Leah rolled her eyes and began brushing Dottie. “You’re being crazy. There will be boys there. Hot, hot boys who are tan and buff and delicious. Oh, Haze, you have to come! You just have to do it. Think about it—bathing suits, drinks, and great music all night.”
I knew Leah was new to what it meant to be my friend, so I’d give her the benefit of the doubt for misunderstanding everything about me, but the last thing I wanted to do was hang out with strangers in bathing suits.
Leah must’ve seen the resistance in my stare. “Come on, Hazel. You work so hard at the ranch, and you never really give yourself any days off. You think I don’t see you working on your days off? You’re a youthful workaholic, which is an oxymoron if I ever did hear one. So let your hair down and come to the bonfire with me.”
“I don’t know, Leah . . .”
She sighed and tossed her hands up in defeat. “Fine, fine. It’s just too bad. The Wreckage is performing, and I figured you’d like to see them.”
I straightened up a little. “Ian and the boys are performing?”
“Yeah. They’ve been the performers for the past few years. It’s tradition.” She gave me a knowing grin. “Wouldn’t you like to see Ian perform in front of a crowd? I mean, I know he performed for you at your party, but seeing him in front of a bigger crowd just makes him larger than life.”
“You mean wouldn’t I like to see the whole band? Not just Ian.”
“Well, the way your cheeks turn bright red when I mention him gives me the feeling you care more about him than my brother and the other two.” She arched an eyebrow and leaned in toward me. “So is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Do you have a crush on Ian?”
“What? What? No! No way! A crush on Ian? On Ian Parker? No way.” Oh my gosh, every inch of my body was on fire, as I sounded so far from convincing when it came to my feelings for Ian. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d caught myself daydreaming about his eyes, his lips, his smile, his dic—“We’re just roommates,” I pushed out, wanting to fan my face from embarrassment.
She wiggled her eyebrows. “A roommate with benefits is probably something you’re interested in, huh?”
“No, Leah, not at all,” I lied like the freaking liar I was in that moment. “Besides, even if I did have feelings for Ian—which I don’t—he’s so far out of my league I couldn’t even imagine him ever giving me a chance.”
“I’m sorry, but are you stuck on stupid?”
“What do you mean?”
“For a smart girl who knows that bonfire isn’t two words, you sure are stupid, Hazel. Ian is crazy about you.”
“Come again?”
“I see him all the time checking you out around the ranch, and when you aren’t at their band rehearsals, he goes on and on about you as if you’re every star in the sky. He’s obsessed with you.”
I laughed. “He’s not. Trust me, if Ian was obsessed with me, I’d know.”
“Really? So you think a man who spoons you every single night and builds you a she-shed isn’t into you? I mean, I have a boyfriend and can hardly get a good-morning text, and you’re getting whole sheds built in your honor! He’s, like, in love with you!” she exclaimed.
“Shut it, Leah; he’s not.” But he had built me a she-shed. Did that mean something more than just a roommate being nice? Did Ian . . . ?
No.
No way did he like me. I wasn’t his type. I’d seen his type. The tall, curvy girls who always smelled like expensive perfume. I wasn’t the kind of girl who caught Ian’s attention. I was more the girl who hid in the shadows, not the limelight, and Ian dated limelight girls.
“Just come to the bonfire and see for yourself. Now that I’ve awakened you to the fact that Ian is crazy about you, you’ll notice it yourself. Trust me. A blind dog couldn’t miss the connection between the two of you.”
I hesitated before tossing my hands up in defeat. “Fine. I’ll go, but it’s only to prove to you how wrong you are about this Ian situation. He doesn’t see me that way.”
“Yeah, okay, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. You’ll see, Haze. But there’s one thing we need to do before the bonfire this weekend.”
“And what’s that?”
Leah’s giddiness intensified times a million as she tossed her arms into the air in celebration. “A makeover!”
The bonfire was still a few days away, but thanks to Leah, I found myself watching Ian’s every move around the ranch, and I’d come to one massive realization: Ian was hot. And sexy. And hotly sexy. I hadn’t a clue what had come over me over the past few days, but whenever I was around him, my lady boner went full force. My eyes danced across him as if he were the best cooked steak in the world and I wanted to devour every single inch of him.
It didn’t help that a few nights I’d wakened up from the dirtiest of dreams about him taking control of me. Every night when we’d sat down to work on lyrics, I’d had to force myself to not reach over and, oh, you know, accidentally swipe right on his penis.
If there was a dating app for Ian’s body parts, I’d swipe right until the cows came home.
Calm down, lady boner; he’s just your friend.
I kept telling myself those words, but it was growing more and more hard to believe them every night he crawled into bed with me and pressed his rock-hard abs against my body. Just watching him work around the ranch was making me hot. I wouldn’t have thought seeing a shirtless, sexy man brush a horse could be so exciting.
Sure, it didn’t sound as if it was an act of sex appeal, but my gosh, was it the sexiest thing I’d ever witnessed in my life.
“You want to ride?” Ian asked, glancing my way.
“Oh God, yes,” I muttered in a deep whisper as my eyes danced across his figure in a hypnotic way. I shook my head, shaking myself from the daze I was residing in, and tried to keep the heat of my skin at a tame level. “I mean, what?”
He smiled my way, seemingly unaware of my current state of desperate need to slide into his pants. “Do you want to ride the horse?” he asked, patting Dottie’s back. “I mean, it seems that the two of you are the best of friends, but I’ve never seen you out giving her a ride.”
Oh.
The horse.
He wanted me to ride the horse.
Of course that was what he meant.
“I, er, I’ve never ridden a horse, and if I’m honest, that sounds pretty terrifying.”
He laughed. “It’s not as bad as you’d think. Come on; I’ll help you out. We can ride together.”
“You want to ride me?” I blurted out, then mentally slapped my forehead. “I mean, with me. You want to ride with me?”
“I’ll ride beside you and make sure Dottie treats you well.” He walked past me, brushing his arm against mine, and needless to say, I almost melted into a pile of mush. Every time that man came near me, my body reacted intensely. All I could do was pray that he never noticed.
He grabbed a saddle for me and then led Dottie out to the open field for a ride. He came back to the stables and picked Big Red to be his riding partner for the afternoon. As we walked outside toward Dottie, Ian helped me learn how to mount the beauty.
“Okay, so we have our stepping block set up for you to use to help you get on Dottie. Place your left hand on her mane, and then place your right hand on the other side. Place your left foot in the stirrup, and then swing your right leg over the saddle.”
Yes, yes, Ian. Talk horsey to me.
As he said all of this, he helped me by placing his hand against my lower back. Once I was seated on top of Dottie, I felt as if I’d just achieved the ultimate life goal—I’d climbed onto a horse while Ian had assisted me, and I’d lived to tell the story.
“Well, this isn’t so bad,” I said, sitting on top of Dottie without a clue what to do next. Ian headed over to Big Red and saddled up like the hot rock star cowboy that he was. Rock star cowboy seemed like an extreme oxymoron, but I was wholeheartedly into it.
“
Okay, hold on to your straps and move slowly,” Ian said, pulling Big Red next to Dottie and me. He was close enough that if I needed his assistance, he’d be able to help me out. We started out very slowly, which was exactly what I needed, because the second Dottie began to move, my fears came rushing back to me.
“Are you sure this is safe?” I asked, feeling terrified by the whole situation.
“One hundred percent safe. Trust me, darling, you’re in good hands. Just talk to me to get out of your head. Keep your mind light and your movements light. You’re doing great.”
“Okay, okay. Talk, talk. What do we talk about?”
“Anything. Tell me whatever you want. How about your name? How did you get the name Hazel?”
I snickered a little, thinking about that. “Funny story. When I was born, I had big hazel eyes. Mama said she fell in love with them right away, but she hadn’t a clue that when a baby was born, her eye color could change over time. So she named me for my hazel eyes, even though down the line they’d become green.”
“I like your green eyes,” he commented, and I hoped to God my invisible lady boner wasn’t poking into Dottie.
I gave him a tight, awkward smile, because I didn’t know what else to say to his comment. I didn’t know how to take compliments, especially compliments from Ian. If someone had told me the man I’d met weeks back who’d been getting a blow job from some random woman would tell me he liked my eyes, I would’ve laughed in their face.
Now, I was stuck blushing like a fool but hoping that the sunbeams were enough excuse for the redness of my cheeks. Unluckily for me, that wasn’t the case.
“Do you always blush when someone gives you a compliment?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t received many throughout my life.”
He eyed me up and down as he scrunched up his nose. “It makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?”
“Times a million.” I laughed. “I don’t know how to react when nice things are said to me. Not enough practice.”
“Well, shit. That makes me want to say more nice things to you to make you uncomfortable, because you’re cute as shit when you don’t know how to take a compliment. The color in your cheeks heightens, and it’s adorable.”
My cheek color probably heightened some more. “Shut up, best friend,” I murmured, knowing I was redder than a Red Delicious apple.
“You have a beautiful face, Hazel Stone,” he mocked. “Your eyes remind me of the stars. You have a perfect-shaped nose, and I’ve never seen a pair of ears that were sexier.”
I laughed as I flipped him off. The moment I let go of the strap with my left hand, Dottie must’ve been freaked by something, because she took off at a crazy speed, sending me into a full-blown panic.
“Oh shit,” I heard Ian mutter as he started off in our direction.
I grabbed the strap that I’d dropped to give Ian the finger and held on for dear life. “Stop, Dottie!” I hollered, hoping my soon-to-be-ex–horse friend would slow down her movements.
I flew up and down against the saddle as Dottie proceeded to lose her freaking mind, and that, my friends, was how Hazel Stone broke her vagina. Once I’d managed to get Dottie to halt, Ian rushed over and helped me slide off the saddle. Every inch of me was battered and bruised from Dottie’s random burst of energy, but nothing, and I mean nothing, ached more than my vagina.
“Holy shit, are you okay?” Ian asked, his voice strained with worry. “I’ve never seen Dottie ever do something like that before. It’s like she lost her mind for a second or something. Fuck. Are you okay, Hazel?”
I couldn’t reply right away, because I was too busy bending over and holding my hoo-ha in my hands. You know what I always wanted in my life? A bruised vagina from horseback riding.
“Dang, did Dottie smack you down south?” he asked.
“Way below the border.” I nodded. “One nice bump sent this vanilla bean straight to hell.”
Ian raised an eyebrow, and a wicked grin fell to his lips. “You know what we have to do, right?”
“No, I don’t,” I groaned, still bent at the waist in pain.
“We have to ice it.”
“Ice what?”
“Your vagina.”
“My vagina what?”
“We have to ice your vagina.”
The redness from my furious pain shot straight to a new form of redness from embarrassment as I stood up. “You’re not icing my vagina, Ian Parker!”
“I’m just saying it’s the best way to get the pain down, and you don’t want swollen, um, you know . . . lips . . .” Now it was his turn to blush a little. Who knew that the playboy of the century could get shy from talking about my inflamed vagina?
“Well, if anyone’s icing me down below, it’s going to be me.”
“No, I can definitely do it. That’s what roommates are for, anyway,” he joked.
I laughed in agony. “Roommates are for icing each other’s private parts?”
“I mean, only the best roommates. Think of it as a roommates-with-benefits situation.”
“And the benefit is holding an ice pack to my lower region?”
“Yep. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.”
I shook my head. “And that someone will be me. Now, if you’d excuse me, I’m going to hobble over to the ranch house and swim in a pool of my own tears.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll carry you.”
“You will do no such—Ian!” I remarked as he scooped me up into his arms. “Put me down!”
“I will, once we reach the ranch house.” He waved over to another ranch hand and instructed him to put the horses back in the stables for us.
“No, do it now!” I argued, but secretly in my head, my thoughts were more like, Oh yes, Ian. Carry me back to our dungeon and ice my hoo-ha and tell me I’m pretty and sing into my ear as you feed me dark chocolate.
Had I mentioned Ian’s pecs?
Hey, Rock? Meet Hard.
I grumbled as if I were irritated the whole walk back to the ranch, but truly I was wondering if that roommates-with-benefits situation was a real thing. Because once my vagina wasn’t in a flurry of pain, it was going to take Ian up on that offer.
When we entered the house, Ian laid me down on the sofa. “I’ll get you something for your situation. Stay here,” he said.
I didn’t argue, because I was pretty certain I couldn’t move, even if I wanted to. My hand slightly massaged my lower region while he was gone, as I groaned in pain. When he came back, he had a pack of frozen peas in his grip and gave me a sloppy smile. “Sorry, this was all we had.”
I held my hand out, not even caring. I grabbed the vegetable bag from him and slammed it against my lower half in unbelievable pleasure. “Oh my gosh, yes,” I moaned in excitement from the coolness hitting my lower region. Sweet dreams are made of peas.
Ian sat down on the coffee table directly in front of me. He still had a smile plastered to his lips. “Is that enjoyable?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “You have no clue. I never thought I’d dream of the day when I’d be able to place peas against my vagina.”
“If you want, I can hold them in place,” he said, tongue in cheek. I opened my eyes to see his mischievous smirk. “You know, just a helpful roommate.”
“Well, aren’t you just the roommate of the year?”
“I take my roomie duties seriously,” he joked, eyeing the peas. Or, well, eyeing my vagina. It was hard to tell at this point. “You were doing pretty good riding until Dottie lost her mind.”
“I know, right? I really thought Dottie and I were friends. Needless to say, we aren’t on speaking terms for a while.”
“I’d never seen her do that before. Maybe she was trying to be a wingwoman to help get me to ice you.”
I laughed. “She could’ve found a better way to do it.”
“Are you okay, though? I feel shitty, because it was my idea to get you riding. I figured it might’ve been a nice break from the day-in-and-
day-out ranch work. Plus, you and I haven’t had a chance to hang out outside of working with the band and working on the ranch.”
He wanted to hang out with me outside of work and music?
Well, that was surprising to hear.
I combed my hand through my hair and gave him a weak smile. “Maybe next time we can just go out for ice cream,” I joked.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Damn . . . the guys are going to give me a hard time once they hear I put you on Dottie and she treated you bad. You wouldn’t believe the hell they gave me once they heard I pretty much treated you like shit when we first met. They love you. It’s like you’re a manager to them or something. I swear, sometimes they come up with music ideas when you aren’t around and say, ‘We should run it by Hazel first. She’ll know if it’s good or not.’ I don’t know how you did it, but you got them all wrapped around your finger.”
I smiled. “And what about you? Are you wrapped around my finger too?”
His dark brows lowered, and he leaned in toward me. As he pierced me with his stare, every hair on my body stood up with nerves. “I’m wrapped so tightly around that finger you could tell me to go dive into the pigpens, and I think I would.”
I bit my bottom lip while my hand stayed placed against the peas. “I know I joke about us being best friends, but we are friends, right? Like, we’re not just roommates and coworkers, right?”
“Right. You’re my friend, Haze. I don’t deserve to be your friend, but I’m happy I am.”
Just friends, though? I thought to myself, but I didn’t let the words leave my mouth. I shifted around on the sofa and cleared my throat.
Ian looked from my eyes down to the peas. “Are you sure you don’t want my help icing your vagina? I’m pretty sure that would make me the best of friends, helping you out like that.”
I smirked and shook my head. “I’m sure you have enough women that you could be icing down south if you wanted to, even though you haven’t brought anyone home in a while.”
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