But Nobody? Without her even having to tell him to, he held her even closer. She shifted her legs back so she was able to lean into him even more.
“Well, I care. Does this hurt?”
“No.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
“I don’t lie to you.” He said it simply, as if this were some great obvious truth—and maybe it was—but she felt odd tears prick at the corners of her eyes.
She had such bad taste in men. Always had. The ‘bad boy’ who had no qualms about sleeping with someone on the side—male or female—who ‘broke the rules’ not because the rules deserved to be broken but because they got in the way of his selfish needs.
Maybe Nobody Bodine was just a new, improved version of the same old bad boy she’d been chasing for years. But what if he wasn’t? He hadn’t lied to her—in fact, his honesty had been royally inconvenient. But there was something comforting about a man who was honest even when it wasn’t convenient.
“Is that how you thought it’d go?”
“What?”
She pushed herself up to look at him. “I mean, you’d thought about that, hadn’t you?”
She liked that faint blush on him. It took all the hard edges of his face and made him look different. Almost as ease. “Yeah.”
“Me, too. But with a bed.”
His blush got deeper. “I can move some books. If you want to come back out here.”
She grinned at him. “After that? You better believe that I’m coming back out here. You are an amazing lover, Nobody Bodine.”
He hugged her so hard she couldn’t breath.
“How did you think it would go?”
“I …” He swallowed again, unable to meet her gaze. Rather than push him, she ducked her head back against his chest and waited. “I thought about you in the shadows of the trees. In the dark.”
Her mind filled in the image for her. Nobody pulling her away from the light of the fire and into the dark of the trees. Him, lifting her up and backing her against a tree where no one could see them. Her, wrapping her legs around his back as he held her up and drove into her body hard.
“Oh.” She kissed his neck, shivering at the thought of it. “After you heal up?”
“I’d like that.”
Behind them, she heard clomping footsteps. Jesus—they were both naked in broad daylight—surely Jamie wasn’t about to wander into the clearing, was he?
She lurched up and tried to get free of his arms—to grab her shirt—anything—but he held tight. “Just the horse.” Then he sat up. “Damn. The horse. I need to get her rubbed down.”
“Oh. Do you have a bathroom or …” she was mildly afraid of the other alternative. She didn’t have a lot of experience peeing in the bushes. Especially not bushes that may or may not contain mountain lions.
“Inside the trailer. Plumbing works.”
“Okay, great.” She climbed off his lap and scooped up her clothes, her legs feeling like jelly.
But it didn’t matter. The best sex of her life? Yeah, her legs could just feel like jelly.
She walked into the time-warp trailer again, books stacked everywhere. He was such an odd man, but mostly in a good way. Very different from any other man she’d ever known and, let’s be honest, that was a good thing.
But, as she got cleaned up, she remembered that sleeping with Nobody Bodine hadn’t been the reason she’d come all this way out to the middle of his nowhere. They had a problem. True, it wasn’t as big as it had seemed last night after he’d left her hard up, but they still had a problem.
What were they going to do about Jamie?
Chapter Fourteen
Nobody got cleaned up and dressed, then he buried the condom and the wrapper in the bottom of his fire pit. The whole time, his head was swimming.
He’d just had sex. With Melinda. What’s more than that, he’d hit her. Okay, maybe not hit her—but he’d smacked her. A little.
Instead of cowering, she’d … told him to do it again. Begged him to. So he had. And she’d liked it, he was pretty sure. He hadn’t not liked it.
What did that say about him? About her? About them?
He tried not to think about it. Instead, he focused on the horse. Star had already found the small trough he filled up every morning, so he wasn’t worried about her getting dehydrated. But he still needed to make sure she wouldn’t go into shock.
He got a bucket and scooped out the water from the trough. It was warmish. Good. He grabbed a sponge and began to slop the water onto Star’s back, rubbing her muscles to help them loosen up after her hard run. If Jamie were here, Nobody would have the boy do this. He’d gotten good at cooling down horses, which made Nobody feel like maybe he was doing something right for once in his life. Rebel had always talked about how horses were part of the tribe. Nobody wasn’t exactly part of the tribe, not really, but he still had the connection of the horses.
His thoughts wandered as he cooled off Star. They didn’t go far—just to the woman inside his trailer.
He knew she’d been in there before, but he hadn’t been exactly aware of it at the time. Now? Now he knew she was looking at the stacks of books and the odd furniture and the blue bathroom. It made him nervous. He didn’t like feeling nervous, and he especially didn’t like feeling nervous right after he’d gone and had sex with a woman.
His side began to pull as he rubbed Star down. He forced himself to pause and breathe, to let the pain wash away with the water he was slopping on Star’s back.
He didn’t know what would happen next—and, worse, he didn’t know what she expected him to do next. Was this a one-off, a different version of the same old sex-on-a-drunken-dare he’d had back when he was young and stupid? Or would she think now that they were dating? Hell, he’d never even gone on a date before. He was pretty sure the night where he’d gotten stabbed didn’t come close to qualifying.
The fact of the matter was that, aside from remembering the basic mechanics of sex and following his baser instincts to ravish her, as the books said, he had no idea what he was doing. And that sort of cluelessness probably didn’t wash with a woman like Melinda Mitchell.
He heard the door to the trailer swing back open, heard her step down the two steps, heard the door close behind her. He tensed, which did nothing for his side. But he couldn’t help it. She was going to say something. He just didn’t know what.
And there was no point in hiding from her. None. So he had to stand here and take it. Whatever it was.
“Explain to me,” she began in a voice that sounded mostly normal, but with a hint of something that reminded him of how her breasts had bounced as she’d ridden him, “why you have that many books.”
“Like to read.” Old habits didn’t just die hard. They never died, apparently. He was having trouble finding words.
“Did you graduate from high school?”
“No, Ma’am.” She cleared her throat in what sounded a hell of a lot like frustration, so he added, “I didn’t finish sixth grade.”
His mom had never cared if he went to school or not, but he’d kind of liked it. It wasn’t home, anyway, and that made it a good thing.
But he’d never had a head for books or history or math—especially not math—so he’d been held back in fifth and sixth grades until he was too big and they had to pass him up because he was scaring other kids. And then, well, after his mom died, what was the point? He didn’t have to escape her anymore.
She was closer to him now—probably close enough to touch, but far enough away that he wouldn’t drip water on her. “But you have what appears to be every western ever written.”
He shouldn’t be nervous about this. She’d seen him at his lowest, barely able to drink from a cup, and she’d heard about his record. Why should his educational failings be as bad?
Because he had so many of them and she was clearly a well-educated woman.
“Got my GED.” That was something to be proud of, after all. He wasn’t a
total loser.
“In prison?”
“Yes.” He slopped some more water on Star’s back, pretty sure the horse had fallen asleep. That was good. He hated it when a horse was in distress, especially when he was the cause of it.
“Explain that to me.” In that moment, she sounded a lot like her sister, but instead of being super-bossy or judgmental about it, Melinda sounded curious.
He took a breath, careful not to pull at his side. “My second year in, they put this white college boy in with me. He’d been caught running drugs over the Canadian border for Mexican cartels.”
Ricky Campion. If ever there’d been a guy who wasn’t cut out for prison, it’d been Ricky.
“We had this deal. I wouldn’t talk about killing and he wouldn’t talk about cartels. Nothing about our pasts. I looked out for him—he was easy pickins’ for some guys—and he showed me where the prison library was. We spent a lot of time in there. It was safer, you know? Quiet. I didn’t read real well, but he helped me study for the GED and he liked to read westerns …”
“You were friends?”
Somehow, it was easier to talk without looking at her. Looking at her made thinking difficult. “Yeah—just friends.” A lot of people had thought that Ricky was his ‘bitch,’ but that wasn’t how it worked. They’d let people think that, though—made it safer for Ricky if other inmates thought Nobody would kill them for trying anything.
It hadn’t been a true friendship but then, Nobody wasn’t sure he’d know what a true friendship was if it bit him on the ass. He and Ricky had been more like comrades in arms, fighting prison instead of a war. Outside, they never would have crossed paths. But inside, they had a barter system. Nobody tried to keep him safe and Ricky helped Nobody get an education.
“Understood. What happened to him?”
“Cartels must have decided he was going to talk. Year before I got out, he got shanked.”
And the hell of it was, he’d never been able to figure out who’d done it. The wall of silence in that prison was unbreakable. Nobody was probably lucky they hadn’t tried to kill him, too—after all, if everyone thought Ricky was his bitch, they might have assumed the skinny white guy would have told him everything.
“Oh, God, Nobody—I’m so sorry.”
Nobody shrugged. He knew good and well that if he’d gotten out, he never would have known what had happened to Ricky. Once their paths uncrossed, they never would cross again. In all reality, the most shocking part of it had been that they’d killed him while Nobody was still around. “Prison is a brutal place.”
She was silent for a moment longer, probably feeling bad for something that happened a long time ago. She was soft like that in a way that he wasn’t. He liked that about her.
Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “Where do you get the books?” in a too-bright tone.
If he hadn’t been covered in horse hair and grimy water, he would have turned to her and pulled her into his arms. But soft women probably didn’t like smelling like horse and grime. “Thrift stores.”
“You don’t have a library card?”
He did turn to her then, unable to help the smile on his face. “Don’t have an address,” he reminded her.
“Sure you do,” she said, meeting his grin with one of her own. “Nobody Bodine, Middle of Nowhere, White Sandy Rez, South Dakota. Easy. Anyone could find you.”
“No one ‘finds’ me.”
The look she shot him did some funny things to his chest. He didn’t like it, but he wanted a lot more of it. “I did.”
The sponge splashed into the water as he covered the space between them in two steps. To hell with horse sweat and grim. “I let you find me,” he reminded her as he pulled her against his chest and buried his face in the crook of her neck.
“Same difference,” she replied and even though he couldn’t see her face at this angle, he could hear the smile in her voice. Her hands pushed back at his chest and then she was pulling his face up to hers, pressing her lips to his.
She still wanted to kiss him. That made no sense to him. None. He was a felon who hadn’t even finished jr. high and had to be taught how to do long division by a drug runner. He was a loser in every single possible sense of the word—and she was still kissing him.
There were some trees right over there. He could pick her up and lean her against one and plunge into her welcoming body again and again. And even then, he wasn’t sure he could get enough of her.
She didn’t nip at his lip this time, dang it all. Instead, after a really nice kiss that bordered on sweet, she pulled away. It hurt to let her go but he did.
She looked up at him through her thick lashes and licked her lips. Damn, he wanted to kiss her again.
“I’ll get some more condoms. I’ll make a special trip into town.”
“Sounds good,” he agreed. She could have told him that she only had sex on the full moon of odd months and he would have agreed that it was a solid plan. Anything, as long as she kept suggesting they were going to have sex again.
He’d never been with the same woman more than twice. That was a record he was looking forward to breaking.
Then Star nudged him in the back, nearly knocking both of them over. “Horse,” he said by way of apology to Melinda. “She likes the bath.”
“You know, when we used to wash down horses before a show or something, we’d have to tie them up and they’d stamp and kick. How on earth do you train them so well? And how many horses do you have? And why?”
He grinned down at her. It was becoming a habit. “I have my own herd.”
“Seriously? Just a herd, huh?”
“Come on.” He took her by the hand and patted Star on the flank.
With a snort of disappointment—no more bath for her—Star headed down the path that led to the small valley on the other side of the hill. Compared to the sea of grass that separated these hills from the rest of the tribe, Nobody’s valley was barely more than a culvert, but the stream ran with fresh water and there was enough grass for his horses.
He didn’t let go of Melinda’s hand. What was more, she didn’t let go of his. There was something so normal about walking through his woods, holding hands with this woman, that felt exceptionally special.
They hiked the four hundred yards down the hill until the path widened. He’d built some lean-to shelters for the horses up under the trees—plenty of cover from the winter winds. They passed those first. Melinda didn’t say anything.
Which made him nervous. What if she saw the lean-tos as nothing more than shacks? And she hadn’t said anything else about his trailer, just that he had a lot of books.
He couldn’t remember the last time he cared this much about what someone thought about him. Never, maybe.
But he cared what she thought. A lot.
Boy, he didn’t like that. Not one bit.
He did like the way her hand fit in his and he liked the way she smiled at him and he especially liked the way she’d climbed on top of him without even a glimmer of fear in her eyes.
On the whole, he’d say he was having a good day.
They came into the clearing. Nobody did a quick headcount—he didn’t see Red yet. That horse was probably taking the scenic route home. When Nobody had seen Melinda mount up at Rebel’s place, he’d gone to find Red, ridden to where he thought she might be headed, and then sent the horse on with a slap on the flank. Red knew where home was. She’d get here sooner or later.
“Holy cow—you have your own herd,” she said in a breathless voice. “Where did you get all these horses? And don’t you dare tell me you borrowed them.”
“Didn’t.” This was what he was most proud of, outside of the boy. “They were wild horses. Found them when I came out here the first time.”
The horses had almost saved him the first time. Almost. He’d found the group of about fifteen horses hiding in this valley, far away from the Bureau of Land Management and their wild-horse roundups. The second night he’d slept by
the cabin, he’d heard the footsteps of horses—at least, he’d hoped they were horses and not another dream animal come to talk to him in a language he didn’t understand. So, when he’d been able to explore a little more, he’d eventually found the clearing and the horses.
“Don’t know who was more wild—me or them,” he told her. “They were matted and dirty and hungry.” Like he’d been, except on four legs instead of two.
The horses hadn’t been able to find the things they needed. “Let me guess—you stole some horse feed?”
“Borrowed it,” he reminded her. “But yeah. Turns out, you feed a starving animal, they follow you forever.”
It’d taken time—years—of hauling out sacks of grain he lifted from feed stores to win the trust of the herd. But he was quiet and patient and when the stallion let Nobody pet him for the first time, he knew he’d be able to ride the horse.
He’d done it, too. But then he’d been stupid in a bar and wound up in prison for a while.
The first thing he’d done when he got out was get back here. He hadn’t told anyone about the horses—who was he going to tell? Albert? There wasn’t anyone else and he wasn’t going to be a bigger burden than he’d been on the old man.
That’d been the best day of his life—making his way out to the middle of nowhere, as Melinda had put it, and finding his horses still here. Still dirty and hungry and wild, but still here. Some had obviously died or been caught, some new foals had been born. It wasn’t the same herd he’d been forced to leave behind, but the stallion had still been here. Older, lame in his back right leg—but still here. Waiting for Nobody to make things right.
Star caught up to them. He pulled Melinda out of the way as the horse went down to greet her friends. Melinda looked up at him. He knew it wasn’t possible that she’d gotten more beautiful in the last fifteen minutes, but she sure as hell looked like an angel. “How come you never came back for her? I mean, she’d been at Rebel’s for days.”
This was one of those situations where he didn’t think explaining himself would necessarily make things better. But Melinda notched an eyebrow at him in challenge. So he swallowed and said, “She’s yours.”
Nobody (Men of the White Sandy) (Volume 3) Page 18