When he turned back to the bed, I rolled to my side facing him, planting an elbow in the mattress so I could rest my head on my hand. “Guess this is where we get dressed and go,” I said softly, trying hard to keep the disappointment from tightening my voice. I really liked this cowboy. Too bad this was only a one-night stand.
He sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand over my shoulder down to the curve of my waist. His gaze followed. Probably filling in his mental picture of what he hadn’t been able to see in the dark.
I let him look his fill and didn’t feel the least bit embarrassed doing the same. Lord, the man was built. Thickly muscled arms and shoulders, ridged abdomen, lightly furred.
My gaze slipped to his waning erection, still clothed in a condom.
“Carly, I know you wanted this to be something…fun,” he said softly.
I knew what he was really trying to say. I didn’t want to say goodbye either. Something about him—maybe the care he’d taken with my body—made me feel things I couldn’t express. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night in his arms and hear half-hearted promises come morning.
“Cowboy,” I said, my flat tone a reminder of the rules, ignoring the way his expression slowly shuttered although it caused me a twinge of pain. “Storm’s over.”
He drew in a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right.” His lips curved in a rueful smile. “Guess I should get rid of this,” he said with a quick glance at his cock.
I stifled a sigh of regret and stayed silent as I watched him stride to the bathroom and quietly close the door. The sound of the shower starting up pulled me into action.
I rolled from the bed, opened the top drawer of the bedside table, and pulled out a small notepad and the motel’s pen. I quickly scribbled Carly and my real last name, plus my cell phone number on the top sheet, then searched the ground for his jeans and slipped the note into the front pocket.
Maybe he’d turn out his pockets before he washed them. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d read the note, smile and crumple it before throwing it out.
I really didn’t want to know. If he didn’t call, I’d prefer to think he never saw it and that maybe he carried a little regret with him when he thought about me and our tryst.
As for me, I knew watching a storm roll in would always remind me of my wild night ride with the rodeo champion.
I dressed quickly, let myself out of the room, and dug into my pocket for my keys. In minutes, I was pulling out of the parking lot, watching the motel’s lights grow fainter in the rearview mirror as I headed west, toward home. Regret weighed down my chest.
My cell phone buzzed on vibrate on the seat next to me, and I quelled the leap of hope that quickened my heartbeat until I saw CALLER UNKNOWN on the lit screen.
With my heart beating wildly, I smiled and tucked the phone between my shoulder and my ear. “Hi there, Cowboy. Miss me?”
*
A week later, I stroked “Waitress Red” onto my toenails, and then set my feet up on the porch rail to admire them while the polish dried. I’d had the cabin to myself all weekend, but that was about to change.
My parents were in Dallas, my brothers back at the ranch. No one had a clue I’d invited company to join me. A good thing, since the last thing I wanted was my brothers showing up with shotguns to give Dalton a proper pre-date warning. I’d groaned and cried through that humiliation too many times. Was it any wonder I took my pleasure when and where I could find it? And if they knew who he really was…?
An engine growled and tires kicked up white-flour dust in the distance. Cowboy’s Ford was taking the goat-trail road to the cabin with ease. He pulled it to a halt in front of the porch, opened his door and stood on the running board, tipping back his hat to give me a lazy once-over that left my skin tingling head to fire-engine red toes.
“Might have told me you were a Mallory…”
I grinned. Unrepentant. McCabes and Mallorys had been chewing over the same tracts of land since Texas had achieved statehood. The fact we’d never met before that day in the diner was no surprise since our families’ friends would never stray from one camp to the other. Guest lists for parties were carefully scrutinized and scrubbed.
He stepped down to the dirt and strode toward me. “How long you plannin’ on keepin’ us a secret?”
I glanced upward, pretending to think about it. The question was all I’d thought about after leaving him at the motel. The sex had been great. He’d been great. His call minutes after I’d left had made me smile inside because I knew he was caught—just like I was.
“Wanna run away?” I asked, wrinkling my nose, only half joking.
His head dipped, his cowboy hat hiding his expression, but then he looked up at me. “I don’t want to run. And I won’t hide.”
Secretly glad he felt the same way, I nodded and gave him a smile. “I don’t go by Carly by the way,” I said. “It’s my middle name.”
“I know.” His smile was crooked as his hands caught the edge of the porch roof. “I looked you up on Facebook, Elizabeth.”
I admired the way his plaid shirt with its snap buttons stretched across his broad torso. “Just Beth,” I said, feeling breathless.
His gaze narrowed on my face. “Just Beth, now was that so hard?”
I groaned. “Makes it real. When I’m Carly and you’re Cowboy, we’re just two people…”
“…Fallin’ in love?”
My breath hitched and tears stung my eyes. “Crazy, huh?”
He dropped his arms and closed the distance between us to scoop me up against his chest. With an inch between our mouths, nothing about this seemed crazy or wrong. “Guess we’re done talkin’.”
A smile stretched my mouth. “Don’t have a neighbor for miles.”
His eyebrows waggled. “Guess we’re gonna do it on the porch.”
“Put me down.”
We both stripped in under a minute and gazed at each other’s bodies in the sunlight. I hadn’t been dreaming, hadn’t exaggerated a thing in my mind. He was just as ruggedly masculine, just as rough around the edges. My nipples prickled, my heartbeat thudded.
His hand wrapped around his cock and gave it a slow pump. “Pardon my lack of manners, ma’am, but this has to be quick.”
“No complaints from me,” I murmured, then turned and faced outward, my gaze taking in the cedar and oaks dotting the hillside below me, the bright cloudless blue sky above. I gripped the porch rail and bent over it.
While fingers stroked my sex and swirled inside it, juicing me up, I let my mind wander. This wasn’t a passing fling. We couldn’t stop wanting each other if we tried. I was glad that our first attraction hadn’t been tainted by thoughts of the obstacles we faced. Our families would just have to deal.
His fingers withdrew, then slid around my torso to cup my breasts. He gave them firm squeezes while he shuffled his feet apart, scraping them on the boards while his cock slid lower. When he was just the right height behind me, his cock snug against my entrance, he smoothed his hands to the notches of my hips. “It’s gonna get rough.”
“God, I hope so,” I said, moaning when he nudged me there. I’d missed the feel of that fat blunt knob. “Fuck me, cowboy.”
He obliged, driving deep in a single, steady thrust. When he was as deep as I could take, he groaned and hugged my waist, bending over me to rest his head in the corner of my neck. “I thought maybe I’d dreamed how good this felt.”
“It’s no dream,” I said, lifting a hand to touch his cheek. “It’s just us.”
“I’m not letting you go.”
“Fine with me, but you better start moving.” I squeezed my pussy around him, drawing inward as hard as I could before relaxing.
“Don’t do that again,” he said, giving a raspy hiss when I did.
“Shouldn’t have dared me.” I couldn’t help smiling.
“There I was, thinking I’d go slow and easy. Make it good for you.”
“Baby, it already is. Fuck me, Dalton.
Don’t worry. I’m already there.”
He straightened, gripped my hips again and began to move, long steady glides in and out. The sound of a plane overhead reminded me where we were, in the open with a chance of discovery. My body shuddered as the thought took hold. I liked the way I felt. Wicked. Free.
I let go with one hand and cupped a breast, playing with the nipple while he pounded me from behind. I twisted it hard and stretched to twist its twin. Then I smoothed downward, fingers touching my clit, but it was too engorged, too sensitive, I opened my fingers to feel his cock as it sank inside me, so big, so wet.
I curled myself, reaching deeper between my legs and grabbed his balls. He paused in his strokes as I fondled him, tugging and rolling them. “Don’t stop,” I gasped. “Give it to me hard.”
His strokes were shorter, but sharper, thudding hard against my pussy. And I was drenched. Arousal so intense my skin was hot and sweaty, a lust-haze stealing my mind.
At last, I let go of his balls and gripped the rail, stiffening my body, tilting my ass as high as I could to take more of his length.
His hands cradled my inner thighs, jostling me, taking me off my feet, as he slammed me onto his cock again and again. I held onto the rail for dear life while my pussy convulsed, pleasure sending pulsing heat in waves throughout my body. The top of my head felt as though it had exploded and light burst behind my closed eyelids.
When the storm passed, he held me like a ragdoll, still attached to his hip, and I gave a ragged laugh. “If anyone saw us now…”
He pulled free, but didn’t let me go, turning me in his arms then pulling me over him as he sat in the kitchen chair I’d been using. I reached down and guided his wilting cock back inside me, then straddled him as he sat. His hands squeezed my bottom and he kissed my shoulder blades and the tops of my breasts. “Marry me?”
I grunted and shook my head. “It’s too fast.”
“Who says?”
“People will.”
His thumb pushed up my chin so that I couldn’t escape his mossy gaze. “Sooner or later, we have to face everyone.”
“I choose later.”
His expression shuttered.
“You think I’m a coward. Well, I’m not.” I stroked a finger along his cheek. “But I don’t want our time together spent worrying over what they’re thinking or doing. I want us to be free.”
His jaw tensed for a moment, a muscle moving along the edge, but then he nodded and pulled me against his chest for a hug. “I like this cabin.”
“No surveyor’s gonna get creative enough to cut this out of our ranch.”
He chuckled, the sound low and dirty. “You Mallorys are always so worried we’re after what’s yours.”
“Aren’t you?” I asked, lifting my head to give him a challenging glare. “Aren’t you after what I’ve got?” I swirled my hips, tugging on his cock, which was slowing filling again inside me.
“You got me there,” he murmured, running a hand down my back. “Guess I’ll just have to prove up my claim.”
We smiled as we began to move together, the chair creaking beneath us.
“Funny the trouble a little storm brings,” he whispered, his gaze intense.
“Nothin’ little about it.” I bit his bottom lip, and then kissed him hard. Trouble lay ahead. How much, only time would tell. For as long as we could, we’d keep this secret. Give our love time to grow deep roots. Deep enough we’d weather any storm.
Pitch Black
‡
Given the right company and a soft bed, Danny Crispin would have welcomed the hot summer storm. He’d have opened his bedroom curtains, tossed up the window glass and let the wet wind howl right inside. Wouldn’t matter if his bed got saturated. The thought of a certain redhead covered in rain and sweat, green eyes glinting hotter than any flash of lightning, tightened his body.
However, a thunderstorm spelled trouble this night. He gazed up from behind the wheel of the prison pickup and watched yet another brilliant flash dance and pop across the strands of the concertina wire high atop the chain-link fence.
“Sarge, did you see that?” the radio squawked, all formal radio protocols forgotten by the new guard in the South Tower.
Danny understood Officer First Class Hughes’s concern. The towers were open metal cages, no glass in the windows to protect the guards from the elements. No doubt the young officer had parked his weapon in a corner, his metal chair beside it, and stood in his rain poncho with his rubber-soled boots on the iron grating while rain sliced sideways, soaking him. It’s what he’d done when he’d been a rookie corrections officer, before he’d been promoted to sergeant a year ago.
Another jagged bolt sparked on the wire, and he cursed, wishing he was back in his hub keeping watch on the restless prisoners. Jenna Hurly was scheduled to be in the barracks. If the power went out, she’d be trapped in the dark with eighty murderers. He hoped like hell the storm blew over soon, and he could head back to the Hub One cell block. Half an hour ago, the lieutenant had ordered him to assume his rover duties outside the fence so he could be inside the walls in case the power went out and generators had to be cranked to replace the feed from the electric company. Something that occurred with annoying frequency in this remote region of Arkansas.
Danny drove a slow circle around the dirt track surrounding the walls. The rain fell harder, the wiper blades useless against the deluge, his headlights barely piercing the darkness.
Moments later, another flash was followed by a loud explosion. Then the lights in the two towers in his line of sight went dark, confirming his worst fears. The transformer had been hit.
Danny pressed the gas and clicked the button on his radio. “Grayson, meet me at the North Tower!”
Moments later, he skidded to a halt in the mud. Because the automatic locks wouldn’t be working, he had his keys in hand, his flashlight held at his shoulder as he ran toward the gate. He opened it just as Grayson came running. “You take rover. I’m going inside.”
Corporal Grayson gave him a curt nod as they passed each other. Danny turned to lock the gate behind him then ran toward the entrance of the prison. The pitch darkness inside the glass doors was ominous. Again he fought the lock then raced through the corridor toward his hub.
He ran to the North Control booth. They couldn’t pop the button, so again he was delayed opening the locks to first the outer door, then the inner door. Not slowing, he ran right, passing Central Control, then hit a quarter turn to the left and arrived at the Plexiglas corridor that usually gave a bird’s-eye view into Hubs One and Three.
Eerie darkness spread beneath him. At the end of the corridor he entered another door and another, then passed Hub One’s control booth where he spared a second to wave at Officer McGee, whose concern was etched in his wrinkled face.
As Danny raced through a rabbit’s warren of doors and stairs, his heart thudded dully against his chest. He hoped like hell Jenna had kept her head, followed their preset plan, and that she’d be waiting in the tiled shower area of the barracks. With the power out, the prisoners would be making the most of the unsupervised time. Images of vicious beatings and rapes flashed through his mind. A male officer faced horrific dangers, but a female caught on the floor…
He couldn’t think about that now and not go nuts. He had to keep calm. Had to get to her. As he at last entered the third tier of the barracks, he flicked off his flashlight and felt for the iron bars atop the stairs and followed them, jostling past prisoners moving in the darkness.
Two more flights down, she’d be there. Waiting in the darkness. If he was lucky the skinheads had gotten to her first. They’d stepped in a couple of times to prevent assaults, having decided Officer Hurly was “good people.”
Relying on a lifer wasn’t Danny’s idea of the optimal situation, but an officer caught in the midst of a melee didn’t have many choices. Hiding in the darkness, her back against a wall, hoping no one heard her breathe or noted where she was when the lights went out�
��.
Danny drew a deep breath to calm his heart and barreled down the last of the iron stairs.
The moment the lights flickered out, Jenna darted to the left, through the last “hole” between prisoners where she’d been patrolling, keeping an eye on the restless bunch.
Her radio squawked. “Grayson, meet me at the North Tower!”
Thank god. Danny was on his way. She reached for her radio and turned it off. The sound would pinpoint her location to those around her. Then she slipped her cuffs from her back pocket, slid one manacle around her wrist and gripped the other like brass knuckles. Just in case she had to fight her way through.
Already she heard hard thuds, no doubt the sound of battery packs wrapped in socks hitting flesh. Soon after, the slick sounds of an illicit tryst came from beside her, but she stilled her breaths, held out her hands and moved as quickly as she could, her metal cuff and pepper-spray can held at the ready in case she found trouble.
“Red,” a husky whisper sounded beside her, using the nickname the prisoners had given her, but never dared say to her face. She was Officer Hurly to them all.
But she recognized the voice of the whisperer. For a second, she felt relief, but then she remembered the crime Prisoner Draper had committed. Murder. Of three gang rivals. With his bare hands.
She remained silent and still.
“Red,” he said a little louder. “Gotta trust me on this, ma’am.”
And because she was already turned around in the dark, afraid she hadn’t moved fast enough or that someone else would find her, she answered. “Draper, I’m here.”
In the inky dark she felt a hand clamp around her wrist. She shook her arm.
“It’s me.” The whisper came beside her ear. “Coats and Benny are with me. Where you headed?”
She drew a deep breath. If she told them, and they were using her for bait, Danny would be in danger too.
“Where to?” came the gruff whisper. “This lasts too long we’ll all be in a world of hurt.”
“Showers,” she whispered back, biting her lip and hoping she wasn’t making the worst mistake of her life.
Ultra Strokes Page 6