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

  He rapped once, sharply, impatiently, on the tack room door, and then let himself in before the sound died away.

  She was standing, still as a statue, on the opposite side of the small, cluttered room in front of a small, shuttered window. The filtered sunlight created a dappled golden nimbus around her, rimming the edges of her fluttery dress, highlighting the tiny white flowers that adorned her coiffure and the fine wispy strands of hair that escaped her braid, making her look delicate and ethereal. There was a thick pile of quilted stable blankets at her feet, neatly spread out, one atop the other, to create a cozy bed. The invitation inherent in them was blatant and earthy. Clay looked from her face to the blankets and back again.

  Their eyes locked.

  Held.

  “Bolt the door,” she said, her voice breathy with excitement.

  Without shifting his gaze from hers, Clay fumbled behind him and slid the simple bolt lock home. It made a sharp metallic noise like a rifle being cocked. The noise echoed faintly through the room, sending ripples of sound skittering along their nerve endings. Several more seconds passed in utter silence as they stood stock-still with the width of the room between them, she at the window, he at the door, eating each other up with their eyes.

  There was no movement except for the rapid beating of two hearts. No sound except for the labored breath rasping in and out of two pairs of lungs. It was as if they were each waiting for the other to make the next move, to take charge, to commit them both to a course of action that could change everything. Excitement and heat shimmered in the air between them. The sense of anticipation was as ripe and heady as the scent of summer peaches on a hot day.

  Jo Beth turned and offered her back. “Unzip me,” she ordered, tilting her head forward and reaching around to pull her beribboned braid out of the way.

  Clay crossed the room in three long strides and reached out, clasping the tiny tongue of the zipper between his big fingers to pull it down. Her exposed nape was pale and delicate, as vulnerable as a child’s above the fabric of her bridesmaid’s dress. He could see, close up this time, the fragile bumps of her spine as he slowly lowered the zipper. He leaned down and pressed a kiss between her shoulder blades, just above the ivory satin strap of her bra, then cupped her shoulders, holding her still as he nuzzled his way up her back, to her nape, to the side of her neck.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured, his lips against her skin.

  Jo Beth shivered in response. She arched her neck, letting her body melt back into his for just an instant before she tensed and took a half step away from him. “We haven’t got time for any romantic nonsense,” she said, as she turned to face him.

  His hands remained on her shoulders. “Romantic nonsense?”

  “All the tender little touches and sweet talk. We haven’t got time for that.”

  He smiled down into her eyes. “We’ll make time,” he said, bending his head as if to nuzzle her neck again.

  “No.” She put a hand on his chest, stopping him. “There’s no time. And even if there was—” she shook her head slightly “—I don’t need to be wooed, Clay. I know exactly why I’m here and what I want, and I don’t need it fancied up and camouflaged with sweet little kisses and pretty lies.”

  “Most women like it fancied up a bit.”

  “I’m not most women. I like things to be what they are. And what’s between us is sex. Plain and simple. Down and dirty. There’s no need to cloud the issue with a bunch of hearts-and-flowers nonsense. We’re both here to get laid.” She shrugged, her shoulders moving uneasily beneath his caressing hands. “Simple as that.”

  “So let’s just get right to it, is that it?”

  “Yes, that’s it.” Deliberately, her gaze holding his, she slid her hand down the front of his body, cupped her palm over the bulge straining against his fly, and rubbed her thumb over and round the bulging head of his penis. “Any objections?”

  Whatever objections he might have had dissolved in a surge of lust so strong, it almost knocked him to his knees. He tightened his grip on her shoulders, dragging her to him, and ran his hands down her back to her butt. He pulled her in, tight against his hips, and ground his pelvis into hers. He took her mouth in a bruising kiss, forcing her head back beneath his, using his lips and teeth and tongue in a way that was blazingly, unabashedly carnal.

  She felt devoured. Desired. Deliciously overpowered. Just exactly the way she’d imagined feeling in all her fantasies of him. She sank into it, into him, with a murmur of delight. Her mouth was as greedy and voracious as his, her hands busily kneading his chest in a mindless effort to find bare skin. And then she felt his hand scrabbling at the silky material of her dress, inching it up along the back of her thigh, bunching the delicate fabric in his fist.

  She tore her mouth away from his. “Wait,” she panted. “Wait.” She pushed against his chest. It was like pushing against solid granite. “Damn it, Clay. Wait a minute.”

  He raised his head but didn’t let her go. She could feel his breath, hot and rasping against her cheek.

  “I thought you wanted it down and dirty.”

  “I did. I do.” Her voice quavered with the effort it took to control her own breathing. “Just let me get my dress off first.”

  “Screw the dress.” His fingers touched the bare skin of her thigh, cupped it, slid upward. “We can work around it.”

  “No.” She grabbed at his hand, as much to stop herself from giving in as to restrain him from going any further. “I can’t go back to the reception with my dress all wrinkled. Or torn. Let me take it off.”

  He dropped his arms and stepped back. “All right.” He ran a hand through his hair, giving himself time to take a deep, shaky breath before he could continue. “Take it off.”

  5

  JO BETH TOOK TWO STEPS back from him and, her gaze fastened on his face, reached up and pushed the filmy half sleeves of her dress off her shoulders. She let them fall to the crook of her elbows, let the bodice of the dress slide downward to reveal a hint of cleavage before coyly catching it against her breasts with the flat of her hand. She hadn’t intended to do it that way, to drag it out, hadn’t intended to make a striptease of it. She had intended, in fact, to dispense with the dress in her usual quick and efficient manner and get on with the business at hand. After all, he’d already seen her bare-assed naked, so it wasn’t as if she had anything new to show him.

  But there was something in his expression as he watched her remove the dress, something intent and focused and intensely male, something that made her feel intensely female in return. It wasn’t just the lust in his eyes—she’d had men look at her with lust before, she expected lust in a situation like this—it was the fascination she saw there, the anticipation, the utter raptness of his gaze as he watched the dress slide down. More, it was the blatant, unapologetic sexual greed he made no effort to hide or disguise, as if he wanted to devour her in one big, greedy gulp. It made her feel powerfully, erotically female, and was more arousing than anything she had ever felt before.

  She liked it.

  A lot.

  She wanted more.

  She let the dress slide another teasing few inches lower, revealing the curve of her breasts in her strapless ivory satin-and-lace bra. Objectively, she knew how she looked. Her small breasts were plumped up, swelling a bit above the built-in push-up pads in the bra. Her skin was as pale as milk, kept that way through judicious use of sunscreen. She had a smattering of freckles across the tops of her breasts and a tiny mole nestled in her cleavage. Nice enough, but nothing spectacular. Nothing like she knew he was used to. Nothing, really, to rivet his or any man’s attention.

  And, yet, he was looking at her as if she were built like a Victoria’s Secret lingerie model, and he was a man who’d never seen a naked woman before.

  With his gaze riveted on her cleavage, he licked his lower lip as if anticipating her taste and the way she would feel in his mouth.

  Something tightened deep inside of her, a shaft o
f longing and lust that was almost painful in its intensity. She lowered the dress another few inches, slowly, catching it in both hands as it slid past the inward curve of her waist, watching his face all the while.

  His gaze followed the downward slide of the dress, his eyes darkening, the pupils expanding to twice their normal size as the peach-colored fabric dipped below her navel.

  She held it there, waiting, hoping, yearning for something she couldn’t even put a name to.

  He forced his gaze upward with visible effort and captured her eyes with his. His expression was that of a man fighting for control. He had to swallow before he could speak. “I thought we didn’t have time for romantic nonsense.”

  “This isn’t romantic nonsense.” She lowered the dress so that the top edge of her bikini panties showed, and felt a thrill of triumph as his gaze flickered inexorably downward again. “This is to make us both hot.”

  He shook his head without shifting his gaze. “It’s because you like to be in control.”

  “And that makes you hot, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it makes me hot.” His voice was a hoarse croak but he managed to force his gaze up to hers again. He cocked an eyebrow, casually, as if he wasn’t inches away from grabbing her, seconds away from ending the teasing little game she was playing. One corner of his mouth quirked up in the semblance of his usual cocky grin. “How’s it working for you?”

  She smiled seductively in answer and dropped the dress another few inches, revealing the shadow of dark hair beneath the peekaboo lace of her panties.

  Clay sucked in his breath and his hands, hanging loose by his sides, fisted. She could tell he’d come to the end of his rope—and hers. Enough was enough. “Stop playing games and take the dress off, Jo.”

  She hesitated, wondering how far she could push him, how far she wanted to push him, how far she dared push him. He wasn’t like the other men she’d bedded. He wasn’t a mild-mannered, good-natured banker or a good ol’ boy cattle broker, content to let her set the pace and make the rules. He was a cowboy, used to doing things his own way. Though she was loath to admit it, it was one of the things that made him so damned attractive to her.

  “Take the dress off. Now.” His voice was raspy. The look in his eyes was rapacious and predatory, and just a little dangerous. He was a man clearly about to lose what little remained of his control. “Or I swear, I’ll take it off for you. And I won’t care if it ends up torn and on the floor.”

  Satisfied by his ragged demand, Jo Beth matter-of-factly lowered the dress to her knees and stepped out of it. Force of habit and inbred practicality had her folding it neatly as she turned to drape it over one of the saddles on the stand behind her to keep it out of harm’s way. When she turned back to face him, her arms were already up and behind her, reaching for the hooks on her strapless bra.

  “Don’t,” he ordered.

  She paused, her hands still behind her. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t move. Don’t say anything, either,” he added, when she opened her mouth to ask why. “Just stand there.”

  “Why?” she asked, but she let her arms drop back to her sides.

  “Not another word,” he said, and reached out, pressing his fingertips against her lips, stopping further questions.

  She had to fight the urge to kiss them. Or bite them. She wasn’t quite sure which. “Why?” she said again, just to keep herself from doing either.

  “It’s my turn to play games to get us hot. Hotter,” he amended. “And you’re going to stand there like a good girl and let me play them.” He trailed his fingers down over her chin and the delicate line of her throat to the tops of her plumped-up breasts, and then brushed them, back and forth, over the edge of her bra. “Aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “And you’re going to be quiet.”

  “Yes,” she said again, then added. “As long as it suits me.”

  He gave a strangled bark of laughter. “You don’t take orders worth a damn, do you?” His voice was rough, almost savage, but his touch was exquisitely gentle.

  “I believe I’ve already made it clear that I prefer to give them.”

  “Not this time.” He put both hands on her, tracing lazy spirals around her breasts, grazing the bare upper slopes with his calloused fingertips, circling down under the satin-clad lower curves, and up and around again, slowly, drifting closer and closer to her nipples without actually touching them.

  She had to fight the urge to grab his hands and make him touch her the way she wanted to be touched. The effort caused her muscles to quiver almost imperceptibly, like a barrel racer at the gate or a hound on a scent, sending tremors of anticipation and excitement rippling along her skin.

  “You’re built real fine,” he said musingly, his gaze following the meandering path of his fingers. “Sweet and dainty as a ballerina.”

  She snorted derisively, or tried to, anyway. The sound was actually more of a whimper. Or maybe a moan.

  He slid his hands under her arms, following the band of her bra to the hooks in back. She felt the bra loosen. Instinctively, she tried to tighten her arms to her sides to keep it in place but his arms were in the way. The bra fell to the floor. He stared at her bared breasts for a long appreciative moment. They were as pretty up close as they had been at a distance, small but nicely rounded with tiny raspberry-pink nipples, tumid with arousal that silently begged for his attention. He slid his hands back to the front of her torso and cupped them over her breasts. The slight, sweet swell barely filled his palms.

  “Dainty as a ballerina,” he repeated decisively, a hint of satisfaction in tone. “I thought so the first time I saw you through Tom Steele’s binoculars.”

  “Binoculars!” The word was barely above a whisper but she got it out. “You were watching me through—”

  He pressed his thumbs against her distended nipples.

  She sucked in a ragged breath. “—binoculars?” she managed to say as it hissed out again.

  “How else was I going to see who was down by the water tank, hmm?”

  “What else did you see?”

  “You. Doing this.” He rotated his thumbs over her nipples, making them stand even more rigidly at attention. “And this.” He grasped them between his thumbs and forefingers, pinching them lightly as he’d seen her do, pulling on them until they were jewel hard.

  The sound she bit back was definitely a moan.

  He skimmed his right hand down her belly to trace the edge of her panties. “I couldn’t see exactly what you were doing under the water, but I imagine it was something like this.” He slipped his hand inside her panties and down between her legs, cupping her.

  She clamped her teeth together, determined not to whimper. Or beg.

  It turned out she didn’t need to.

  Clay Madison, cowboy, wild thing, bull rider extraordinaire, was her fantasy come to life. He knew exactly what she wanted, exactly what she yearned for, and exactly how to give it to her. And she didn’t have to say a word.

  He stroked her clitoris once, very lightly, very slowly, with his index finger, watching her face all the while to gauge her reaction. Evidently, he liked what he saw because he smiled—a slow, sexy, satisfied smile that she would have objected to as smug at any other time—and stroked her again, equally lightly and slowly. And then again…and again…and again, so lightly and slowly and delicately that it was barely a touch at all.

  Jo Beth gasped and reached out, grasping his arms to hold herself upright. Her short manicured nails dug into the soft summer-weight wool tuxedo jacket covering his hard biceps. Her eyes closed. She bit down on her lip to stifle the wanting sound that rose in her throat.

  “Or maybe it was more like this.” He circled the slick, swollen nubbin of sensitized flesh, then grasped it lightly between his thumb and index finger, tugging on it as he had on her nipples.

  Jo Beth’s entire body jolted in helpless response. Her knees buckled. Her spine arched. Her head fell back. A
shuddering sigh escaped her lips.

  Yes, he thought with supreme masculine satisfaction, and wrapped an arm around her, catching her up against the hard length of his body. His left hand cradled the back of her head, supporting it as he had when he dipped her on the dance floor. His right continued to work furiously between her legs, two thick blunt-tipped fingers sliding in and out of her now, pressing deep, stroking the exquisitely sensitive upper wall of her vagina, his thumb riding her clitoris. He was determined to bring her to fever pitch, determined to have her explode and melt in his arms like every other woman he’d ever made love to had done.

  Another sixty seconds passed in taut, panting silence and then, finally, she uttered a long, low guttural groan of pure unadulterated pleasure and came against his fingers, her wet inner muscles clamping down hard to hold him inside, her fingers white-knuckled as they bit into his biceps.

  He bent his head then, capturing the groan with his lips, and immediately set about driving her up again. If one orgasm was good, two was better—and he always aimed to do better. While his fingers continued to gently, expertly ravage the sensitive, swollen passage between her thighs, his mouth ravaged her lips.

  She was being invaded above and below, penetrated by his fingers and tongue, caressed into trembling, intemperate insensibility by a man who knew precisely how sex should be done—and who did it with single-minded intensity and admirable attention to nuance and detail.

  She came twice more in as many minutes. Small, sharp forceful explosions of sensation that were almost painful in their intensity. She strained against him, trying to get closer and get away at the same time. Her thighs were clamped tight against his hand as if to thwart his invasion while holding him close. Her lips were open and avid under his, inviting him in. Her tongue dueled furiously with his as if to keep him away.