With every second that ticked past, Hailey became more convinced that she was the real lunatic in the room. She had tempted these men? She’d half been joking when she said they were doomed earlier at the bar but now she felt it. It had been pure idiocy to come here tonight. Stupidity in the extreme because now she knew. She knew and she desired.
Worn past the point of even being able to ask any mighty deity for help, Hailey just whimpered softly beneath the bed as her body twisted and convulsed with all sorts of perverted lusts. It didn’t matter to her hormones that her body had already endured more than it could bear in Kyle’s bed. Her imagination turned traitor, conjuring up explicit images to match the sounds she heard. It drove her arousal to the most shameful level—putting her in the image along with Kyle and Cole.
Oh, God, I got to get out of here.
Hailey swallowed hard and offered another, endlessly babbling prayer to her maker, hoping that He could deliver her from this hell. The only answer that rung back from the heavens was the high-pitched squeaks and groans as one of the Cattleman finally mounted the poor girl they’d been tormenting for the past couple of hours.
Threatening to come down on top of her, the couple went it at it like she and Kyle had, but there hadn’t come a moment when her breath stopped and two men started grunting. The very fact that mere inches from her head some woman was getting double stuffed had drool forming along Hailey’s lips as she wondered...
Ah, got to stop that.
She had to get the hell out of here. She had to leave now.
That thought solidified with enough force to actually peel her off the floor. Snatching up the other woman’s silk blouse from where it lay slightly under the frame, Hailey slithered very slowly, turning fully around so that she could peek just over the lip of the footboard to see that somebody hadn’t taken his boots off to fuck. The other bastard still wore black socks, and that caught her enough to make her smirk.
Now that’s sexy.
The snide comment echoed out of her soul, reminding her for a moment that she was Hailey Mathews and she didn’t cower under any bed. What the hell would they do if she just popped up all of sudden?
Probably shit bricks and freak out, and wouldn’t that be funny as hell?
If it had been Patton instead of her, that’s probably what she would have done. Hailey enjoyed the thought but remained focused on escape and not having to explain to anybody what she’d been doing under the bed for the past two hours. Fearing to look for the delay it might cause her, Hailey shoved back with her feet and slid nearly silently through the bathroom door. Staying on her back, she worked her way all the way into the shadowed safety of Kyle’s room.
Through the bathroom she could still hear the clear sounds of spiraling passion. It fueled her panic to get out before they erupted into a loud enough frenzy to wake Kyle. He still slumbered peacefully, unaware of the chaos going on around him.
Just the sight of him curled up along his pillow distracted Hailey into a pause. But to be his pillow, Hailey sighed. Worn down, tired, and horny, none of that compared to the ache of being lonely.
Window or front door, Hailey? Focus.
Grinding her teeth at that harsh rebuttal, Hailey cut her eyes from Kyle to the window. It didn’t even sigh was she shoved it up. A fact that disappointed her enough to glance back at Kyle and made her wonder if she didn’t really want to be caught.
“Oh, God! Master!”
Not hesitating for fear of what the next moment might bring, Hailey swung a leg out and dropped the four feet to the ground. Then she ran, and kept on running until the residential street blocks faded into more barren fields and then back into the sudden cluster of commercial buildings that lined the curved main street of Pittsview.
She didn’t slow down for all the ache in her muscles or the pain in her chest until Riley’s gravel pit parking lot crunched beneath her shoes. Long closed, only one truck remained, parked right up alongside hers.
Hailey slowed down, fishing for the keys thankfully still tucked in the bottom of her jeans pocket. Head down, already thinking of the shower waiting for her at home, she jumped about a foot when a male voice broke the stillness of the late night.
“Hailey?”
“Riley.” Popping toward the right, she cast a wide-eyed glance at the bar owner walking down the side of the building. Headed her way with his keys out, Riley had obviously finished closing the bar for the night. Hailey figured that must have made it two a.m.
“What the hell happened to you?” Passing by his own hood and rounding around hers, he came in a little too close for comfort. Hailey knew what she looked like and probably still smelled like—a well fucked woman.
“Nothing.” Holding her hand steady, she worked the key into the door lock as fast as she could.
“Are you sure, Hailey?” Riley sounded too concerned and too close. “Because you look a little—”
“Tired?” Hailey managed to get her door open. Using it like a shield, it kept Riley from getting too good a look at her in the dim shadows of the street light. Plastering on a big, fake smile, she answered her own question before he could. “I am. Quite tired. And that’s all I am, Riley. Good night.”
Before he could argue with that bold-faced lie, Hailey slid in behind her Studebaker and made her escape.
* * * *
Cole shrugged into his jeans but didn’t bother to button them. Claudia knew the rules. She had to get her skinny ass back in her clothes and out of his bed, ’cause he couldn’t sleep with a woman in it, or a man for that fact.
“Hey, man.” Cole smacked GD with a pillow to rouse him. With a snort and a single, stormy gray eye pinning him, GD awoke. “Time to get up and out, GD.”
“You’re a peculiar son of a bitch,” GD complained. Swinging up to a sit, his feet hit the floor as his back arched in a lazy stretch.
“What? ‘Cause I don’t want to snuggle up to your hairy ass all night?”
“There’s a woman between us…” GD shrugged off his glance when he took in the obvious fact that the woman had disappeared. “Well, there was. You send her running, too?”
“In the shower.” Cole nodded toward the bathroom a second before he swung out of the bedroom. He didn’t have any need to see GD dress or join him in the shower with Claudia, which is probably what the big bull rider would do.
Cole had had enough of Claudia. Sweet and well-trained as she was, she just couldn’t put to rest the itch that had been gnawing on him for the past few weeks. He’d been trying to fuck it out of his system. The good lord, with GD’s help, had certainly filled his bed to overflowing with the bountiful beauties piling up out at the club.
Even the endless sea of prime and willing flesh couldn’t appease that annoying part that kept him restless and looking for something more. Cole blamed it all on Patton James for bringing that spark back into his life. Pretty and pretty wild, she reminded him that it could be fun to try to bring down an unbroken filly.
Not that Patton had really been his intended prey. She’d merely been bait. Very sexy, he-wouldn’t-have-said-no kind of bait, but that would have been the dumbest thing he could have done. Forget the beating the Davis brothers would have rained down on his body. Fucking Patton probably would have screwed him out of any chance of fucking her best friend, Hailey.
In fact, just trying to screw her had probably not helped him a bit. Cole figured that out too late. He’d forgotten the cardinal rule—everybody blamed the man. A woman could make one man jealous using another because she knew the men would rally to fight over her. When a man got done, the woman was his prize and he took what he conquered.
Women, though they might fight between each other, still always blamed the man. Even if Cole managed to make Hailey jealous by chasing her best friend, she’d only be mad at him for it. Given that Hailey didn’t need help being mad at him, Cole could see now that he’d been a little too rash in his plans for Patton.
The only excuse he had was that he’d become a l
ittle desperate in his pursuit of Hailey. Cole didn’t like being desperate, not when it came to a woman. He knew from firsthand experience just how badly a man could get scarred by a woman when the cards stacked in her favor. He made that mistake once, and he wouldn’t be making it again.
That’s why you just spent the last two hours fucking Claudia and thinking about Hailey? Because you’re just such a badass.
Cole told that snotty voice to go fuck itself, but it didn’t take the advice. Instead, it pointed out just how much like a pussy he’d been acting like for over the past month.
Cole twisted the lid off his water as he kicked the fridge door closed, not wanting to admit he had a point. Sure, GD had a scheduling nightmare at the club that kept him constantly on the register, but that had just been a convenient excuse.
He’d told the girl “game on” and then punked out. One thing he knew for sure, he wouldn’t get Hailey beneath him if he didn’t at least try at some point.
“Cole?”
Claudia came wandering through the arch that led into the dining room holding a towel over her breasts. Not fully dressed, not ready to leave. Cole held his sigh and his obnoxiousness in. “What, darlin’?”
“Have you seen my shirt?”
What a dumbass question to ask him. “No, darlin’. Where did you leave it?”
“On your floor,” Claudia answered, as if that wasn’t obvious enough.
In the hopes of moving things along, Cole ushered her back toward the bedroom, certain that the shirt wouldn’t be found in the kitchen. “Well, I’m sure it’s still there somewhere.”
“I looked and it isn’t.”
Annoyed by that point and at the entire stupidity of their conversation, Cole released Claudia as they cleared the bedroom door. “It’s got to be. Who the hell would take it?”
“I’m telling you, it isn’t there.”
GD gave him a smirk, and Cole knew then she’d already driven him nuts with looking. The two of them might not be able to find a damn shirt, but he sure as hell could. Probably under the bed and that lazy ass GD hadn’t been willing to look. In the hopes of getting Claudia out of his house and his ass back into bed, Cole went to his knees.
Not that he found the shirt he looked for, but he did find something that turned his attention—a very pronounced clean streak across the floor. Cleaning did not rise high on Cole’s list. When he did put out the effort, it only extended to what he could see. Under the bed did not qualify, and the layer of dust had risen well over an inch in the past three years.
Something, though, had cut quite a swath through it and even pulled some back out at the foot of the bed. Rising up to his feet, Cole left GD to tune into Claudia’s disparaging remarks as he tracked the trail to the open bathroom door.
GD’s shower had left the room moist and disturbed, but that had only smeared the dirt tracks that lead through Kyle’s door. Shoving the door wide, his gaze snapped instantly to the open window.
Son of a bitch.
Chapter 8
Friday, May 2nd
“You slept with Kyle Harding!”
That outraged shout cracked over Hailey as the blare of sunlight hit her like a cannon blast. Patton matched that overly loud proclamation with a yank back of her comforter, letting in a world Hailey hadn’t been willing to confront so far that morning.
That’s why when she heard Patton banging and yelling at the door, Hailey hadn’t even twitched. She should have known Patton would just go around back to use the spare key in the little safety rock she’d given Hailey years ago. When Patton wanted to talk, there would be no hiding from her.
“I asked you a question, Hailey.”
Groaning, Hailey rolled away from the light and her annoying friend. Pushing her head under the pillows, she waged a war with Patton over the soft sack. When Patton finally managed to yank the pillow free, she yanked it completely free, tossing way across the room.
“Hailey! I want to know what is going on here.”
Rolling over the bed, her feet slapped onto the cool wood floors, making her grimace that much more. Shoving up with a grunt, she ignored her friend as she trailed around the bed, rambling on.
“I mean, Riley calls in the middle of the night and now he’s got Chase, Slade, and Devin all ready to go kick Kyle’s ass, and if it wasn’t for me—”
At the change of Patton’s footsteps from clicks to clacks, Hailey came to a sudden stop. Turning with a hand out, she caught Patton in the chest as her friend barged into the bathroom behind her. The sudden flat-handed obstacle choked off Patton’s words, and she let Hailey walk her back over the threshold.
It felt good to slam the door on Patton, but that small joy wore off quickly. She’d been hiding from this day for over an hour, unsure of what to do. Her plan unraveled on her last night. Neither a success nor a failure, it left her with no clear idea of what to do today or what to expect from it.
Patton’s arrival certainly put the ominous thought in her mind that fate had just weighed in. Against or for her, that remained to be seen because Patton could be the best ally and sometimes the angel of doom.
It would help if doom didn’t feel so damn good, but it did, at least in the fantasy forms that tormented her through the night. Dreams, memories, it all blurred into one sexual odyssey that left her with no place to hide from the ache. No place but maybe her shower, her last ditch hope.
She customized her sanctuary with her own hands. The curved stone wall, the over-indulgent number of high-powered spray jets, the steam, Hailey sighed as her shower flooded in behind her, trapping her in the momentary solitude of steam.
A very little slice of heaven, but even that morning it couldn’t keep the demons at bay. That’s because they came from within her, carried in by her own traitorous mind that refused to let the issue go. It couldn’t let it go because last night hadn’t been just sex.
Being scared of the truth didn’t change the reality that she actually started to…like Kyle, just a little. Hailey’s head hit the wall of the shower under the weight of that admission. Yes, she liked Kyle, kind of looked forward to just seeing him, messing with him, sleeping with him again.
Feed the beast and the monster just gets bigger.
Her mother’s old warning about too much sugar seemed absolutely appropriate when applied to sex with Kyle. Look at what one taste did to her. Two and she’d be calling him master.
Dignity and pride be damned. If they wanted to avoid that future, they better stiffen up and save her ass now. Straightening off the wall, Hailey’s mind solidified on a plan. She needed to get one, and sitting in her kitchen was the master of all games. Patton.
Hailey didn’t have to wonder where Patton had retreated. The scent of sickeningly weak coffee greeted her the second she cleared her bathroom. Five minutes later, the sight of the yellow piss filling her pot confirmed her grim prediction.
“You know, if you’re going to barge into my house and harass me first thing in the morning, the least you can do is make something stronger than a pot of piss.”
Hailey greeted Patton with nearly the same complaint she treated Patton to almost every morning when she’d been staying with her a few weeks back. It earned her a typically-obnoxious Patton response.
“There’s a bottle of motor oil over here. You want me to pour you a shot of that?”
Casting a dirty look over her shoulder at her best friend, Hailey eyed her friend’s smug smirk. “So you know I slept with Kyle. Is that why you’re over her breaking into my house and pushing me all around?”
“No, I’m over here to complain about your love life invading into my personal time.”
That Patton couldn’t even get those words out with a wisp of sincere indignation had Hailey turning shocked eyes on her friend. “You did not just say that to me.”
“Yes I did.”
“After what you put me through this summer?”
“And I relished saying it.” Instead of backing down, Patton grinned with satis
faction. “I get to complain now because I’m the one who was enjoying a pleasant interlude with my men when Riley called and riled them all up. Hey that rhymes, a little.”
Hailey rolled her eyes at that and turned back to making her coffee. Behind her Patton prattled on. “He told them some wild story about a bar fight and you taking off with Kyle only to show back up later looking rolled over and wearing the wrong clothes. You can imagine, of course, how Chase took that kind of news. It wasn’t pretty, and I’d say you owe me a good apology and thank you for keeping him at home last night.”
Hailey laughed as she hit the on button on the coffee maker. Turning to face Patton, she settled in against the counter to grin at her friend. “You really expect me to thank you?”
“I really expect some juicy details,” Patton retorted. “I did suffer for them.”
“Yeah, you look it with that grin, too. Tell me, Patton, just why I should indulge your dirty little mind with details.”
“Well,” Patton breathed in, considering that for a moment, “you could just leave me to fantasize, but then I certainly wouldn’t have anything to say that might keep Chase on his leash. Unless, of course, this plan of yours is to have Kyle get the crap beat out of him.”
“You know it’s not,” Hailey snapped. Her annoyance came out at Patton, but it focused more on her men. “This isn’t none of their business. You can tell Chase, Slade, and Devin they’ll be answering to me if they put a bruise on Kyle Harding.”
“Oh, is that right?” Patton laughed. “And suddenly you care about marks on Kyle Harding’s body? Tell me, you leave any last night?”
“Maybe a few.” Hailey couldn’t help the grin that spread out over her face. “I got to admit he left a few of his own.”
“That’s not juicy enough.” Patton leaned forward in her seat, obviously eager to hear the answer to her next question. “Where’d he leave them?”
Hailey's Game Page 8
