Carolyn Brown - [Spikes & Spurs 07]

by Cowboy Seeks Bride

  She shifted to one side, put her bra on top of the saddlebags, and wiggled free of her jeans and panties. She was about to remove her socks when he reached down and took them off for her, kissed each toe separately, then strung kisses from her feet to her belly button.

  “God almighty!” she said.

  “He must be because He made you,” Dewar said when he left her midriff and kept traveling to her breasts.

  She’d been kissed before. She’d had sex before, but nothing prepared her for the sheer fire that turned her into an absolute yearning hussy craving his hands to touch more and more.

  ***

  Haley inhaled deeply and arched against him, wanting to get on with the show and yet not wanting the foreplay to end. She’d never known such searing heat and was afraid to let go of the feeling for fear it would never come around again. It was the most delicious thing she’d ever felt, and she looked forward to the ultimate climax. It could easily blow the top of her head right off if the foreplay was any indication of what the sex would be like.

  He left her breasts and latched on to her lips, nibbling and teasing her soft mouth open and then starting another mating dance even more provocative than the last one. All the air escaped her lungs and they burned as hot as the rest of her body before she remembered to inhale again.

  “Dewar, please,” she said.

  “Are you sure? I can play all night,” he said.

  “Darlin’, I do not doubt your ability, but I’m about to turn into nothing but ashes. Please.”

  The first thrust took her from earth to the clouds. She floated higher with every rocking movement, arching tighter and tighter toward him, wrapping her legs around his midsection and purring deep in her throat with the pleasure of it all. He was multitalented, able to kiss, touch, and keep up a steady motion all at the same time. And each one drove her completely wild with desire.

  “I’ve never felt like this,” she gasped.

  “Me either,” he said.

  His hands moved down her sides, touching places that she’d never even thought about being erogenous zones. Lord, after that night she’d be able to write erotic romance or at least an article for those women’s magazines about the ways a man can please a woman.

  The next thing she knew he’d lifted one of her hands and was licking the inside of her wrist. The thought was silly but the feeling was purely sexual, his tongue tickling the soft skin. Dammit! If a bracelet did that to a woman’s wrist, there’d be a run on every jewelry store in the whole world.

  She clasped her legs tighter. The thrusts became shorter and faster and she clamped on to his neck with her mouth to keep from screaming out. He slipped his hands under her bottom and with one final thrust, he collapsed on top of her with a throaty groan.

  “My God!” he mumbled.

  “Oh, yeah!” she whispered and straightened out her legs.

  “That was… wow!” he said.

  “I know,” she agreed.

  He held her tightly in his arms as he rolled to one side, her skin bringing the plastic-coated tarp with her. He deftly peeled it back and tucked the edge of the sleeping bag around them, wrapping them in a cocoon of pretty sparkly colors dancing around the hayloft.

  “Am I dreaming or did we just have mind-boggling sex?” she asked.

  “You ain’t dreamin’, darlin’,” he assured her.

  “Don’t leave me, Dewar. Stay with me,” she said.

  “I will until I have to leave,” he promised.

  She snuggled close to his chest, using his arm for a pillow. The pretty colors faded and the afterglow dimmed. She shut her eyes and slept.

  ***

  Dewar slept for a while but, when the rain stopped, he awoke. The clouds shifted and the moon hung in the loft window as if it were dangling from a string. Stars popped out around it like diamonds on black velvet.

  Haley slept soundly, her snores more like the purrs of a baby kitten than the full-fledged man-snores sneaking up the ladder from the men below. Dewar was not a virgin. He’d had women. He’d had a few real relationships. But nothing had ever prepared him for what had happened between him and Haley. It must be what sent his older brother into a tailspin of love-drunk blues when he’d met the woman who was to be his future wife.

  Things had worked out for Rye because Austin had inherited a watermelon farm right across from his ranch in Terral, Oklahoma. Haley didn’t have a square foot of land anywhere near Ringgold, so she had no reason to stick around once the trip was finished. Besides, miracles weren’t a dime a dozen and all four of his siblings had already dipped deeply into the miracle trough.

  “Miracles are all used up and nobody left one for me,” he whispered.

  She muttered and turned over with her back to him. He carefully moved away from her and wrapped the sleeping bag more firmly around her body before he dressed. He crawled silently down the ladder and was sleeping in his own bed when Coosie started rattling pots and pans at daybreak.

  “’Bout a noisy cook, aren’t you?” Dewar grumbled.

  “Time to rise and shine. Look at that sun peeking over the horizon out there. We got miles to go and cattle to herd. Kick them cowboys out of those warm beds and let’s get started,” Coosie said.

  Dewar would have rather had a big king-sized bed with Haley curled up with him all day. Just thinking about the positions they could get into in a big bed like that aroused him to the aching stage. He sat up and made himself think about shoveling horse shit from the stalls at the ranch to take away the pain.

  “Good morning!” Haley said from the ladder.

  She wore the same jeans she’d thrown in the corner last night, but Dewar knew now what was underneath that shirt and those jeans. He knew how she tasted, what she felt like, and how she responded to his touch, and even shoveling horse shit didn’t work.

  “Good morning. Looks like the rain stopped,” he said.

  Finn sat up and kicked back his blanket. “Rain wasn’t as uncomfortable as a sandstorm, but I’m not complainin’ about it bein’ over.”

  “Me either.” Sawyer yawned. “What’s for breakfast, Coosie, or do you want us to call you Cookie from now on?”

  Coosie shook an egg turner at him. “I told you last night, Coosie sounds tougher than Cookie and that’s what you will call me or you’ll be eatin’ a lot of burned food. We’re havin’ fried potatoes, ham, and scrambled eggs.”

  “Biscuits?” Rhett asked.

  “Every morning that I can make them, that way we got part of dinner fixed at the same time,” Coosie said.

  “When we get back home, I’m callin’ you D-d-d-dexter,” Buddy said.

  “At home I am Dexter. On the trail I’m Coosie.”

  Haley wandered through the back door and out to the corral where Eeyore came trotting right over to the corral fence. He stuck his big, long nose out and she scratched his ears.

  Dewar jerked on his boots and said, “I’ll check the cows.”

  He walked up behind her in time to hear her say, “They’re not making fancy cat food out of you, sweetheart. I’ll find a place to put you even if I have to pay a boarding fee.”

  “Guess you could board him at my horse ranch. I don’t reckon he’d eat a lot of grass and he could protect the new colts from coyotes,” Dewar said.

  She almost spun around and kissed him hard right there in front of the cowboys and Eeyore and even that longhorn bull, but she checked herself just short of doing it. “What would this boarding fee cost me?”

  “Not a thing. Like I said, he’ll pay for his keep by protecting my colts. I don’t have time to mollycoddle him, so you’d have to come up to the ranch and see him if you want him to have attention.”

  “Oh?”

  Dewar shrugged. “Or you can find a boarding place closer to your apartment in Dallas.”

  She whispered, “I reached for you this morning and was disappointed when you weren’t there.”

  “Yeah, well, I expect there’ll be fewer problems if the rest of the c
rew doesn’t know.”

  “You are probably right, and thank you for offering to keep my donkey. I appreciate it and I’ll be glad to pay you,” she said.

  He chuckled. “Just don’t go chargin’ me a fee for every coyote he kills.”

  Would a stubborn gray jackass be enough to make her learn to love his way of life? Maybe there was a miracle left in the trough for him after all and its name was Eeyore!

  Chapter 11

  The sun was out when they turned the cows and Eeyore out of the corral and started north again. Haley intended to act like the night never happened, but she couldn’t keep the crazy grin off her face. Dewar did a much better job, but maybe she hadn’t made him as hot as he did her.

  “Well, that must have been a mean thought,” Coosie said.

  “What?” Her neck popped when she twisted it too fast to look at him. She hadn’t even realized that she’d ridden up beside the wagon and wasn’t riding behind it anymore.

  “You were all smiles and your eyes were sparkly at whatever you were thinking about and then boom! Everything in your expression went black as sin. Looked like an angel that got kicked off a big old fluffy cloud in heaven and landed smack on the devil’s pitchfork.”

  Haley smiled at the description. “That bad, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah, must’ve been a terrible thought.”

  “It was, but it’s gone now. Talk to me,” she changed the subject.

  “About what?” Coosie asked.

  “Tell me about Dewar’s brothers.”

  Coosie shook his head. “You want to know about Dewar’s family, you ask him, not me. Or better yet, ask them.”

  “They aren’t here right now,” Haley said.

  “Then you’d better talk to him about them.”

  “Please! Tell me about Rye. He’s the oldest one in the family, right?”

  Coosie nodded.

  “And his wife is?”

  “Her name is Austin and they have two kids. Rachel and Eddie Cash.”

  “So is she from Ringgold?”

  “No.”

  Lord, getting Coosie to talk about the O’Donnells was worse than trying to pull hens’ teeth, as Granny McKay used to say.

  “And Dewar’s momma and daddy raise horses?” she asked.

  Any minute now he was going to get started and keep her entertained all the way up to dinnertime.

  “That’s right.”

  It damn sure wasn’t that minute.

  “If you want to know about Dewar, ask him, child,” Coosie said.

  “I’m not a child.”

  “You’re acting like one. You want me to tell you all about his family when it ain’t my place.”

  “That don’t make me a child.”

  Coosie laughed. “No, it makes you a manipulative woman. And it doesn’t become you. Let’s talk about cows or donkeys or even what I’m cooking for supper because I’m not going to tell you the O’Donnell family stories.”

  “You are mean.”

  “Yep, I am.” He chuckled. “I will tell you that when Rye went all love drunk over Austin that we all knew it before he did. Happens that way sometimes.”

  “Love drunk?” She frowned.

  “That means that he couldn’t think of another thing but her.”

  “Oh,” Haley said flatly.

  Was she love drunk? Did one fantastic night of sex in a hayloft with rain beating down on the tin roof make a person moonstruck? Was there a cure for it? Was Coosie telling her that he saw something between her and Dewar that morning?

  Before Coosie could say anything else, Dewar rode up and motioned for Coosie to pull up reins. “We’ve got a railroad track up ahead about a quarter of a mile. I’m going to get the cattle across and then send Finn and Buddy back to help you with the wagon. Might need some muscle to get the wheels over the tracks.”

  “Guess we’ll have a late dinner because you’ll want to get the cattle a mile or so down the road from the track before we stop, right?”

  “Why?” Haley asked.

  “Because if a train comes past, the noise could spook them into a stampede.” Dewar turned the horse around and rode away. His back reminded her of where her legs had been the night before and how broad and muscular it had been when she raked her nails down across his shoulders.

  Dewar rode back toward the front of the herd without so much as a wink or a word.

  “Austin makes watermelon wine,” Coosie said out of the clear blue.

  Finally! A statement without her having to pry it from his lips.

  “Watermelon wine?”

  “Yep, Austin uses her granny’s recipes and has a pretty damn good business with her wine making.”

  “Is it good? I’ve never had watermelon wine before.”

  “You’ll have to ask her to let you sample it sometime.”

  He didn’t venture forth with anything else and she couldn’t think of another question that he would answer, so she dropped back behind the wagon and herded a heifer that was trying to veer off to the west back into the herd. When they finally reached the train tracks, she pulled up reins and watched the process. Coosie crawled down off the buckboard and gave the reins to Finn, who led the horses from the front. Then Buddy and Coosie eased the front wheels over the first rails. Finn clucked his tongue and the horses moved a few feet. Coosie and Buddy pushed the wheels over the second rail and the back ones bumped up over the first one. It looked easy but that wagon was loaded and heavy. Haley had a whole new respect for both Coosie and Buddy by the time Coosie was back in the seat and they were rolling along again.

  “Tell me about Dewar,” she said. If she could catch him off guard, he might talk for a couple of hours.

  “He’s a real cowboy. Not a fake one. But I think you know that, Haley. You been lookin’ at him like you could eat him up ever since that first day.”

  “I have not!” she declared.

  Coosie chuckled down deep in his chest. “I see the cowboys are letting the cattle have a drink out of that farm pond up ahead. I reckon that’s where we’ll be stopping for dinner.”

  She carried her dinner to a fairly large-sized scrub oak beside the pond and sat down with her back to the tree bark. Haley had turned thirty the previous January. Her mother kept telling her that her clock was ticking loudly, but she hadn’t even made up her mind to have children. That had been a very small part of the problem with Joel. He wanted one child to carry on the name and inherit all of the Anderson oil money but no more. Haley had wanted either two or none. Being raised alone was no fun.

  Dewar sat down beside her. “Penny for your thoughts.”

  “They’d cost you far more than a penny.”

  “Dollar for your thoughts.”

  “I was thinking about babies.”

  Dewar choked on a sip of black coffee and sputtered until he finally got control. “You are on birth control, right?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  He exhaled loudly. “I didn’t even think to ask last night and I damn sure didn’t bring condoms. I wasn’t planning on…”

  She giggled. “I hope not.”

  He cut his eyes around to glare at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Look around you, Dewar. If you’d been plannin’ on sex, it wouldn’t have been with a woman. I’m glad you are straight.”

  Dewar chuckled. “Okay. But why were you thinking about babies?”

  “I’m thirty and I’m trying to decide if I want any.”

  “I thought all women wanted kids.”

  “I’m not all women and I haven’t made up my mind.”

  “Well, I want half a dozen. I don’t care if they’re boys, girls, or a mixture. I love my nieces and nephews and all my friends’ kids and I want some of my own to love and spoil,” Dewar said.

  “And what happens when you find the right woman, fall in love, and can’t live without her? She just wants to be in love with you and have this amazing life with you without kids,” Haley asked.

  Dewar
didn’t answer for five minutes. “I wouldn’t fall in love with a woman like that.”

  “Why?”

  “When I’m an old man, I want to put my grandchildren or even my great-grandchildren in the wheelbarrow and give them a ride out to the horse stable. I want to put them on their pony and lead them around the corral before they’re old enough to ride a big horse. And I want to see my wife’s smile, her pretty eyes, or maybe her attitude in those kids. To know that she lives on and on in the children that our love produced and the life that we shared. That’s why I want children.”

  One of those sentimental tears formed and found its way down her cheek. She wiped it away in the ruse of swiping at sweat. What Dewar said was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard and touched her heart deeper than the most elegant poem in the world.

  “So why don’t you want children?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want them. I just said I didn’t know if I did.”

  Coosie yelled across the campsite, “Y’all about through jawin’ over there? It’s time to wash up your plates, and get a move on it if we’re going to have supper at a decent time tonight.”

  Dewar stood up and held out a hand. She slipped hers in his and he pulled her up to her feet. For a minute, she thought he’d kiss her, but he just winked and walked away.

  Chapter 12

  Haley had looked forward to a bath all day. Not just a pan of water, her washcloth, and soap, but a flowing creek where the water was at least semi-warm that she could sit down in and it would come up to her waist. Where she could wash her hair and shave her legs and wash out her dirty clothing.

  But Kingfisher Creek was barely deep enough to water the cattle and entirely too muddy to take a bath in. Apache was unsaddled, brushed, and let loose with the cattle to graze on the spring grass in the pasture where they were camped. Coosie was fussing about with a pot of something that smelled wonderful. The rest of the crew had already unfurled their bedrolls and were stretched out with their hats over their eyes blocking the evening sun as it set in a glorious array of colors.

  Haley’s bedroll could wait until later. She pulled a few sheets from her diminishing roll of toilet paper and headed for the trees lining the creek with Eeyore trotting along beside her.