Best of Cowboys Bundle

by Vicki Lewis Thompson, Barbara White Daille, Judy Christenberry, Christine Wenger, Shirley Rogers, Crystal Green, Nina Bruhns, Candance Schuler, Carole Mortimer

  She could feel her temperature rising in response to having all that magnificent masculinity so temptingly, teasingly near. She could feel her body tingling…her breasts tightening…her thighs softening…her resistance melting like butter in the hot Texas sun.

  “Well, hell,” she muttered, thoroughly disgusted with her inability to control her lust around this totally unsuitable man, this…this cowboy.

  He chuckled wickedly, knowingly, and executed a tricky little dance step that brought her six inches closer. His hand shifted on her bare shoulder, moving to cradle the curve of her neck. His fingertips pressed ever so lightly against her sensitive nape. His thumb brushed ever so softly against the hollow at the base of her throat. He brought their clasped hands closer in to their sides so that the back of his brushed against her thigh with every swaying step they took.

  Heat flooded through her in a wild torrent, unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was all she could do not to turn her cheek against his caressing hand and rub against it like a cat in heat, demanding to be petted and stroked. She swallowed convulsively, ruthlessly tamping down the urge, and managed to retain her dignity. No one watching them would see anything beyond a formally attired couple pirouetting in approved country style to a sprightly country two-step. No one would know how desperately she wanted to close that yawning six-inch gap between them…to press her breasts to his chest…to crush her lips to his…to give in to the wild sexual impulses surging through her.

  He knew, though. He spun her lightly out and away from him, guiding her back so she twirled under his raised arm in a showy move that ended with her pressed against the hard length of his body. Her lips were within inches of his. Her spine was bowed in a graceful arc. Their clasped hands were tight against the small of her back, pressing her lower body against his.

  It was a maneuver he’d perfected on countless dance floors in countless honky-tonks with countless adoring buckle bunnies. It always turned them to putty in his hands. He had no doubt it would work the same magic on Jo Beth Jensen.

  She glared up at him through the fringe of her lashes, her lips pursed, her body tense, her senses humming with anticipation and temper and pure unadulterated lust.

  God, he was gorgeous.

  And sexy.

  And cocky as hell.

  That last should have turned her off. If she had the sense God gave a goose, it would have turned her off. Unfortunately, it only made her hotter.

  There was really no sense fighting it.

  She lifted her lashes, looked directly into his wicked brown eyes, and smiled invitingly.

  He flashed her a lazy, ain’t-I-irresistible grin. “Decided not to be mad at me, after all?” he said, and dipped her slightly, so that her head fell back into the cradle of his hand and she was forced to tighten her grip on his lean waist to keep her balance. Their lower bodies were pressed more tightly together than before. He swiveled his hips, just slightly, making sure she felt what he wanted her to feel, imposing himself on her with the unmistakable, unsubtle body language of the dominant male animal intent on staking a claim.

  “No, actually—” she held the position for a heartbeat, returning the pressure of his hips with the answering pressure of her own, her gaze locked with his, unabashed and uncowed, letting him know she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by his show of masculine dominance “—what I’ve decided to do is fuck you.”

  To Jo Beth’s unalloyed pleasure, his cocky grin faded and his face went utterly blank with something that looked very much like shock. He brought her upright with the hand at the back of her head, moving her smoothly, effortlessly into the next step of the dance. They took two quick whirling turns around the dance floor in complete silence while Clay considered what she’d said.

  He didn’t know why he was so taken aback by it. He knew she wanted to have sex with him—hell, most women did!—so it wasn’t as if what she’d said came as any big surprise. And he’d certainly heard the word before, and said it any number of times himself, too, so he couldn’t put his reaction down to shock at hearing the vulgarity spoken out loud. Although, if he was truthful with himself, shock was definitely part of what he was feeling. It wasn’t so much what she’d said, though, as it was the way she’d said it. The emphasis she’d used. She was going to fuck him.

  He was accustomed to it being the other way around. Rodeo groupie, beauty queen or society debutante—they were all content to stand back and let him take the lead. He did the picking and the choosing. He was in charge. His whims and desires dictated the when, the where, and the how. That was the natural order of things and that’s the way he liked it.

  Although, now that he’d had a minute to think about it, it might be kind of interesting to be the one being done, as it were, instead of the one doing.

  Some of Jo Beth’s pleasure at having rendered him speechless dissolved as a sly, cocky smile began playing around the edges of his lips again.

  “What?” she grumbled, clearly disgruntled at such a short-lived victory.

  “Just when were you thinking of doing this…um…” Funny, he found he couldn’t say the word as easily as she could. At least, not under the present circumstances. “…of doing it?” he finished lamely.

  “It?” Jo Beth arched a derisive eyebrow. “You mean fucking you?”

  He scowled. “What kind of language is that for a lady to use?”

  “Lady?” Jo Beth gave a spurt of surprised laughter. “Just what century do you live in, cowboy?”

  “We’re at a wedding,” he said reprovingly. “There are children and grandmas present.”

  Jo Beth made a show of turning her head to take in the dancing couples sharing the floor with them. “None within earshot.”

  “That’s not the point,” he insisted, knowing he must sound fairly ridiculous. After all, they’d practically been doing the ol’ bump and grind on the dance floor a few minutes ago. But his dear departed mama had raised him to be a gentleman, and a gentleman—or a lady, for that matter—didn’t use bad language where children or little old ladies might overhear. “The point is—”

  “The point is, you’re a prude,” Jo Beth crowed softly, an expression of unholy glee lighting her eyes at finding this chink in his facade. “The hotshot stud bull rider is a prude.”

  It should have turned her off, just like his in-your-face cockiness. The last thing she needed in her life was a judgmental male. Not that he’d be in her life long enough for it to matter, but still, prudery wasn’t usually high on her list of the traits she looked for in a sexual partner. And, yet, for some inexplicable and probably highly perverted reason, she found his unexpected streak of modesty…well, hell, adorable was the only word she could think of. It was surprising—and surprisingly appealing—in a man who exuded such swaggering sexual confidence. It gave him a vulnerability that made her all the more eager to get him someplace where she could strip him down to his skin and do all the things she’d been fantasizing about doing for the last interminable week. It would add an extra little kick to the proceedings if there were the possibility she might actually manage to shock his socks off while simultaneously screwing his brains out. Maybe she could even make him blush.

  “You packing?” she asked, gazing up at him with a look in her eyes that made him instantly suspicious.

  “Packing what?”

  “Condoms.” Under the cover of his tuxedo jacket, she slid her hand from his waist to the back pocket of his trousers and squeezed. “I’ll bet you’ve got a couple in your wallet, right?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t blush, but he did make a quick scan of the crowd to make sure no one had seen her grope his ass. “So?” he said, with all the wariness of a man who had reached out to pet a house cat and found himself stroking a tiger instead.

  His sudden caution pleased her no end. It made up, in no small part, for the incident at the water tank, when he had had the advantage and she had been the one struggling not to show her embarrassment.

  “So, I’m go
ing to dance two more dances after this one,” she said, as the fiddler teased the last notes of the song out of his instrument. “And then I’m going to take a stroll down to the corral by the barn to look at Tom’s new prize-winning bull. There’s a tack room in the northeast corner of the barn, tucked behind the last stall on the right.” She leaned into him, lightly touching her breasts to his chest. “It has a door. And a lock,” she whispered enticingly, her lips within a kiss of his. “If it won’t offend your delicate sensibilities, you can meet me there and we’ll play a few of the games I was fantasizing about while you watched me in the water tank yesterday.”

  The bolt of lust that shot through him at her words burned away all thoughts of propriety and what was or was not appropriate behavior at a wedding. His eyes lit up with pure sexual greed. “Why not all of them?”

  “Because there’s not enough time. The maid of honor is expected to be present for the cake cutting and the bouquet toss. So’s the best man.” Just before she drew away, she let her fingertips drift in and downward to brush briefly, lightly, over the fly of his pants. He was as hard as a branding iron under the tailored gabardine fabric. “I’ll wait ten minutes. That should be long enough for you to dance a third dance and find your way to the tack room. If you don’t show up by then, I’ll lock the door and play by myself.”

  BALANCED ON THE KNIFE’S EDGE of raging lust and the imminent threat of acute embarrassment, the next ten minutes of the wedding reception were the longest of Clay’s life. He danced with the bride and then with the bride’s mother while simultaneously thanking providence for tightie-whities and the concealing cut of a classic tuxedo, all the while trying to keep Jo Beth within his line of sight. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she danced first with Rooster and then with Hector Menendez, his expression much like that of a man watching an exotic animal that had strolled into his backyard—fascinated by its appearance but very aware that it might be more dangerous than it looked.

  Jo Beth Jensen certainly fascinated him. And she was certainly more dangerous than she looked in her flimsy bridesmaid’s dress. The trouble was, he didn’t quite know how or why or in what way that danger might manifest itself. Given the state of his libido at the moment, he didn’t much care. For now, it was enough to know that he wanted her. He’d worry about the possible consequences of actually having her later.

  Still, he couldn’t help but puzzle over it as he danced a third dance, as ordered, and surreptitiously watched her stroll away from the shelter of the white canvas party tent and wander off in the general direction of the barn.

  Seen through a connoisseur’s critical eye, she wasn’t more than passably pretty to look at, even all decked out in her wedding finery. Her face was pleasant but unremarkable, really, except for the intelligence and determination gleaming in her eyes, and the arrogant set of what could otherwise be termed a delicate little chin. He knew for a fact that she did, indeed, have a nice little body and a truly fantastic ass—he’d give her that—but there certainly weren’t any beauty-queen curves hiding under the silky material of her bridesmaid’s dress. She didn’t have a flashy wide-as-the-Texas-prairie smile, either, or big blue eyes with fluttering lashes, and even done up with shiny peach-colored ribbons and tiny white flowers, her hair was still just plain brown. And she sure as hell didn’t have what anyone would call an accommodating personality.

  So how had she managed to get him hotter, faster, than any woman he’d ever met before?

  He was a pretty jaded character, after all, a man who’d sampled just about everything there was to sample, sexually speaking, before the age of twenty-five. Life for a prize-winning rodeo cowboy was a sensual smorgasbord with women laid end to end from one rodeo arena to the next. He didn’t have to do much more than crook his finger—and sometimes not even that—to have some curvaceous little buckle bunny ready, willing, and eager to roll over onto her back for him.

  He got the distinct feeling Miz Jo Beth Jensen didn’t roll over for any man. Hell, she’d probably shoot one who dared to crook his finger at her.

  And maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe it was the challenge she offered that lured him so irresistibly and made him salivate like a hound at suppertime when he so much as looked at her. He was a champion bull rider, a man who made his living by pitting himself against creatures that wanted nothing more than to stomp the shit out of him. He thrived on challenge, which was something that had been sorely missing from his life lately, and would continue to be missing until he was back on the circuit doing what he’d been born to do.

  Looked at from that perspective, it was really no wonder at all that he’d zeroed in on a woman who could give him a real run for his money. It was pure instinct, is what it was, and nothing to be wondered at or puzzled over. Besides which, he had something to prove to hoity-toity Miz Jo Beth Jensen.

  He was not a goddamned prude!

  JO BETH SAUNTERED SLOWLY, carefully, with apparent aimlessness, down the hard-packed, sun-baked path to the barn, both to avoid stirring up the fine powdery dust that would settle on the delicate straps of her heels, and to forestall drawing any undue attention to herself. She didn’t want anyone to be able to say later that they had seen her hurrying anywhere, and begin to wonder where she was heading in such an all-fired rush. No sense giving the good folks of Bowie, Texas, anything solid to get their teeth into. She was risking enough already. Probably too much, if you came right down to it. Lord knew what a field day the gossips would have if they had any idea what she was up to! She would be the subject of gleefully appalled tongue-wagging for months if anyone found out she’d disappeared from her best friend’s wedding to indulge in a quick bout of slap-and-tickle with the best man. And that man a cowboy, for God’s sake! A breed she’d publicly sworn off years ago.

  She was just the tiniest bit appalled at herself, when you came right down to it. Not enough to call a halt to the proceedings—she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction or deny herself the pleasure—but enough so that she was almost hoping he wouldn’t show.

  In the first place, sex in a barn wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Contrary to popular belief, hay did not make a comfortable bed, even when covered by the ubiquitous plaid blanket seen in all the movies. It was scratchy and dusty, and tended to poke through the blanket to stab the unwary in delicate parts of the anatomy at the most inopportune times. Still, when it was all the bed one had, one made do, and, if one were sufficiently turned on, one barely even noticed how uncomfortable it was. And she was more than sufficiently turned on, and had been since she first clapped eyes on the gorgeous Mr. Clay Madison.

  In the second place was the time factor. She figured she had thirty minutes, max, before she was missed. And thirty minutes wasn’t enough time to do even half of the deliciously wicked things she’d imagined doing with her fantasy cowboy. It was, however, enough time to do what needed to be done to ease the tension humming crazily through her body.

  In the third place, well, there was her heretofore cast-in-iron cardinal rule about not sleeping with cowboys. That should have mattered most of all but, strangely enough, it didn’t.

  Like Scarlett O’Hara, she’d worry about the consequences of her actions tomorrow. Right now, she had an urgent need to scratch an itch that had been driving her crazy for far too long.

  Despite her urgency, she stopped by the corral for a moment to admire Tom Steele’s new prize-winning Charolais bull—just in case anyone was watching—before slipping into the barn. It was cool and quiet and shadowed inside, with golden dust motes dancing in the bright fingers of sunlight shining in through the shutters in the loft that had been cracked open to provide ventilation and a way for the heat to escape.

  “Hello?” she called, and then stood still for a moment, her hand resting on the edge of the door, listening for signs the barn was occupied by more than just livestock. “Hello?”

  Hearing nothing but the gentle snuffling of a drowsy horse and the soft chirping of barn swallows nesting in the
rafters, she pushed the door closed and headed down the center aisle, between the horse stalls, to the tack room.

  Her heels made delicate little clacking noises against the brushed cement floor as she traversed the length of the barn. Her dress swished softly against her calves. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. Her breath sloughed in and out of her lungs, too fast, too heavily, as if she had been running a long way. She stopped for a moment, her palm pressed flat against her chest, and took a few deep controlled breaths in an effort to calm herself down. It was no use. Her breathing—and her heartbeat—continued to race with libidinous excitement.

  CLAY TOOK A MORE circuitous route to the barn in an effort to throw anyone who might be watching off the scent. After indicating a need to use the facilities, he headed toward the bunkhouse, then circled around behind it and approached the barn from the far side, out of the line of sight of the guests gathered under the party tent in front of the main house.

  He pushed the barn door open with the same stealth Jo Beth had used ten minutes previously, pausing just inside the entrance to let his eyes adjust to the dimness and assure himself there was no one around. A horse nickered as he passed its stall but he spared it no more than a glance as he hurried down the center aisle toward the tack room. His boot heels rang against the cement floor. His suit coat flapped against his hips. His breathing was ragged and quick. He could feel his heart pounding against the wall of his chest and his cock throbbing against the fly of his pants. But none of that stopped him. It didn’t even slow his pace.