by Vicki Tharp
He dropped the light and grabbed her wrist.
* * *
Silas’s hand engulfed her wrist and held it steady. Heat rose to her cheeks but that didn’t stop Josephine from wanting a touch, a peek, a taste of what he had beneath the tenting of his sweats. “Sorry, that was…I mean… I uh…”
She tried to back off the bed, but his grip was firm.
“Where you going?”
She preferred wallowing in her humiliation without an audience. “Back to my trailer.”
The flashlight had caught at an odd angle on one of the pillows. It shot harsh light up at Silas’s face, reminding her of a kid telling ghost stories around a campfire, but even then, she saw the softness in his eyes.
He settled lower on the bed. “Kiss me.” The words didn’t come out as a demand or a command. They came out as a promise. A promise of what, Josephine didn’t know. He gave her wrist a gentle tug, and his lips tilted up at the corners. “Kiss me.”
You heard the man.
It was a tad disconcerting she’d hear those words in her naughty granny’s voice. Yet despite granny’s naughtiness, she had always been a smart woman.
Silas released Josephine’s wrist and she crawled back to him. He gathered her hair over one shoulder, his fingers working the tight muscles at the base of her skull as she leaned in and brushed his upper lip with the tip of her tongue.
A groan of pleasure. A grunt of pain. He raised up on one elbow, opening his mouth to her, deepening the kiss. He drew back a moment, his eyes locking on hers before he dove back in for more. His arm came around the small of her back, drawing her in. Not wanting to crush his ribs with her weight, she leaned on one elbow and balanced with one leg between his.
He hitched his hand behind her thigh, shifting her on top of him. His erection pressed against her lower belly, and his hand slid beneath her jeans and cupped her curves.
A heaviness settled between her legs, as she pressed against him. As much as she wanted to reach down and take hold of the hard length of him, she broke the kiss instead. “What are we doing?”
He removed his hand from her waistband and skimmed it up her side, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. “Pretty sure it’s called foreplay. You know those things you do to turn your partner on and—”
“Yeah, I know what foreplay is. What’s the end game here?”
As their breathing returned to normal, his expression shifted. She expected anger or frustration, but all she saw was patience and humor. “Sex? Not that you always have to end up there, but if you don’t ride the bull for the full eight seconds every once in a while, you miss out on a lot of fun.”
“I’m sorry.” She sat up, turning her back to him and dangling her feet over the side of the bed. “I didn’t mean it to come out that way. It’s not like I’m looking for a proposal, or a boyfriend or…” she shut up before she embarrassed herself even more.
He huffed and puffed and grunted and groaned until he’d made it to the edge of the bed, his shoulder brushing hers. She couldn’t look him in the eye. All she wanted to do was to hit a giant redo button and start the whole damn day over. Then she’d stay in her trailer like a good girl.
He reached over and linked their fingers. “I don’t know what the end game is either. What I do know, is that I’m interested, and not in a one-and-done kind of way. By the way you had your tongue down my throat, I’m thinking that makes you interested too.”
“Cheyenne is only a few weeks away and then we go our separate ways. Long distance relationships never work and—”
“Whoa now.” He pressed a lingering kiss to the back of her hand and that touch settled her more than the words had. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I mean, who knows, I may find out that you fart like a bronc or snore as loud as a freight liner.” He glanced away then looked back up at her, his eyes earnest when he said, “Please tell me you don’t snore as loud as a freight liner.”
“I don’t snore.”
“See, then there’s hope for us, yet.”
She got that itch between her shoulder blades that made her skin prick and her legs want to run. She wasn’t looking for a happily ever after. She stood up and swayed with an exhaustion that had settled deep into her bones. His hand held her steady, but she needed to make her intentions clear so there would be no misunderstandings or hurt feelings. “I’m not looking for an us.”
He tugged her back down to the bed and she didn’t have the energy to resist.
“Then let’s take it one day, one night at a time. Deal?”
She nodded once as her eyes drifted closed. She could do that.
“Lay down, Josie.”
“What?”
“You’re falling asleep sitting up. Lay down.” He eased down against the wall, and fluffed the other pillow for her. He held out his hand. “Come here.”
She laid next to him, her back to his chest. She shifted, and bumped up against the hard length of him, but instead of pulling her tighter against him, he angled away.
“Ignore that.” His words came out tight and tense and for a brief second, she wondered what it would take to break his control.
But that wasn’t what they’d agreed to.
His hand settled around her hip. “Get some sleep.”
Except she didn’t.
Couldn’t.
Hour after hour, she lay there. His warm breath on her neck, his large hand spanning her belly, her bottom in his lap. He slept, soundless and deep, but her body buzzed with an awareness she couldn’t shut off or unplug. The Naugahyde cushions squeaked when she shifted, and Silas’s scent drifted up from the pillow she’d borrowed. A heady combination of sunshine and fresh air and raw power.
When the morning pinked the windows of the trailer, she didn’t wait for him to wake up, because that’s what couples did. They woke up together.
She slipped from beneath his arm, slid on her boots and climbed out of the trailer, her mood off and her eyes gritty from lack of sleep. She already dreaded the chores ahead of her and was counting the minutes until she could fall back in her bed. Alone.
She hadn’t been looking to become a couple. She’d been looking for some fun.
4
The cool heat of a Canadian Saturday afternoon found Josephine three hoof soaks and two short naps later. She snapped on her farrier chaps and worked her fingers into the sweat hardened leather of a pair of old work gloves complete with rasp-warn fingers.
People had been giving her a wide berth all day, or looking at her funny. Maybe she should have gone with Cora to the local bar the rodeo crowd had taken over. Josephine clearly needed to relax if she was scaring everyone away.
But she’d been feeling out of sorts and antisocial since she’d left Silas’s trailer that morning. She’d worried he’d come find her, to ask why she’d left.
He hadn’t.
Which worried her more.
Where was Cora when she needed her?
Josephine pulled Comet from his stall and looped the lead rope around one of the bars and got to work replacing the thrown shoe.
Comet dozed while she rasped the bottom of the hoof flat and drove in the first two nails. His head popped up the same time Josephine heard Cora’s laugh in the distance.
Cora’s laughs were always loud and as infectious as an STD at a porn convention. Josephine glanced up and Cora turned the corner at the top of the aisle. Josephine waved her over.
Cora said goodbye to her friends and jogged up, the fringe on her long sleeves bouncing with each step.
Josephine dropped Comet’s hoof and slipped the hammer into the loop on her chaps. “Just the wom—”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you slept with Foss?” Cora didn’t have an inside voice. Or discretion.
People passing by slowed and stared before walking on again.
“Would you keep your voice down?”
“Doesn’t matter. Everyone already knew about it but me.”
“You were asleep when I got
in. I didn’t want to wake you. Besides, I thought you were staying the night with—”
Cora waved a dismissive hand. “That’s over.” Cora didn’t look all broken up about it. She looked her normal, brushed out, made up, perfectly dressed self. “And don’t change the subject.”
Josephine stretched Comet’s leg back and settled his hoof over her thigh and started tapping in the rest of the nails. “I guess that rumor accounts for all the weird looks I’ve been getting all day.”
Cora settled on a bale of hay across from Comet’s stall. “It’s true, then.”
Around a couple of nails she had sticking out of her mouth, Josephine said, “Of course it’s not true.”
She pounded the last nail home, twisted off the ends, clenched them tight and gave Comet back his hoof. That shoe wasn’t coming off anytime soon.
“So that redhead on the flag team was lying when she said she saw you sneaking out of Silas’s trailer at dawn?” Cora chewed on a stalk of hay, one booted foot on the bale, and a you-can-tell-me-the-truth smile on her face.
Rodeo rumors flew faster than Telex, faster even than her hometown gossip grannies. Which said a lot.
Josephine started gathering up her tools. She needed to set the record straight. Did it make her bad that a small, tiny, minuscule, fraction of herself wished the rumors were true? “Yes, I came out of Silas’s trailer at dawn. But no, I didn’t have sex with him. I didn’t even sleep with him. Now I’m tired and grouchy and—”
“Horny.”
Josephine couldn’t hold back the bubble of laughter as heat rose on her cheeks.
“I knew you couldn’t go the whole season without someone tickling your fancy.”
“Tickling my fancy? Now you’re starting to sound like my grandmother.”
“Hey, Cora, get your sweet ass over here.” The deep male voice came from about ten stalls away. It wasn’t the roper Cora had left with last night.
Cora’s grin expanded, and her eyes lit as she started backing down the aisle. “You should listen to your grandmother. She’s a smart woman. All my grandmother gave me when I left on the circuit was a container of oatmeal cookies. Yours gave you a box of condoms and an order not to dare come back until they were gone.”
“I’m pretty certain that’s not normal.”
“Doesn’t make it bad advice.”
* * *
Back at the Calgary rodeo grounds after a few beers at the local bar with his best friend and fellow bull rider Tobias Navarro, Silas climbed out of Toby’s rusted out, beater of a truck that burned oil faster than gas. A cloud of exhaust gathered around Silas’s boots from a crack in the pipes, tickling the back of his throat.
“You should put some ice on that.” Toby flicked a finger toward the new bruise blooming on the right side of Silas’s jaw.
Funny. Needing to ice a bruise was what had gotten him the new one. “Yeah, I’ll jump right on that.” The words were right, but his tone said screw that.
“Don’t let Monte and Chet get to you. No matter what gets back to Cox, the man doesn’t have near the pull with the circuit that he used to. Besides that, you didn’t do anything wrong. Shake it off and concentrate on your ride.”
“Sure.” Toby had a point. Though the sinking feeling that Silas had painted a neon target on his back by getting involved with Josephine wouldn’t go away.
Silas leaned his hands on the door sill and Toby said, “And buddy, next time, hit them with your left hand. Hard to make Cheyenne if your grip hand’s busted.”
Silas tapped his open hand on the roof of the truck cab and backed away. “Asshole.”
Toby whooped out a laugh and left Silas in a choking cloud of exhaust. He wiped blood off his scuffed knuckles and flexed and extended his right hand. At least his grip didn’t feel bad.
He zig-zagged through all the rigs and detoured by Josephine’s trailer on his way to his truck, but no one was home. He hadn’t seen her since she’d slipped out of his camper the morning before. He’d been hanging out—make that hiding out—at the bar.
It wasn’t because of the rumors, which hopefully that fight had squashed. It wasn’t because he was embarrassed, and it certainly wasn’t because he didn’t want to see her.
It was because he wanted to see her too much.
He wanted to talk to her, put his hands on her, and do everything those rumors said they’d done.
And then some.
But that was the problem. She’d been the one concerned about losing focus and he hadn’t taken her seriously.
Now she was all he could think about at a time when he needed laser focus. Cheyenne was only a handful of rodeos away, and he and Toby and Monte and that skinny kid named Freeman were in a tight earnings race to make the final cutoff. Depending on how the other men’s rides went meant he was only a buck-off, or a lousy score away from not qualifying.
He’d tried to stay away from Josephine. But that had only made his focus worse.
So now he’d see what would happen when he didn’t stay away.
Silas came around the corner of a stock trailer and stopped short. The door to his camper stood wide open, Monte standing in the doorway. “Get the hell out of my truck.”
Monte clump-clumped down the steps more like he owned the place and less like a thief on the run. Monte reached behind him and pulled some folded bills off the top of Silas’s rig bag. “I was just leaving you the money I owed for the gas from last week.”
Silas snagged the money from Monte’s hands. “You could have given it to me at the bar.”
“Didn’t get the chance.” Monte had a small cut near his left brow where the skin had split under the impact of Silas’s fist.
Silas shoved the money in his pocket and as a parting shot said, “Stay away.”
Monte put his hands up in mock surrender and backed up a couple of steps before turning and walking away. Silas scanned the trailer and checked the hidden compartment where he’d stashed all his winnings, but everything was undisturbed and all his money accounted for. He changed into his riding jeans and chaps and grabbed his bullrope and the rest of his gear and headed to the warm-up arenas. He needed to find Josephine and apologize.
At the third arena, he found her lazy loping the barrel pattern. As she approached the third barrel, Silas could already tell her angle was off and her turn too tight as she came around. Comet rammed Josephine’s knee into the barrel, dumping it in the dirt.
A kid ran across the arena and set it back up for her, dodging other warm-up riders as he ran in and out. Silas folded his arms over the top rail of the fence. Josephine and Comet were almost to the fence when she glanced up and noticed him there. She pulled Comet up short and the gelding tossed his head at the sudden bit contact.
She scratched at his withers. “Sorry, buddy.” To Silas, she said, “Hey.”
“Hey.” That was about as smooth as arena dirt after a rodeo. “Look, uh…”
“What happened to your face?”
“Had to set a someone straight about the rumor. My fault. I should have walked you back to your trailer the other night. I forget sometimes how fast the rumors fly.” He pointed to his jaw. “I think I put an end to it, if that helps.”
“I don’t care so much about the rumors unless it gets back to my father. Let me guess, Chet?”
And Monte. And some dude who’d had too much whiskey and just wanted to fight. All of them had been lucky the bar owner had kicked them out and hadn’t called the cops. “Does it matter?”
“No.” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder toward the barrel. “I should probably get back to it. My timing needs a little adjustment.”
“Comet knows the pattern and his job. Maybe you need to relax coming into that barrel. Not take things so seriously.” By the way her expression darkened, the advice wasn’t welcomed.
“Hah. Relax. Easy for you to say. You’re winning. You have money in the bank. If you don’t finish in the money in Cheyenne, you just move on to the indoor rodeos come fall. Yo
u don’t have to crawl home to daddy.”
“Neither do you.”
“I’m barely covering expenses. Sometimes I have to sneak into the beer tent just to score a free hot dog because I had to choose between feeding myself or my horse. Besides, I made a promise.”
“Break it.” He didn’t say for him, but that was implied.
She side-passed Comet to the fence. “What are you saying?”
He stepped on the bottom rail, not knowing how to answer. He only knew that he didn’t want to have to say goodbye come Cheyenne. “I’ve got last draw tonight.”
“I’ve got first. I could maybe find a seat by the chutes, after.”
“And I could watch you from the alleyway, before.”
She smiled and settled deep in the saddle. Comet let out a heavy sigh. “Okay. It’s a date then. I mean not a date just a time for us to be together but not together because we will be riding but—”
“Hotstuff. It’s a date.”
Her grin widened, exposing a dimple he didn’t know she had.
“I gotta go.” He leaned across the top of the fence, his face inches from hers. “But I think you should give me a kiss before I do.”
“For good luck?” Comet cocked a hip, shifting her closer. Silas would have to find a carrot for his wingman.
“That, and if everyone is going to talk, we might as well give them something to talk about.”
That adorable dimple reappeared as she closed the gap between them and pressed her lips to his. She broke the quick kiss, but he caught her with a hand behind her neck. “That’s not going to cut it.”
Her narrowed eyes said challenge-accepted and she leaned into the kiss. He angled his head, taking the kiss deeper. He tasted the tamale on her tongue and smelled the hay in her hair. His heart beat in that crazy rhythm he got right before he rode, and he couldn’t get enough. His loose jeans got tight and the top rail cut into his groin. Comet edged away, and when Silas couldn’t lean over any further, he let her go. “See you at the chutes.”
She pointed Comet for the first barrel. “I’ll see you in the alley.”