One Wild Night

by Melissa Cutler

  The question tugged his eyebrows together, though the heated interest in his eyes never wavered. “Lutheran.”

  Not a local, not Catholic. And he was not dark-haired and dark-eyed, to boot. Three strikes and you’re out.

  Relief relaxed her shoulders and peeled away at her armor. This sexy, corn-fed Oklahoma cowboy was not part of the spell. She was in no danger of falling for him. Or him for her. She took a final step that brought her close enough to catch the faint scent of his aftershave and trace the curves of his lips with her gaze.

  “I’m Skye. What’s your name?”

  The muscles in his cheeks tugged those lips into a straight line and his gaze slid past her as he considered the question. “Tell you what, Skye. I don’t think I’m gonna tell you my name.” With a sweep of long eyelashes, he focused those baby blues on her eyes again. “Call me crazy, but tonight I just want to be that guy you caught mucking stalls in the barn.”

  Even better. After the month she’d had, with the smitten, puppy-dog eyes and fawning from the men she’d dated, not to mention the several marriage proposals she’d fielded, it came as a thrill to know that she could flirt with this guy—she could even sleep with him if she wanted—and yet there would be no price to pay, no forever to worry about. Never mind that becoming involved with resort guests was strictly forbidden by Polished Pro’s contract with Briscoe Ranch. If anything, that particular rule infused her blossoming interest with a sharp edge of danger. And Skye Martinez could never resist a little harmless danger.

  But to make absolutely certain, she asked, “To be clear, you don’t want to marry me?”

  He gave her the side-eye, as though she’d asked him a trick question. “No.”

  Excellent. “And you’re leaving town again after tomorrow night’s wedding, right? We’d never have reason to run into each other again because you’ll be gone?”

  “Uh … no? I mean, yes? My man-brain isn’t following what you’re getting at.”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” Allowing her expression to turn flirty, she slid her fingers along the broom handle. “So, why are you out here mucking stalls instead of with your wedding party?”

  His attention darted to an acoustic guitar leaning against the wall. “Looking for a little clarity.”

  “Your guitar?”

  “Sometimes a little clarity requires a song,” he said on a shrug.

  She gripped the broom handle and gave it a jiggle, though with his weight resting on it, it barely budged. “And sometimes it requires mucking a stall.”

  “Now you’re feeling me. What are you doing here so late on a Friday night, dressed so fine?’

  “Same as you. I come here when I need to clear my mind,” she said.

  “Yeah? What do you have on your mind that needs clearing?”

  She flickered her eyebrows, playing it cool, even though her arousal was a thick, heavy force bubbling in the cauldron of her belly. The sensation was almost foreign, it’d been so long since a man had lit her up like that.

  “Let’s make a deal,” she told him. “I won’t show you my baggage if you don’t show me yours.”

  He leaned the broom against a stall door and faced her square on, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that made his biceps round into solid curves. “Best deal I’ve heard in a long time.”

  The thrill of adventure coursed through her, potent and wild. More intoxicating than a trail ride in the dark with Vixen. Flirting with a man who wasn’t under a spell, whose name she’d didn’t know, whom she’d never see again. And a resort guest on top of all that. Then again, who was to say she couldn’t have her cake and eat it too?

  “In that case, stable boy, I have a question. You want to go for a ride?”

  Chapter Three

  Not that Gentry was questioning his good fortune, but riding through the dark night on a horse with a beautiful woman who had no idea who he was and didn’t care was almost too surreal to believe. But there they were, on a trail ride that hugged the hills and crossed through meadows and streams, with nothing but moonlight and stars to light their way.

  Gentry had been skeptical of riding out into the backcountry like this, but Skye had reassured him that she knew the trail by heart, just as the horses did with their superior night vision, and that the trail was pristinely kept by the equestrian center, with no hidden rocks or holes to trip the horses up. So far, he’d found her reassurances true in every way.

  The trail they were on had narrowed to single-file through a field of bluebonnets as high as his ankles that he was sure were lovely, but he only had eyes for the way the saddle accentuated Skye’s curves and the way the movement of the horse rocked her hips, all the way down to where the simple black cotton dress she wore bunched up high on her thighs. The dark copper hue of her skin glowed golden where the moonlight kissed it from the tops of those thighs until where her slender legs disappeared into black boots with intricate turquoise and gold stitching.

  But his favorite part was the way her dark-as-night hair whipped around when she turned to look at him with eyes that danced with seductive mischief. It had gotten so he was dreaming up questions just to get her to turn.

  “So … this is Frosty I’m riding? As in ‘Stay Frosty, my friends’?”

  She turned in the saddle and smiled at him, and just like that, his body pulsed with carnal awareness. “As in the snowman. The holiday season is a huge deal at the resort. All the animals have Christmas-y names.”

  Which gave him new understanding of why the private villa he was renting for the weekend was named the Poinsettia Suite. “Then your horse, Vixen. You’re sayin’ that’s not just a reflection of its hot-as-hell rider tonight?”

  “No. But thank you.”

  “The gratitude’s all mine, believe me.”

  His mind wasn’t only filled with questions he wanted to ask her to keep her turning and talking to him. The longer they rode, the more he was dying to ask about what she did for work at the resort. What her full name was. How did she learn to ride like this? But every time a question about her welled up, he bit his tongue.

  I won’t show you my baggage if you don’t show me yours.

  Far be it for him to be so curious, when he’d opted not to share his name with her.

  That in itself made him freer. He was just a man spending the evening with a beautiful woman. He wasn’t Gentry the performer. Gentry the celebrity.

  Gentry the washed-up star.

  Just a man on a horse, riding in the dark.

  Inspiration sparked in his mind like a sunburst. This night, this woman, was begging for a song to be written about her. “Riding in the Dark.” Perfect.

  She turned again, her eyes bright. “The trail’s opening up. I thought we might get our giddyup going, if you think you can handle your horse.”

  Handling the horse wasn’t a problem. It was its rider he was having trouble getting a handle on. Or, more accurately, he was having trouble getting a handle on his urge to pull her down off that horse and right into his arms. And he might have done it if the thought of galloping side-by-side with her in the darkness didn’t hold such appeal.

  But appeal it did. It’d been a long time since he rode like this, carefree and just for the fun of it, and even longer since he’d ridden in the dark, but it was a rush of freedom to submit to their horses’ night vision and the moonlight. How could he have forgotten something so wild and wonderful? Of course, he knew why. He’d been so busy hustling for his career for so long, touring and recording, then doing it all again. To top it all off, Cheyanne hadn’t been into horses, which, looking back on it, should have been a red flag.

  “You tell me when,” he said. “Let’s open her up.”

  Another smiling look over her shoulder, another painful pulse to his heart and his groin and all the places in between. “Then let’s go. Ride with me.”

  She gave a click of her tongue and the slightest nudge of her boot—and she and Vixen were off. Gentry nudged Frosty into motion, but the
horse was already speeding up to catch his friend. Neck and neck, their horses tore through the countryside.

  The wind in his hair, the not-unpleasant off-kilter feeling of riding in the darkness on an unknown trail in an unknown land. Gentry had never felt so alive. Blood pounded through his veins, his lungs filled and emptied with air, the wind nipped at his cheeks, and every footfall of the horses hit his ears with crystal clarity.

  Just like that, the puppet strings that had been binding Gentry snapped off. He was a free man. Was it the riding or was it the woman? Or was it the magic of hill country and the balmy Texas air? All he knew was that this experience was one-hundred-percent authentic—everything his performance tonight, hell, his life, hadn’t been.

  They barreled around a bend in the hills, but slowed slightly on the other side of it. Skye spread her arms wide and tipped her face up to the heavens, eyes closed. Her body swayed with a loose-hip grace in rhythm with her horse’s stride. “This is it. This is what I live for.”

  “Amen to that.”

  She dropped her chin and smiled at him, broadly enough that her teeth glowed white with the moon’s reflection. “Thank you for this. I needed to step out of myself for a night.”

  What did that mean, that she’d needed to step out of herself? For the first time, he recalled her words when she’d first discovered him in the stable. She’d been looking for a place to gain clarity, though she hadn’t said from what. What was going on in her life? What wasn’t working for her?

  Gentry was filled with a sudden, inexplicable urge to fix whatever it was. But that wasn’t part of the plan. Their whole time together tonight was predicated on the fact that he didn’t want to reveal his identity and her obvious relief that they’d never see each other again after this weekend.

  So, then, this ride—and whatever came to pass between them after it—would have to be enough. And wasn’t that a damn shame?

  “Think the horses can handle another run? Do you think you can?” he asked in challenge.

  This time, she gave him no signal before bursting forward into the night. It took Gentry and Frosty the lengths of two meadows to catch up with her, and by the time he did, they could both sense the horses fatiguing.

  Which meant it was time to head back to the stable. As much fun as Gentry had on the ride, he had the unmistakable feeling the best of the night was yet to come.

  Back at the stable, they worked in charged silence to tend the horses, the air thrumming with the knowledge that as soon as Vixen and Frosty were tucked in their stalls, something was going to happen between Skye and Gentry and it was going to be fireworks. He knew it; she knew it. And he couldn’t fucking wait.

  “That was incredible,” he said as she latched Vixen’s stall. “It almost makes me want to get back to my ranch, my horses.”

  “Almost?” Skye’s cheeks were flushed from the ride and her dress was wrinkled. If possible, she looked even sexier in this disheveled state, a true cowgirl with an untamed spark in her eyes that were the color of the earth after a rainstorm.

  Fire and earth. And Skye. Everything he hadn’t known he needed that night.

  He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Yes, ma’am, because there’s nobody like you there waiting to ride with me.”

  When she tipped her chin up and her lips parted, he didn’t even try to fight the urge to kiss her.

  Their mouths came together, hot and hungry, as though their trail ride had been an hour of foreplay leading very specifically, very deliberately, to this moment of connection. There was nothing exploratory or tentative about it. Their primed bodies pressed together, the perfect chemistry of her body’s soft curves and his hard edges. Gentry’s hand splayed over the small of her back to worship the flared curve of her hip as her hands explored his neck and hair.

  Brand new lyrics and guitar riffs raced through his head at lightning speed as the kiss got dirtier and sloppier, their hands more frantic in their exploration as desire throbbed between them, thick and elemental.

  His dick hardened painfully in the maddeningly tight pink bikini briefs. That’s when it hit him: no matter how much fun he could have with Skye, it had to end here. And not just because he was wearing a ridiculous pink plum sack as underwear. The heart of the matter was that whatever he and Skye did, the pleasure would be fleeting, ultimately meaning nothing to his future or his career unless he could take all that raw, erotic power and repurpose it to fuel his creativity. As much as he longed to lay Skye down on his bed and make down-and-dirty love to her for the rest of the night, the hard truth was that he had an album’s worth of songs to come up with in a month’s time, and for the first time in months, he felt saturated with inspiration and fresh ideas.

  Skye and their midnight ride had been the key, but it was time for him to take the reins and turn toward his future, which meant it was time to bid good-bye to the sweetest surprise he’d encountered in a long, long time.

  He peeled his body away from hers and stepped back. When he opened his eyes and looked at Skye, it was to find her clutching the wall behind her. Her lips were dewy and pouty, fully kissed. Her chest heaved with every labored breath. He looked into her eyes and let a languid smile curve his lips. Damn, she was a sight to behold. Ravishing was the only word that came to mind to describe her.

  It took a moment for Gentry to rebalance himself and find his voice. “Skye, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this, but I’m gonna need to stop right here and leave it like this between us. As bad as I want more of you, this has been a perfect night with you, and I need to hang on to the memory of it.” He straightened his thumbs and index fingers into a frame and gestured from her body to her face. “With you, just like this. Does that make any kind of sense?”

  Her languid smile fell and she nodded. “All that baggage that we agreed not to share.”

  “Exactly. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I do. I don’t like it, but I get it because it’s the same for me.” Her voice was husky, and a hint of a Hispanic accent had crept into it.

  He’d done that to her. He’d stripped away all her pretenses and made her melt into this supple, sultry beauty. That knowledge would sustain him through what he knew would be a sleepless night of song writing. And there was nothing saying they couldn’t return for an encore the next night, generate some more heat—and perhaps even some more inspiration. “And, hey, there’s always tomorrow night. Are you free to meet again?”

  Her smile turning aloof, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling, as if her weekly schedule were posted there.

  He stepped closer, reminding her of how charged the air between them got when they were near. “Say you’ll be here, Skye. Nine o’clock. Give me one last night with you before I pack up and go home to Oklahoma.”

  Her eyes fluttered closed. On a breathy whimper, she leaned in for a kiss. Gentry groaned as his willpower snapped. He braced his hands on the wall behind her and lowered his mouth. But before their lips could do more than brush, she ducked under his arm and out of reach, playing hard to get.

  He whirled to face her and found her smile one of flirty aloofness. She let her gaze linger on his lips before rolling it up his face to meet his eyes. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see if I show up tomorrow night.”

  He watched the seductive sway of her hips with each step as she walked away. So much for aloofness; he had all the evidence he needed that she was feeling it too.

  He adjusted himself in the underpants. Man, had he gotten it wrong. He hadn’t needed any special underwear or to try breathing out of his eyelids to break him free from his writer’s block. He’d needed a midnight ride with one of the hottest strangers he’d ever laid eyes on. As soon she was out of sight, he sat down on a bench near his guitar and whipped his phone out. He opened an email to himself, getting all those lyrics and song ideas out before he lost them. Frosty stuck his head out of his stall and nuzzled Gentry’s head as he typed with urgent purpose.

  When he’d gotten all t
he ideas out of his head, he stood and gave Frosty one last pet, then grabbed his guitar and headed back out into the night. Skye was nowhere to be seen, but then again, he hadn’t expected her to hang around after an exit like that. He walked with long, quick strides across the resort grounds to the resort’s cluster of lakefront private villas, eager to get busy crafting all those songs that his sexy new muse had inspired.

  Chapter Four

  Another weekend, another celebrity wedding, which meant there were way too many entitled, famous people at the resort this weekend for Skye’s taste. She loved Remedy and was so grateful for the friendship that had evolved between them since Remedy had relocated to Texas two years earlier, but Remedy was the daughter of two insanely famous actors and, as the resort’s wedding planner, she’d turned Dulcet into a bona fide celebrity hot spot.

  Great for business, but not so great for Polished Pro’s staff’s morale. While actresses and celebrity couples were hit-and-miss about tipping and their various levels of obnoxious entitlement, musicians were a whole different animal. They partied the hardest, left lousy tips if any, created the biggest messes in their rooms, and kept vampirish hours that screwed with Skye’s housekeeping schedule. But even this weekend’s influx of five hundred guests for some country music mogul’s daughter’s wedding couldn’t erase the skip in Skye’s step as she went through her workday.

  “Last night’s date must have been a winner. You’re practically glowing,” her mom commented in their shared office on the basement level of the resort’s main building. She speared her finger at Skye. “Just don’t tell me that glow is because you slept with him. If you treat yourself like a hussy, then men will too.”

  Right. She’d been on a date last night. She’d nearly forgotten. The truth was, she was pretty damn pleased with her hussy-like behavior the night before, not that she was ever going to share the story with anyone, least of all her mom. Her late-night rendezvous with the mysterious stable boy was an erotic present all for her. “Oh, yeah, the date was great. He was really generous.” With his words and talking about himself.