The Love of a Cowboy

by Anna Jeffrey

  Her chin dropped to her chest. Her shaking fingers worked at buttoning her dress. He felt a little shaky himself. “This couldn’t go anywhere,” she said. “I’m going to be here only until the end of August. I’m really sorry. I don’t blame you if you think bad things about me.”

  Damned if he wanted to dissect the situation. Or hear an apology.

  “You’re a lady who changed her mind. That’s all I’m gonna think.” He settled his hat on, his composure coming back.

  She reached for her purse and held it tight against her chest. Her shoes still lay on the table. Did she plan to leave without ’em?

  “This is terrible,” she said.

  He heard a catch in her voice. She was gonna cry for sure. Shit. He had lived his whole life in a houseful of women, but he still didn’t know what to do if one broke down and bawled. He laid the coats and key on the dresser and went back to her. A clump of shiny, ebony hair curled at her collarbone. He wanted to bury his hand in it. Instead, he reached out and tucked it behind her ear, letting his hand linger on her neck. “Being scared cuts both ways, you know.”

  She sniffed and shrugged off his hand, her purse still bonded to her chest by crossed arms.

  “I wouldn’t think you’d be afraid of anything. Especially with . . .with women.”

  “What, you think I just hop in and out of the sack without considering what I’m doing?”

  She looked up at him, her head tilted. Her eyes told him that was exactly what she thought. No telling what she had heard. Tall tales about him and women went around Callister as regular as clock hands. She had been in town long enough to hear ten or twenty.

  She looked so soft and smooth. He wanted to touch her, so he ran his fingers down her arm, stopping when he heard the little quick intake of her breath. “Acting on instinct’s such a simple thing in animals, but people make it complicated. When you said you wanted to come up here, I thought you felt the same pull I do, but if that’s not true—”

  “No, I—I do feel something.” Her eyebrows drew into a tent. She reminded him of a wild creature, cornered and defensive. “But I’d rather us be friends. I’m not sure we could be if . . .if we did this.”

  He dredged up a smile. “Sugar, if two people can’t please each other in bed and be friends, who can?” Silly question. He had yet to meet a woman who would allow sex and friendship to go together, so he added, “But you seem upset about it. We can discuss it some other time.”

  She stood there without moving, hugging that damn purse, those clear, green eyes as luminous as jewels. Did she really want to stay?

  He lifted her chin with his fingertips. “Dahlia, I wouldn’t try to tell you this is more than it is. If you want to go, we’ll go. Fact is, it’s probably a good idea. But being a good idea doesn’t keep me from wanting you. But it’s your call, darlin’. It’s your call.”

  Her lips trembled. Lord, she had the most kissable mouth. The taste of her lingered like heat from a smoldering fire and he couldn’t shake the want. As tender as he knew how, he placed a kiss at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve never forced a woman. I’ve never expected a woman to do something she didn’t want to. I’m not good at throwing around flowery words, but I’ll make you one promise. If you stay, you won’t be sorry.”

  The spark Dahlia had felt from the first flared. It was her call. Despite her conscious mind, an arcane thing within her had chosen him above all others. It was as simple as he said. Instinct. Sex. Natural, normal parts of life. Nothing to go witless over. She drew in a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, her voice a squeak.

  A smile softened the grim set of his mouth, but his eyes were solemn. He took off his hat and reached for her purse. He laid them on the table and she went into his arms. His embrace swallowed her. His mouth angled across hers and his tongue plundered. She felt lightheaded, intoxicated by the heady mix of Polo and being desired by so masculine a man.

  His erection pressed against her stomach, his hands gripping her bottom and moving her back and forth against it. Heat filled the empty places she had denied were there and this time, she didn’t fight it. She slid her arms around his ribs and hung on, finding an anchor in the strength of his well-honed muscles.

  He walked her backward until her calves bumped the edge of the gymnasium-sized bed. His thumbs slipped under the neck of her dress and bra strap. “Do something about this,” he said, “I don’t want to bust these fancy buttons.”

  For the second time, she shakily un-did them. Then, in a tangle of hands, arms and mouths, the top of her dress was shoved down around her waist and her bra, his shirt and T-shirt were flung across the back of a chair and he was caressing her breasts and teasing her nipples with his tongue and something was tugging at her down low and she didn’t think she could ever get enough of all of it.

  They sank to their knees on the mattress. He bent her backward across his arm, latched his mouth onto one nipple. Heat sizzled through her, throbbed between her legs. She clasped his head to her breast, astonished at the primal greed driving her. Together, they fell back. His hands moved everywhere, touching, stroking, rucking up her skirt.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he muttered. “Stockings.”

  The garter belt tabs that held them popped free. The stockings slid down her legs. His fingers hooked into the elastic waistband of her panties. “Lift up,” he said. She planted her feet on the mattress, levered her hips up and her lace bikini panties slid to her ankles. He pulled her to her feet and He knelt and she let him slip them off her feet, but when he stood and the same hand smoothed up the inside of her thigh, panic shot through her. She grabbed his wrist, squeezing her eyes shut and wondering again, as much as she had thought she wanted this, if she could go through with it. “Wait,” she said.

  He pulled back and looked down at her. His eyes glittered, pupils dark as sapphires surrounded by a blue halo. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna stop me.”

  Her breath came fast and shallow. “It’s just that it’s—it’s been a . . . real long time since . . . a real long time for me.”

  His mouth took hers in a painfully tender kiss. At the end of it, he whispered, “It’ll be okay. I’ll take care of you.”

  She believed him. Dear God, she believed him.

  With a whimper, she loosened her grip and he twisted his wrist free. His palm covered her and pressed and made a slow circle. “Let me play with you, sweetheart . . . make you hot.”

  If she grew any hotter she might ignite. She whimpered again.

  His fingers worked gently into her pubic hair. “Move your leg a little. I’m just gonna . . .” She complied. He parted her and eased between her layers.

  “Oh—”

  “Feel good?”

  The weak remnants of denial melted in the pleasure of his languid strokes. “I—I think so.”

  “You’re wet—”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” The room began to spin, she was coming apart.

  He laughed softly and gently bit her neck. “Don’t be sorry.”

  Abruptly, the pleasure ceased. “Oh, don’t—”

  “Just a minute.” He rolled to his back, struggling to push down his jeans and shorts. She raised to her elbow and helped him shove them past his narrow hips. His erection sprang free, huge and alive. With no hesitation, she curved her fingers around the pulsing thickness.

  “Oh, yeah,” he choked out, “but don’t pump.”

  She didn’t, but she let her thumb graze the slit on the damp tip of him.

  “Oh, shit.”

  In an instant, she was on her back and he was crouched over her, bumping her thighs apart with his knees and kissing her like he could eat her alive and down there she was open and eager and the broad, hot head of his penis was pushing into her . . .

  Pain! Deep and sharp and unexpected. She stiffened and grunted to keep from letting out a yelp.

  “Oh, Jesus.” He braced himself on his elbows and held himself still, his body taut and

  trembling, “You’re tense, sweethea
rt.” His voice sounded as tight as her body felt. “Relax a little. Let me get it in.”

  She wanted him to “get it in”, but her body apparently had other ideas. She had never imagined “it” might not work. Anxious and upset, she squirmed and opened her legs wider. “Just do it, just do it,” she said frantically.

  “Shh-shh. Not so fast. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  His hand skimmed over her hip. He reached between them and she felt his fingers again, parting, exploring. Intense sensation whoosed through her. Her muscles contracted and with a sob of helplessness, she arched to him. His hard penis pushed all the way into her and shattering tremors crashed through her.

  Then, she was floating, the world coming back in bits and pieces and she was stretched and filled from side to side, top to bottom with Luke McRae. The pressure was incredible and wonderful and she couldn’t remember why she had denied herself this.

  “Lord, Lord, darlin’” he said, his voice husky in her ear. “I damn near didn’t make it through that.

  She was beyond replying, beyond thinking. He filled her senses. His scent, his taste, his strength, the feel of his firm body. She couldn’t hold him close enough, couldn’t take him deep enough. She ran her hands down the valley of his spine, dug her fingers into his taut buttocks.

  His lips brushed her eyelids, the corner of her mouth. “Sweet,” he murmured. “So good.”

  He reared above her and began to rock. Instinctively she wrapped her legs around his hips and as if she had known it forever, found his quick, steady rhythm. His thrusts reached up high inside her, touching a place her husband had never found. She could feel it starting again—the deep throb, the voluptuous desperation, as if she had melted and become a part of him and he a part of her.

  His arm slid under her hips and molded her to him. “Put your legs around my waist, darlin’.”

  She obeyed. Instantly, he slid deeper and she was certain he must be all the way inside her womb. “Oh, Luke . . .”

  “Okay?”

  “Oooh, Luke . . .”

  He began to move faster, his hot, hot penis pressuring and rasping that deep place that had become the center of her universe. Her mind emptied. She hung on to his shoulders and dug her heels into his buttocks, panting and racing to a repeat of the intense sensation that before tonight, she had only read about.

  Her second orgasm was even more explosive than the first. It crashed through her in waves. Her deep muscles clutched at his hot flesh in a frenzy of contractions. Her neck arched and her mouth jerked open in a silent scream.

  His powerful arms crushed her to him. With a deep groan, he plunged and shuddered and the scalding spurt of him flooded into her. Then he was still, his breath coming in shudders. Awareness returned in gauzy layers. They were wet and slick and still joined and she could feel his warm breath against her neck. Slowly her muscles relaxed and he shrank from inside her with imagined suction. She felt the lift of his body from hers. Her eyelids weighed a hundred pounds, but she forced them to open and saw him looking down at her.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded once, her mouth dry and unwilling to form words. He rolled away and sat on the edge of the bed, leaving her raw and sore and sticky. And exposed. She sat up behind him, tugging her crinkled dress to cover her nakedness.

  “That was a little rougher than I meant it to be,” he said.

  He cocked an ankle across his knee and pried off a boot. The muscles in his wide back rippled with the movement of his arms. The cartoon on Piggy’s mug and his smart-aleck remark that first night he came to her house popped into her mind. Well…at least he wasn’t wearing his hat. Every part of her grew cold as the realization that she had become one of his groupies trickled in.

  Swearing, he tossed his boot backhanded past the foot of the bed as if he were angry, then braced his palms on his thighs. “You don’t have to worry. I don’t have any diseases.”

  Diseases. That rational concern hadn’t entered her mind. “I didn’t think you did,” she said to his back. “I—I don’t either.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I didn’t use a rubber. What about you?”

  “Me? I don’t have sex. I mean, I didn’t . . . I—I haven’t been with anyone since my husband.”

  He looked at her across his shoulder, his eyes as cold as their arctic color. Did he not believe her? “You said he’s been gone nearly three years. You telling me you haven’t fu—you haven’t done it in three years?”

  The question reminded her of what a desert her relationships with men had been, including the one she had married. She pressed her fingers against her lips, holding back a sob.

  He turned away, cocked his other boot over the opposite knee and pried it off. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbled again. “When was your last period?”

  Her face burned with embarrassment. “I’m sure it’s too late in the month for me to get pregnant. I—I’m practically religious about keeping up with my…cycle.”

  His head jerked back to face her. “Why? You just said you don’t screw around.”

  She couldn’t label what she saw in his eyes. She scrambled to explain, though she had never felt so dumb. “Kenneth was so adamant about not wanting kids. I, uh, had a reaction to birth control pills. I . . . we used the rhythm method. I’ve just never stopped keeping up with my . . . my schedule.”

  His expression was flat, as if he had never heard of the rhythm method of birth control. A few seconds passed. “You got off a couple of times, didn’t you?”

  Got off? Pain washed through her, as biting as alcohol poured on a wound. She wanted to mean something to the only man who had taken her to a place she had never been. But she would be foolish to let herself believe she was anything more than another conquest. They had little in common and he had shared nothing but his body. She bit back tears. She couldn’t let him see her cry. It was just sex, wasn’t it? “Uh, yeah . . . a couple.”

  He stood, yanked up his boxers and jeans, tucking himself away. He dragged his shirt off the chair back and held it out to her. “You, uh, need the bathroom?”

  She nodded and curled to the edge of the bed, wincing at the deep ache between her legs. The musky scent of sex surrounded her. She felt cheap and disappointed, stunned and exhilarated. And puzzled—she was sure he had gone into the men’s room downstairs to buy condoms.

  Her stockings were bunched around her ankles. Holding her dress against her breasts with one arm, she peeled them off, then reached for his shirt. No more than this meant to him, she couldn’t bear having him see her nakedness. As she rose to her feet, blessedly, her crushed skirt slid to cover her hips and her skewed garter belt. He stood there watching her, his fly yawning, his hands on his hips.

  Unable to organize thought and speech, she padded to the bathroom.

  Luke stared after her. As soon as she disappeared behind the bathroom door, he sagged to the edge of the bed. Christ, what had he done? He had ravaged her, oblivious to caution and precaution. He longed for the empty feeling that usually followed fun and games in a king size bed. He wanted to feel his normal MO—that urge to get dressed and get the hell out. He wanted that because what gnawed at him now was worse, something he couldn’t name and that made it plumb scary.

  Unbidden, a string of women paraded through his mind. They all had two things in common: they knew the ropes and no matter what happened in their beds—and it had always been their beds, never his—they kept one eye glued to the assets of the Double Deuce. He had never kidded himself that any one of them cared more about him than about his checkbook.

  The woman in the bathroom didn’t fall into either of those slots. He might not be the first man to have her, but he would bet the ranch he was the second. The onus of that realization fell on his shoulders like an anvil, as disturbing as it was satisfying. He yanked off his socks and stuffed them into his boot top, rubbed his forehead with thumb and fingers. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, looking up, toward the closed bathroom door.

  Pos
sessiveness surged, like it had out on the deck and in the bar. Strange and downright uncomfortable. For a crazy millisecond, he wondered if his daughters would like her or if she would like them. He squelched that thought. If he ever brought a woman into the lives of those girls, his ex-wife’s explosion would make Mount Saint Helens look like a firecracker. Nothing would set Janet off faster than for her to think he was attempting to replace her as a mother. Never mind that Tabasco, his favorite bull, had better paternal instincts than she did. Thinking of the trade-offs he made to prevent her uprooting their daughters’ lives and trying to move them back to Boise, was wearying. He had walked on eggs and hidden his trysts in the shadows for five long years.

  Dahlia. Delicate like her name. And vulnerable. What could he say to her?

  He heard the water stop running, didn’t know what to expect when she came out. If she belted him, it would serve him right.

  The door opened slowly and she paused in the doorway, her slender body silhouetted in the bright, bathroom light. Her hair was all messy and sexy. His shirt hung off her narrow shoulders, past her cute little bottom, the cuffs hiding her hands. He liked seeing her in it. The pretty blue dress was draped over her arm. Without looking at him, she took it to the clothes rack and hung it on a hanger. Tenderness ached inside him. As much as he wanted to ignore it, he couldn’t. He went to her, framed her face between his palms and kissed her. “It’s probably ruined. I’ll buy you a new one.”

  To his surprise, she laughed. “That’s the second time you’ve offered to buy me clothes. It’s just wrinkled. I’ll send it to the cleaners and it’ll be good as new. I should’ve taken it off, but I didn’t have time.”

  Damn, she was likeable. He laughed, too. “I guess I was pretty hot. I was primed ever since out on the deck. When you touched me, I lost it.”

  She rose on tiptoe and placed a kiss beneath his jaw. His heart squeezed. He felt himself stir again, but it was too soon—she needed some time. Shit, who was he kidding? He was the one who needed it. “You’re a special woman, Dahlia. You’ve got a sweetness about you. Just being around you, you make a man glad he’s a man.”