by Penny Wylder
Her eyes flash, the humor only appearing just now.
I scowl. “That was a joke.”
“Don’t test me, though, or next town we hit, I really will put an event like that on your to-do list.” With that, the van pulls to a halt. Sheila slaps my knee in a friendly gesture as she pushes out of her seat to climb through the door. “See you in the stadium,” she calls over her shoulder.
I stare after her, still debating whether the view of that fine ass of hers bent over exiting the van is going to be worth all the hell this woman will clearly put me through.
The crowd erupts as the announcer calls my name for the fourth and final time tonight. It’s the grand finale, the main event. The moment all these screaming crowds have come to see.
The moment I lasso, climb onto and ride a bucking bull.
I burst out of the passageway into the stadium with both hands raised in the air, pumping my fists to work the crowd the way I always do. I hear screams, shouts, chants of my name. Ru-ckus, Ru-ckus, Ru-ckus. It echoes in my ears as I gallop across the field toward my target—the angry as hell bull on the far side of the stadium.
He’s wild, pumped up with fury by all the shouting and the noise in the stadium. One glance at me and he starts to charge my stallion, snorting as he races toward us. Some people in the crowd gasp. Others cheer louder. Hell, half the time I think they want me to fail. It does make a more interesting show that way, I suppose.
Sorry to disappoint.
I whip my lasso above my head and wait for the right moment. Until the steer is just close enough in his mad charge, eyes crazed with bloodlust. Only then do I let the rope fly, and tug my stallion’s reins slightly to get him to sidestep out of the bull’s path. The rope lands true, right around his neck, easy as a ring toss. He flies past me, still racing, his bulk making it difficult for him to cut and follow us as easily as my horse can dance out of his path.
At the same time as the bull flies past in a cloud of dust, I yank the rope tight, securing it around him, and loop that over the horn on the front of my stallion.
On his next pass, I leap off the horse and slap his ass. My horse speeds away across the field, which draws the rope around the steer tight. He stumbles, then leans back into his rope to try and tug my horse off-balance. But while he’s distracted with that, I leap onto him from the side and with a quick flash of my fingers, undo the knot binding the rope that held him.
He snorts out a huge breath, furious now that I’m on his back.
This combo event is highly unusual in the rodeo. I’m one of the only cowboys who performs it regularly, and for good reason. It’s dangerous from start to finish. Especially now that I’m on the back of this madder-than-hell bull, who will do anything to throw me off him and then stomp me senseless.
But I’ve done this show so many times I could do it in my sleep. There’s nothing that can throw me, not even this bull, as he rears up onto his hind legs and leaps forward with a vicious back kick.
Nothing… Except when I glance up and catch a glimpse of a woman in the front row of the stands. I didn’t notice her standing there before. I figured she’d skip the show—Frank always did. Why watch the show when it’s just the same thing every night on repeat, manager or no?
But there she is. Smack dab in the front row, hands over her mouth, eyes huge as dinner plates as she watches me work.
Sheila Greyson. The girl who’s been stuck in my head ever since the moment she strode into the bar where I was drinking myself senseless. Before I even knew who she was, I sensed the connection between us. Like I’m this angry bull, only she’s the one pulling my strings this time.
Speaking of the bull.
I’ve let my attention wander. Only for a millisecond, but on the field, in the middle of a tense part of the show like this, that’s a millisecond too long.
The steer bucks again, and this time I’m not ready for it. Off-balance, I go flying—not off to the side the way I’m trained, either. I fly straight forward, over his head. I feel a stabbing, searing pain in my thigh as one of his razor-sharp horns grazes my thigh on my way over. I’ve got jeans on, thick ones, but that definitely felt like it found its way through the fabric.
Then I’m distracted from the pain in my leg by the pain of the dirt field hitting me smack in the face. I skid across the pitch, dust and debris all stuck up my nose and in my teeth as I scowl through the fall. My whole head rattles, and every bone in my body feels limp. But I hear screams in the audience, shouts for help from the trainers and emergency responders right down on the field near me, and I know I can’t just lie here.
Not when that bull is about to come down on my head.
I have just enough energy left in me to roll to the side. Not a second too soon, either, as a hoof crashes down onto the spot where I’d been just seconds before. I shove up to one knee, gasping for air. I don’t have strength to go much farther. One more hit and the bull will be on me. From the corner of my eyes, I spy the trainers racing for me, several of them whipping lassos overhead. But they’re too far away. The bull is right here, right on top of me, and he’s about to either spear me through with those vicious horns or stomp me into oblivion.
I take a deep breath, trying to make my peace with God, when I hear it.
A voice.
Her voice.
“Hey! Over here, you big ugly brute!”
Sheila, no.
I power through the screaming pain in my body from the fall I just took and whip my head up. Sure enough, on the far side of the field, there’s Sheila—having hopped the front row stand in which she stood and whipped off the jacket she was wearing. She holds it out at her side now like a matador, waving it like crazy.
A lot of people think that in bull fights, you use a red flag to piss off the bull. But that’s horse shit. Bulls are color blind. The red is for the audience’s benefit. All you really need is something rippling, making a lot of movement, catching their eye. Shouting helps too. Both of which Sheila appears to know, as she whips her jean jacket at her side, shouting more insults at the beast.
He turns toward her, snorting out his fury. I watch her eyes go wide, realizing what she’s done, and I shove myself up to both knees now, ready to dive in front of the bull, intervene.
But it’s too late.
He charges. Straight toward Sheila.
“No!” The scream that escapes my mouth doesn’t sound like me at all. Hell, it doesn’t even sound human. It sounds crazed, as wild as the bull. I stagger upright and try to chase after the monster, knowing it’s fruitless—there’s nothing between Sheila and this animal but thin air.
But somehow, as the beast charges straight for her, Sheila just keeps whipping her jacket, jaw set and eyes determined. At the last second, she lets go of the jacket, and the bull head butts the denim, ripping straight through the fabric. He skids to a halt then, snorting and tossing his head as he struggles to throw the denim off his face.
At that moment, the trainers finally catch up and loop lassos around his head from either side, pinning him in place. Sheila ducks out of their way as more trainers arrive to lasso his hind legs next and draw him from the stage. The moment she’s free of the storm, she rushes toward me.
By that point, I’ve finally made it back to my feet, though I’m breathing hard. And… shit. I glance down at my thigh and find a deep gash there, welling blood. He got me good when I flew over his head.
Sheila reaches me at the same time as the medics. “Ruckus!” she shouts, and before either of us say anything else, she flings her arms around me. “Are you okay?” she mumbles into my shirt. I try not to think too hard about the sensation as her mouth moves against the fabric of the jacket, right against my skin. It does painful things to my jeans, making them tighten and strain at the crotch.
I tug her closer to me, savor the firm press of her solid little body. “Me?” I ask, half laughing. “What about you? Are you crazy?”
“He was going to kill you,” she protests, then, jer
king back a little to peer up at me. “What was I supposed to do, just watch?”
“Cover your eyes. Not leap into the field of battle completely untrained.” I scowl down at her. “You could have gotten killed doing what you just did.”
“Did I look completely untrained to you?” she fires back, lifting her jaw. “I’ve been working in the rodeo ring for years now. I know bulls are dangerous.”
“Knowing they’re dangerous from watching shows and actually facing one in the ring are two very different things,” I point out. “Next time something like that happens, you let me face it alone. I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
“Yeah?” She narrows her eyes. “Well I don’t want to find a new job, which I’d have to do if you went and got yourself killed performing. What’s it matter to you if I get my hands dirty anyway?”
“There’s getting your hands dirty and then there’s getting yourself killed for me. I can’t let anyone do that. Not for a guy like me. Not even my future wife.” I mean it as a joke, though it comes out too serious after the rest of the tirade. We both freeze, eyes locked, our mouths a breath apart. I’m gazing down at her, and only then do I remember her arms are still around me, our chests both rising and falling fast as we try to catch our breaths. From the argument. From the warm press of her body against my side, molded perfectly against me, her soft curves sinking into my hardened muscles.
My throat hitches and I know I should push her away. Know it, and yet, my arms refuse to obey. In fact, they only clutch her tighter.
“Ruckus…” Sheila murmurs.
Then one of the field hands clears his throat, loudly. “Um, excuse me, Mr. Ruckus sir, but, uh, you’re still… bleeding.”
We both step back, startled out of it. I glance down to find the red stain spreading down my jeans. Dammit.
“I’ll let you boys take it from here,” Sheila tells the field hand and the medic beside him who’s clutching an oversized emergency kit and clearly stifling a laugh with difficulty. Sheila’s face is bright red. I wonder if mine is any better.
She scurries from the field and I let the medical team take over, though I can’t stop my mind from replaying the sensation of holding her in my arms.
“How are you doing?” Sheila asks, hesitant. She’s paused at the doorway of the medical center where the staff brought me after bandaging my leg. The on-site doctor just finished giving me stitches, which I can feel tugging at the seams whenever I shift my balance on the table.
“Not great,” I admit. “Though I’ve been worse.” Also true.
She laughs at that, but it’s weak. Half-hearted. The smile drops from her face as she enters the room, checks behind her, and gently eases the door shut.
“Having second thoughts about coming home with me tonight?” I tease her. “Offer’s still open.”
She scowls, but unless I’m much mistaken, I catch the corner of a grin before she straightens her facial expression. “Listen, Ruckus, about earlier. I’ve been thinking about what you said on the field…”
“And you’ve come to the conclusion that I was right, it’d be an awful shame for a woman like you to waste her life trying to save an asshole like me? Good.” I grin wider.
She sits on the edge of the bed where my leg is propped up. Her gaze darts to my chest. The medic left my shirt open after taking my vitals, and I didn’t bother buttoning it again, hot as it gets in this medical wing. Now I’m glad I didn’t, if it makes her stare at me like this.
But then I realize where her eyes are focused. On the tattoo in the center of the chest. The stallion rearing over my heart, and below, down under my pec, the mare and foal both watching him in the distance. A perfect little family. The one my dad always dreamed about. The one he had, albeit briefly, until my mom passed away way too young. Then I was all that was left of his perfect life.
And he was all that was left of mine.
“You are worth saving, you know,” she says, in a voice softer than I’ve ever heard from her.
Whatever I expected, whatever kind of lecture, it wasn’t this. My eyes widen. Lock on hers as she crosses toward me. Even in the stale fluorescent lighting, she’s gorgeous. The kind of woman you could spend your whole life looking at and never get tired of it.
“What’s your tattoo mean?” she asks. She reaches out, tentative, but I nod, and she traces her fingertips along the arch of the stallion’s back. She barely touches me, just the very tip of her finger, and yet I swear no woman has ever set me on fire with so little before. It sends a flare through my veins, makes me want to pull her against me, flip her over so she’s under me on this table, and run my hands over her the same way. I want to touch every inch of her, feel her soft skin under mine, her smooth curves as they melt into me. I want to spread her legs and press between them, feel her hips grind against mine, as my hard cock traces up her inner thigh…
Her hand drops, and with it, I try to force myself to focus. To ignore the aching throb in my jeans where my cock is already getting hard, wanting to take her the way I imagined.
I clear my throat once, hard, to distract myself. What did she ask? Right. Tattoo. I grimace and glance down at the dark ink on my bare chest. “I got it after my father passed away,” I say. When I lift my eyes to hers again, they’ve widened. I hold her gaze this time when I talk. “Family meant everything to him. He always wanted me to have a family, like he had—a family he cared about more than anything. I got this to remind me of that. To remind me what my father wished for me.”
She steps closer. Without thinking, I stand from the table. The blood rushes to my head, from the wound on my leg—or maybe just from her. Her proximity, her scent which is overwhelming in this small space. She smells like leather and spice and underneath it all, something softer, sweeter, like a hint of vanilla. It makes me want to taste her.
I reach up to brush a strand of stray hair behind her ear. Her eyes fixate on me, wide, her lips parted as her breath hitches. It’s no good. I can’t resist her any longer.
I don’t want to, anyway.
I lean down and crush my mouth to hers. Her lips part under me, soft and pliable, and when I invade her mouth with my tongue, hers swirls around mine, matching my motions. She tilts her head, and I cup her cheek, run my hand around to the back of her neck, down her neck to her shoulder blades. I wrap my other arm around her waist and crush her against me, the way I imagined doing so many times since I met her. But the real deal blows any of those fantasies away.
She feels right. Her soft curves fit exactly against the hard planes of my chest, my stomach. When she arches her back and pulls just far away enough from our kiss to gasp for air, I can feel the shudder of desire that passes through her whole body—the way she lifts a leg to wrap around my waist, and for a second, my rock-hard cock grazes her inner thigh, and all I see is white hot lust. I want her. I need her.
Right. Now.
Then she pushes back, both hands against my chest, and twists away from me.
I let go, not without a pang that travels all the way through my body, an ache, a hole that until just a minute ago I didn’t even know existed. A hole she fills, perfectly.
“I can’t do this, Ruckus, I’m sorry,” she’s saying, her voice so fast it sounds like her words are tripping over one another. “This goes against my own rules, personal and business alike. I don’t blend the two, not ever.” When her eyes find mine again, they’re hardened now, a steely reserve behind them that I’ve seen in her before. It’s one of the things I admire most about her. How dedicated she stays to her causes. How sure she is of doing the right thing.
I respect it, even though right now, I wish to hell she’d let it go for once.
“I was hired to do a job,” she says, lifting her chin higher, shoulders straight. “I’m not going to fail at it. I never fail.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I say, and I try not to let the disappointment, the ache of desire show on my face. Not even when she turns to go.
“I’ll find
the doctor,” she calls over her shoulder. “Send him to check on you.”
I sink back against the table. My leg throbs worse than ever, but it’s nothing compared to the ache in my chest. This woman just might be the weak spot I never knew I had.
4
Sheila
Fuck fuck fuck.
Why did I let him do that?
No, scratch that. Why did I do that? I don’t even know who kissed who, it all happened so fast. It felt impossible, irresistible. One minute I stood there having a perfectly normal conversation with Ruckus, and the next, those big hands of his were all over me, and his strong, muscular body was pressed against mine, and Christ, I could feel his cock through his jeans and it made me wet as hell just to think what a man like him, with a cock like that, could do to me… He’d take me rough if I wanted it, bend me over that examination table and fuck me until I could hardly walk straight.
Just thinking about it sends another shiver of desire through my body, so strong it’s hard to focus. Right. Doctor. Injury. Ruckus’s face when that bull reared back, about to stomp him, keeps playing in the back of my mind. I don’t know what came over me. All I knew was that I couldn’t see him hurt. Not the man I’m hired to protect.
Not the man I’m coming to care about either.
I couldn’t help it. I leapt straight into that ring without thinking about my own safety, without any idea of what I was gonna do once I got down there except yell and scream and chase that bull away from him. At the last second I remembered watching old bull fight videos and thought to use my jacket, but it was a close call. If I hadn’t thought of that, well…
I shake my head. Doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that Ruckus is safe and whole, and fuck can he ever kiss like the devil himself. My mouth still burns from contact with his, and every time I blink I swear I feel his thick calloused hands on the small of my back, tracing my neck, my shoulders…
“Doc!” I startle as I run across just the man I supposedly left Ruckus to go find. In reality, I just couldn’t stay in that exam room one more second. I would’ve let Ruckus do whatever he wanted to me. Would’ve let him strip off my jeans and fuck me until I screamed so loudly that everyone in the medical building knew I was getting fucked, and I wouldn’t have even cared.