So there wasn’t any sex in their immediate future—that didn’t mean he had to stop touching her.
Her apartment was a carbon copy of the one they’d just left—living room separated from the kitchen by an island, two bedrooms and a bath down the hall—but all resemblance ended there. Delon had been in places that screamed money. This one whispered. The couch was real suede, the tall coffee shop-style table and chairs some kind of hardwood with a marble top. A pricey-looking area rug covered most of the generic tan carpet. Everything was pure quality, including its owner.
Out of your league, a voice hissed in his ear.
He jammed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Nice place.”
“Thanks. I’m going to go, um…” She gestured down the hall. “Are you hungry? We could order a pizza or something.”
“Sure. I can do that.” Food. Good excuse to hang around. Talk. Keep his hands busy. Delon pulled a cell phone out of his shirt pocket. “Got any preferences?”
“No green pepper or fruit.”
And definitely no onions or roasted garlic. He fully intended to get another taste of her, even if it was only a nibble instead of the full-meal deal.
She disappeared into the bathroom. He dialed the pizza place and wandered the living room as he placed his order. The watercolor print over the fireplace was a Buck Taylor, one of Delon’s favorites. Then he looked closer and realized—holy shit—it wasn’t a print. He was looking at the original.
The girl on the phone said, “New Year’s Eve, it’s gonna be at least an hour for delivery.”
“That’s okay.” He could think of all kinds of ways to kill time. Like kissing Tori, and touching her…and then strolling outside to dive into the unheated pool before he burst into flames.
His whole body vibrated with desire, a motor revved to the red line. He set his cowboy hat brim up on the table, then rolled his shoulders and arched his back to work out the kinks. His body—yeah, the muscles, too—was stiff. He bent, touched his toes, and felt the tug in his hamstrings. Out of habit, he kicked his heel onto the back of one of the chairs and reached up to grab his ankle, pulling his chest to his knee. He held the stretch for a count of twenty, then rotated his upper body to the side and bent at the waist to press his palms to the ground on either side of his toes. Another count of twenty, then he kicked his foot off the chair, swung it down, and popped upright to find Tori staring at him.
“Excellent…flexibility,” she said.
“Five years of gymnastics.”
Her face lit up like a schoolkid who knew the right answer. “Like Ty Murray.”
“Yep.”
The Texas native had rocked the rodeo world, winning seven all-around world titles. When he’d claimed gymnastics played a big part in his success, every aspiring cowkid in the country had begged his parents to join. Merle Sanchez had said no, he didn’t have time to run them to lessons, but once again Iris Jacobs had saved the day, offering to take them instead.
He brushed his hand across the top of the chair, in case he’d smudged it. “I was stove up from being stuck on that couch for so long.”
Her eyebrows rose. “What can you do when you’re loose?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He laughed when her face went red, even as a part of him was thinking, Who is this guy, flirting and teasing? Just this once, he wasn’t going to overanalyze. Wouldn’t worry about tomorrow. For one night, he could just do and be what he wanted.
Tori pressed her palms to flushed cheeks. “I am the Queen of Inappropriate tonight.”
“You seem fine to me.” More than fine. Exceptional. He strolled over and looped his arms around her waist, pulling her close. The heat flared up all over again as she melted into him. “But I might have to kiss you again to be sure.”
He didn’t think it could get any hotter, but whoa. All of her was nestled up nice and snug against all of him, and now their hands had room to roam. He could’ve spent hours letting her hair flow like satin over his hands as they memorized the curve of her back—down, then up, then down again. The calluses on his riding hand scraped against her bare skin and she shivered.
She caught his hand and pulled it up to where she could inspect it. The skim of her thumb across the line of calluses at the base of his fingers was like a lick of fire. “From riding?”
“Yes.”
She brushed a kiss over the calluses, then followed up with a flick of her tongue in the center of his palm.
He groaned, burying his face in her hair, his breath hot and fast against her neck, his heart beating a hole in his chest. “So much for not jumping you the minute we walked in the door.”
“Actually, you didn’t. It’s been at least six minutes.”
He gave a pained laugh. “So what are we gonna do with the other fifty-four before the pizza gets here?”
Her hands smoothed over his back, from his shoulders to his belt. “This works for me.”
“Me too, but I’m not sure how much more I can take.” He hesitated, then blew out a pained sigh. “I didn’t come prepared for this, you know?”
There was an excruciating pause while he waited for her to shove him away.
“I am,” she blurted. “Prepared, I mean.”
Shit. Now he was gonna have to say, Sorry, it’s not like I don’t trust you when you say you’re on the pill or whatever, but it still ain’t gonna happen unless I’m covered, too. Literally. He eased back. “I’m kind of paranoid because of…well, anyway, without condoms it’s too risky. For both of us.”
Another pause while she stared at him as if trying to figure out if he was for real. Then she smiled. “I agree. So does my mother. That’s why she makes sure my medicine cabinet is always stocked.”
Delon’s jaw dropped. “Your…mother?”
“She’s very concerned that I’m going to throw away my future on…uh, well, you know.”
A guy like you. That voice again, as if he was still some nobody from a nothing little town. But he wasn’t, dammit. He was Delon Sanchez, National Finals bareback rider.
“Wait right here,” he said.
He found the condoms right where she said, in the medicine cabinet. Three different sizes, two brands of each. All unopened, he noted. Geezus. Her mother really did believe in covering every possibility. He grabbed a box, tore it open, pulled out a packet, and started to shove it in his pocket, then thought better. If a man was gonna be prepared, might as well go the whole nine yards. He unbuckled and unzipped his jeans, breathing a sigh of relief. Then he rolled the condom on, yanked his shirttails out and left them hanging loose as he walked back into the living room.
Tori had moved to one of the heavy wrought-iron stools at the breakfast bar and kicked off her boots. That little nothing of a skirt had ridden up on her thighs, showing off a mile of heart-stopping legs. When she saw him, her bare toes curled. God. She was killing him.
He stepped close and boxed her in, a hand braced on either side of her. “We’ve only got forty-nine minutes ’til the pizza guy knocks on the door.”
Her eyelashes fluttered down and her voice went husky. “I heard bareback riders only need eight seconds.”
He laughed, and then he kissed her again, and what little restraint they’d had was gone in a flash of pure flame. He devoured her mouth while his fingers went straight to the ties on her dress, top, then middle. The silk slid down to her waist. He covered her with his hands, all that warm, creamy flesh, and drew a moan from deep in her throat when his calluses scraped across her nipple. Ah. So she liked that, did she? Slowly, deliberately, he grazed his palm over her breast and she groaned again, arching into his touch. She tugged at the buttons on his shirt, pushed it aside, and it was his turn to groan as her fingernails scraped lightly over his shoulders, chest, nipples, then lower.
He peeled one hand off her breast and moved to her thigh. Satin ski
n, firm, toned flesh. She curled her calf around the back of his leg as he stroked higher, and higher, and then…his heart stuttered. He leaned back and pushed her skirt up so he could see what he’d just felt, and his heart ka-whomped again. A pink lace thong. Dear sweet Jesus.
She arched an eyebrow. “You like?”
“Oh baby.” He slipped his fingers under the narrow elastic at her hip, then followed the curve of it down and in, and muttered a curse when he found her as hot and ready as he was. She rocked into his touch, moaning as she pushed her hands under his belt and shoved his jeans down. She gasped, her hips jerking as his fingers slid deep into the center of all that slick heat.
“Oh God…” She breathed it like a prayer and went for his throat, using her teeth to scrape every nerve to a fever pitch.
He hooked both thumbs in her thong and dragged it past her knees. While she lifted her leg to push it the rest of the way off with her foot, he shoved his briefs down. Air shuddered out of her lungs when he cupped her butt in his hands and pulled her against him, flesh to aching flesh. She reached, stroked, and hissed her approval when she found the condom already in place.
And then he was lifting her, driving hard inside her. Screw finesse. His want was too huge, the heat and silken clench of her around him too intense. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but take, and take, and take some more as she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in deeper. The friction and pressure built and spiraled until all it took was the stroke of his thumb to send her flying. He drove into her three, four, five more times, then arched, stiffened, his groan low and gut-deep as he exploded into her.
He collapsed against her, shoulders heaving.
“Oh. Wow.” She was panting, her neck damp with sweat against his cheek.
He gulped in air. “No shit.”
She rested her forehead on his collarbone as they waited for the earth to stop rocking. “That was…fast.”
“Eight seconds, remember?”
She laughed, breathless. “Not sure I remember my name right now. But that was definitely…”
Insane. And for once in his life, he didn’t give one solitary damn. He raised his head and grinned into her dazed, flushed face. “We still have thirty-three minutes before the pizza gets here. Wanna go again?”
And again. And one more time, in the shower late the next morning. By the time he stumbled out of Tori’s car at Sanchez Trucking, everyone else was long gone, already seated around Miz Iris’s dinner table, no doubt. He tried to rehearse excuses as he drove to the Jacobs ranch in a haze of infatuation, lust, and rubber-kneed exhaustion, but it was Violet, not her mother, who met him at the door and corralled him in the mud room, out of earshot.
“What the actual fuck, Delon? You couldn’t even answer your phone?”
He pushed away the hand she’d planted on his chest. “It was turned off.”
“And luckily, I had a pretty good idea why, or our parents would really be going nuts.”
Oh, hell. “You didn’t tell them—”
“Are you kidding? Like I’m gonna tell them where you spent the night. Honest to hell. Tori Patterson?”
Delon’s foggy brain caught on a single word. One he’d barely registered the night before. “Wait. Patterson? Like…the Pattersons?”
Violet gave a disbelieving laugh. “Seriously? You didn’t know?”
“Why would I expect her—” Jesus Christ, she was a Patterson? “What was she doing at that party?”
“She’s going to college here. Trying to rodeo. How have you not heard?”
Delon shook his head, shock blasting away his euphoria. “I’ve been on the road. And distracted.”
“Obviously.” Violet folded her arms and glared at him. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where your brother is?”
“No. Why?”
“He was supposed to be back from Oklahoma City yesterday. He never showed. Your daddy was so worried he called Krista. She said they’d had a huge fight. Something about her taking Quint to France for three months. Now he’s MIA and not answering his phone.”
The shock crystallized to ice in his gut. The way Gil had been since the accident, who knew where he was…or what he might have done. Delon cursed, soft but with feeling. That selfish, entitled bitch—
“Yeah,” Violet said. “And now you’re gettin’ all sweet on her clone. Like I said, Delon, what…the…fuck?”
He blinked at her as his memories of the past twelve hours shifted, like someone had turned the kaleidoscope a half turn and the whole picture changed. Everything he’d thought he’d known about Tori. Everything he’d felt. Thought she felt too. Real? Or just a trick of the light?
The door behind him opened, admitting a rush of cold air and his brother. Gil was haggard, unshaven, his eyes slightly unfocused and dilated. Using his cane, so his hip must be killing him.
Alive, though. Reasonably whole. For now.
“What’s up?” he asked, his speech not slurred but fuzzy around the edges.
Delon stared at him for a long, painful moment, this twisted shadow of what had once been his brother. His heart settled into the pit of his stomach. “Nothing,” he said.
He kept it that way, no matter how his body screamed at him to just call Tori, already. A day. A week. Every time he reached for the phone, he conjured up that tortured image of Gil and pulled back. By the second week, he knew it was too late. If he called now, after leaving her hanging, she’d tell him to go to hell.
And just to stomp out that one stubborn ember of hope, when he got back into town at the end of that first three-week winter rodeo run, he did call, bracing himself for the worst.
But she’d said yes. And yes again the next time. And the next. How the hell could he stay away from her if the answer was always yes?
Yes, he could pop by, even though he hadn’t called until he was an hour out of town. Yes, he could come in, at two in the morning when he’d driven straight down after the rodeo in Guymon so he could have a few extra hours with her. Yes, yes, oh yes.
Right up until the day she didn’t answer at all.
He slammed his fist into the couch cushion. Idiot. Through all of the night’s prodding and prying and true confessions, he’d failed to ask the single most important question.
Why?
Chapter 14
Tori had just finished saddling her horse, still chewing over what the hell Delon meant with that crack about how she didn’t know him, when an ancient pickup roared into her driveway. Shawnee’s rig was straight out of an old cowboy cartoon—rusty, dented, what paint was left faded to an indefinable shade of green. The equally decrepit stock trailer had plywood wired onto the wooden slats on the sides to give the horse some protection from the elements, and a rope tied around the end gate to hold it shut.
The pickup engine died with a sputter and a cough. Shawnee stepped out of the cab, planted her hands on her hips, and gave Tori’s front yard a long once-over. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”
“My curb appeal dropped ten points when you parked that thing in the driveway,” Tori shot back.
Shawnee shrugged. “It’s not the rig that counts, it’s what you’re haulin’.”
For which Tori had no answer because Willy had always said the same thing. She jerked a thumb toward the arena. “I’m going to gather the steers. Come on back when you’re ready.”
“I’m so ready I could damn near wet myself,” Shawnee drawled. “Lead the way, Princess.”
Tori opened her mouth, then snapped it shut when Fudge whinnied right in her ear. She tugged on the reins when he craned his neck to gaze longingly at Shawnee’s trailer. “Don’t go getting attached,” she hissed. “They are not our friends.”
Behind them, Shawnee hacked out a laugh.
Neither spoke as they warmed up, the rapidly cooling air inside the a
rena still except for the sound of muffled hoofbeats and creaking leather as they readied ropes, pulled on gloves, and tightened cinches. Shawnee rode into the heeling box on the right side, grabbed a lever to open the rear gate, and pushed the first steer into the chute.
Tori built a loop and tucked it under her arm, willing away the tension in her muscles. “I need to take my time on the first few, make sure my horse is working right.”
“Whatever.”
Tori backed Fudge into the box. Shawnee did the same with her buckskin, her right thumb on the electric release button for the chute. Tori scraped up her scattered thoughts, rolled them into a ball, and chucked it over her shoulder. The game was the same no matter who was sitting over there in the heeling box. Rope the steer, turn the steer. Keep it simple. Isn’t that what Willy had told her a hundred times?
Don’t miss, don’t miss, don’t miss…
She squashed the desperate little whisper and focused on her target at the base of the steer’s horns. She nodded her head.
The gate banged open and Fudge launched from the corner, smooth as silk. She rode him into perfect position, then kept him there while she took two more swings and threw, acutely aware of Shawnee on the other side of the steer. The loop curled around the right horn but above the left. Tori let it lie and the rope dropped down and over the steer’s nose. She ripped the slack out and the loop came snug. Half a head. Sloppy, but legal. She wrapped the end of her rope around the saddle horn and went left.
Shawnee’s horse swooped in behind, her loop curling around the steer’s hind legs almost before he’d completed the turn, scooping up both feet. As she dallied, Fudge swung around to face the steer stretched between them.
“How was that?” Tori asked, then winced, because she sounded like a rookie who’d just turned her first steer. “Uh, the handle, I mean. How do you like them turned?”
Shawnee released her rope with a wide, leering grin. “Just like sex. Hard and fast, and don’t worry about the rope burns.”
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