ve laughed, but just then he deepened the kiss, and she was too breathless to do anything but draw away before she lost her focus.

  “That wasn’t part of the dare,” she admonished, backing up.

  Luke reached up to grab the branch, released his knees, and jumped to the ground. “Maybe it was just preparing you for my dare.”

  A sensual awareness shimmied through her at his intonation. She braced herself against it. “Who says I’m not going to offer the truth?”

  Luke hooked his fingers into her belt loops and dragged her to him. “OK, when did you last see your favorite color?”

  His question so surprised her, Shay began, speaking too quickly, “My favorite color is a red, with a gold-orange, and a little magenta mixed in.” She paused, realizing as she spoke she’d dug herself into a hole, or perhaps, with intuitive skill, he’d put her there. “It’s really a persimmon color, I suppose. Red, orange, a passion fruit pink …”

  His eyebrow arched, dragging her a little closer, until their body heat mingled. With a knuckle under her chin, he tipped her face up. The hat fell off. “I didn’t ask you what color, Shay; I asked you when you last saw it.”

  Shay felt breathless. Her mind’s eye had filled with an explosion of persimmon the last time they’d made love. How had he known?

  “I’ll take the dare,” she breathed as a blush heated her face.

  “The dare is”—he paused, caressing her with his gaze—“to show me the most sensitive spot on your body. The most secret one. The one I never would know unless you show me.”

  Shay shivered, not from the desire but with the reality his questions, his dares, were showing her. He cared about her. Did he realize it?

  “Well?” he asked, walking around her, twirling a forefinger around a hank of her hair, pulling it back to kiss her behind her ear. “Would it be there?”

  “No.”

  His hands cupped her breasts and breathed feathery kisses on each nipple that upturned immediately at his touch and poked through the thin fabric of her T-shirt. “There?” He palmed below her zipper that warmed in his hand. “Or here?”

  “Those aren’t very secret, are they?”

  He looked at each, eyebrows raised, gaze appreciative. “No, I guess not. They are tattletales.”

  Shay’s blush deepened.

  “Still no answer?” Luke continued. “Then I will continue torturing you until you tell me the truth, or do the dare.”

  “Here,” she said finally, afraid that if he tried any more tactile guessing she would be lost and the game over before it really began. She unfastened the top two buttons of her Levi’s, rolling down her waistband, turning slowly, lifting her shirt to point at the dip in the small of her back. She looked over her shoulder at his eyes darkening to gunmetal. “Here,” she said.

  He knelt on one knee, his hands spanning her hips as he kissed her back. “Here?”

  Biting back a moan, Shay nodded.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he said, breathing the words on her skin. He tickled the spot with his tongue. “Is this your secret erogenous zone?”

  “Yes,” she sighed, squirming as his hands slid up to her bare waist, his tongue tracing a trail up her backbone as he stood.

  Luke dropped his hands and stepped back, leaving her body bereft. “Now it’s your turn again.”

  His hot-and-cold treatment was driving her crazy, even though she knew that was precisely his intention. Shay watched him wiggle his bare toes in the water. For some reason his bare feet made him look so vulnerable and that much sexier because of it. She sucked in a breath and took a gamble that could send him back to Sonora. “Tell me about the biggest disappointment in your life.”

  First Luke’s look turned introspective; then he glowered, not at her so much as at a memory. “What if I told you it was falling off the rankest bull on the tour and ruining a perfect one-hundred score?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He blew out a breath. “I’ll take the dare.”

  “I’m going to put the blindfold on you and lead you.”

  Luke shook his head.

  “You have to decide if you’d rather trust me with the truth or trust me not to lead you into a pile of fire ants or a snake hole.”

  He grinned, but only with a hint of humor. “You’re treading in dangerous territory now.”

  “It’s worth it; I get to find out which you value most—your secrecy or your control.”

  Luke flexed his jaw, his eyes guarded. “Put the blindfold on.”

  “Ah, secrecy wins,” Shay said, plucking the bandanna off the ground and slipping it around his eyes, tying it behind his head. Luke tensed.

  Shay slipped her hand into his and began to walk along the riverbank. The simple sensation of her small hand comfortable in his large one touched her the way nothing else they’d shared had. She smiled, watching his bare feet feel around rocks, knowing instinctively that he’d never before in his life trusted anyone enough to give up this much control.

  She led him up and over a small rise that jutted over a deep pool in a curve in the river. They walked to the very edge, where Shay finally stopped him with a hand on his chest. She looked down at the twenty-foot drop to the water and judged the pool deep enough to absorb six feet of two-hundred-pound man.

  “I want you to jump.”

  His jaw flexed.

  “That is, if you know how to swim,” she said.

  “I guess you’ll just have to find out,” he said, pulling his shirt out of his jeans, yanking the snaps apart, and discarding the shirt behind him.

  For a second, Shay’s heart went to her throat. He wasn’t daring enough to jump without knowing how to swim, was he? She put her hand on his bare biceps. “Wait.”

  He shook his head and used his feet to feel his way to the edge of the limestone shelf. “No. A dare is a dare.”

  Without warning, Luke jumped out, landing in the water with a loud splash. Shay was on the verge of jumping in after him when he bounced back to the top, the bandanna in his hand. Grinning up at her, he shook his wet head, the spray flying. “It looks like that scared you more than it did me.”

  Realizing she’d been holding her breath and her fists tight at her sides, Shay let both go and sat on the edge of the precipice, drawing her knees to her chest. She watched him tread water easily, the clear water giving her a magnified view of his muscles flexing with each stroke. “OK, your turn.”

  “I want to know if you’ve ever been in love before,” he said.

  Before what? Shay wanted to ask. Before now?

  Maybe she was reading too much into his words that he could be using carelessly.

  “I was, once, or so I thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was twenty-one. He was an attorney I met when I was working my first PI job, a simple background check on a witness. He asked me to marry him but wanted me to give up my work. I decided I loved my independence more than I loved him. I guess I wasn’t willing to do that compromising we talked about yesterday. Now it’s my turn.”

  Luke was looking up at her with a mixture of ra
w jealousy and curiosity on his face. She bit back a smile at how unwittingly transparent he could be at times and so emotionally opaque at others.

  “Why do you ride bulls for a living?”

  She knew the moment she asked that it was too broad a question, one he could shimmy out from under without giving her the insight into him she craved.

  “Because I’m good at it, and I love it.”

  “Why?”

  Still treading water, he held up a hand and shook his head. “You can use that for your next Truth or Dare. Now it’s my turn.”

  Knowing a dangerous question was coming, Shay tensed as he floated on his back and closed his eyes and said, “I want you to tell me what it would take for you to compromise your independence for a man you love.”

  Shay was grateful he kept his eyes closed as she felt her heartbeat accelerate and her face flush. The answer sprang immediately into her head.

  For you to tell me you love me.

  She couldn’t risk it.

  “I’ll take the dare.”

  “Jump in,” he said, dimple digging into his cheek.

  Shaking her head, Shay stood.

  “The truth then.” Luke’s gaze tried to read hers. To avoid it, she leaped over the edge without thinking anymore.

  The water was cool and seductive, turning her clothes that floated around her into a thousand stitches of erogenous stimuli. He’d gone under the water to pull her up in his arms, kissing her as they kicked to the surface. They each drew in a breath before his lips closed over hers again, tongues exploring the hot recesses of her mouth made exotic by the coolness of the water around them.

  Luke gazed at her thoughtfully. She felt like he could see inside her soul. She tried to see into his to ask the right question, remembering what Monty had said about Luke being driven and what Cody had said about him being reckless since being kicked off his father’s ranch. She wanted to ask him about what he’d do for love, but knew he had to first come to terms with the demon that drove him. “It’s my turn and I want to know what’s the first thing you will do after you win the championship trophy at the World Bullriding Pro championships.”

  She’d hit close to the bull’s-eye. She could see it in the intensity in his silvery eyes. Neither one spoke for a full minute. Their legs kicked; his arms still held her, her arms wrapped around his water-slick back. She would’ve bet he would take the dare, but then he said quietly but harshly, “I will drive all night to get home and march into my father’s office and put that trophy on the mantel so that every day he and my brothers can see it and know I wasn’t the loser coward they told me I was.”

  Then, overwhelmed by the hate and revenge, he released her and swam toward the riverbank. She grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Luke, tell me why they said that.”

  “If you’d read the background check on me, you’d see why. You shouldn’t have walked out without it this morning. I brought it with me; you should read it when I’m gone.”

  “I don’t want to read it, I want you to tell me.”

  They both stood on the riverbed, the water swirling around them, Shay’s hand on his arm, Luke tense and withdrawn. His storm cloud eyes looked past her. “My father owns the fastest-growing computer company in the nation. My brothers will make it the biggest before they die. We were all raised for the business, but I’ve always hated it. My father talks every day about his ‘dynasty.’ I hate being forced into anything. I tried, though, for years, then ran the ranch, and got into bullriding more and more. Finally my father told me never to come back until I could prove I was ready to take responsibility and be a man instead of a lazy good-for-nothing.”

  “And you think showing him you’re the best bullrider in the world is going to change his mind?”

  Luke tensed his jaw. “Maybe.”

  “Luke,” she said gently, touched that he’d confided in her finally, but not wanting to give up this opportunity to make him understand himself. “You’re going to discover that the empty feeling inside you won’t be filled when you march into your father’s office with your trophy. You need to ride the bulls for yourself. Win for yourself. And you have to stop agreeing with your father.”

  “I’ve never agreed with my father!”

  “You share a low opinion of you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, yanking his arm out of her hand.

  Shay pursued him. “You’re living life for the wrong reason. You can’t live life for revenge, to prove something to your family. If you do, you’re running away from things instead of running to things.”

  “What if I’ve been running to you?” he said roughly, pulling her into his arms and kissing her deeply. His honesty made her weak, and she let him pull her soggy shirt over her head, let his hands float over her skin, let him draw her jeans off, carry her to a patch of soft grass on the bank, and love her body.

  Shay wished he could love her soul as well, even though in her heart she knew he couldn’t until he loved himself.

  Luke woke to a raucous squawk and looked up in the cypress branch above them to see a black grackle mocking the human couple in a tangle of damp arms and legs and clothes. The river water had dried on the skin, but sweat was taking its place as the hundred-degree afternoon heat steamed the ground under them, even in the shade. Luke guessed they’d slept a few hours and knew he had to get up, the bullriding would begin in a couple of hours, but he hated to let loose of the woman in his arms just yet.

  The idyllic times they’d spent together had been stolen—first by staving off suspicion, then by distracting her from her psychological probing. It would all end with the ultimatum that he knew would come by the end of the afternoon.

  He just didn’t know who would be making it.

  They were both too strong, too independent, to be together for long, especially in the middle of someone else’s game with deadly stakes.

  Shay stirred, moaning softly in a way that tweaked Luke’s heart. He relished the feeling for a few minutes; then those incredible amber eyes opened and blinked in consciousness. She smiled. “Why do you always wake up first?”

  “I like to watch you sleep. You look actually tamable when you are unconscious.”

  “What an odd thing to say.”

  “You’re a little like the broncs and bulls in the rodeo. You can waltz right over and stroke their noses, their necks, but the moment you try to master them by hopping on their backs they don’t want anything to do with you.”

  “But didn’t you say when you get on the rough stock the idea is to hang on for the thrill ride—let loose of the idea of controlling it?”

  Luke laughed, surprised she was sharp enough to turn his bullriding philosophy back onto a human relationship. “I did.”

  They shared a look that left Luke fidgeting. He wasn’t ready for this. It was time to push her away, make her want to leave and never look back at him again. He drew his arm out from under her and handed her her damp shirt. “It’s been fun, but it’s time I got back to the motel and dressed for tonight.”

  Hurt flashed in her eyes for just an instant before it was replaced by her businesswoman look. She adjusted her bra, slipped her shirt over her head, and handed him his jeans. “We have to talk about that, Luke. You can’t ride. It’s not safe. The bull you rode last night was drugged. You are the killer’s target.”

  “How do you know that?” He frowned, disbelieving. “Anybody could have drawn that bull.”

  “Yes, and when you did he was injected with a substance that made him deadly crazy.” Shay watched Luke as he jumped rocks across the river and hiked back up the ridge to get his shirt, then his boots. She followed him across to get her own boots. “There’s a pattern, Luke; the guys killed or put out of commission under suspicious circumstances have all been the most reckless riders on the tour. There aren’t that many coincidences. The last rigging that went back came back from the crime lab as having an acid injected into the center, which disintegrated from inside out. Ho
w do you see something like that until it’s unraveled from the pressure of a twisting buck and your head is crashing into a metal gate?”

  Luke shook his head, sauntering up to her as he slipped his arms into his open shirt. “You still don’t have a good motive. All this could be just stuff the WBP is cooking up to beef up the TV ratings. Couch potato rubberneckers will be tuning in all over the country because of the better odds of seeing one of us die on camera.”

  Shay shivered and shook her head at the deadly image. “I have come up with a motive. All of the reckless riders are getting bonus points from the judges. I thought that maybe a conservative rider would be resentful enough to try to teach you all a lesson or—”

  Luke paused, her words striking a memory that left him cold. All Tim’s sly lectures on having to be careful because of having not one, but two, families to support could’ve been grim rationalizations instead of mere complaints. “Or it could be someone teaching us a lesson for a different reason.”

  Shay put her hand on his forearm. “What do you mean?”

  “Tim Auerbach’s brother was number one on the tour last year and got there by being a flashy risk taker. He’d stay on the bull longer to get the audience wound up, would throw his free arm wilder, spur the bull harder even when keeping him close would’ve kept him on for eight seconds, He’d ride with a broken arm, a concussion, without a vest. He was paralyzed the week before the finals practicing on a bull that the tour refused to take on because he was too crazy rank.”

  Shay looked at him. “And those of you carrying on his brother’s legacy are higher up in the rankings.”

  Luke thought for a moment. “Yeah, most of us.”

  Cupping his jaw in her hands, Shay brought Luke’s eyes to hers. “Don’t ride tonight. If it’s Tim, he’ll try again. If he’s injecting bulls he’s taking a huge risk and won’t stop until he’s caught. He might already have found out your draw and gotten to it. He might have broken into your motel room and have sabotaged your gear; he might have come up with some entirely new strategy. I’ll alert Monty and the WBP officials, but they won’t cancel the event and it might be too late to find out exactly what he’s done. Don’t take the chance.”