by Luna Starr
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
BONUS NOVEL: SINNER IN ME
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
COWBOY UP
by
Luna Starr
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Cowboy Up
Copyright © 2017 by Luna Starr
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Please note that this work is intended for adults over the age of 18 and all characters are represented as 18 or over.
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ALSO BY LUNA STARR
The Cherry Series
Cowboy Up
Sinner In Me
The Femme Fatale Series
Hot For Teacher (coming soon)
Teacher’s Pet (coming soon)
Schooling the Teacher (coming soon)
Dark Heroes Series
To the Hilt (coming soon)
The Club Series
Safety Word (coming soon)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
BONUS NOVEL: SINNER IN ME
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Cowboy Up
Chapter One
Summer
I wasn’t even sure who I was any longer. That might sound trite, but sadly, it was true. I was also completely cried out. In fact, I was numb. The only creature who allowed me to feel anything close to happiness happened to be munching her hay inside the rusting aluminum tin can I’d purchased with the last few dollars I had left to my name.
Who would ever have thought I would have suffered such a reversal of fortune?
Summer Camille Sellers. The girl who had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. The girl who had never wanted for anything. The girl who was now nothing more than the punchline to Fate’s twisted joke.
It was only a couple of months ago when Dad and I drove past the old horse trailer parked off the side of the road, a sign in front of it reading: For Sale. Now that exact same decrepit trailer was hooked up to an almost as old Chevy truck (my other recent purchase). Both had matching rust stains. The day I’d driven by the old trailer with Dad, I’d scoffed at it and tipped my nose up haughtily like the snotty bitch I’d once been.
Dad had looked sideways at me and smiled but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was more a smile that said he felt sorry for me. “Be thankful that you have all you do. Not everyone has the things you take for granted.”
And, now, as I thought back to that conversation with my dad, I wondered if he knew then what I knew now. When he’d said those words, did he know what he was going to do?
The tears came again and I swiped them away. So much for being cried out.
My horse, Aria, and I would be okay, I promised myself. We had to be. We didn’t have any other choice.
But we had to leave Connecticut far behind in order to start fresh, to start new. I prayed the truck and trailer would make it to Colorado and to my new job. My first job, ever. Thank God Liza had the contacts she did and hooked me up, so to speak.
Because of Liza, my long-time coach and trainer, it looked like maybe I’d be able to leave the mess that had become my life behind—that mess including people whispering behind my back about the unfortunate string of events that my life had become. That unfortunate string included my mother, who, just after I graduated high school, slept with my boyfriend. A boyfriend I’d never even had sex with, and, yes, I was still a virgin. And now, it was four years later and my mother and my ex-boyfriend were still together—shacking up in what I was certain was a pretty lavish apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan.
But that was just one of the messes I was leaving behind—old friends, old boyfriends, a mother who never cared about me, painful memories—you name it, and I was leaving it.
With what my father had done, I had no choice but to take Aria and get out of the town that I’d grown up in, the only place I’d ever called home.
Liza had arranged the trip west for Aria and me, making sure we had a place to stay every night. And traveling with a horse didn’t make arrangements easy. But somehow, Liza set us up in locations with stalls or pens for Aria, under the roof of one of her friends.
The day I’d left, I’d hugged the woman who was way more of a mother to me than the woman who had given birth to me as tightly as I could, sobbing as I thought of letting her go.
“Are you sure about this, Summer? You can stay with us. You can earn board and training for Aria by working for me.” She tucked a loose strand of her graying brunette hair back into her hair tie and gave me a sympathetic smile, tears swimming in her eyes.
I forced a smile in return. “As much as I want to, you know I can’t. I have to start new, start over. And I just can’t do that here.” I shook my head. “I need to go someplace where no one knows me, and no one knows what happened.” And then something occurred to me. “You di
dn’t say anything to your cousin about any of the particulars… I hope?”
She laid a hand on my shoulder. “No. I didn’t. I did tell him that you’d had some tough times lately and you’d need your space. Brady is a good guy. He can be kind of rough around the edges but he’s fair and he’s honorable. He’s from a different part of the horse world than we are, Summer. Everyone in Colorado is. It’s going to be a bit of culture shock for you, and it worries me that all of this change might make things… worse for you.” She sighed. “It’s not going to be easy, sweetie.”
“I didn’t expect any of it to be easy but it’s still what I need,” I insisted with a clipped nod.
Liza knew that once I’d made up my mind, there was no swaying me. So, she helped me load Aria onto the ancient trailer. After I hugged her for the nth time and promised to call her every night, I pulled away from Hewlitt Ranch and started down the road, heading for a whole new life.
And so, for the next week, Aria and I drove from Connecticut to Colorado. The day I crossed the Colorado state line, I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t actually expected to make it the whole way in the old Chevy without incident. But it appeared luck had been on my side. And now, Aria and I were headed into Colorado Springs and I couldn’t have been more excited.
I followed the GPS on my phone and twenty minutes out, my nerves started taking over as I wondered what my new life would be like. But there was no point in fearing the unknown or being unnecessarily anxious, so I shelved my nerves and pulled through a rustic looking wrought iron gate with a sign over it that read “Springhill Ranch.” The place was beautiful—an old, sprawling, two-story white house set against the Front Range, pasture land surrounding it with grazing cattle and horses. The sky was a hazy blue with scattered clouds floating above. It was like I’d just stepped into an old western movie.
I drove down the long dirt road that opened up to a full working ranch where I spotted a decent-sized arena with a guy on a bay quarter horse roping a steer. Another cowboy spotted me, and pointed to an area that I assumed was where he wanted me to park and unload.
A nice, large, wooden barn stood behind the arenas. It had that log cabin thing going on—very rustic and very different from the white clapboard barn I was used to in Connecticut. I parked the truck and hopped out. Almost immediately, a tall cowboy approached me, his hand outstretched.
“Brady Lawson,” he said and tipped his hat like they did in John Wayne movies.
I shook his hand and smiled back. “Nice to meet you. I’m Summer.”
Up close, Brady was even taller than I’d thought. In fact, he stood a few inches over six feet and next to my 5’3” frame, he looked gigantic. He was probably about fifty-something, with warm brown eyes and a mop of sandy blonde hair that stuck out from underneath his hat.
“My cousin said good things about you.”
“Don’t believe them.” I tried to laugh and make light of my discomfort, even though I was still nervous as hell about whether or not I would fit in here. As much as this trip was about me getting away from the drama of home, it was also about finding a new home, somewhere I fit in. No one out here knew anything about me and for the first time in my life, I could shape my entire world.
Aria let out a shrill whinny as soon as she realized there were horses close by. I was suddenly overcome with the hope that everything would work out here.
“I’ve got some work to do, but Tom will show you where to put her,” Brady said and nodded toward the same cowboy who was roping the steer when I pulled in and was now dismounting his horse.
“Tom, come meet Summer and get her a stall for her horse, please,” Brady yelled to Tom.
As I opened the trailer door, Tom yelled back to Brady with a southern twang to his voice. “Yep. Be right there. Let me just tie Jenny up.”
I stepped up into the trailer and approached Aria who had a bit of a wild-eyed look to her at the moment. She was as nervous as I was, and about ready to come unhinged.
“She’s a big girl. Beautiful,” a deep male voice behind me said. The southern twang made his words sound almost musical.
As soon as I turned around and took him in, I couldn’t help but stare. There was just something about him. He was larger than life with his cowboy hat, boots, plaid shirt, a pair of Wrangler’s, and a serious set of blue eyes. They were the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, especially with his chestnut hair. And his face! With his square jaw, stubble, strong nose and full lips, he looked like he’d just stepped off the pages of an LL Bean catalog.
He. Was. Gorgeous. Like gorgeous times ten.
The lines of his plaid shirt outlined the curves of his huge shoulders and prominent chest, making them stand out. It was pretty obvious that this guy was packing some serious muscle and I found myself completely tongue-tied as I gazed at him.
He smiled and it crinkled the corner of those crazy blue eyes. “Tom Terrence. Pleased to meet you, miss.”
I gripped Aria’s rope tighter as I begged my tongue to work. “S-Summer Sellers. And, um, this is Aria… my horse.”
Tom chuckled at me, apparently because I’d had to point out that Aria was a horse when it was fairly obvious that such was the fact.
“Nice to meet you, Summer,” he said, dimples lighting up that devilish smile. He looked like he was in his early to mid-thirties maybe. “What do you say we get her settled?”
“Right,” I answered as I inwardly pinched myself and wished I hadn’t come off like a tongue-tied, total dork. “Yes, and nice to meet you, too. Thanks.”
I followed him into the barn and down the aisle, all the while trying to force my attention off his incredibly shaped ass. But it wasn’t easy to do. The guy had a body and then some.
Chapter Two
Tom
“You’re from back east?” I asked, walking ahead of Summer and her horse. I couldn’t help but study her and wondered what the hell an east coast debutante type was doing all the way out here.
I had to admit that when I’d first approached her in her trailer with her filly, I’d noticed her shapely ass. It was high, round, wide and looked delicious in her blue jeans. But when she’d turned around... wow. She had these light green eyes that reminded me of a piece of jade I kept tucked away in my nightstand. And that long strawberry-blond hair made me immediately think about running my fingers through it.
“Connecticut. I’m from Connecticut,” she answered with a quick, nervous smile before glancing down at the ground again. I couldn’t help but wonder if I made her nervous. I hoped I did.
“Never been there,” I answered as we walked the length of the barn aisle. A breeze passed through that caught her scent, reminding me of orange blossoms. I noticed her looking around the place. It was a good size, housing up to fifty horses but I wasn’t sure how it compared to whatever she was used to. Her mare was going down on the far right end.
“Oh,” she replied. “It’s um, it’s cold in the winter, and it’s uh, well, it’s pretty. You should try to visit sometime.”
I glanced back at her and raised my brows in a way that said I had no interest in big city living. We held each other’s gazes and there was something about those intense green eyes—a vulnerability there that I thought I recognized. Not that I gave a rat’s ass. I’d just met the girl so she wasn’t anything more to me than a pretty face and a fine ass. Well, it looked like she had a hefty pair of tits, too. Not that I was looking…
“Okay, well your girl goes right here.” I pointed to the stall. “This good with you?”
“Should be fine. Thanks.”
I unlatched the stall door and slid it open, so she could lead the horse in.
Summer took a step toward the open stall and jerked to a stop, spinning around. “Um, where’s the bedding?”
“The what?”
She stared at me. “The shavings. I can’t have her standing on a bare floor like this.” She craned her head to the next stall over and glared at the bottom of it. “None of your stalls have shaving
s?”
“All the stalls have runs,” I answered with a shrug, sounding nonplussed but the truth of it was that her hoity-toity ways were annoying me. Springhill wasn’t a fancy place and neither were any of the people who lived on it. If she wanted to fit in, she’d need to get with the program. “The horses are only in here at night,” I continued. “They get turned out in the pasture during the day, unless they’re being ridden. So, nope, there’s no ‘bedding.’” Yep, I’d just finger-quoted. Summer frowned at me. Shit, she was obviously a good-looking woman, but damn, I didn’t care for high-maintenance chicks. It was a horse’s stall, for hell’s sake.
Of course, the thought of plunging my huge cock into her mouth didn’t seem half bad. In fact, the more I considered it and those rosebud lips, the more I liked the idea. It was definitely one way to shut her up…
She put her hands on her hips and scowled at me like she didn’t appreciate my tone. She didn’t say anything so I continued. “You’ll find, city slicker, that country folk out here are simple. We don’t have the same… needs that you do. But the sooner you drop those fancy notions of yours, the better you’ll be.” Not to mention that if Brady caught wind of this ridiculousness, he’d shit himself.