“Now you.” Rogue picked up her red blouse and his fingers grazed the sensitive skin of her side.
Flinching, Kit managed to stop his roaming fingers before they eased their way to her breasts. “Later. I can’t wait.” In explanation, she sank to her knees until she was eye level with his cock.
“God, yes.” He threaded his fingers into her long, dark hair, tightening until she could feel the pull against her sensitive scalp.
Kit licked her lips, placed one hand on his thigh and leaned in close.
“Oh, yea, take me in your mouth. Suck me, baby.” Rogue threw his head back and bucked his hips in erotic anticipation.
Katherine’s eyes widened. This was nothing like she expected. Part of her wanted to think she’d be turned off, disgusted by the idea—but she wasn’t. Shaking, she leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss on his right thigh.
“Fuuccck,” Rogue moaned. “Don’t make me wait, you’re killing me.”
That was the idea.
For a moment she let her fingers pet his skin, her mouth caressing his abs, moving a little lower, teasing him – making him wait. Hopefully, driving him certifiably insane.
Until she stopped, hissing in fake pain.
“What’s wrong?”
Katherine knew she had to quit, this was all about revenge. It embarrassed her to know what she really wanted—and that was to climb on top of the table, open her legs wide and beg him to fuck her hard. Playing out her role, she grasped her eye. “My contacts, something’s in my eye. I need to take them out so I can enjoy going down on you.”
“Oh, okay,” he said, his whole body shaking, needing her to finish.
“Lie back on the table and wait.” She placed a hand on his middle and pushed. “Relax. I’ll be right back.”
“Hurry,” he groaned, settling down.
“Oh, I’ll go fast. Promise.” Katherine stood up and while he was staring at the stars fisting his cock, she picked up his clothes, every scrap—boots and hat included—and high-tailed it to her truck. Quickly she crawled in and before he knew it, she’d started the engine.
“What the hell?” he called, raising his head up from the table. “Kit? Where are you going?”
“Away from you.” She held her hand out the window and shot him the finger. “I heard what you said about me, every NIRA member from four counties heard what you said. You think I’m ugly. I disgust you.”
“No, baby.” He rose up. “I think you’re beautiful. Perfect. So sexy. What I said in the booth was just my first impression, you know how wrong those can be.”
“Yea, I do,” she said, quickly putting the truck in gear because he was moving toward her. “My first impression of you was that you were a nice guy. I was wrong. Have fun walking out.”
It was at that moment, Rogue realized she was leaving him. Nude. Buck-ass-naked. “Where’s my clothes?”
“I have them. Have fun hitching a ride in your birthday suit, asshole.”
“Hey! At least leave my hat so I can hold it in front of my dick!” He made one last desperate entreaty. “Or my phone!”
Katherine rolled her window up and gassed the truck, leaving a very pissed, very naked, very vulnerable Rogue Walker to walk or hitchhike back to the rodeo arena.
“Well, shit.” Rogue stood with his hands on his hips, staring after Kit Ross in utter disbelief. With a sigh, he set off, his naked skin gleaming like a ghost in the moonlight, his now very flaccid cock waggling low between his legs. He kept to the shadows when he could, cussing and wishing every conceivable ill down on the head of his nemesis. That she’d been gorgeous, sexy-as-hell and a generous lover before she’d turned on him was something he had to push out of his mind. When he arrived near the end of the road, vehicle lights made him hit the ditch. And when they slowed down, he didn’t know what he was going to do. Until…
“Rogue?”
Rogue breathed a sigh of relief. It was Elijah. A laughing hoo-rawing knee-slapping Elijah. “Having problems?”
“Yea, Kit Ross fucked me over.”
Elijah threw him some clothes when Rogue opened the door, quickly putting them on.
“I guess you’ll be nicer to her next time.”
“I hope I never lay eyes on that Jezebel ever again.”
And he didn’t…
Until today.
CHAPTER TWO
“Get out!” Kit raised one elegant small arm and pointed to the door. “Get off our property! Now!” She glanced around, making sure the coast was clear. This was one time she was glad there were so few paying guests.
“Katherine Ross? Kit?” Rogue was fifty kinds of shocked and more than a little turned on. Because he was so stunned, feeling things he didn’t know how to deal with, Rogue decided to antagonize her. Why that seemed the right thing to do, he didn’t stop to analyze. “I haven’t seen you in forever.” He held out his hand. “How have you been?”
Ignoring his hand, she narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, picked up her sheet and proceeded to stomp toward him, wagging her finger in his face. “You are the last lily-livered polecat I’d ever want as my guest. Just turn around and head your ornery ass out of town. Your money’s no good here.”
Rogue’s lips twitched with humor. This was one reunion he’d fantasized about over the years. After their date from hell, he’d been angry at first. Later he’d mellowed, seeing the whole fiasco from her point of view. But now – standing face to face, Rogue didn’t feel like he thought he would. He’d long since gotten over it. In fact, he’d looked for her so he could apologize, even called Beth McGee to no avail. The only information she’d given Rogue was that Kit didn’t want to see him again. And that was a shame, because he hadn’t met a woman before or since that excited him quite as much. In fact, she’d starred in many of his fantasies in the last six years, he’d awakened from more than one dream with her name on his lips.
“I wish you’d reconsider,” he cajoled, enjoying watching her face. She had huge wide-set blue eyes fringed with dark lashes. Her small nose was gently turned up and her lips were generous—suckable—just like he remembered. Her hair was long, lush and curly. The blush tingeing her high cheekbones made him want to rub his face against hers to see if she was as warm and soft as he remembered. “I’d love to catch up on old times, Kit. Exchange stories, compare our sex lives.” Rogue had enough sense to realize he was skating on thin ice—but then he’d always liked to live dangerously.
“No. Hell no,” she fumed. A blush matching her cheeks was rising from the intriguing area beneath the sheet, giving an enchanting rosy hue to her creamy skin. “Leave!”
“You haven’t aged a day, beautiful.” Rogue stood his ground, crossing his arms over his chest. “Was that your mother who checked me in?”
Kit sputtered, ignoring his compliment. The infuriating cowpoke was making her completely crazy. “Yes, that was my mother. She had no idea you were a creep or she would’ve turned you away herself.”
Was she relenting? He hoped so, he had no intention of leaving no matter how many hissy fits she threw. “What have you been up to?” He leaned back against a tree, crossing one booted foot over the other. Glancing down at his feet, he almost choked to realize he had on the boots that their night out together had cost Elijah Bowman. He decided not to share that info with Kit, she probably wouldn’t appreciate the irony. Besides, she had inflicted more damage on him than she’d known. When he’d jumped into the ditch to hide from the truck that had turned out to be Elijah, he’d landed in some of the poison ivy she’d warned him about. He’d been laid up scratching for a week, swathed head to toe in calamine lotion. “I looked for you, you know. I wanted to thank you for such a wonderful evening, but you vanished into thin air. I hope that wasn’t because of me.” He was talking, but he was also looking. The way the sun was shining, he could see right through that sheet to the intriguing gap between her legs. Man, he’d like to get his fingers in that pussy. The woman was seriously stacked.
Kit made herself st
are into those stormy eyes of his. She could smell his familiar scent, a mix of freshly mown grass and leather. “No, of course not. I would never run away just because you hurled some petty insults into the air.” She paused, then added, not sure why she was sharing. “My father died the next day. I came home to help my mother.”
A wave of contrition hit him. “I’m so sorry,” he said sincerely. “Dave Parker must be your stepfather.” Now, he understood the difference in the last names.
Kit didn’t get a chance to answer.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.” A disapproving voice spoke up from behind her. Kit jumped. “Katherine, what are you doing outdoors in such a disheveled, inappropriate state? You should be more mindful of our guests and have a little bit more pride in your appearance!”
Katherine felt her cheeks burn. Another man making more snide remarks about her appearance. God, sometimes she hated half of the world’s population. “I’m busy and this is none of your business, Dave.” She despised the ground her stepfather walked on. He was up to no good, she didn’t really understand how beyond the fact that he manipulated her poor mother at every opportunity, but she didn’t trust him an inch. It was hard for her to believe that he used to be her father’s best friend.
Rogue turned his head to find a middle-aged man, not as tall as he was, with a weathered face and pale blue eyes. “Hello, I’m Rogue Walker.”
Dave’s face brightened. “And I’m Dave Parker, glad to meet you. You’re here for the card game! We’ve heard so much about you. Barnaby speaks highly of you and we have a fourth coming, a man you’ll enjoy meeting, Troy Keller, a businessman from Wichita. He owns a string of car dealership. When Gordon told us you were coming and wanted a game with Barnaby, we couldn’t resist. You’re a legend in these parts among card players.”
Kit, who was still standing there, clutching the sheet over a set of generous breasts, snorted. “Legend. More like a lizard, a scaly coldblooded reptile with no heart and no scruples.”
“That’s enough, Katherine!” Dave held out a hand, infuriating Kit worse than Rogue had. They’d been at odds from the time he’d moved into her family home and immediately started trying to change things. Dave hadn’t been satisfied until he’d pulled up every floorboard and relocated every wall. His involvement in every aspect of her life unsettled Kit. A portion of White-Wing, not the homestead, but the acreage where her horses ran and her little house set was even owner financed with him. That was bad enough, but when he’d stepped in just months after her father was killed and began courting her mother, Kit knew he would end up bankrupting them. His reputation as a reckless gambler was well known.
Anger began to boil in her blood. One day she was completely gobsmacked by the chaos her stepfather had brought into her world, and the next the former object of her desire/nightmare stole her ability to breathe. Rogue had encroached upon her space, barging into her life and looming over her like some kind of chocolate éclair laced with cyanide—she’d love a bite but it would kill her.
Her gaze moved from one irritating man to another. Despite her adolescent yearnings for romance and a family, she’d learned there weren’t many men one could depend upon—from her mother’s weak second husband who didn’t have enough sense to come out of the rain, to Rogue Walker who had eviscerated her foolish tender feelings as effectively as if he’d stomped a small ladybug beneath his boot. “Dave, this man—”
“Is our guest and will be staying here, whether you like it or not.” With that, Dave put a hand on Rogue’s shoulder and led him off to the lodge where she knew a card table would be set up so he could squander even more of White-Wing’s diminishing returns.
* * *
Rogue accepted a cup of strong coffee from Dave Parker. He was half listening to Dave’s recollections of the 2003 World Series of poker where legendary player Chris Moneymaker turned forty dollars into two and a half million.
In 2003, Rogue had been fourteen years old—lost, lonely and hating his father. Dusty Walker had waltzed in and out of his life, spending only a meager amount of time with a sad teenager who hung on every word he uttered. Hell, the truth was, back then he hadn’t hated him, he’d worshipped the man. As a small boy he’d often wondered why Dusty was gone more often than not, and once he’d asked him. Rogue could still remember his answer. He’d said, “I have responsibilities, Rogue. One day you’ll understand. But know this; it’s not the quantity of time we spend together, it’s the quality.” The worn cliché had satisfied him at that tender age, but now he couldn’t imagine the gall of the man whose urge to leave heirs to carry on his name overrode his ability and desire to be a father.
Dave kept talking, pouring drinks while Rogue reminisced. His unexpected encounter with Kit had made him nostalgic for the past. He’d grown up in West Texas, his mother still lived in the same small town. After he’d graduated from UT, like many alumni, he’d stayed in Austin. No matter. You might take the boy out of the Permian Basin, but you didn’t take the Permian Basin out of the boy. Now, after meeting his so-called brothers and finding out what Dusty had spent his lifetime building, his father’s presence in that part of the world where Rogue had spent his formative years made sense.
Rogue’s youth had been untamed, surrounded by mesquite-choked fields dotted with hundreds of pump-jacks, as common a sight as tumbleweed in that part of the world, giant metal sculptures, rhythmically lowering their heads to the ground like horses taking a drink of water. When night fell, the gas flares from the derricks burned bright orange and yellow, shimmering through the darkness.
In the hill country of Texas, one might catch a whiff of mountain laurel or lavender, but in the part of West Texas where Rogue grew up, it was the sour stench of gas that filled the air. Rogue hadn’t known the phrase then, but he knew it now—the smell of crude oil, gas and cow shit doesn’t stink – it smells like money.
The oil fields had been where he’d played, shooting pop bottles, chunking dried dirt clods at snakes, riding bikes and swimming in fiberglass stock ponds. When Dusty had sprung for him an old secondhand pick-up, he’d prayed for rain so he could mud-hog, a game teenage boys played plowing their trucks through mud to see who could slide and who got stuck.
Since college, he’d started out as a smalltime speculator, traveling all over the country acquiring small oilfields or property where he thought there might be oil. Before he worked for himself, he worked for others, building a reputation as a man who could locate crude when no one else could. He’d been known to get tingles or itch when there was oil beneath the ground. Hell, he’d even been known to get an erection, but Rogue didn’t know if it was from excitement or some chemical awareness. Unlike the old-timers phrase about having a nose for oil, Rogue had a dick—a dick that just seemed to sense black gold beneath the ground like a dousing rod.
The one thing he’d learned was that when he traveled out of Texas, he missed it. He missed everything being chicken-fried, the absolute obsession with high school football, and pickups with a gun rack on the back window. That’s why he couldn’t see himself moving to Kansas full time, no matter what Dusty Walker’s will offered.
Rogue had paid his dues on work-over rigs. Instead of high rises, his world was dominated by one hundred foot derricks, jutting into the air like oversize rusty Legos with huge metal blocks falling and rising, carrying pipe from the bottom to the top. He’d worked as a roughneck, a floorhand, a derrick-man, and a hotshot. No job was too small or too insignificant. Rogue had learned the craft, developed the skill and became what he’d always wanted to be—a Texas oilman.
But oil wasn’t his only passion, Rogue also loved sex and he loved poker, especially Texas Hold ‘em.
There was just something about taking a gamble that appealed to him. The oil business was a constant gamble as was dealing with women. What appealed to him about Texas Hold ‘em was that it wasn’t just a game of chance, Texas Hold ‘em was a thinking man’s game. Strategy played a huge role. Unlike draw poker, where the playe
r can only bet twice per hand, in hold ‘em, two cards are dealt that play along with up to three of the five that are free for all to play on and there are four bets instead of two.
“Since you’re the star, we’re letting you pick. Pot-limit, fixed-limit or—”
Rogue didn’t let the older man finish. “No limit, of course.” He smiled and saw Dave wipe his mouth nervously. “How long before the others get here?”
Dave checked his watch. “Another couple of hours. I just thought you might need a respite from my stepdaughter. What was all that about anyway? I take it you two know one another?”
Rogue was careful. “We knew one another in our college days. We both team-roped on the college circuit. Kit was damn good, she beat my team and we were nobody’s slouch.”
“Yea, so I hear.” Dave pulled out a chair and sat down at a big round table where cards and chips rested waiting. “So, Gordon said you were here on business?”
Gordon seemed to talk too much. Rogue saw no harm in telling the truth, it wasn’t like it could remain a secret. “Dusty Walker was my father.”
Dave looked thunderstruck. “Well, I’ll be damned. Never put two and two together. Walker is a fairly common name. Your father and I used to be good friends, years ago. Before he got rich. In fact, he and I ran around with Will Ross, Kit’s father. We used to do everything together.”
“Well, it’s good to meet you.” Rogue reiterated. “It was a surprise to meet back up with Kit.”
“Yea, her mother dotes on her. She’s smart, I guess. It was her idea to stock pheasant and add the cabins. Katherine spends too much time with those horses of hers. She needs to find a husband and move away. Her mother and I would do better on our own.” He fanned his hand in the air. “She’s got a little house down closer to the lake that’s being fumigated. That’s why she’s staying in the cabin for a day or two, and I, for one, will be glad when she’s outta here. We don’t exactly get along.”
Rogue: The Sons of Dusty Walker Page 4
