by T. S. Joyce
For the first three seconds, she just stood there, stiff as a board, drowning in shock. And then she gave in to the fluttering in her chest, leaned in, and kissed him back. He wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t affectionate or sweet. His kiss was a tornado, and she got all swept up in it. His lips moved against hers hard, his teeth scraping her sensitive skin. He thrust his tongue straight into her mouth once, twice, and a little noise of urgency clawed its way up the back of her throat.
He inhaled sharply and yanked back, searched her eyes for a moment. His eyes had turned dark brown, the color of his bull’s, and they were churning with something. Hunger?
He gripped the back of her hair and leaned in again, hesitated. This time he let her come to him. He gave her time to choose whether she closed the last few inches that separated them or not. And she did. She lifted to her tiptoes and pressed her lips gently against his. This time, the chaos died from their kiss and was replaced with a softness she hadn’t even known a bull shifter like him could be capable of. It was gentle sips of her lips, as if he were savoring her. Coveting her. Memorizing her. He slowed then eased away, searching her eyes, his eyebrows drawn down in confusion. He kissed her cheek so soft it felt like a butterfly’s wing. And then he did the same to her other cheek. And then to her lips once more. Just one peck before he released his grip on her hair and stepped back. Two Shots cocked his head, and his frown deepened. “What did you feel?” he asked her.
She could barely gather enough breath to whisper, “Everything.”
There was electricity between them, as if an invisible bolt of lightning was pulsing from her to him and back again. He clenched his hands at his side and twitched his head toward the door. “Get out.”
“What?” she asked, stung.
He shook his head and clenched his teeth so hard, the muscles in his chiseled jaw twitched. “Get out, or I’m gonna make all those rumors true.”
“What do you mean?”
He jerked his chin at the bed. “I’ll take you right there, and you won’t even have the choice. I’ll make you want me. I’ll make you beg for me. I’ll enjoy every inch of your skin, and then where will you be?”
In deep, deep shit. She didn’t need to say that out loud, though, because manners. “It will make our work relationship complicated.”
“I will make your entire life complicated. Out.” He strode for the door and opened it, eyes on the wall across from him.
“Right. Rejection. It’s been a while.”
“It ain’t a rejection, and you know it. Deep down, you know it. If I didn’t care, I would ruin you.”
Huh. So that meant…he did care for her?
She swallowed hard. She wouldn’t cry. There was no use crying. Her emotions were just high. So she walked straight past him and out into the hallway.
“Cheyenne?”
“Yes?” she asked, turning back to him.
He searched her eyes again as he asked, “Was that your first kiss since Tarik?”
Her lips trembled, and she was afraid her voice would shake if she answered so, instead, she just nodded.
“It was big, wasn’t it?” he asked.
Another nod from her.
He pointed to the wall in the hallway by his door. “Sit down, woman.”
She glanced down at the blue carpet then back to him, confused.
“I’m not ready for you to go. I just can’t have you that close to a bed.”
Cheyenne pursed her lips against a shy smile. Oh, my God—oh, my God, he wants me, too. That kiss was awesome. Whoo, that boy knows how to kiss. He kissed me. I kissed someone. Oh, my God.
“I can hear your heartbeat speeding up,” he said, propping the swinging door to his room open with a boot. He took a seat across the hallway. Still no shirt. Still the most gorgeous man in the world.
Holy hell, he really kissed me, and I kissed him back.
“You blush really easily,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, I can’t decide if the worst part about pasty skin is the sunburns or the blushing.”
“I like the blushing.”
Charmer. He was such a charmer and he’d kissed her and she’d liked it. She’d liked it! Eeeeeek!
“Um, what do you want to talk about?” she asked.
“The stain on your sweats and the easy access hole.”
“Easy access hole?”
He pointed to the rip in her sweats near her hoo-hah. “Oh, gosh.” She crossed her legs and hid the hole. “That I did with a box cutter on accident when I was cutting up a shirt to make into a crop top. The stain is from a full order of buffalo wings I stress-ate at two in the morning when I came out of retirement a few days ago.”
“You were nervous?”
“Terrified.” She sighed and relaxed against the wall. “I don’t know what I’m doing. All I know is I have this urge to help. To be an agent again, but on my own terms. Do it better than I did when I was in this industry before.”
“Where have you been? After Tarik died, you disappeared off the face of the planet.”
“You noticed.”
“I looked for you,” he rumbled low. “I always did. Every rodeo, but you didn’t go to a single one after he passed. I figured I ruined rodeos for you. Took away something else you loved.”
She scrunched up her nose. “It wasn’t like how everyone thought.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Me and rodeo. Me and Tarik.”
He rested his head against the wall, too, looked down his nose at her with a frown. “How so?”
“I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this now.” She hesitated. This had been a big secret to keep. “I wasn’t the only girl cryin’ at Tarik’s funeral.”
Two Shot’s eyebrows arched up. “Tarik had another lady?”
Cheyenne nodded. “I really should just let his ghost rest. Bringing this stuff up doesn’t fix anything.”
Two Shots cast a dark look down the hallway, but nothing was there. “His ghost won’t rest either way. Might as well get the weight off your shoulders. My mom always told me to share heavy stuff with one person you trust. Share it, and it won’t be so heavy anymore because you aren’t the only one carrying it.”
“Your mother sounds wise.”
“My mother’s a cow.”
She gasped, but he grinned.
“That was a cow shifter joke.”
She giggled and rolled her eyes. “Okay, the other woman’s name was Heather. She wasn’t in rodeo, so he kept his world with me and his world with her separate. Mostly.”
Two Shots looked sick. “That ain’t right. Did you know about her before he died?”
Her voice broke on the answer. “Yes. We were in the middle of figuring it all out. He was deciding if he wanted to be with her or stay with me. Sounds stupid, but they had this emotional connection that I couldn’t really compete with. It was really hard to feel like I was enough. He would stop talking in the middle of our conversations to text her, and I would have to watch him smile as he responded to her. I wondered why I couldn’t be good enough for him.”
“You shouldn’t have even been put in the position where you had to compete. It should’ve never been a competition. It’s bullshit. Tarik was a fuckin’ asshole for making you feel like you had to compete. You’re in a league of your own, Cheyenne. And you were his wife. Until death do you part and all. A real man holds up his end of a vow. I know what cheating does to a woman. I watched my dad choose other women. They always started innocent, right? He would say ‘hi’ to a lady at a restaurant or a gas station, but then we would start going to that restaurant or gas station more. He would start out polite, talk and chat. I was little so I couldn’t tell him to shut the hell up and take me home.
“Eventually, he would leave me sitting in the car while he would visit those women. I figured out when I got older that he was screwin’ them in the bathroom while my mom was at home thinking everything was okay. But I didn’t know how to process what was going on or how to tell her. I
would watch him come home to my mom and treat her real nice. Nicer than usual. But you know what? Her eyes didn’t light up over the presents and extra hugs, the extra compliments. I watched them darken. Turn sad. I think she always knew when he had a new lady. I heard her cryin’. I watched the tears roll down her face. I was there when she would curl in on herself and question her value, but she was everything. Beautiful, funny, full of life.
“I watched him drain her. And then he would reel her back in with his toxic bullshit, swear to change, tell her they needed to stay together for me. She tried to leave him so many times, and he got more desperate every time to drag her back into his mess. Sometimes I think the emotional attachments are even worse than just fuckin’ a random girl. If you have a woman at home? You take care of her and you watch her bloom, and you hope to God you’re part of the reason for her happiness. You never make her question her crown. That’s what a real man does, Cheyenne. You were in for a long road of questioning your value if he’d survived me. At least until you had enough and left, like my mom did.”
She drew her knees up and rested her forearms over them. “I found out about Heather just a few months before he passed. It was a new relationship. At least, that’s what he told me, but she was crying a helluva lot at his funeral for someone who only knew him a few months. I was embarrassed when I found out. We were this dream couple on the circuit, right? I’d even bought into our hype. I felt like the luckiest girl alive because I had Tarik’s arm around me. But when I asked him to stop talking to her, he said he couldn’t because he cared about her too much already. More than me, I guess. You know, you can look at these dream couples and think they have it all together, but you never really know what’s happening behind closed doors. A couple weeks before he died, he promised me he’d stop talking to her and said he wanted to start over with me, try for a baby, be a better man for me, and it was like we hit this honeymoon phase all over. He did what your dad did. Drew me in. Complimented me more, was there for me emotionally, bought me presents. He was starting to build me up again, and I was so tired of being hurt by him that I was relieved and, in a way, happy during that time. We’d been through a hard time and we’d made it, you know? But after I watched her sobbing on the other side of the front row at his funeral, I had to know. So I looked at our phone bill, and he’d never even slowed down on calling her and texting her. He’d called her right before his ride on you that night. So, there it is. The shame.”
“Not shame on you, though. Shame on him. Shame on her. On Heather. They disrespected your marriage. You didn’t do that.”
“The irony is that he went down a hero, and now my name is in the paper for disrespecting the name of my late husband by representing you.”
“Yeah, well, fuck the media. You’ve got a good reputation, so I’m all on board with keeping it intact, but you want to know what I would do if I were in your shoes?”
“What?”
“Go buck wild and give all of ’em something to really talk about.”
She snorted. “I want to actually keep my job for a while.”
“Where’d you go?” he asked softly, the smile fading from his eyes. “When he died, where did you go?”
“After the funeral, I sold it all. All our cows, our horses—”
“You sold your horse? That roan? What was his name?”
“Scout’s Honor. I called him Scout. I sold him to the Kaid Brother’s Ranch, and they have him working the cattle now. No barrel racing for him.”
“You loved that horse. I could tell.”
“How?” she asked curiously.
“You were always talking to him and singing to him. When you had him tied up to saddle him, you talked to him like he was your best friend. If you were in line to race, you were always hunched over him, hugging his neck, talking in his ear, and that critter sure loved you back. I’m a shifter. I know these things about animals. Why did you sell him?”
Cheyenne shrugged. “Partly for money. And partly to just move on from my old life. I had in my head I would never go near another rodeo again. I sold all of our livestock and packed up what was left, moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.”
“Why there?”
“It’s where my grandparents were from. My parents were both raised there. Two couples that had stayed together always, but I hadn’t figured out how to keep my husband, so I don’t know. I guess I hoped I would find some peace in Jackson Hole.”
“Did you?”
“For a while. I mourned real hard for the first year while I was working at this little coffee shop. The second year, my boss put the shop on the market, so I put in an offer and became my own boss. Hired new staff and renovated the place, got it making money. I still own it. Cheyenne’s Café. I got a girl I trust running it while I’m on the road.”
Two Shots was smiling. “I’m really damn proud of you.”
“For what?”
“For getting through. For getting to here. For taking your time to process what happened, but then getting right back up and standing on your own two legs. You’re one helluva woman, Cheyenne. Tarik didn’t appreciate you near enough. He wouldn’t have been able to look at anything but you if he did. His loss.”
“Well, he’s not really around to feel that loss anymore.”
Two Shots cast another quick glance down the empty hallway. “Don’t be too sure about that.”
“Whatever happened to your dad?” she asked.
“He ended up being nothing of importance.” But when he’d said it, Two Shots’ eyes had darkened. She was a blusher, sure, but his changing eye color did the same thing. They told of his change in moods. They ruined his poker face.
“I never told anyone about Heather. Not until tonight. Share the weight, big bad Two Shots Down, just like your momma said.”
He cocked his head and gave her this tiny, wicked grin. “I think you see more than most people. You pay attention.”
“Yep! One, two, three, go. Story time.”
He snorted and cracked his knuckles. “Uuuh, my mom left him and took me with her. I wanted to be with her, not him. I was angry with what he did to her. He stole her light for a long time. I watched it happen, and I think a part of me hated him for it. She got her light back in a couple years, met a nice man. A human man. His name is Brick, and he’s my stepdad. I was only twelve when they got married, and I was this angry little shit. Acting out. I didn’t know how to control my dominant bull, so my mom had to pull me from school to keep the little human kids safe. I didn’t have a lot of friends, and Brick was a cowboy. A roper. My real dad would come around every once in a while, but he would seem uncomfortable around me, and then he would leave as soon as he could. He always had an excuse. He had to get back to work, or he had a project he was right in the middle of. And every time he would leave, Brick would take me and my mom to a rodeo. He would let us travel with him. Always made it fun, like an adventure. Now as a man, I know he was trying to take my mind off of being angry with my real dad, but at the time, I was just allowed to be a kid, you know?”
“Brick sounds like a good man.”
“Oh, he’s the best. He came to every event I did that he could, but he’s slammed running this little ranch with my mom. They’re happy as little clams in Utah.”
“Is he the reason you turned into a bucking bull?”
He huffed a laugh and scratched his jaw with his thumbnail. “Actually, my real dad is kind of the reason for it, too. When the circuit first started, they did a call for bucking bulls, only none of the bull shifters were trained to buck. My dad signed up the first year, and sometimes I would watch his events on TV. I didn’t tell my mom I was watching them. I would record them on those old VHS tapes and then watch them late at night. Well, Brick caught me one night, and he started watching them right along with me. A year into my dad’s schedule, and he had built a chute for me. He got a couple boys from the neighborhood to volunteer to train on me.”
“He wanted you to take after your dad?” Cheyenne
asked.
“No. He saw the anger in me. The fire when I watched those tapes. He wanted to give me the training to outshine my dad. My dad provided the chip on my shoulder, and Brick gave me the road to get there. My mom and him cheered me on the whole way. The meaner I got as a bull, the more understanding they were with me as a man. It’s what I wanted, so they supported it and never looked back. Got a second mortgage on their ranch to finance me traveling for events the first two years and, now, when I win money, I send them checks. I’m gonna pay them back every dime.”
“Holy moly, Two Shots,” she drawled out, utterly stunned. “You are so much different than anyone would ever guess.”
“Different how?”
“Different in a good way.”
There was the electricity again, sparking between them. Two Shots was the one to break the silence. “You should go before you fall in love with me.” His Cheshire cat grin just about stopped her heart.
“Me fall in love with you?” she asked, standing. “I’m the one with easy access holes and wing sauce stains on my pants. You’re the one in danger.”
She sauntered down the hallway, determined not to look back.
“Maybe I like danger,” he called after her.
Chapter Seven
She knocked again to no answer. He’d really left without saying goodbye.
Sure, she would see him in a week near his hometown of Billings, Montana for the next event, but disappointment swirled in her chest that he’d really checked out and gone without even a wave.
Ew. She was so needy now. She’d never been like this before with men. Cheyenne straightened her spine, gripped the handle of her suitcase, and dragged it toward the elevator. She should get going, too. She had a flight to catch.
The door to Quickdraw’s room opened. He stood there, filling up the entire doorway with his massive shoulders, glowering down at her.
“Good morning,” she greeted him politely.
“No, it ain’t.”
She opened her mouth but closed it again. How did one even respond to someone so grumpy like that?
“If you’re looking for Tweedledee, he’s in the gym downstairs with Tweedledumb. They’ve probably killed each other off by now.” Quickdraw lowered his cowboy hat to shadow his eyes and nearly ran her over getting past her in the narrow hallway. “Get out of the way.”