How to Train a Cowboy

by Caro Carson

  Chapter Six

  “I couldn’t hear every word in there, but I think you just defended my honor.”

  Since Emily was turned toward Graham, watching his profile as he drove, she saw the way his mouth quirked in a fleeting smile before he turned stoic once more in the dashboard lights.

  “Thank you,” she said simply.

  He glanced at her, back to the black road. “I wouldn’t normally face off with an old man like that. I just didn’t like the way he assumed you were some kind of... I don’t know, some kind of nymphomaniac.”

  So you set him straight. She hadn’t had to defend herself—not even in her own head, which was what she did pretty often when the argument got hopeless. Instead, she’d leaned against that glass door, surprised at the turn the conversation had taken, what she could hear of it. Then not surprised. This was Graham, after all, a man who wouldn’t leave her behind. He wouldn’t let her reputation twist in the wind, either. This was a great night; she absolutely loved every minute she spent with him.

  So she smiled. “I don’t know, maybe you should have bought what he was selling. How do you know I’m not a nymphomaniac?”

  The lift of his eyebrow told her just how absurd he found that possibility, but then those deliciously male, surprisingly soft lips quirked again before he said, with perfect seriousness, “If you really were a nymphomaniac, I wouldn’t have had to buy anything, either. I’d expect you to pull a whole strip of condoms out of your little cowboy boot. So far, I’ve just seen a key and a driver’s license.”

  “So far.” She slid her fingers over her bare knee, down inside her boot, inching down her shin, until Graham tore his eyes off the road to scowl at her hand.

  She pulled her hand out and wiggled her fingers. “Kidding. Definitely not a nymphomaniac. Had you worried there for a minute, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t know if worried is exactly the right term.”

  “Hopeful?”

  He kept one hand on the steering wheel and rubbed his neck with the other, still frowning.

  “Confused?” she suggested.

  “Let’s go with that.”

  “Slow down here. There’s going to be a break in the fence—there it is. Since we’ve already put a little mud on the tires, we can do some cross-country driving to go to Old Man Cooper’s farm. It used to be one of my very favorite places. It’s probably all overgrown now, but there used to be a trail back here...oh.”

  The trail was not only there, but it had been upgraded to a dirt road, cut through brush and grasses that looked like the walls of a tunnel in the headlights. They followed it until it opened into a clearing. There, perfectly still in the moonlight, was a small lake.

  “My lake,” she said softly, wondering why she was surprised it was still here—wondering why she felt like crying. “You should turn off your headlights so you can see the moon on the water.”

  Graham pulled closer to the lake, parking where a lot of previous cars had already flattened the ground. He turned off the lights.

  “Isn’t it pretty?” she asked.

  Lights suddenly came on across the water, the headlights of a pickup truck that backed up so fast, so hard, it churned up dirt.

  Emily shut her eyes and turned her face away. “Jeez, someone has to be home by midnight.” She waited until she could see in the night once more. It was little for a lake, but definitely more than a pond. The moonlight was white on its black surface. “Okay, now isn’t it pretty?”

  Graham was watching the pickup truck as it left, always the alert bodyguard.

  Emily sighed for him, but Graham shook his head and actually chuckled. “Is this the local make-out place? Lover’s Lane for teenagers?”

  He was laughing at her pond. Her lake.

  And here she’d been feeling sorry for him. She glared at him instead. “No.”

  Graham gave her that skeptical raised eyebrow again.

  “Not really. Not always.”

  “Either you park here to kiss a girl without adult supervision, or you don’t.”

  “Fine. Then I guess it was the local make-out place. But it was more than that. I always thought it was so pretty.”

  Graham had probably been around the world with the military. He’d probably seen incredible sights like oceans and waterfalls. She’d only seen Austin and San Antonio—and more than enough of Oklahoma.

  She let go of her indignation. “It’s just a pond, I know. Don’t laugh at me.”

  “I’m not. I’m just feeling...old. It’s been a very long time since I drove a girl to a place like this.”

  “I know what you mean. The last time I was here, I was fifteen. Seven years ago. I kind of thought it would be abandoned and all overgrown by now. I don’t know why I thought that. Just because I could no longer come here, that doesn’t mean no one else would come here.”

  She wasn’t the center of the universe. She knew that, of course. But she was looking at a lake that proved life went on without her. This piece of her youth belonged to other people now, people who’d never heard of her, people who didn’t care if she’d ever been here before them.

  She felt a moment of vertigo.

  Graham’s voice anchored her in the here and now. “Why didn’t you come here when you were sixteen or seventeen?”

  “We moved back to San Antonio my junior year. Then Mom got remarried and we moved back here my senior year, but my new stepfather didn’t believe in free time. Or in dating. My big freedom was sleeping over at my aunt and uncle’s. I spent every minute at their place riding. I missed the horses more than I missed this lake, I suppose.” She couldn’t get enough of the view now, though, as the breeze rippled the reflected moonlight. “Maybe since my memories kind of faded away, I thought this place would, too. It’s all so vivid now.”

  “Teenagers wouldn’t abandon a place like this.” Graham sounded kind again, that gentleness back in his deep voice. “Especially when it’s this pretty.”

  “This really wasn’t just a make-out place. We’d lie out on blankets and stare at the stars and talk about all our plans for the future and how great our lives were going to be. If you didn’t have too much ranch work on a Sunday, you could come in the afternoon to swim. I had the idea to start building a dock the summer I was fifteen. Mr. Cooper didn’t care what we did as long as we didn’t leave empty beer bottles or leave a fire burning.” The memories were sweet, but this place was no longer hers. That innocence was over, and never would be hers again.

  She couldn’t look at the lake, not while she was drowning in this surge of memories, so she looked at Graham. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I’d feel so strange. I think I’m suffering from a bad case of nostalgia. When did I get old enough to have nostalgic memories of my childhood?” She rubbed her fingers over her chest, right where her heart hurt. “It sucks. Yay, adulthood. Rah, rah, rah.”

  Graham didn’t say anything.

  She wrinkled her nose apologetically. “Sorry. Nostalgia’s not very sexy, is it?”

  Graham looked at her for the longest time. When he raised his hand, she thought he was going to touch her, maybe slide his hand under her hair again, reaching across this extra-wide center console that kept them so far apart.

  Instead, he pointed out the window. “Looks like someone finished your dock for you.”

  Emily had to sit up tall to get her eyes at the same height as his, so she could see over the pond grasses. There, in the moonlight, was a completed dock, a little run of twelve feet or so, just out to where she knew the water got really deep, deep enough to dive in.

  “They did it.” She imagined other kids working on it, kids like the younger version of herself, fifteen and certain she could make the world work just the way she wanted it to. That hadn’t worked out so far, but maybe it would for other kids. “Good for them. I like the i
dea that more girls like me are out there.”

  “Boys might have built it, too.”

  She dismissed his dry observation with a flick of her fingers. “The only reason the boys ever helped is because the girls were working on it first. We designed it. We got the boards and nails. But we were very concerned about our tan lines, you know, so we all thought the best thing to wear for hammering boards on a hot Sunday afternoon was a bathing suit. That’s when boys started showing up.”

  “I stand corrected. That’s entirely plausible.”

  “You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get a boy to do what you want when you’re wearing a bikini top and cut-off short-shorts.”

  A small pause. “I’d believe it.”

  She smiled at the memory. “I suspect girls in bikinis are behind a whole lot of industrious males.”

  Graham laughed, outright laughed, and Emily turned toward him to laugh, too, but her breath caught in her chest. He looked so good, her handsome and buff bodyguard, when he was off duty and carefree. Almost as good as he looked after he kissed her.

  I want him. I want to see him happy. I want to be the reason he’s happy.

  She had another moment of vertigo, another emotion catching her by surprise, another change in where she saw herself in the world. Her dream of owning a ranch suddenly looked different; a man got painted into the picture. A lover, a friend. Of course—how had she thought it would be better to be on her own?

  It was scary. Too much, too big of a change.

  Graham opened his door. “Let’s go see how they did.”

  The cold air came inside and brushed her cheeks, but her body was warm in his coat. He was going to be cold, though. Maybe he had another coat or a blanket or something. She turned to look in the back seat—two more bucket seats and another wide console separating them.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “You know, for parking at a make-out place, all this roomy luxury sucks. Not one bench seat. Just this mile-wide center barricade. Mr. Schumer would approve.”

  At his silence, she looked up to find that he was leaning over the console, too, looking at the back seats with her. Their faces were so close—and his looked distinctly amused.

  “Those seats recline,” he said. “Fully.”

  “Ah.”

  “A footrest comes up, so you can stretch out. It’s pretty luxurious.”

  “I see.”

  “Are we done with the backseat recon?”

  “I was looking for—never mind.” She kissed him. Full on, mouth on mouth. His lips were so soft. The shadow of his beard was rough on her palm as she ran her hand along his jaw before burying her hand in his hair. She held his head firmly as she changed the angle of the kiss, leaning into him as she leaned a little farther across the console.

  He let her control the kiss. When she nudged his lips apart with her own, he obeyed. When she nipped his lower lip, when she licked his upper lip, when she cupped his jaw in her two hands, he let her come closer and closer, inching his head back as she turned into him, her knee on her seat now for leverage as she pushed him back into his seat with kiss after kiss.

  He took over, and he wanted to taste her. She wanted to let him. Without breaking off the kiss, he slid his hands under the coat, up her sides, and lifted her up and over the console, turning her so that she was lying in his lap, cradled in his arms, her legs draped across the console, her boots on the passenger seat. The coat was still wrapped around her, but she shivered, anyway, a physical thrill at how strong he was to be able to lift her so easily. He kept her close to his chest with one arm as he reached for the open door and slammed it shut.

  And then, oh then, he really kissed her—her cheeks, her eyelids, her forehead. Not little butterfly kisses, but passionate ones, like he was claiming her, every inch of her skin. He turned her head away with one hand and kissed her throat, then under her jaw, then her chin, then turned her head back to take her mouth. She’d never felt this before, never been kissed like this before. She could hardly think, but she knew that this, this, was being ravished.

  And she loved it. She lay boneless in his strong arms, letting him show her just how much he wanted her, proving to her how much he could make her want him. His mouth returned to hers over and over, tasting her, then exploring her more slowly, but not gently. It was physical. It was carnal. He kissed her with intent. He kissed her like he owned her.

  He didn’t want to stop. She knew that like she knew her own thoughts, but he lifted his lips from hers. A pause, another taste. Over her mouth, he growled a demand. “Now take it back.”

  “Take...” It was hard to speak. “Take what back?”

  “You said my car was no good for making out.”

  “Oh...ah...”

  “Still think it sucks?”

  But then she felt him smiling against her mouth. That smile was so intimate, coming from someone so stern and strong, she felt it all the way to her heart. My private bodyguard smile. She wanted to smile back, but she could hardly breathe. She couldn’t even keep her eyes open.

  The coat she wore like a cape was still mostly around her, but without taking his smile away from her lips, she felt Graham very deliberately lift the edge of the coat and peel it away, laying it open. Her blue dress covered her up to the base of her throat, yet she felt so exposed, wildly aware that his hand had let go of the coat. She could hardly stand the anticipation. Where was his hand? Where would he touch her?

  His mouth closed over hers again as his whole hand, warm and large, wrapped around her side, just below her breast. She arched her back, hoping his hand would move just a bit higher, but instead he smoothed his way lower, to the soft indent of her waist, over the firm curve of her hip, to the edge of her dress. His hand was warm on her bare thigh as he slid his palm to the back of her leg, then lifted her knee slightly, holding her there a moment, letting his hand warm the sensitive area behind her knee. Oh, she hadn’t known she was sensitive behind her knee. She was dying, melting, completely undone by this man who so very clearly, so very incredibly, knew what he was doing.

  He demanded, with a gentle bite on her lower lip, that she pay attention to the kiss again. She tried to focus on his mouth, until his hand lifted from her leg, leaving her skin cool in the air. He was going to touch her body somewhere else, any second...

  She was practically lapping up his every kiss when his hand returned to her side, tightening around her ribs as he lifted her, shifted her with that one strong hand so more of her weight was cradled in his other arm. She was aching for his touch, and this time, he slid upward, ruffles slipping under his hand as he brushed the side of her breast, then rested there for a moment.

  She made some sort of incoherent sound, and she felt him smile against her lips again, but this time it was more tender than devilish. He whispered something serious against her lips as he firmly ran his thumb over her nipple. She gasped at the sensation. He kissed her hard again and cupped her entire breast, shaping the softness to fill his hand.

  “Graham—please—” Words were hard, so hard when her body was ruling her mind. “You have protection for us.” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. It was time.

  Graham devoured her, working his way to the soft spot below her ear. “We can take this all the way to the end.” She wasn’t sure if that was a question, either, when the answer was obvious. She was putty in his hands, writhing with want under his touch. She wanted to make love to him, she wanted to be part of him, with an intensity that overwhelmed every other thought.

  He slid his hand with a sure touch down her side, her hip, her thigh, and then under the hem of her dress. The back of his hand grazed up her inner thigh, then over her most sensitive spot, knuckles smoothing over the slippery nylon of her underwear.

  She was not going to last. There was no way she could wait for him
if he kept touching her there. She would climax—then his thumb pressed over just the right spot, drawing deliberate circles over the smooth fabric, and she realized that was exactly what he wanted her to do. The firm pressure of his thumb became the firmer pressure of his hand, and she was lost, the burst of pleasure blotting out the world.

  Chapter Seven

  His heart hurt.

  It shouldn’t.

  A beautiful woman was draped across Graham’s lap, her legs smooth and shapely, stretched across the width of his front seats, her feet hidden in cowgirl boots. A beautiful, satisfied cowgirl, whom he’d just sent over the edge with the weight of his hand on her feminine, incredible, absolutely spectacular body. She was panting gently, eyes closed, coming down from her high, coming back to this moment.

  Coming back to him.

  Why did that make his heart hurt?

  Of course his body hurt. His hands, his mouth, his eyes had all been roaming over the richness that was Emily, getting their fill of her shape, her taste, her beauty. Their greed caused an arousal so complete, even his shirt felt like too much on his skin. The unforgiving denim of his jeans caused outright pain. Every part of his body wanted to be in contact with every part of hers. But while he watched Emily catch her breath, his heart was pounding with more than just sexual desire.

  This is special. This is different.

  It couldn’t be. He wasn’t ready for that.

  He’d never be ready for that. His life had veered too far from that, too long ago. But Emily sure as hell was no last cigarette. She wasn’t just a woman, or the first woman he’d had in ages, or the last woman he’d have for a long while.

  Emily was a whole new addiction.

  She was holding on to a fistful of his shirt. He watched her fingers relax, and then with a shivery breath, she opened her eyes and blinked at him, slow and sleepy, as the moonlight poured in through the windshield.

  She smiled.

  This one. She’s the one.

  He rejected the thought harshly. But damn, she was special. He looked away, down that river of blue ruffles.