by Vicki Tharp
Josephine reached over and nabbed the rope he’d used, the bells clanking and clattering. “Uh, oh.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. He stopped what he was doing and took the end of the rope from her. Knife marks. Just like Toby’s.
“This is beyond ride fixing,” Josephine said. “Toby could have been killed. You could have been killed.”
He thought back to his ride, back to who could get ahead in the earnings with him and Toby out of the picture and Monte Shaw popped into his head. With Silas out for a weekend and Toby out for God only knew how long, Monte had moved up in the standings. He wasn’t in the top ten earnings yet, but depending on how this and next weekend went, he could be.
The blood in Silas’s veins went cold then hot. “That son of a bitch.”
“Who?” Josephine started shoving all his gear back into his bag.
“Monte.”
“What? You don’t seriously believe Monte is behind this do you? He’s an ass, but I don’t see him cutting people’s ropes and waiting on the sidelines for something bad to happen. Besides, if you wanted to rig a ride, certainly there’s a better way. Who’s to say the rope is going to snap when you want it to? And wanting to win is a long way from attempted murder.”
They heard laughter coming from a few rigs over. A little too obnoxious. A little too much bravado. A woman giggled. High pitched. Calculating. He glanced at Josephine. How the hell did he get so lucky to land the finest woman on the circuit?
“Speak of the devil,” Josephine said with a head toss in the direction of the laughter.
Silas balled up his rope. “Wait here.”
Josephine put a staying hand on his arm. “Where you going?”
“To see a man about a rope.”
Josephine fell into step beside him. He stopped. “Stay.”
She raised a brow, her gaze hard, but held a hint of humor. “If you think I’m a dog you can—”
“What are you going to do, fight my fights for me?”
“If I have to.” Her chin came up a couple notches. “You still aren’t a hundred percent. You’re still having headaches and you can’t make it through the afternoon without needing to rest. No way are you ready for a fight.”
Damn. All she needed was a red and blue bodysuit with a giant W across her chest. Despite how bone weary he was, all he wanted to do was take her back to his camper, back to his bed, and put all her piss and vinegar to good use.
Instead, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pressed a kiss to the side of her head. “Come on, hotstuff.”
Her eyes lit as if he’d said he’d bought her a brand-new barrel saddle. She was easy to please. One of the many things he was learning to love about her.
They came around the corner of a faded red two-horse bumper pull. Monte had a young local girl backed against his rig, his hands on her ass and his tongue down her throat. Josephine drew up short. “Maybe we should come back later,” she whispered.
Oh hell no. Silas’s blood bubbled as it climbed to a soft, rolling boil. “Monte, I need a word.”
Monte pulled back from the girl but didn’t bother to turn their way. This was probably the most action Monte had seen in a while. The women on the circuit had learned their lesson the hard way, and pretty much treated him like a feral dog. Nice enough to pat, but too dirty to take home.
“Go away,” Monte said.
The girl skittered away with the briefest look back. Monte fastened the top button of his jeans and buckled his belt. “What the hell do you want?”
Silas tossed the bullrope and it hit Monte square in the chest. “You so desperate to win that you gotta cheat to get to the top?”
Monte caught the rope before it tumbled to the ground. “I ain’t no cheat.”
“You’re saying you had nothing to do with cutting my rope? Or Toby’s?”
“Cuttin your—” Monte leveled his eyes on Silas. “What the hell kind of drugs did that ER doc give you? I didn’t cut yours or anybody else’s rope. I don’t need to cheat to win.”
Monte tossed the rope back at Silas, but Silas let it fall to the ground. He closed the gap between him and Monte. “You were in my trailer right before my ride. You had plenty—”
“Wait.” Josephine wedged herself between the two of them and pushed them apart. She turned on Monte. “You were in his trailer? Before his ride?
Monte’s eyes went dark and his hands fisted at his sides. Silas placed his hands on her shoulders, prepared to yank her out of the way if a fist went flying. Monte caught the movement, his lip twitched up into a sneer, but his hand relaxed. Silas may not be a hundred percent, but if that asshole messed up one hair on Josephine’s head, it would take the sheriff and all his deputies to pull him off Monte’s bloody body.
“I was returning some money I owed. Not that I need to justify my actions to a bi—”
“You don’t want to finish that sentence.” He didn’t yell. The quiet confidence with which he said those words was enough of a warning that Monte shut his trap. Though really, Silas would kill for an excuse to land another fat one on the side of Monte’s face.
“You don’t have to justify it to me.” All smoldering fire and leashed indignation. God, she was beautiful when she was riled. She poked a finger in Monte’s sternum hard enough to make him wince.
Looked like Silas had been protecting the wrong person. If the pulse thumping at the base of her throat and the tautness in her shoulders was any indication, Monte was one stupid response away from Silas having to haul her off Monte’s battered body, kicking and screaming.
Silas almost smiled. No other woman had ever made him so hard so fast. He readjusted himself.
“But I’m going to make sure you have to justify it to the rodeo commission, and the sheriff,” Josephine said.
She turned on her heels and had taken a few steps towards the rodeo office when she turned back to Silas and said, “You coming?”
“Right behind you.”
“You’re not much of a man if your woman has to fight your battles for you.”
Despite the taunt, Silas smiled. Your woman. He liked the sound of that. Liked that others saw that too, even if Josephine refused to admit it herself. Silas bent down and picked up his rope. “Watch yourself, Monte. You go anywhere near anything that doesn’t belong to you, and the sheriff will be the least of your worries.”
Monte tucked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans but managed to keep his big mouth closed.
Josephine was already out of sight. He’d probably have to peel her off the rodeo chairman too if the man didn’t take their claims seriously. He wouldn’t want to miss that. Silas turned to follow.
“How is he?” Monte asked.
Silas stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“Navarro,” Monte said. “I heard he’s in a coma.”
There had been something in Monte’s voice that sounded a whole lot like genuine concern. Silas turned around.
“I know I can be an asshole sometimes, and I have no fucking idea what Josephine sees in a prick like you, but everybody likes Navarro. He was a good man.”
Was. The word smacked Silas as if Muhammad Ali had hauled off and sucker punched him in the gut. Acid rolled up the back of Silas’s his esophagus scorching the back of his throat. “Is.” The word came out charred and brittle. Silas cleared his throat. “Toby is a good man.”
Silas wasn’t sure what Monte was trying to say. Was it some sort of apology for hurting a fellow competitor? For leaving a good man in a coma? Or was Monte’s concern real?
9
“What do you mean there’s nothing you can do?” Josephine stared at the Monterey county sheriff, unable to process his words.
Sheriff Baldwin was an older man with more hair in his ears than on the top of his head and a belly that strained the limits of the buttons holding his shirt together. “Like I said, I’ll have one of my deputies ask around, see if anyone saw someone messing with Mr. Navarro’s rigging bag, but the ar
ea behind the chutes isn’t secure. Anyone could have slipped back there unnoticed.”
“What about Monte? And Silas’s rope? Silas caught Monte coming out of his camper that same day his rope was cut.”
The sheriff leaned a shoulder against the wall of the rodeo office, resting his forearms on his pistol and nightstick. “And Mr. Shaw denies any wrongdoing. It’s Mr. Foss’s word against Mr. Shaw’s.”
“What about fingerprints?”
The sheriff barked out a laugh, full of condescension. “Ma’am,” he said, though in her head she heard look here little Missy. “No need getting all hysterical.”
“Hysterical?” And yeah, that squeak in her voice did come out a tad unbalanced. But they were talking about men’s lives at stake here. Didn’t that deserve a little emotion? A little passion?
She took a step toward the sheriff, not exactly sure what she’d had in mind, but Silas gripped a gentling hand around her elbow. How could he be so calm? She spun on him. “How can you be so calm? This is your life, your friends’ lives.”
“And one way or the other we’ll get to the bottom of this.” Silas’s words came out even and reasonable, but she saw the strain around his eyes, and the fight in the set of his jaw and the squaring of his shoulders.
The sheriff must have seen it too because he said, “Now son, don’t you be getting any cockamamie ideas in that noggin of yours.”
Silas didn’t spare the sheriff a glance and Josephine knew there was nothing the sheriff could say to dissuade Silas from doing his own poking around. There was too much at stake to leave it in the hands of a sheriff who knew that the rodeo would be out of his jurisdiction in a little less than twenty-four hours. She could almost see the man mentally counting down the minutes until this trouble, whatever the hell it was, was someone else’s.
Silas leveled his gaze on Maynard Rowe, the man responsible for putting on many of the rodeos they’d entered on the road to Cheyenne. “I’m not surprised the sheriff doesn’t give two damns—”
“Hey there, son—”
Silas talked over the sheriff as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “But this circuit is your livelihood. The word gets out you aren’t doing everything in your power to get to the bottom of this, you can bet your ass everyone will be riding Silver’s rodeos next year.”
Maynard was an old coot with an unlit cigar mashed in the corner of his mouth that always made his vowels sound round and his consonants land soft. Maynard’s eyes narrowed, and he pulled his cigar out of his mouth long enough to spit something on the floor as if the mention of his rival rodeo promoter soured on his tongue. “You threatening me, boy?”
“It’s not a threat. It’s not even a promise. It just is.”
“Now, son—”
Silas shut the sheriff up with a look Josephine imagined he’d had right before he’d decked Monte a couple weeks ago. “Don’t you have a job that needs doing, Sheriff?”
Slowly, the sheriff stood to his full height. Silas still had a good five inches on him, and while Silas had never seemed the type to lord his height over another man, Josephine recognized that light in Silas’s eyes. He was enjoying the hell out of the fact that the sheriff had to tilt his head back to look him in the eye.
The sheriff held Silas’s gaze long enough to let Silas know that Silas hadn’t chased him off, or some macho-man bull crap like that. To Maynard, the sheriff said, “Rowe, I’ll be getting in touch.”
The sheriff left, and Silas stared at Maynard across the battered desk where Maynard worried the end of his cigar the way a feral dog might gnaw a bone. “You need to call off the bull riding tonight. It’s not safe.”
“Safe? Safe?” Maynard’s chuckle was thick with phlem. “You think people come to the rodeo for the barrel racing? No. They watch the barrel racing, but come for the bull riding. I’m not pulling the money maker. No one forces you idiots to ride.”
Silas planted his palms on the narrow desk. Maynard had to lean back in the chair to get Silas out of his face. “No one forces us to ride, but this sport is dangerous enough without someone besides the bull trying to kill us.”
“I’ll block off the area behind the chutes, post some men. But I’m not canceling the bull ride, and if you cause me any trouble, I’ll find a way to make the Pro Bull Riding association sanction your ass. You’d be lucky to catch-ride sheep at a 4-H carnival.”
“Now who’s tossing around the threats?”
Maynard stuffed his mouth with the cigar again. “No, boy. That is a promise.”
* * *
“You okay?” Josephine’s voice drifted to Silas in the near darkness of his camper. The perimeter of the parking lot was edged with vapor lamps and the yellow light filtered in around the edge of the blinds.
“I’m fine,” he said, but the way the words came out, fine was a hard days ride from where he was. He was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. Seeing Toby earlier that night, still in a medically induced coma, hadn’t made him feel any better. Toby’s mother blaming Silas for Toby’s injuries hadn’t helped. Not that Mrs. Navarro would ever come right out and say it, but he’d seen it in her rheumy eyes, as if she’d thought it was him that should have been lying in that bed instead of her son.
It wouldn’t do to tell her that he’d tried to talk Toby out of the ride. She wouldn’t want to hear it. Besides, in a corner of his mind, he knew he held part of the blame. If it hadn’t been for him, Toby would still be on the reservation, safe, but trapped in a way of life he couldn’t escape. Silas had convinced him that bull riding was his way out. He’d been right.
But that only made Silas feel worse.
“Yeah. Sure you’re fine. Your mattress probably has permanent damage the way you’ve been flopping around,” Josephene said.
“Sorry.” Silas sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed, too restless to sleep, and too exhausted to get up.
The mattress dipped, and Josephine came up behind him, draping her arms over his shoulders, her bare breasts soft against his back.
She pressed a kiss to the side of his neck, her breath warm. He could stay like that forever, wrapped up in her, in them, shutting out the rest of the world. But he had an obligation to keep his friends and fellow riders safe.
“Come back to bed.” Her words held a tantalizing promise that he couldn’t ignore.
He reached behind him, capturing the back of her neck with his hand and held her close. “And if I do? What will I get?” He knew the answer, but it turned him on to hear it coming from her lips.
“Me.”
His needs turned dark and all he wanted to do was take whatever she’d give him.
Just for a moment, he wanted to forget about his friend, wanted to forget about his worries, wanted to forget there was some sick bastard out there who wanted to hurt him and his friends.
Just for a moment, all he wanted was his Josephine.
Hard and hot and fast and… “Careful what you wish for, hotstuff.”
He turned his head to see her reaction. She didn’t frown at the darkness in his voice. She smiled. Sad. Knowing. The shine in her eyes saying whatever he dished out, she would gladly take.
He stood and turned to face her. “Lie back.”
She did as he asked, her breasts jiggling in a way that made him want to lick his way up her belly and burrow his face between them.
He shucked his briefs and made her panties disappear even faster. His breath caught as he took in the sight of her. Silas ran the tips of his fingers over the muscular curve of her calves used to direct her horse, over her firm thighs that kept her tight in the saddle, up to her flat belly that kept her balanced in the tight turns.
Her hands skimmed over his shoulders, the tiny callouses on her palms raising the hair on his arms and sending sensations through his body that made him think of tangled sheets, sweaty nights, and long-lasting orgasms.
“Hurry.” Her soft brown eyes darkened, not so innocent anymore, as she reached for him.
He dodged he
r hand. She pouted. It was adorable, and he wanted to take that bottom lip and nip and suck on it. Grasping her ankles, he tugged her ass to the edge of the bed and wrapped her legs around his waist, his cock brushing over the top of her mound. She moaned, arching up, her body seeking the pressure and her release. He blocked her hand again and caught the errant wrist, trapping her arm low across her belly.
“Hotstuff, there is nothing that excites me more than having your hands on me, but if you touch me right now, the fat lady’s not only going to sing, she’s going to shatter the crystal.”
Josephine got a mischievous look on her face that promised wicked pleasure. Sweat popped out on his forehead as he struggled to maintain control. Silas eased forward, the bead of hot pre-cum slicking her folds and the ridge of his penis teasing her nub. He recognized the glint in her eye a micro-second too late. With her free hand, she reached across and curled her fingers around him, her grip firm, her strokes enticingly long and dangerously slow.
In one quick motion, she tipped her pelvis up and dug her heels into his ass, driving him so deep, so fast, their breaths hissed in at the same time. Her head lolled to the side, a ball busting ‘O’ shape to her lips. If he weren’t already in a tight, warm, space, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep until those magnificent, plump lips slid down his shaft.
With a hand under her ass, he lifted her hips and stuffed a pillow beneath her, loving the angle, the depth, the tension. The muscles in her belly quivered beneath his hand as he stroked in and out. The tingling of his impending orgasm tightened his balls. He pulled out until only the tip remained inside her, ready to plunge into to her again, to take her hard and fast. She bucked up against him taking him impossibly deep. Every inch of her hot, slick, encompassing. She felt—