Hot and Bothered

by Lori Foster

  “A deal like this should be sealed with a kiss,” she whispered as she drew her hand away from his chest and held it out in front of his lips. “A kiss on the hand, of course.”

  Vexation, disappointment, and then finally grudging respect reflected in his eyes before Luke took his hands away from the tree and grasped her fingers, draping her hand over his.

  “Of course,” he said, before flashing that rascal grin. He was up to something.

  He brought her hand to his lips and then, with his left hand, turned it around, cradling it palm up just as his mouth descended. The contact of his moist lips on the sensitive center of her palm was more erotic than anything she’d ever experienced before, and Shay was incapable of doing anything but simply feel. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the tree for support as his tongue, stiffened to a point, excruciatingly slowly traced the lines on her palm. She swallowed a moan and shifted, swollen and needy, against the seam of her jeans. His hot breath blew on her wet skin, sending lightning sensation rocketing to her breasts, already aching, their nipples pebbling tighter. His lips nipped a trail to her wrist, where with tongue and teeth and in ten seconds he removed the leather band of her wristwatch. Her eyes flew open as the watch fell. Luke pressed his lower body against Shay’s to catch it between them.

  “Is that supposed to impress me with your prowess? A fancy form of the cherry stem trick from high school?” Shay had meant it to sound mocking—to lighten the atmosphere so heavy with arousal she could hardly breathe—instead it thickened it.

  “Hell, you think that was fancy?” he whispered, dipping his head to her ear. His voice was rough and thick. “I’d like to show you what fancy is.”

  They fit well against each other, too well. His iron-hard thighs pressed against hers. His erection, so hot she could feel it searing her through the thick blue jean cotton, filled the hollow between her hipbones. It was all she could do not to run her hands down his back to that tight rear end and press him deeper into her. His hooded eyes drank her in. She knew he felt everything she felt. Suddenly for an instant there were no secrets.

  It scared her more than she’d ever been scared in her life.

  Shay pulled her hands loose from his and pushed herself free. Luke gave way more easily than she’d suspected he would. She squeezed between him and his horse and then walked away as fast as she could around the left side of her horse and began untying the mare from the low tree limb. Her hands were shaking, but she didn’t want him to notice, so she put the horse’s head between them, pretending to adjust a piece of bridle.

  “Where are you going?” Luke asked, leaning over to scoop her watch up from the ground.

  Keeping her eyes carefully trained away from him, she drew in a deep breath and went back to fumbling with the reins. “I have to get back to do some interviews for my article.”

  “Did you forget about the bet?” He idly swung her watch from his thumb and forefinger.

  “Bet?” Shay blinked, her blood pounding everywhere but her head. “Oh, the bet.”

  “You back out now, I’d win by default. And you’d be giving up without ever trying to win that rare apology.”

  Luke took a big step toward her, reached under the tree and the horse’s neck to slip her watch into her pocket. His fingers lingered, caught there. She was grateful the horse hid her face from him because she had to bite her lower lip hard to keep from moaning. She grabbed the saddle tightly to stop the urge to lean into those warm, mobile fingers. After a moment he withdrew them, but slowly.

  “Well, what do you say?” he asked lazily, as he stepped back.

  Drawing in a deep shuddering breath, Shay debated. She knew she couldn’t trust her body to be around him for much longer; his sexiness anesthetized her brain. She needed to do her job, but the siren in her begged to let their sexual chemistry combust while the rebel in her longed to compromise his arrogance. Could she do it all? But how? Even when she put her defenses up and parried him with words, he skillfully turned it around to her disadvantage.

  And took advantage.

  Still, to have him apologize … that would be a coup. She’d love to take him out in the middle of the rodeo arena so every pro cowboy in Sonora could see it and she could show Monty and her father that little Shay could handle the dangerous bullriders just fine.

  “All right.” Shay replaced the reins and put her hands on her hips, praying for moral strength. “I’ve got my question.”

  His dimple danced. He must’ve expected her to turn tail and run. She’d surprised Luke Wilder; that obviously didn’t happen too often.

  “What’s the question, then?”

  Shay spread her arms out. “Is this your postion? Maybe you’re the one who likes it standing up.”

  “I do, actually.” He winked at her, then added, “But this isn’t my position for the question. I want my position to complement the question.”

  “OK.” Shay looked him in the eye. “Can you tell me what it’s like to ride a bull?”

  She’d surprised him a second time.

  Seconds ticked by. The cicadas perched in the trees filled the silence with their scratchy thrum. Shay saw him consider calling her bluff, and that’s exactly what it was, but it was also a test. If he suggested she ride him, like she guessed the overly arrogant cowboy would, then she’d be gone, damn the bet. But if he didn’t, well, she might actually enjoy those two dances.

  Suddenly Luke turned around and unwound the leather that attached the saddle to the girth and swung the saddle off the horse’s back and onto the tree. Then he untied the chestnut, jumped on, and held his left hand out.

  Her gaze flew to his in surprise.

  “Come on. Unless you’re reneging.”

  Shay put her hand in his and he pulled her up in front of him on the gelding’s bare back. Hands around her waist, Luke eased her bottom between his lap and the horse’s withers.

  He rested his head against hers and spoke so his words drifted past her ear: “The bull is in the chute, muscles quivering with excitement, with the intense need to break free, all his power just barely leashed. It’s tangible—you feel it, and you become it.

  “When you slide onto his back, it’s all there, between your legs, so tight, near to bursting. All you need is for the gate to open for it to explode underneath you, and then you’ll be out of control and able to ride with it.

  “But for a minute, this minute, you’re in control.”

  Luke took Shay’s right hand and turned it palm up, pressing it down against the horse’s withers, shoving it tight between her own legs. He ran the forefinger of his other hand hard across her palm. Erotic sensation shot up her arm. “This is when you wrap your hand in the rigging.” He took her other hand in his and fisted it, pounding it against her “rigged” hand. “You try to get into your own head even though you know it’s your heart that’s gotta get you through the next eight seconds. Time warps in those eight seconds. They seem like a lifetime and no time at all. You know all this as you straddle the bull. You feel yourself letting go. Then you give the nod.”

  He paused. The cicadas sang. The brutal summer sun beat down on them through the trees. The horse shifted beneath her hand, between her thighs.

  “The gate opens and the power underneath you explodes.”

  Shay had lost herself in his description, part of her hearing his double entendres and being aroused, the other part of her hearing the truth and understanding a little of the madness that drove a man to ride a ton of angry bull.

  “You have to throw your free hand up, away, and you’re left vulnerable.”

  Holding her left arm up in the air, Luke undulated his body against hers, mimicking a bull ride. His hand worked hers up and down, rubbing between her legs following the imaginary bucking, twisting, and lunging. His breathing quickened, fanning her cheek and, she realized, matching her own. Shay could feel his heart pounding against her back. The arm holding her right arm brushed her breast. Her thighs tightened against the hor
se’s barrel, but Luke’s thighs pushed hers up, letting them fall back and pushing them up again in a rhythmic motion.

  “What do you feel?” he whispered in her ear, the heat from his body surrounding her.

  “Vulnerable and out of control, riding an explosion of power with only my heart to guide me …” Shay murmured. “But most of all I feel alive.”

  His whiskey baritone thickened with an undertone of surprise. “That’s right. You got it.

  “Then,” he dropped her arm, let go of her hand, and wrapped his arms across her chest and around her torso and gave it a rough shake. His voice hardened to all business. “You land on your ass or your face, bounce back up, and get the hell out of the way.

  “You make the eight seconds, and you feel like a king.

  “You don’t, and you feel like the dirt you landed in.”

  Shay rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, trying to imagine the letdown, the disappointment. It wasn’t difficult; she felt that way now. They’d felt so close, more intimate than she’d ever felt with a man before. Somehow, she’d brushed that secret part of him and he’d closed it off. She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him. “What makes you try it again?”

  Luke paused, thinking hard. When he spoke he sounded like he’d made a revelation of his own. “I guess we do it again to experience those split seconds of feeling really alive, no matter what happens in the end.”

  His mouth was on hers then. Warm, mobile lips and the rough scrape of his razor stubble made the rest of her swollen aching parts beg to feel the erotic contrast. First, he gently tasted and tempted. She opened her mouth to him, tongues dancing and daring. With his hands, he pivoted her shoulders to face him; then he ran his hands along her sides, eliciting shivers of thrill. Luke slid his hands under her knee and guided it over the horse’s neck. Shay didn’t wait; she drew both legs up and pivoted until her body faced him. She threw her legs over his thighs. He pulled her into his lap where his hot, hard length pushed up against her. Shay moaned and shifted. Luke groaned and held her hips still against him. He’d never stopped kissing her, hard and soft, playfully, then passionately.

  The desire was spiraling through her faster and faster. The horse fidgeted and whinnied. Her mare answered. Shay drew away from Luke to reach at the mane behind her for balance and realized the craziness of what she was doing.

  The horses had more sense than she did.

  Shay was in the place she promised herself she wouldn’t be; she let the cowboy get to her. She should’ve known better than to play his game.

  “My interview is over.”

  She brought her left boot up and drew it over his lap. She slid to the ground, running her hands over her face, pausing at her swollen lips, wishing she could make them forget the feel of Luke Wilder.

  Escape was what she needed. She willed some steel into her noodle-strong legs and strode unevenly to the tree, freeing her reins.

  “So you lose,” his voice mocked her from above.

  “What?” Shay looked over her saddle at him, glad for the thousand pounds of animal between them.

  “I was still answering your question. You abdicated the position. Couldn’t take the heat. So I win.” Luke grinned and, except for the damp sheen on his lower lip and the mound in the crotch of his Wranglers, he looked totally unfazed. Damn him.

  “You play dirty,” Shay muttered.

  He shrugged. “Whatever it takes to win.”

  Shay suppressed a shiver of foreboding. Did his casual philosophy include killing to win?

  CHAPTER 3

  “You’re not only talking about winning bets, are you?” Shay asked, her gaze probing. The relentless wind whipped her hair around her suddenly sober face.

  Luke sensed a subtle change in the atmosphere between them. He answered carefully, “I’m talking about doing whatever it takes in everything. Career.” He paused, deciding to shake her up. “Love.”

  “So, let’s take love,” Shay said, not shaken at all. “What have you done that would impress me for love?”

  “I’ve never been in love,” Luke said, surprising himself with his frankness, “but I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to keep it once I find it.”

  “Including sacrificing part of yourself? Including compromising your independence?” Shay asked disbelievingly.

  “Including those.”

  “She’ll be a lucky woman then.” Was it envy he heard in her honey-rich alto?

  “She won’t be lucky; she’ll be working for it.” Luke grinned.

  “She will?” Shay looked at him, suspicious. “How?”

  “By sacrificing herself and compromising her independence.”

  As she shook her head, Shay’s face softened for a moment, and she chuckled. “Sounds painful.”

  He laughed with her. “I imagine it is.”

  “What makes you think you’re worth it?” Shay asked, only half-teasing. Her amber gaze caught his and held it for a beat. Her grin faded with his.

  Luke clenched his jaw and looked away, past the trees to the small rocky hills beyond.

  “I’m not.”

  He might want in Shay McIntyre’s blue jeans, but it wasn’t worth her irritating psychoanalysis. Without a backward glance, Luke threw the saddle back on his horse, cinched it tight, jumped on, and reined away from the tree. Once free, he kicked the gelding into a jog and weaved in between the low-hanging oak branches until he was out in the open prairie again.

  There were dozens of eager, available, uncomplicated women at each rodeo stop. Why did he pick a woman who stirred him up mentally as well as physically? Why did her questions remind him of how empty he felt beneath his brave facade? Why did her probing looks have to remind him why he’d joined the pro tour in the first place, why he couldn’t ever go home until he’d made himself famous? He didn’t need this. Luke urged his horse into a lope. He had three rounds of bulls to ride tonight. He couldn’t afford a wandering mind.

  “Why aren’t you worth a woman’s sacrifice, Luke Wilder?” she called from behind him.

  Glancing back, Luke saw she’d caught up with him. He felt his throat constricting with emotion. No one since his mother died had really asked him that question. His father despised him. His brothers harangued and lectured him. Cody dished out advice. But nobody had ever pushed when he pushed back. Nobody but this woman. He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want,” she returned, jamming her hands onto her hips.

  “Fine, then don’t ask me any more about things that aren’t any of your business.”

  “It’s my business if I’m invested in you.”

  “Invested?”

  “The bet. I haven’t paid my debt yet.”

  Luke smiled despite his turmoil. “One day you’re going to paint yourself into a corner with that quick mouth of yours.”

  “I think I already have,” she admitted in a rueful tone.

  The way this fiercely independent woman could admit she was wrong surprised him.

  Shay drew her mount next to his. Luke didn’t look at her, but his peripheral vision caught the comfortable way she sat a horse. A woman only got that way by growing up on one. The knowledge made him insatiably curious for more about her childhood.

  Hell, he was losing it. He never wanted to know anything about a woman except the location of her G-spot. If that wasn’t enough for a woman, well, too bad. It clearly wasn’t enough for Shay. But unlike most tiresome women who demanded he get to know what was in their heads, Shay kept trying to know what was in his head. Why?

  “You didn’t talk about your career,” she picked up where she’d left off earlier. “You say you do whatever it takes to win; what does that include?”

  She’d been after something all right, and it was more than his philosophy on love. Her eyes were sharp, her body language tight. She got way too nosy and way too serious for a little article about bullriders. Her probing his emotions was only a diversionary tac
tic; for some crazy reason, Luke felt a pang of disappointment.

  Wait a minute. He hadn’t liked the thought of her doing a psychoanalysis to snare him.

  Then why did he feel so let down when he figured out she could care less who he loved or how he loved?

  Hell, she’d turned his head around worse than the meanest bull.

  Angry with himself, he ticked his list off by slapping the ends of the reins hard against his thigh. “I’ve ridden hurt. Concussions, broken hands, they don’t stop me. I’ve gone to twice the number of rodeos this year my twenty-seven-year-old body probably is built to manage. I don’t have a real home, just live out of a duffel bag, in motel after motel.”

  “I hear you’re rich. Surely that makes the travel a little easer to take.”

  “You heard wrong. The only money I have and ever want to have is the money I earn myself.” Luke tensed defensively. “And I don’t know what the hell that has to do with an article on bullriders.”

  “Where you come from has a lot to do with where you are and where you’re going.” Shay paused, watching him closely before continuing, “Back to winning, then. You ride hurt, ride a lot, and take big chances. That’s the stuff you have direct control over. What about the competition? Isn’t there anything to give you a leg up there?”

  “Not above getting lucky by drawing at the top of the bull pen, lifting weights and running to stay in shape, and keeping healthy by the grace of God and the face of Fate.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Mostly.” He glanced at her, drawing his eyebrows together. What was she after? He added, “Unless I decided to start knocking off the other guys.”

  When he heard his flippant remark, he knew what she’d been after all along. Reining his horse to an abrupt halt that forced her to backtrack, Luke narrowed his eyes and watched her return. “Is that what this is all about? You heard about the accidents.”