When his long fingers joined his tongue, she’d opened to him like a water lily. His cock was smooth and elegant, like his fingers. By the time he sat up to guide the tip into her, she’d wished her pussy really was a mouth so she could suck him inside. He hadn’t made her wait. He’d slid that solid dick of his into her to the hilt, until their pubic hair mingled.
Over the course of a few days that man made her come plenty of times—hard and fast. On the last day he teased that she was an eight-second ride. Well, a girl bull rider’s always going to get teased about something. Anyway, where do you go from there? Snubbed by a clown down the road or—worse—married to one?
A female bull rider is basically a loner or she isn’t a bull rider for long. That was her opinion—then and now.
“Thanks, Greggoire,” she said. She knew she was blushing but she didn’t care. As a redhead, she was used to it. It’d pass.
He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Like the blush of a rose,” he said.
Amy liked that he’d never betrayed a bit of surprise, over time, at the way her pale skin had weathered. He never treated her like an attention-junkie or a whore or a man. Mostly, he treated her like a girl he was sweet on. That endured although the romance or relationship, or whatever their time in Jasper could be called, ended.
“When are you going to be my blushing bride?” he asked.
Amy drew back slightly, putting distance between his hand and her face. “Silly so quickly,” she protested, making a face.
“How about a trip back up the mountains, after the Stampede?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Dinner tonight?”
“Not tonight,” she replied.
His broad shoulders lifted and fell in an easy shrug. “Good luck tomorrow. What bull did you get?”
“I’m riding Alberta’s Assassin.”
“Yikes! He’s got plenty of spirit.”
“Sure does, eh? You have my back?”
He ran his hand through his thick, black hair. His grin was so large it made his hazel eyes squint as if the sun were glaring in them. His face lit up, too. “Always,” he replied.
Gregg ambled off, exaggerating his step so he looked like a tall, straight-backed but bowlegged cowpoke. Amy laughed and went to inspect her tack.
There’s a moment, before the bucking chute opens, when the rider has to empty her mind of everything she knows—not just about bull riding, but especially about bull riding. Once the bull is released into the arena, if she’s still thinking, she’ll be off that animal in a split second. That’s part of the exhilaration—the trained experience of a blank mind smacking up against raw sensation. Pure muscle memory. It was to die for.
Which is almost what happened when Amy rode Alberta’s Assassin at the Calgary Stampede the next day.
Amy saw Gregg to the side of her bucking chute. She mounted the bull and gripped the bull rope with her right hand. She raised her left in the air and signaled that she was ready. The chute opened and the bull shot into the arena with Amy on his back. She leaned into the riotous action of the kicking beast and rode him high and hard, instinctively matching her motion to that of the heaving muscle and bone beneath her.
Amy’s blood rushed hot with adrenaline. She knew without doubt—without thought—that she was alive! The horn signaled her eight seconds were over—just before Assassin bucked her airborne. She flew for an exhilarating, horrifying moment before colliding with the ground. Assassin twisted around furiously, hooves flailing, intent on punishing her for her puny arrogance.
Amy saw the hooves descending and a flash of blood-red color before she blacked out.
When she saw the footage for the first time, it was obvious that those who witnessed the incident were undecided about who had suffered the greatest injuries—the girl bull rider or the bull fighter rodeo clown. Both were taken from the arena on stretchers, but while the girl had landed hard enough on her back for the crowd to hear the crack, she’d been wearing her protective vest. On the other hand, who knew what the artist burdened with the job of protecting the rider wore under his bright, baggy clothes?
One thing was for sure—that crazy clown went the extra mile doing his duty. He pretty much flung himself between the bull and Amy, and was gored for his trouble.
She fluttered a shaky hand from the stretcher she was bound to when her score, in the high eighties, was announced. The clown, on the other hand, remained deathly still.
Amy watched the video from her hospital bed. When she saw Gregg being tossed by the bull’s horn, it broke her heart. The same thing happened the second and the third time she watched it. By the sixth viewing she was back in her apartment in Calgary, after being under observation for twenty-four hours. She had a concussion and had fractured a couple of ribs, which, in the most dangerous sport of all, amounted to getting off scot free. Plus she’d won the competition and the money softened every blow she’d taken. Still, the footage caused the bull rider great pain.
It was as if, after years of shellacking her heart until it was hard as a stone, the sight of Greggoire in his baggy pants impaled on the two-thousand-pound bull’s lethal horn made her heart beat so hard and fast it broke free of its armor and—broke.
Amy, never one to shirk the difficult, lasted two days (or sixteen viewings) before she made up her mind. She was going to Foothills Medical Center to visit Gregg. She dressed in neon pink, which she personally believed clashed with her short mop of auburn hair, but she wanted to make a point, if he was well enough to understand it.
She wanted to take him everything—flowers, balloons, a basket of fruit—but none of it made any sense to her at all, so she just took herself and a card and went before she could change her mind.
Gregg was in a semiprivate room, but there was no one in the other bed. Amy was grateful for that because the sight of him made her want to cry—so pale even his lips were a pale pink when usually they were such a rich shade of red. So still, when some part of his body had always seemed to be in motion. Amy burst into tears. It was obvious, contrary to all she’d heard, that he was in a coma or perhaps had just died.
Amy grabbed a tissue from the box by his bed and sobbed into it. Hastily, she closed the curtain around his bed and fell into the visitor’s chair. It was imperative that nobody see the reigning Female Champion Bull Rider of the Calgary Stampede bawling like a baby at the bedside of a clown. It wouldn’t be good for the sport. She had to set an example for the girls coming up behind her. Unless . . . unless . . .
She wiped her eyes. “I’ve been stupid! And now I’ve let a fine man, a proud man, and such a brave man slip through my bull rope hand.” She grabbed fistfuls of his sheet and buried her face in them.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Gregg said. He patted the back of her head.
“Oh god, Gregg!” Amy sat up, wide-eyed. “I’m so glad you’re alive!”
“Ditto, doll face.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“Hey, I was just doin’ my job. ‘Rodeo protection artist,’ if you recall.”
“You saved my life! Have you seen the video?”
“No. I saw your back smack the ground once. I never want to see it again. You okay?”
“Yeah, nothin’ even broken. Two cracked ribs. Different two from last time.
But Assassin gored you!” Gregg winced. “Another reason I’ll take a pass on watching the footage. Anyway, there’s a first time for everything.”
“But you’re all messed up.”
“Ah. It’s not so bad. The head wound is superficial, really. I don’t even need this bandage.”
“Assassin gored your gut.” Amy grabbed his right hand with both of hers, intent on making him understand how serious the situation was.
“Yeah, but he threw me so his horn didn’t go as deep as it could’ve. Missed my belly by a good inch. And now we’re both here instead of just me. A fair exchange.”
“I won the purse,” said Amy.
“Well, there you go
. The Champ at last!”
Amy beamed. “So . . . do you want to go to Jasper when you get out of here?”
The look of surprise on Gregg’s face quickly morphed to pleasure. “Sure! Just let me hail the bartender and get my bill.”
Amy laughed. “I don’t think you’re going anywhere right now, Mister.”
“What are you going to tell folks who make fun of the champ bull rider dating a clown?”
Amy blushed scarlet. “I’m going to say, ‘A woman can have a relationship and be a bull rider. A woman really can have it all.’ I’m going to say, ‘He’s my hero. And he’s a bull fighter, buster.’ ”
Amy got up out of her chair. She kissed Gregg’s pale lips as gently as he’d kissed her the first time; she kissed him until his lips were red again. When he made room for her on the bed and raised his sheet, she snuggled in beside him, cuddling as close as she could.
Gregg popped open the buttons on her hot pink top, and in a moment he had her left breast in his hand. He gently rubbed her little nipple with his thumb. In a moment, the rosy bud hardened. Gregg groaned. “Where you been so long?” He dipped it in his mouth.
It was Amy’s turn to groan. She freed her right breast so he’d have more of what he’d been missing. She arched her back to push her tits in his face. “I thought about your mouth,” she confessed. Her breath deepened. “Your mouth on mine.”
Gregg ran his free hand up between her thighs. He cupped the cotton gusset that covered her pussy. With his middle finger he made a slight furrow between her labia and started a little pulsing beat.
Amy felt that small sensation with what seemed like every nerve in her body. She could not imagine how she’d lived without the electricity of their intimacy for so long.
“I thought about your tongue inside me,” she continued, “making me crazy.”
He lifted his head from the valley between her tits. “Lie back. I want to eat you.”
“Mmm.” Amy met his gaze with hers. Now that the barrier of mild flirtation between them had once again been lifted, it was as if she’d been starved for lack of him. She wanted to drink him with thirsty eyes and yes, she wanted that mouth on her pussy, but now just wasn’t the time.
She’d have to protect him.
“Better save it for the mountains,” she said.
Gregg scratched at the cotton covering her clit.
Amy moaned. Her snatch ached for him. She reached for and found his cock, tenting the front of his hospital gown. She stroked its smooth contours through the thin material, and to her delight he grew even harder.
“We can fuck,” she announced. “But it has to be gentle.”
“Okay,” he agreed. He flashed his sunshiny grin.
Amy shimmied out of her hot pink ensemble and tossed it on the chair. The outfit was followed by her underwear.
“Do you like my fancy clothes?” she asked.
“Yep, and me so plain,” replied Gregg, “lacking my finery.”
“I get it now and I agree,” said Amy.
Gregg gave her a questioning look.
“We don’t have to change for anybody,” she said. “Not even each other. Unless we want to.”
Gregg grinned. “You’re pretty smart for a bull rider,” he said.
“That’s because I’m a lady bull rider,” she replied. “I guess I’d better ride you like a not-so-bucking bronc, hmm?”
“Like a mechanical bull set on very, very low,” he agreed.
She pushed his gown up so she could see the bandage covering the wound the bull had inflicted. The deep bruising across her midsection clearly indicated where her ribs had cracked. It would be easy to avoid contact with their injuries but more difficult to match body rhythm to body rhythm without pain.
So they didn’t get to fuck like they had in Jasper—at least, not that day. This was a gentle fuck, so gentle she thought it might better be called “having sex” or even “making love.”
She was wet enough to easily receive his hard-on. Once he’d filled her with his long cock, she contracted her pelvic floor rhythmically, giving him a Kegel version of the pulsing finger he’d tortured her with earlier.
Gregg ran his hands over the contours of her breasts and belly. “I love your tits, your tummy, your pussy,” he murmured.
“Make me come, baby,” she said.
She began to rise and fall above him. Amy savored the slight draw of his cock against the walls of her vagina as she slowly shifted so only his tip was inside her. At the same steady pace, Amy lowered herself until once again she was impaled on Gregg’s solid cock.
Gregg found her clit with his fingers and circled it in slow motion. His other hand rested on her hip, neither guiding nor resisting her movement, just joining their bodies in a companionable way. This stirred a muscle memory in Amy that got her even hotter.
In no time her slick, satiny tunnel had adapted to his shape and she was riding his cock like a thick, wet pole—in slow mo.
They were lucky not to be disturbed, or perhaps the staff was lucky not to disturb them, because Amy had no intention of stopping, not for anything, and from the look in Gregg’s eyes, he felt the same.
Amy knew she’d be back in the arena and she guessed Gregg planned to be, too. It was in their bones and, after all, neither of them had even broken one. There’d be plenty more rodeo thrills. But this! Amy released a guttural groan as her internal pleasure points lit up, so warm and intense she imagined them as little white holiday lights. This was something else.
She leaned forward, her hands on the pillow on each side of his head. Carefully, she increased her speed. His fingers stayed steady on her clit, his other hand on her thigh. Her pussy contracted suddenly and she gasped.
For a moment she was suspended between flying and falling and, while the flying was fantastic, she was not afraid to fall.
“That’s it, baby, show me how much you love having my cock inside you again, all the way, sweetheart, let me fuck you all the way home,” coaxed Gregg.
“I’m gonna come,” she managed to mutter between gasps. She felt the tension in his hips start to release as he relinquished all self-control.
A split second later she was growling through gritted teeth as one gut-clenching paroxysm followed another.
He thrust up and down, no more than an inch, but it was enough to get him growling, too. His fingers continued making little circles around her clit, triggering wave after wave of pleasure.
Amy held her position, her knees wide apart, her wet pussy gripping and releasing his cock with each contraction.
Gregg jerked and groaned as he climaxed beneath her. His thumb mashed her clit and set off another spark that culminated in another explosion of bliss for Amy. Her pussy gripped his cock, which spurted once more. And so they continued until both were limp.
Amy dismounted gingerly. “Ow,” she said. “That was fantastic.”
“Ow,” Gregg agreed. “It was.”
Amy curled up beside him again. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her as close as he could.
She found she liked the sense of safety she got from being in his arms. It made for a very welcome change.
He nuzzled her earlobe affectionately. “That was no eight seconds,” he whispered.
“No, Greggoire,” she whispered back. “That was forever.”
SEVEN SWEETS AND SEVEN SOURS
Megan Hart
I have a suitcase packed and ready to go.
It doesn’t hold much. A pair of black trousers I took from my brother Jacob’s room. One of his white shirts. A pair of socks. I’ll wear the pair of hiking boots I bought from the local English department store and have hidden in the suitcase behind the chicken house, where my dat will never find it. My mam might have, if she hadn’t passed on last year. She was the reason I hadn’t left, but she’s gone.
For now, I wear my plain brown dress and the white mesh prayer cap. The ribbons dangle down my back along with my thick braid. My legs and feet are bare. My toes
, dirty. When I live among the English, I will never have dirty feet. I will cut my hair short and never wear a dress again.
Hannah’s house is dim and cooler than the late August day outside. Today is not baking or wash day. I brace myself for the possibility that her mother-in-law, Rebecca, will be in the kitchen when I come in through the back door, but the room is empty. From upstairs, I can hear the faint singsong of Hannah’s lullaby. She must be nursing the baby. He is only four months old and will sleep after she finishes. We will have an hour or two before he wakes.
I’m too eager. I take the stairs two at a time, my bare feet slapping the wood. I’ve been told too often I talk too loud, run too fast, argue too fiercely. My father scolds that I’m not womanly, and that’s the truth. I am not a woman, even if I wear the dress and grow my hair long and do the baking and washing, even if I have managed to learn, sometimes, to bow my head the way a woman should. I have never been a woman.
“Mary,” Hannah says as though she’s surprised to see me.
I told her I was coming over today. She didn’t forget. She always pretends she is surprised when I arrive. I understand why. In case there is someone to overhear us, she needs to be able to pretend she didn’t know. She’s never told me that, but I understand her. We’ve been friends since we were infants in our mams’ arms. I know her better than anyone ever will, even if Hannah will not admit it.
The baby in her arms falls away from her breast, his small mouth lax in sleep. He suckles the air for a moment before going still. Hannah puts him to her shoulder as she stands from her seat in the rocker in the corner. Her hand rubs along his tiny back until he belches so loud we both laugh, and she hushes me with her eyes alight with glee.
“Don’t wake him,” she says.
Silently, I stand aside while she settles the baby into the cradle near her side of the bed. He stirs but doesn’t wake. She turns to me without a word.
We never speak about the things we do when her husband is away in his woodshop. Hannah, I think, prefers to tell herself that every time is the last time. Even though I know she feels guilty about it and I know she intends that every time should be the last, it has never yet been.
Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 4 Page 18