The Cattleman (Sons of Texas Book 2)

by Anna Jeffrey

  Pic felt a stir in his jeans. Jesus! Even her feet made him think of sex. “They’re…uh, fine.” He looked back at her across his shoulder. “I don’t pay much attention to things like that.”

  She cocked her head. “Yes, you do. Every time you look at me, you’re drinking me in from head to toe. You must see something you like.”

  Johnnie Sue’s words zoomed into his thoughts:…You look at her like she’s a big piece of chocolate cake….God, was he that obvious? Then he gave himself an excuse. Hell, what normal man wouldn’t look at her? She was exactly what Johnnie Sue had said.

  “I think you’re afraid of me,” she said.

  Wincing inside, he gave a silly laugh without looking at her. “Why do you say that?”

  “You’re afraid I’m going to come on to you, like I did yesterday.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “And you’re afraid you’re going to give in.”

  “I told you I’m with somebody. I assume you respect that.”

  “But that’s between you and her. I’m talking about you and me.”

  He finally looked at her. “This is a picture-taking mission, right?”

  “She ran her tongue along her lower lip. “But it could be more if we wanted it to be. This is an even more private place than that guesthouse.”

  He straightened and rubbed his damp palms on his thighs, doing his damnedest to will away the erection growing in his shorts. “Let’s finish up so we can eat lunch. I’d like to get back to the house in time to help Dad. He’s got a lot to do.”

  Wrapping a black curl around her finger, she tilted her head toward the breezeway. “What’s on the other side?” Another slow, knowing grin tipped the corners of her mouth. “Bedrooms?”

  Pic swallowed the ball of saliva that had collected in his throat. “Um, Mom fixed up a reading room in one of the rooms, if you want to take some pictures of that.”

  Zochi laughed, stroking her fingers back and forth on the sofa cushion between them.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  “You. A big macho guy like you. Afraid of li’l ol’ me. That’s funny.”

  Enough already! Pic lurched to his feet. “You got more pictures you want to shoot? Let’s get on with it.”

  Her mouth twisted into a pout. She got to her feet and picked up the camera. “Fine.”

  “You oughtta put your shoes back on. It’s not a good idea to—”

  “It’s hot. This floor feels cool on my feet.” She walked out the door.

  Pic said a silent prayer a scorpion or a trail of fire ants wasn’t waiting in the breezeway.

  He followed her out, unable to take his eyes off her heart-shaped ass in tight shorts and that friggin’ tattoo. He couldn’t see all of it, but he knew it was located not too far above the cleft of her bottom. His imagination didn’t have far to go to see the whole picture vividly. After all, he had already seen most of it.

  At the door to the reading room, he said, “These two rooms on this side are just alike.” He gestured back and forth between the two rooms with his index finger. “Just big square rooms.”

  “Is one of them a bedroom?” She looked back at him, big-eyed and all innocence. “I suppose I should take pictures of that, too. To be thorough, I mean.”

  Pic unlocked the door to what his mom called a reading room. At the same time, he glanced around, looking for crawling varmints and checking the containers of vermin poison.

  A couple of big wooden rocking chairs covered by plastic hunkered near two bookcases. The shelves were stuffed with paperback books, the spines natty and faded. The only person who had even touched the books in a very long time had possibly been Mandy. She was a reader. She had sometimes read the sex parts to him out of romance novels and they had tried the stuff she read.

  Zochi pulled a book from its slot and thumbed through it. Dust motes rose from the yellowed pages. She made a little cough, fluttered her hand in front of her face, then returned the book to its place.

  “It’s so hot, I’m sweating,” she said. “What I need is a nice cool pool to swim in. Why don’t you have a pool back at your house?”

  “No need. None of us swim.”

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t have time,” he answered sharply.

  “But your girlfriend swims.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The little guy at the grocery store in town told me. His granddaughter is on her swim team. He thinks she’s great.”

  “She is great,” Pic said firmly, intending to quash this conversation. Discussing Mandy or his relationship with her with Zochi somehow felt dangerous.

  Zochi ran her free hand under one breast, lifted it and slowly rubbed under it. The mound of flesh came within an inch of falling out of her top. “Having big boobs is a pain in the summertime.”

  Involuntarily, Pic’s jaw clenched. Three garments. Just three. Top, shorts and panties. Hell, maybe she wasn’t even wearing panties. That was all that separated a dark side of him from what he wanted more than he could ever explain. Who would know? that dark side asked.

  “I’ll bet,” he said, barely managing a normal voice.

  He tore his traitorous eyes away from her. Jesus! Today was worse than yesterday. Today, he couldn’t escape by walking out the door and leaving her. He was as trapped as if they had been thrown in a hole together.

  Zochi snapped a few pictures, then started toward the door. “I want to go to that other room.”

  Setting his jaw, Pic walked to the other room, opened the screen door and unlocked the heavy wooden door. He stepped out of the way, let her go inside, then leaned a shoulder on the door jamb while she looked around the room.

  He, too, looked around. Nothing had changed since he had been here last. The square room was cool and dim and smelled of disuse. Mom had installed a cast iron queen-size bed. The mattress was covered by a quilt she had probably made herself, back when she used to do things like that. Memories rushed at him of how, in the wintertime, he and Mandy had snuggled together and kept each other warm under the down comforter that used to be on this bed. His memories seemed to be determined to make him behave himself.

  An antique oak dresser stood against one wall. A bowl and pitcher for washing sat on top of it. A cute little red woodstove perched on a hearth of stones in the corner, its stovepipe passing through the wall. Zochi leaned her backside against the dresser, reached up behind her neck and untied her top. Pic’s dick turned to stone.

  Her gaze leveled on his fly, then slid up to his eyes. Holding his gaze, she reached behind herself and untied the back of her top, pulled it off and tossed it on the bed, baring her torso.

  Staring, Pic swallowed audibly. Her breasts were as beautiful as he had imagined. Round and plump as melons. More than a handful indeed, with large dark nipples that would be more than a mouthful. Then, before his eyes drank their fill, to his amazement, she unbuttoned and unzipped her shorts and peeled them and her panties past her hips. The garments fell to her ankles. She stepped out of them, kicked them aside and stood there barefoot and stark naked.

  The only naked female Pic had seen in real life in more than two years was Mandy. And Mandy’s body looked almost nothing like Zochi McLaren’s. Mandy’s body was lean and athletic. Zochi, with her large breasts, a tiny waist and fleshy hips, was the epitome of lush femininity.

  His heart was pounding, his blood swishing in his ears. Like hungry wolves, his eyes roamed, slammed to a halt at Zochi’s groin, captured and held by her totally hairless pussy. He couldn’t stop staring. He had seen pictures of women who shaved or waxed themselves. Actresses in porno movies and the models in Playboy and Hustler had bare pussies, but he had never seen for real and only a few feet away, a woman’s privates devoid of hair.

  The blood that had not already rushed to his dick made the final plunge. Something primal gripped him, an overwhelming urge to throw her down on the bed, spread her thighs and lick every inch of that smooth flesh. He wanted to explore
with his eyes and tongue that dark cleft so blatantly exposed. He wanted to tongue-fuck her until she screamed. He wanted to bury his screaming cock in that intimate sanctum he knew would enshroud him with wet, warm, slick pleasure.

  She stepped toward the bed and sat down on the edge, summoned him to follow her, but still so stunned he could barely move, he stood where he was in the doorway. “Jesus Christ, Zochi—”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked in that soft breathy voice that bespoke sex and erotic adventure. “Afraid you’ll like it? Afraid you won’t get enough of it? You don’t even have to take it. I’m giving it to you.”

  He gave her his profile and stared at the door jamb. “Jesus Christ, Zochi,” he said again. “Put your clothes on.”

  “Come here beside me,” she said softly. “I know you want to.”

  That he wanted to wasn’t even a question and there was no hiding the bulge in the front of his pants. His animal desire and his loyalty to the woman he thought he loved warred within him. He fiercely shook his head.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, her tone low and coaxing in that voice that was almost a whisper.

  No more than a few feet separated them. Three steps and he would be there. “No. I can’t,” he choked out.

  “You don’t have to fuck me. There are other ways we can make each other feel good. How will that do any harm? You wouldn’t be cheating.”

  Oral sex. In his mind, that was cheating. And it led to the ultimate thing. He shook his head again. “Zochi, no. It ain’t happening.”

  His brain had almost ceased to function, his cock strained against his zipper. He was in agony. He turned and stalked out of the breezeway, down the rock pathway. He fought the fuckin’ rusted gate until it opened and let him out. His balls were drawn up so tight in his belly he could barely walk. He staggered toward the back of the house and a huge oak tree. He wanted to yank his belt and fly loose and relieve his pain with his fist, but in his mind, even letting her drive him to jack himself off would be cheating.

  He forced his mind to the picnic and the music and dancing and laughing and eating good food with his friends and family. He thought of Mandy’s big smile and her tinkling laugh. Eventually, his erection subsided, but he stayed in the shade of the oak tree for a long while, sweating and heaving for breath, gathering his wits.

  Gradually, his equilibrium returned, but his composure in Zochi’s presence might never come back. He turned and looked behind himself to see if she had followed him.

  He had sweated his T-shirt through. He would love to tear it off, but he didn’t dare. He walked to the Jeep, opened the rear door and pulled his bandana from his pocket. He poured ice-water from the water jug onto it and scrubbed his face and neck.

  His thoughts traveled in a direction he had resisted going. Had his own mother teamed up with Zochi like she had done with Drake’s old girlfriend to cause trouble between him and Mandy? She had already proved she was capable of doing that. Pic didn’t want to believe it of his mother, forgodssake. But knowing what she had done to Drake and his wife and what she had already done to Mandy, as well as less damaging minor tricks over the years, he wouldn’t put it past her.

  He forced his thoughts back to the here and now. Now what? In what state would he find Zochi when he went back to the house? He had to get her back to the guesthouse and stay away from her. He draped his wet bandana over the steering wheel and walked back to the house.

  He found her in the living room. She was clothed, thank God, and sitting primly on the edge of the sofa cushion as if she hadn’t just given him a strip show. She looked up at him with solemn eyes. “If you aren’t engaged or married, what difference would it make if you fucked me? Like I said to you yesterday, who would ever know?”

  “I’d know,” he said. “And I couldn’t live with myself. As it is, I’m having a hard time even with…”—He ducked his chin because looking into her eyes made him feel even guiltier.—“…even being here like this. And seeing you without your clothes.”

  “I can see that.” Her tone would freeze water. He wasn’t surprised. Had any man ever rejected her, especially after he saw her nude? She got to her feet. “This is getting boring. We should go.”

  “Right,” he said. “Get your camera and get in the Jeep. I’m gonna lock up.”

  They rode back to the guesthouse in total silence and in record time. He parked the Wrangler in front of the guesthouse, scooted out and helped her gather her things and carry them inside. As he started for the door, she said, “Pic?”

  In spite of knowing better, he stopped.

  “I’ve learned one thing since I’ve been here,” she said. “Nights out here in the wide-open spaces get really long and lonely. I could leave the front door unlocked.”

  His mouth went dry again. He swallowed. “I’ve got to go, Zochi. You’re welcome to come to supper if you want to.”

  ****

  Xochimilka stood at the window and watched Pic drive away, visualizing his body. Visions of naked men didn’t typically fill her head, but she couldn’t stop her imagination. He had a perfect body. She hadn’t enjoyed sex with most of the men she had slept with, but with him, she might like it. Some mysterious instinct told her he would make her feel good.

  A feeling of desolation came over her, enveloped her, threatened to smother her. She had lived with it and battled it since adolescence. She had never fit in and never known why. When she had been unable to develop friendships with girls, she had turned to boys. Then later, older boys. They had entirely different expectations than girls or boys her age and it hadn’t taken her long to learn to fit in with them.

  As an adult, her longing for affection, for a place to belong, for a person to belong to, had driven her to one-night-stands and lunchtime quickies. She had dropped to her knees for men she scarcely knew. Anything to be free of the pervasive loneliness, the need.

  Her stomach suddenly cramped and she backed away from the window, hurried to the kitchen and filled a glass with water from the tap. Before lifting it to her lips, she stopped and stared at it. Was it safe to drink? Or was it saturated with chemicals from fracking?

  The cramp grew worse. She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed half the liquid in the glass.

  ****

  Pic entered the house through the back door, still trying to come to grips with what had just happened.

  Johnnie Sue came from the kitchen and he handed her the thermos of water. “Where’s the lunch box?” she asked.

  Shit. When he and Zochi arrived back at the guesthouse, he had been so shaken he had carried the full lunch box into the guesthouse along with her camera bag. “Uh, I forgot and carried it into the guesthouse. I’ll get it tomorrow.” He headed for his bedroom.

  He showered, then took a few extra minutes in his room, chilling out. He had to erase the image of Zochi’s naked body from his mind, but it wasn’t easy. He did love the sight of a beautiful woman with no clothes on, even a dangerous one.

  Finally, he put in an appearance at supper with his Dad and Johnnie Sue.

  “Zoshi coming over for supper?” Dad asked.

  Pic doubted she would show up, hoped she wouldn’t. If she didn’t, he guessed she could eat the two thick chicken salad sandwiches in the lunch box and the chocolate cake. At least she wouldn’t go hungry. “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “How’d the picture-taking go?”

  “Hotter than hell and not worth a damn. Dad, this is a waste of my time. I’m finished with it. I mean it. I’ve got things I need to get done around here.”

  His dad only nodded. But at least he finally got the message. “How’d things look at the old homeplace?”

  “Like always. It was full of dust and sand. The rat poison needs to be replenished. The yard needs work. There’s rust showing on the fence and on the gate’s lock. Hogs have been there, but they couldn’t get past the fence.”

  “Fuckin’ varmints,” Dad growled.

  “I can get the cleaning girls down there when
they come out after the Fourth,” Johnnie Sue said.

  “Do that,” Dad said. “You never know when Betty will want to go down there. I’ll get Smoky to send a couple of the hands with them so they can fix what needs it. I’ll send the yard man with them, too. Betty wants the outside kept up.”

  Pic gave an indiscernible shake of his head. He would never understand the relationship between his parents. Did Dad honestly believe Mom would ever go to the old homeplace again?

  His dad saw a long list of women, but he was lonely for Mom. Pic’s most vivid memory of his mother when she had lived here was her screaming tantrums directed at his dad. Yet, Dad’s whole demeanor brightened when she was expected to come by, even if for only a short visit and even if they ended up in a damn brawl. And it had been that way ever since she left. Was Dad going to his grave waiting for Mom to get off her high horse and return to the ranch for good?

  So if he cared that much, why had he cheated on her? Was co-dependency a part of any marriage? Was it a constant battle without regard to the casualties? If so, why did anyone ever take those vows?

  Chapter 20

  Amanda stood on her front porch saying good-bye to her old college friend, Eric Frazier. She and Eric had gone through Texas Tech together, but been only casual friends. She was surprised he remembered her. He was now the assistant athletic director at Odessa High School, a school many times the size of Drinkwell. And that was the capacity in which he had visited her.

  Who knew a big school like Odessa High had noticed her success with the Drinkwell swim team? And they wanted her. Eric wanted her. He had flown from Odessa to Dallas and driven all the way to Drinkwell in a tiny rental car to tell her so.

  He didn’t even have her resumé, but he remembered her from their college days and had a thick portfolio of newspaper articles, speeches, interviews, even some comments she had made on blogs discussing her coaching philosophy and innovative approach to teaching teenagers how to compete. She knew she was good, but she didn’t know she was that good.

  His visit had rocketed her mood to somewhere in the stratosphere. Sometime within the next week, an offer would be on the table to coach the Odessa High School’s girls’ swim team. It went without saying that there would be a substantial pay increase above what she made now.