The Royal Wager

by Kristi Gold

  Mitch let her go long enough to shed his denim shirt and hat, leaving him wearing only a plain white tee. Tori followed suit, removing the black leather jacket to reveal the sleeveless red sweater that formed to her breasts perfectly.

  They left what clothes they could discard in public piled on the table, while Mitch imagined removing the rest of their clothes and taking her to his bed, beneath the patchwork quilt where he could end this torture. Where he could touch her with his hands, taste her with his mouth, satisfy the unbearable pressure building in his groin. But he had no right to ask that of her, even if he wanted her so badly he could carry her out of here at the first sign that she wanted it, too.

  They came back together, moved together but remained mostly in one spot, in the corner away from the rest of the dancers, only occasionally drifting into another couple’s path, disregarding the muttered cautions and the occasional near-collision.

  Mitch buried his face in her neck, tested the shell of her ear with the tip of his tongue. She responded with a soft, pleasurable sound that drove Mitch wild. He nudged her bottom toward him with his palms, until not an inch separated their lower bodies and only one thing could bring them closer. If Tori, with the sweet sexy smile, the voice like an angel and the body that could turn Mitch into a devil, hadn’t known how this unconventional foreplay was affecting Mitch down south, she did now. No way could she ignore his aroused state. No way could he ignore it, either, though he realized it was best if he tried.

  God, he wanted to kiss her, but he wasn’t sure whether to take the chance. If he made the move too soon, she might hightail it out of there, and he couldn’t stand it if she did. First of all, he’d lose his dignity, considering he was hard as a horseshoe and was relying on Tori to hide that fact. Secondly, he didn’t want this time to end without eventually knowing how her sexy mouth would feel against his, engaged in something besides small talk, even if that’s all he would know tonight.

  Maybe someone would play a fast song, something to help him regain control of his libido. He was surprised someone hadn’t, but when he glanced at the jukebox and found Stella and her friends feeding in quarters and giving him a thumbs-up, he realized they’d been the reason behind the barrage of sex songs.

  Then Tori tilted her face up, her warm lips settling against his neck, and Mitch gave up the fight. He danced her toward the dark, recessed area near the far end of the room, lit only by a flickering beer sign and far away from what was left of the late-night crowd.

  Once they stepped off the floor, he guided her to the corner and backed her up against the wall. He braced one hand over her head and the other on her waist, angling his lower body away from her, at least for the time being. Her eyes, dark as a desert at midnight, looked hazy as he brushed a kiss over her forehead.

  “Mitch, this is crazy,” she said in a breathless whisper.

  He trailed kisses along her jaw. “I know. Real crazy.”

  She turned her head slightly, giving him access to her neck. “We probably shouldn’t do this.”

  He pressed fully against her once more, letting her know his body didn’t agree. “Yeah. We probably shouldn’t.”

  “Mitch,” she murmured when he worked his mouth up her throat.

  He lifted his head and palmed her face with one hand, running his thumb along her soft lower lip. “Yeah?”

  She closed her eyes. “It’s hot in here.”

  It was now or never. He chose now. “Do you want to go someplace else?”

  “I want you to kiss me.”

  She didn’t have to tell him twice. He lowered his lips to hers, only a breath away from finally having what he wanted from her now—what he’d wanted all damn night since the moment he’d laid eyes on her—until, “Get the hell away from my woman!” drew him away from her to look around the corner.

  Bobby Lehman stood by the table where Stella was seated, his fists raised and aimed at the hulking deejay named Carl, a man who was twice the ranch foreman’s size with a temper second only to a raging bull defending his herd.

  Mitch could stay here and do what he wanted to do—kiss Tori senseless.

  Or he could rescue the groom from getting a beating the night before his wedding.

  Damn Bobby Lehman for ruining his night.

  Two

  Twenty minutes later, Tori found herself crammed into the front seat of Mitch’s fifteen-year-old faded black truck. She was closest to the passenger door while Bobby Lehman, the big burr in her butt, occupied the place where Tori preferred to be—next to Mitch. But when Bobby had threatened to throw himself out of the truck after they’d pulled away from the bar, Tori had agreed to switch places and block the exit, saving Bobby from the clutches of concrete even if he had insisted, loudly, that he had to go after Stella. However, at the moment, Tori would gladly open the door and shove him out, doing them all a favor.

  She’d never really understood what Stella saw in Bobby Lehman, a stocky-built, non-descript sort of guy with a brown flattop haircut that accentuated his receding hairline, hazel eyes and an overblown opinion of his attributes. Tori liked him less now that he was whining, “Oh, God, Stella’s not going to marry me,” blowing his whiskey breath on the side of her face since she refused to look at him. And she’d liked him even less when Mitch had gotten between Carl and Bobby to stop the brawl and Bobby had inadvertently slugged Mitch in the mouth. If she added the fact that Bobby had stopped Mitch from kissing her in the bar because of his hot head, she would literally despise the pavement he’d crawled upon on his way to the truck.

  Now that Mitch had a small split on the left corner of his bottom lip, Tori doubted he’d kiss her tonight. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. If she wanted him to grant her an interview, she needed to start acting like a professional, not some smitten woman willing to hop into bed with a pedigreed cowboy just because he looked great in jeans, danced like a pro and made her melt with his smile. Besides, she hadn’t really wanted to hop into bed with him. She’d wanted to hurl herself into bed with him without a second thought.

  “I gotta see my woman,” Bobby slurred when they arrived in front of Stella’s tiny white frame farmhouse, situated between the edge of town and the verge of nowhere. Tori’s accommodations until Sunday.

  “That’s not a good idea, Bob,” Mitch said, bracing an arm across Bobby’s chest to hold him back. “You better let her calm down first.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” Tori said as she grasped the handle. After she opened the door and slid out of the truck, she smiled at Mitch over Bobby, who was now leaning to one side. “Thanks, Mitch. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night at the wedding.”

  “If she marries me,” Bobby whined again.

  Mitch sent Tori a regretful look. “Yeah. Maybe we can finish our dance.”

  His grin, lopsided due to his swollen lip, did things to Tori that she felt all the way to the soles of her feet. “That’s a deal.”

  Just as she reached the gate, Tori heard, “Dammit, Bobby. Get back here!”

  Bobby rushed past her, pushing her against the fence as he tore into the house. Stunned, Tori turned to find Mitch rounding the hood, verbalizing the curses she had silently uttered at the drunken groom-to-be.

  “He’s determined to talk to her,” Mitch said when he reached Tori’s side.

  “I think we both should go in there and referee.”

  “I think you’re probably right.”

  Tori entered the house with Mitch behind her, finding wobbly Bobby facing off with stern Stella.

  “Carl was only congratulating me, you jackass!” Stella shouted, her face stained with tears.

  “He had his hand on your back…Stel…” Burp. “…la.”

  Mitch approached Bobby and grabbed his arm. “Come on, Bob. You need to sleep it off.”

  Bobby wrenched his arm away and stumbled back against the wall. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere till she talks to me.”

  Stella folded her arms beneath her full breasts. “I’m not talking to you ri
ght now, Bobby Joe Lehman. I’m not sure I’m even going to marry you.”

  Without warning, Bobby pushed off the wall and snatched the keys out of Mitch’s grasp. “Stella and me are going for a drive.”

  “No way, Bob,” Mitch said. “You’re drunk, so give them back.”

  But before Mitch could snatch them away, Stella grabbed the keys from Bobby, dropped them down her maternity blouse and grinned.

  Bobby growled and then went in search of Mitch’s keys, running his hands up Stella’s blouse like a security guard doing a strip search. Stella squealed and said, “You brute!” but didn’t put up one ounce of a fight.

  And just like that, Bobby and Stella were kissing and groping like a couple of horny kids, as if all were forgotten, especially that Tori and Mitch were standing there, playing witness to their foreplay.

  Tori turned her back on the disgusting scene and told them, “Get a room.”

  And they did, running hand in hand into the bedroom adjacent to the living room, slamming the door behind them. Tori stared at the closed door, mouth agape and totally shocked into silence.

  “Which one of us is going to get my keys?”

  Tori turned to Mitch and shook her head. “Not me. Not on your life. You should have put them in your pocket.”

  “That’s the last thing I wanted, Bobby rifling through my pocket.” Mitch ran a hand over the back of his neck. “What do you propose I use to get home?”

  “Stella’s car?”

  “You have any idea where she keeps her keys?”

  Tori visually searched the room. “In her purse, which is probably in the bedroom with her and Bobby. So I guess you can either call a cab, walk or wait.” She really hoped he’d choose the last option.

  “No cabs in Quail Run, and no way am I going to walk twenty miles in forty-degree weather.” He sauntered over to the floral sofa and set his long, lean body down on the cushions, easy as you please. “I’ll wait.”

  Suddenly very warm, and very thrilled, Tori slipped out of the black leather jacket and hung it on the hook by the opening leading to the kitchen before facing Mitch again. “You know, it could take a while.”

  “Probably not. Bobby’s pretty drunk. I’m not sure he can even get it…” He rubbed his shadowed jaw. “Get anything done.”

  Tori had no doubt Mitch could get it done, and quite sufficiently, drunk or not. But he wasn’t drunk, and neither was Tori, except she felt rather woozy seeing Mitch leaning back on the sofa, his raven hair shining in the light since he’d left his hat in the truck, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his large hands clasped over his board-flat belly, right above the big gleaming silver-and-gold belt buckle, and below that, the big….

  Tori forced her gaze back to his eyes. “Bobby’s been here the past two nights. From what I’ve heard, he’s rather…determined.” So was Tori, determined not to faint over the sheer maleness of Mitch Warner.

  “Don’t mind me,” he said. “You can go on to bed.”

  Don’t mind me? How could she possibly ignore him? “You’re sitting on my bed, Mitch.”

  His grin arrived slowly, bearing down on Tori with the force of an eighteen-wheeler hell-bent for the border. “Oh, yeah? I thought Stella had a spare room.”

  “She does, but it’s full of boxes and furniture ready for the move to the ranch where Bobby works.”

  “Bobby works for me.”

  Another shocking revelation. “She didn’t tell me that.”

  “Well, he does.” Mitch patted the seat beside him. “Come here. We can talk while Stella and Bob take care of business.”

  Tori thought it might be better if she suggested they sit at the dinette, not on her makeshift bed, in case she found it difficult to behave. But she was so drawn in by Mitch’s diamond-blue gaze that she moved toward the sofa as if he were pulling her forward with an invisible lasso.

  She dropped down beside him, keeping a decent berth between them, in case she did forget herself and tackled his fine cowboy bod.

  They remained silent for a few moments while Tori worked up the nerve to tell him what she did for a living and then ask him for an official interview. But before she could open her mouth, the trouble commenced, beginning with an “Oh, baby,” then an “Oh, Bobby, oh, Bobby, ohhhh….” The thumping against the wall behind the sofa sent both Mitch and Tori off the couch simultaneously.

  “Get your jacket and let’s get out of here,” Mitch said.

  Tori complied and met Mitch at the front entrance. “Where are we going?”

  “Anywhere but here,” he said as he opened the door.

  They walked to the truck but when Tori headed for the passenger side, Mitch said, “I locked it.”

  She faced him again. “No one locks their vehicles in Quail Run.”

  “I do. I never know when some reporter is going to get it in their head to rummage though my glove box, looking for family secrets.”

  Tori swallowed hard. Maybe now wasn’t a good time to tell him she was a reporter. She’d wait and do it tomorrow night, after the wedding, since she assumed it was still on. The honeymoon obviously was.

  On the brink of freezing to the sidewalk, Tori pulled her jacket tighter around her. “Okay, so now what do you suggest we do? Go for a walk?” She nodded toward the closest neighbor’s house, which happened to be one pasture over. “We could beg the Wilsons for mercy.”

  Mitch strode to the back of the truck and pulled the tailgate down. “We can get back here for the time being. I have some hay and a couple of heavy blankets. That’ll keep us warm until Stella cries uncle. Or, ‘Oh, Bobby!’”

  Tori had no doubt that being under a blanket with Mitch Warner would keep her very warm and could get her into serious trouble. But that didn’t stop her from saying, “Okay. Guess it’s the best we can do for now.”

  Mitch stepped up into the pickup’s bed and held out his hand to help Tori up. Turning his back on her, he crouched down and pulled a wire cutter from the built-in metal toolbox backed up to the cab, snapping the string of wire binding the hay bale while Tori stood on the tailgate and watched.

  After scattering some hay and laying a blanket over it, he sat and again patted the spot beside him. “Soft as a feather bed.”

  As dangerous as one, too, Tori thought. But her teeth were about to chatter right out of her head if she didn’t get some heat.

  She slipped down beside Mitch where he covered them both with a red-and-black plaid blanket that smelled faintly of hay and oats, their heads propped against the partial bale of hay padding the toolbox. They stared straight ahead, the silence broken only by the occasional gust of wind whistling around them and rustling the leaves in the nearby maple tree. The lone guard light and a sliver of the moon high in the sky provided the only real illumination in the clear, dark night.

  “I really can’t believe that just happened,” Tori said, the heat of her blush offering some relief from the biting cold.

  “Me neither. Didn’t know old Bobby had it in him.”

  “Obviously he does since Stella’s pregnant.”

  Tori could feel his gaze lingering over her, caressing her as did his deep, seductive voice when he said, “I wonder if they broke the bed.”

  “If they haven’t by now, it’s a pretty sturdy bed.”

  “So you’ve had to put up with that every night?”

  “Yep, every night. And every time Stella started with the Oh, Bobby, I rolled my eyes and said, ‘Oh, brother.’” She turned her head and found he’d turned to his side to face her. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  He smiled, giving the moon and stars some hefty competition. “Which part? The moaning or the fact that they’re that passionate about each other?”

  Tori rolled to her side, bringing their faces so close she could feel the whisper of his breath against her forehead. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just jealous. My boyfriend never said, Oh, Tori! during…you know.”

  He frowned. “I thought you didn’t have
a boyfriend.”

  “Ex-boyfriend,” she corrected. “We broke up a few months ago.”

  “What went wrong?”

  Everything. “He stayed in Oklahoma City when I moved to Dallas. We tried the long-distance relationship for a while, but it didn’t last.”

  “Did you try phone sex?” he asked in an amused tone.

  “A guy who considers reading a stock market report as foreplay isn’t inclined to having phone sex.”

  “Yeah, well he must’ve been a real idiot.”

  “Honestly, Mike was a nice guy. Just not all that romantic.” And not all that easy to love.

  “Does that interest you, having someone talking to you during sex?”

  Tori shivered at the way Mitch had said the word “sex” as if he literally knew all the ins and outs. She trembled from the way he studied her with those heavenly blue eyes that made her want to sing a tribute. “I can’t really say what I prefer since I haven’t had that much experience. I’ve only had the one boyfriend.”

  When Mitch pulled the blanket up under their chins, Tori remembered he didn’t have on a jacket. “You must be freezing since you’re only wearing a shirt.”

  “Two shirts, and I’m pretty hot-natured.”

  He was simply hot, Tori decided, and shivered again.

  “But you’re cold, so let me give you some of my heat,” he said in a low, slow-burn voice. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer, doing exactly as he’d promised—giving her his heat. And Tori absorbed that heat in some places that were more than adequately covered.

  Noting his lip was beginning to swell more, she carefully touched the corner of his mouth above the cut. “You should really make Bobby pay dearly for this.”

  He surveyed her face for a long moment before his gaze came to rest on her mouth. “Yeah. Bobby owes me for a lot of things, especially for his damn interruption back in the bar.”