“I’m starving,” she admitted.
“It’s all the exercise we’ve been having,” he grinned.
She scooped up the last crumb of her hash browns; sated, she pushed away the side plate with her pancakes on it.
“Aw, you’re skipping the best part. Gotta have a bite or two of the ‘Best Pancakes in Wyoming’!” Grant teased. He applied liberal amounts of syrup and butter to her untouched stack, cut off a piece with his fork, and held it out to her. “C’mon, baby bird.”
She opened her mouth, and he fed her.
A drop of syrup slid off the fork and rolled down her chin. Grant leaned in and licked it off.
“Delicious,” she said, moving her lips to his again.
He fed her another forkful and ran his tongue across her sticky lips. Her tongue met his, playful.
“Don’t know about the pancakes,” she said. “But I do like the syrup.”
He set down the fork and dipped his finger in the syrup, drew a line of it across her lips, and licked that off, too.
“Wish I could lick it off all over you.”
“Why don’t you?” she suggested.
“Well, then,” he said.
He dipped his finger in the syrup again and ran it down the side of her neck, following with his tongue. He let a thin line of the stuff drip off his finger and run down the front of her throat to her cleavage.
Again his tongue followed the trajectory of the syrup, sliding down between her breasts. “Mmm, very tasty.”
She felt that fever coming over her again, and it didn’t frighten her now. In fact, she welcomed the rush.
“More,” she murmured. She dropped her hand lightly over his cock. She could feel him stir under her touch, so she touched some more.
“The lady asks for more,” he said, a devilish gleam in his eye.
She watched him press his fingers into a pat of butter. She gasped as he spread her legs and pushed her panties aside and rubbed it in her pubic hair, making it slick and shiny. He took more butter and pushed it up inside her, where she was hot enough that it melted and ran down her thighs.
“Oh,” was all she said.
He went back to the syrup again, swirling his sticky fingers inside her. The suction made her come fast and hard against his hand; he had to put his other hand over her mouth to stifle the cry she made.
“Shhh,” he said. Then, “You still want more?”
She managed to nod. “Lots more.” The raw urgency in her voice surprised them both.
He took her at her word. He painted her arms with syrup, stroked it down inside the front of her dress, and then set about licking her.
“I look like I bathed in breakfast, I guess,” she said.
“Not quite.”
He couldn’t seem to stop himself now; he slid the straps of her dress low and rubbed at her nipples with butter and more syrup, popped her gooey breasts all the way out, and buried his face against them, all the time licking and kissing her.
She unzipped his fly, rubbing a pat of butter between her own hands and sliding them up and down his cock.
She wriggled out of her panties and climbed on his lap, pushing his cock inside her. The butter and syrup on her legs rubbed off on his jeans and her syrupy breasts left smears on his T-shirt. He ran his sticky, buttery hands through her hair.
They were out of syrup now, and it was orange marmalade she rubbed on his cheeks and licked off, grape jam she painted on his fingers, which he stroked across her shoulders. She wanted to roll with him in a whole vat of syrup and butter and jam.
They came together, arms wrapped tight around each other. They couldn’t move at all for a moment. Then she climbed off his lap and tucked her breasts inside her dress and pulled down her dress. He zipped up his jeans. They looked at each other and just laughed.
The waitress sauntered down the hallway past the bar. Her eyes went large looking at them, the syrup dripping off the ends of Anna’s hair, the stains on Grant’s shirt and Anna’s dress, the jelly on his cheeks.
“Had yourselves a little food fight, I see,” she said matter-of-factly and slapped down the check.
Grant left a big tip to make up for the messy table and in thanks to the waitress for not calling it exactly as she must’ve seen it.
They could hardly stop laughing just looking at each other. They cleaned up as best they could in the cold-water restrooms behind the restaurant, both of them emerging with wet hair, clean hands, and only faintly improved clothing.
“It sure is fun to buy you breakfast,” he said, helping Anna into the truck.
He’d promised to be at the fair by three, so he had to gun it through the red dust of southern Wyoming, with her pressed up against him, both of them singing along with anything that came on the radio: Brad Paisley and Toby Keith on FM country, and, when they lost that, ancient Petula Clark, crooning “Downtown,” followed by the instrumental theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on the static-ridden AM dial.
They made it in time, even with a detour to the Wal-Mart in Thermopolis for a clean dress for Anna and T-shirt and jeans for Grant. When they arrived at the fairgrounds, he popped a peppermint Life Saver in his mouth and his Stetson on his head. Anna stayed in the truck, saying she wanted to fix herself up a little. He looked back as he crossed the parking lot and saw her applying lip gloss to her pretty lips, and he almost turned back around just to kiss it off her again.
Instead, he settled himself at a small table between the cattle and horse barns next to Ag Hall and signed black-and-white glossies of himself astride a bronc. Everyone was wishing him luck in the finals and promising to drive up to the Stampede and see him make good for every local boy in Wyoming.
Anna slipped into the crowd around him and handed him her own photo to sign. He wrote Just wait’ll dinner on it, and she laughed.
She’d pulled her hair into a ponytail, the way she’d had it when she first met him, and her makeup was perfect again. She watched him signing for a while, and then she went off and bought herself a Coke and left one on the table for him and sat down on a bench in the shade in front of the barn. All he could see of her from there were her legs, crossed ladylike at the ankles.
Three hours hurried by, and his teeth hurt from smiling so much, and his hand ached from signing his name over and over, but the promoter was happy—good crowd—and he gave Grant two hundred, said he’d sold a lot of pictures. He wanted to talk about bull riding and calf roping and a lot of other stuff, but Grant said he had a friend waiting and took off at a jog around the barn to where Anna was sitting, shaking the ice in her cup, which was all that was left of her soda.
That cute little nose, those freckles, those lush lips. Her new sun-dress was yellow and straight-off-the-rack crisp in spite of the heat, and, man, how he wanted to grab the fabric in his hands and crumple it up around her hips and have at her again.
Beads of perspiration clung to her forehead and to the shallow of her flesh between her breasts. He wanted to wipe it away with his tongue, but there were people walking by.
“It sure is hot,” she said, crunching some of her ice.
“We’re down in the plains here, that’s why,” he said. “Sorry I left you to sit out in the heat all this time.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’ve kept myself busy.”
“Doing what?” He’d seen her legs; he knew she hadn’t moved since she brought him the Coke.
“Thinking about all the fun we’re going to have at the fair.” She uncrossed her legs and spread them just a little at the knees. Looking down, he could see she’d taken off her underwear.
You wouldn’t figure it, her sitting there all nice and proper, her hair in that girlish ponytail—you wouldn’t figure it, from what she’d told him about her ex-fiancé and her routine life in the city, but this girl was wild. Best of all, she was wild for him.
“You’re crazy,” he told her.
“About you,” she replied, her eyes shining with the truth of it. “Crazy about you, too.�
� He put his arm around her shoulders, and she put her arm around his waist, and they walked around the fair.
He bought them a couple of cold beers and some popcorn, and as the warm summer twilight fell in golden, rosy shades around them, and dust rose up from the fairgrounds in little dry puffs and clung to his boots and her toes, he thought he was maybe the happiest, most foolish, most turned-on cowboy on Earth. And he was gonna take first in the finals tomorrow, for sure. And she was gonna be there watching him.
Anna knew she’d crossed some kind of line, gone over to a place where all she wanted was Grant. All she wanted was to be with him, touch him, feel him, have him touch her. She felt electric, intoxicated, insatiable, alive. She was ready and eager for anything, and now she would show him she was.
She sat on his lap on the Tilt-a-Whirl while he spun the wheel in their car faster and faster, making her dizzy. In the House of Mirrors, he bent her backward and posed with her like a swashbuckling silent-film star; she was in a swoon in his arms even before he slid his hand under her skirt and stroked her bare bottom with his warm, dry fingertips.
On the midway, with his arms wrapped around her, he helped her shoot out a target with an air rifle. For a prize she got a shiny purple bear—and the sensation of his stiff cock pressed against her from behind.
He rode a mechanical bull just for laughs, blowing the mind of the kid running the thing and drawing a crowd. The ride was spectacular enough that he won her an even larger stuffed bear. Some people recognized him, so the two of them gave both prizes to a couple of little kids and hurried into the dark of the Haunted House.
Anna screamed for the first time when a glowing skeleton dropped down right in front of her; the second time, Grant made her scream, slipping his fingers in and out of her.
They listened to a bluegrass band and danced under a wide sunset sky, with the lights of the midway spinning around them. Grant kept a hand on the small of her back, in that spot she loved, steering her easily around the dance floor. Then he moved her behind the bandstand and probed her pussy with his thumb.
On the Ferris wheel they necked and groped, and she took out his cock and just stroked him lightly with her fingers.
Afterward, they drifted past giant pigs and woolly sheep and big-eyed calves with blue ribbons hooked on their pens. In the air-conditioned exhibit halls they lingered over beautiful hand-sewn quilts and jewel-like jars of preserves and enormous pickles, which she whispered to him, were not quite the size of his enormous dick.
They had their handwriting analyzed: true love was predicted. Then, as the moon rose yellow and fat in the sky, they succumbed to the heavenly aroma of barbecue. Grant filled a big cardboard tray with ribs, corn on the cob, more beers, a slab of hot-fudge-slathered brownie, and pale pink orbs of cotton candy.
“I don’t know if I can eat all that,” Anna protested, laughing.
“My mama always told me to be good, and clean my plate. But I won’t mind if you wanna be a bad girl, and play with your food,” he said.
A heat rose in her, consumed her like a wave. She was ready for anything, and she would show him she was.
Grant found a picnic table at the dark edge of the fairgrounds ringed by generators running the rides and sheltered further by a large spreading oak. The buzzing and humming of the generators overpowered the screams and laughter from the midway, just as their bulk blocked out most of the light.
They sat down on the bench, their knees touching, his heart pounding with how much he wanted her, but he enjoyed waiting, too, waiting for her to maybe make the move.
“Messy,” Anna said, licking some of the barbecue sauce off her fingers, eyeing him mischievously. “Don’t you think?”
That was enough of an invitation for him. He slipped the straps of her dress off her shoulders and lifted her beautiful breasts out into the warm night air. He tasted them plain and then with a little bit of spicy barbecue, with the warm, oily butter for the corn, with little puffs of cotton candy smeared on them.
They fed each other chunks of brownie with their fingers, licking the fudge sauce off each other’s hands.
“You’ll let me do anything I want?” he asked her, but it wasn’t much of a question, because he already knew.
“I want you to do everything you can think of,” she murmured.
She spread her legs for him, and he went down in the dust on his knees and painted her thighs with butter, rubbed it down her calves and knees and even between her dusty toes. He took a handful of the cotton candy and decorated her pussy with it, a cloud of a pink muff covering her thick, curly brown one.
“I can’t keep my hands off you,” he admitted.
“Or your tongue. And, please, don’t stop, okay? Please don’t, ever.”
And there he was with his face inside her again, getting the butter he’d left on her legs all over his last clean shirt; there she was licking warm fudge sauce off his cock, giving him head again.
And then he spilled her back against the table, her ponytail falling into the last of the cotton candy, and he fucked her so hard and so fast one of their beers knocked over and sloshed against them. He rode her like he would a bronc, even lifting one hand up, showing off, sweat pouring off his forehead and into his eyes. How long could he last, how long? It was a grand championship ride, that was for sure; she was bucking and throbbing under him, she was laughing and she was crying, and they both finished at once as they were learning to do. He rolled off her and lay down next to her, panting on the tabletop.
“That was—” she began, but she stopped, at a loss for words.
“It sure was,” he agreed.
She swiped at her face with her hands and discovered the cotton candy in her hair. He had a time getting it untangled, but then he kept getting distracted from his purpose by little bits of the stuff falling off onto her shoulders and breasts, and brushing it away from her warm skin before it melted, and then watching it melt and pulling her nipples out hard, covered with the stuff like taffy, and all the time she was sucking on his fingers and his face.
There were still little bits of it in her hair and on her arms and cheeks and all over him when they left their alcove and the fair, stumbling through the dark parking lot, furtive, like they’d stolen their loving, so nobody would see the state they were in.
The moon was high in the sky now and even brighter than the midway lights. It was after midnight, and there was a chain across the end of the gravel road Grant had picked up off the highway. A sign alerted them: NO SWIMMING AFTER SUNSET.
He lifted the chain, and they ducked under, hearing only crickets, the occasional car back on the main road, and their own footsteps. Holding hands, they ran silently down to the lake. She kicked off her shoes and Grant pulled off his boots and stripped off his shirt, jeans, and boxers like they were all one thing, a second unnecessary skin he was removing.
Anna just stood for a minute, admiring his broad, strong chest, the muscles rippling in his arms, the tight, hard curve of his thighs, all silvered in the moonlight.
A cluster of tiny bats glided low over the wind-rippled water, and a few fireflies darted along. Raw rock slabs rose from dark hills like prayerful hands reaching for the sky.
It was a beautiful place, and Anna was utterly content; she could not think of a single thing more she wanted. She walked down to the water’s edge and waded in. She thought of something she wanted, then. She wanted the water not quite so cold.
Grant plunged past her. “What’re you waiting for?” he asked, diving in.
“It’s cold,” she said, having made it up to her knees.
He swam back to the shallows, reared out of the water, and lunged for her, pulling her into his arms and all the way in.
“Why’d you do that?” she gasped.
“You were having second thoughts,” he said. “No second thoughts allowed.”
She realized she hadn’t had any at all until now. Not one.
The shock of the cold against her skin receded; the night
was still and warm. They splashed and swam; she shook out her ponytail and rinsed the cotton candy from her hair. Small silver trout brushed her ankles. The sky was full of low, bright stars.
“God, you look good wet,” he said, admiring her breasts, transparent through her soaked dress.
They swam together to a sandbar in the center of the lake. He scooped her up in his arms again and lifted her out of the water. He laid her gently on the soft, fine sand, stripped off her dress in one careless motion, and climbed on top of her.
His cock felt hot inside her after the cold, clear water. She wrapped her legs around his hips, and they rocked together, slow and steady.
She touched his balls with the tips of her fingers, felt his dick tremble in her when she squeezed gently. She grabbed his buttocks as he rolled her over on top of him.
Dripping like a mermaid, she sat on his cock and deliciously rocked herself back and forth. Then he grabbed at her and held her down tight against him, his wet skin slapping against hers, and they both came at precisely the same, screaming second.
Well, she was the one who screamed. She threw back her head and cried out, her cry echoed by something that sounded like a coyote.
They both saw the lights snap on in a cabin across the lake.
“I don’t think it’s just the coyotes you woke. Park ranger lives over there.”
They heard a car engine start, and at that they sprang up, racing into the water again. Grant grabbed Anna’s dress from the sandbar; she gathered his clothes on the shore; they forgot her shoes.
They dove naked into his truck and hightailed it out of there, watching the headlights of the ranger’s truck swing out on the lake road as they hit the highway.
They stopped at a pull-out, and he tugged on his jeans, and she threw on his T-shirt, her dress too wet to manage. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, utterly fulfilled, slipping in and out of sleep. The day played back in her mind in a long, sensual blur, and she felt half drunk on the heady imbibing of him.
4
The Cowboy Page 25