“He’s definitely a man to sigh over.” Carla Branson sat down in the space Clay had vacated. “You’re very lucky to have him.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Carla gestured at the dancers with her coffee mug. “Your cowboy. He’s something else.”
Jo Beth felt a flutter of panic in her stomach. “He’s not my cowboy,” she said.
“No? But I thought…”
“What did you think?”
“You struck me as a couple.” Carla smiled. “A very nice couple.”
“No.” Jo Beth felt suddenly vulnerable and exposed, as if her innermost self was right there on her sleeve for everyone to see. She tried to tamp the feelings down, covering them up behind her usual icy facade. “No, we’re not a couple,” she said, very calmly, and took another sip of her coffee. “Clay works for me, same as all the other hands on the Diamond J.”
“Oh. Well…” Carla Branson’s gaze darted from Jo Beth’s face to the dance floor and back again. “I could have sworn you two had something going.” She grinned. “Something really hot. I mean, the way he looks at you—” She fanned herself playfully. “Yowza.”
“There’s absolutely nothing going on between us.” Jo Beth pokered up like a spinster in a brothel. “I have a firm rule against getting involved with cowboys. They’re unreliable.”
“Oh. Well…” Carla said again. “My mistake.”
Jo Beth sat silently for a few seconds, wondering if Carla Branson was the only one who had noticed she’d been making a fool of herself over another cowboy who was going to leave her as soon as he was able. She sincerely hoped it had only been Carla who’d noticed…whatever it was she’d noticed. Because it wouldn’t be so bad if Carla were the only one. She’d be gone tomorrow at check-out time.
Jo Beth was more worried about whether the other hands on the Diamond J had noticed something, too. Had T-Bone noticed? Had José or Esperanza or either of the two teenagers from the Second Chance seen anything? Was the gossip even now being passed from neighbor to neighbor?
Poor little ol’ Jo Beth has done it again, they’d say. She’s fallen for another cowboy.
Heard this one up and left as soon as he was healed up, they’d say.
You’d think she’d know better, considering what happened with Tom Steele over at the Second Chance, they’d say. You’d think, at her age, she’d know she doesn’t have what it takes to hold on to a man like that.
No one would stop to think that maybe Jo Beth had been the one to end it. No one would think that she had sent him on his way. She’d be the poor dumped almost-fiancé again, the woman who couldn’t keep her man.
Jo Beth’s ears started to burn as if people were already talking. Her insides went all cold and shivery with dread. Her face felt hot with embarrassment. She hated being talked about. Hated being pitied. Hated it! Hated it! Hated it!
“Are you all right?” Carla said.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You look a little flushed all of a sudden.”
“It’s the fire,” Jo Beth said, although they were sitting well away from it. “And the coffee. And I’m suddenly feeling kind of tired, too.” She got to her feet and set her empty coffee mug on the table. “Will you excuse me, please? It’s been a long day and I think it’s finally caught up with me.” She turned and left without waiting for an answer.
From his place in the line of dancers, Clay watched her hurry into the darkness beyond the edges of the campfire and disappear in the direction of the main house. He’d seen her talking to Carla Branson, seen her stiffen suddenly, seen the expression on her face go from easy and relaxed to something that wasn’t either of those things. His first instinct was to go chasing after her and find out what was wrong, but he knew she wouldn’t like that. It was against the “rules” she’d set out for their relationship.
If I hear a whisper of gossip, if I even think anyone suspects, it’s over right then and there, and you’re out of here.
Chasing after her would result in a whole boatload of gossip and speculation. So, he bided his time. He danced another line dance. He had another cup of coffee. He ate another one of Esperanza’s honey-drenched sopaipillas. He patiently, competently shepherded the festivities through to their conclusion and waited until the campfire was doused and the dudes safely tucked away in their beds before he went after her.
HE COULD SEE THE GLOW of light around the edges of the curtains on her bedroom windows as he approached the back of the main house.
Good, he thought, she’s still awake.
Not that that would have made any difference. If the windows had been dark, he’d have knocked anyway. First off, he was worried about her. And second…well, it was time to make a few things clear to Miz Jo Beth Jensen.
She answered the door at his first knock, yanking it open to glare at him furiously, and attacked without warning.
“You just had to make sure everybody knows about us, didn’t you?” she hissed, keeping her voice low to avoid waking sleeping guests. “You just had to advertise your conquest and make sure everyone knows what a big cowboy stud you are.”
Clay had meant to have a rational conversation with her, to lay his feelings on the line and tell her what he’d been thinking and inform her that he wanted to change the parameters of their relationship, but it was obvious she was in no mood to be rational. She was raring for a knockdown, drag-out fight, and Clay was just the man to give it to her.
He was the only man—the only person—on the Diamond J who could, because he was the only one who wasn’t afraid of her icy temper.
He pushed the door inward, ignoring her efforts to keep him out by leaning on it, and stepped into the inner sanctum, the no-man’s-land of the Diamond J. It was very like her, clean-lined, elegant, unadorned, without a frill or a ruffle in sight.
“Just what the hell are you accusing me of this time?” He bit the words off very precisely, his voice low and controlled and quiet in the stillness of her bedroom.
Jo Beth didn’t heed the danger signals. She’d never seen him angry before, but then, few people had. She didn’t know that the quieter he got, the angrier he was. And he was very quiet. Even if she’d known, though, she wouldn’t have cared. Jo Beth was roiling over with conflicting emotions and needed to vent them. Only butting her head against something—or someone—was going to make her feel better.
“Carla Branson knows there’s something going on between us,” she said accusingly.
“Carla Branson is a very intuitive woman.”
“Intuition has nothing to do with it. She knows.”
“Are you saying I told her I’m banging the boss in my trailer every night?”
“No.” Put like that it sounded ridiculous. “No, of course not. You wouldn’t do that. Not in so many words, anyway.”
“But?” He knew there was a but coming. He could see it seething in her eyes.
“But you don’t need to say anything. You just need to…well—” she waved her hand in front of his face “—you know.”
“No, I don’t know. I’m just a dumb cowboy, so you’re going to have to spell it out for me in words of one syllable.”
“You just had to look at me the way you do.”
“Look at you? How do I look at you?”
“How the hell do I know how you look at me? You look at me, okay? And Carla Branson saw you looking and she knew. Everybody else probably knows, too. Or they’ve guessed. Either way, it doesn’t matter, because it’s over. It ends right here, right now, right this very minute.”
He completely lost his cool. “The hell it does!” he roared.
“Keep your voice down, damn it.” She hurried around him to close the door. “Do you want everyone in the house to know you’re in my room?”
“I don’t care if everyone in town knows I’m in your room.”
“Well, I do!”
“Why? Why do you care so damned much about keeping us a secret? Are you ashamed of what we do toge
ther? Is that it? Are you ashamed to admit you have sex?” His voice got even lower, until it was little more than a vibration of sound in the air between them. “Or is it just that you’re ashamed to admit you have sex with me?”
“No,” she said vehemently. How could he even think such a thing? “No, of course not.”
“Then why?”
“Because…Because…” How could she tell him the truth? How could she stand in front of him and admit that she was afraid of being dumped, that she was afraid of being gossiped about, that she was afraid of being pitied. It sounded so abject and needy, so hopelessly retro and helplessly, stereotypically feminine. It would just be too damned humiliating to admit the truth, to have him know that the hardheaded jefe of the Diamond J was really a spineless wuss who worried too much about what other people thought of her.
“I have control issues,” she said finally.
“Control issues? That’s your answer? That’s all I get? You have control issues?”
“Yes.” She jutted her chin at him. “I have control issues.”
“Well, you’re in luck, then, because I can help you with those.”
“I don’t need your—What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded as he reached out and pushed her backward onto the forest-green quilt on her bed with a quick, hard shove to the middle of her chest.
“I’m helping you with your control issues.” He grabbed one of her boots by the heel, yanked it off, and tossed it on the floor behind him. “When I get through with you, you won’t have any more control issues because, baby—” he yanked off her other boot “—you won’t have any control left.”
Jo Beth lay there for a second or two, stupefied by his statement, unable to believe he meant what it sounded like he meant. And then he leaned over her, reaching for the waistband of her jeans with both hands, galvanizing her out of her momentary inertia. She kicked out and flipped over, trying to propel herself off the other side of the bed. He curled his hand into the back of her jeans and yanked her back toward him. She felt the metal buttons on the fly of her jeans pop open under the pressure, and then she was flipped over onto her spine. She scrambled backward, scuttling toward the edge of the bed like a crab. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her flat. She doubled up her fists and started hammering at him. He ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, taking the hits she rained on him, and reached for the waistband of her jeans again. Curling his fingers under the denim fabric on either side of her hips, he yanked it down. She kicked furiously, but the action seemed only to help him peel the jeans—and her underpants—down her legs and off over her feet. He dropped them on the floor next to her boots. She began to fight in earnest, kicking and flailing as she tried to hold him off.
But Clay was bigger and stronger than her, and he was a professional rodeo cowboy. For nearly twelve years, he’d made his name and his living by sticking to the backs of wildly bucking bulls that weighed two thousand pounds and more, staying with them no matter how hard or how fast they twisted and turned beneath him. One skinny little woman, no matter how well toned—or how furious—was no match for him.
In minutes he had Jo Beth stripped down to her skin and on her back beneath him, held there by his weight straddling her thighs and his hands pinning her wrists to the bed.
She lay there, naked, flushed, breathing so hard she was panting, and glared up at him. “There’s an ugly word for what you’re doing,” she snarled at him.
“Is there, now?” He smiled down into her face, his eyes gleaming with sensual intent, his lips turned up in that cocky, confident cowboy smile that put her back up and made her unbelievably hot at the same time. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?” he challenged.
She opened her mouth to level the charge at him, but couldn’t make herself form the word. What was happening between them wasn’t rape or anything approaching rape. It was foreplay. And they both knew it.
“Oh, hell, just fuck me,” she said.
“Oh, no.” Clay shook his head. “Not this time. This time we do it my way.”
Transferring both of her wrists to one hand, he curled the other under her waist and hoisted her up the length of the bed toward the headboard. It was an antique iron headboard, painted distressed white, with widely spaced vertical bars topped by cast-iron finials. There was a decorative maguey, a Mexican-style braided-grass rope coiled over one of the finials. Clay eyed it speculatively, but decided it wouldn’t do for what he had in mind. The fibers were too rough.
Holding her carefully so that she couldn’t twist away from him, he used his free hand to release the catch on his silver trophy buckle and slid the belt from the loops of his jeans. It was made of fine-grain leather, well-worn, soft and flexible. Using one hand and his teeth, he threaded the tongue through the buckle to form a small loop.
Jo Beth’s eyes flared wide as she watched him, her expression hovering halfway between outrage and rampant sexual excitement. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said, knowing he would, hoping he would. No one had ever tied her to the bed before.
Without a word, he slipped the loop over her right wrist. Making sure it was snug enough so that she couldn’t pull free, he threaded the end of the belt through the iron bars of the headboard and fastened it securely around her other wrist.
“Comfy?” he said, and patted her cheek.
She bared her teeth at him.
He grinned and levered himself up off her to stand by the side of the bed. “You start thrashing around, I’ll tie your feet, too.” His grin turned feral. “Spread-eagled.”
“Bastard,” she snarled, but she lay very still and watched him undress.
When he was naked, he sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her. Just looked at her. She lay there with her arms raised above her head, her back arched, her small breasts upthrust with the hard pink nipples silently begging for his attention. One knee was slightly bent, her foot flat against the bed, her thigh turned coyly inward. Her slender body was lightly muscled and sweetly curved. Her skin was as pale as milk against the dark green quilt. Her long, thick braid lay curved across her neck.
It occurred to him that he’d never seen her hair loose, never seen it cascading over her shoulders and down her back, didn’t know if it was straight or curly or something in between. It was symbolic, somehow, of all he didn’t know about her and all they had never shared.
He picked up the end of her braid, worked the elastic-coated band free, and speared his fingers through the plaited strands. Her hair was a heavily sun-streaked medium brown, thick and wavy, and incredibly soft between his fingers. Released from the confines of the braid, it was almost long enough to completely cover her breasts. He stroked his hands down the shining length, from the crown, down over her shoulders, to her breasts.
“Yes.” She stretched luxuriously and arched her back, pressing her breasts into his palms. “Do me now.”
However softly worded, it was a demand.
Clay lifted his hands from her breasts and placed them on the bed on either side of her. “Let’s deal with those control issues, shall we?” he said.
Her smile was a seductive challenge. “Do your worst,” she invited.
Clay knew she expected to be—wanted to be—ravaged, to be overpowered, to be taken with exquisitely controlled brute force. He knew she expected sexual gymnastics and sophisticated sensual games.
She was in for a surprise.
He smoothed her hair back gently, brushing it away from her face, and leaned down to press a soft kiss to the middle of her forehead.
She started as if he had poked her with something sharp. “Clay,” she murmured fretfully, expecting passion, uneasy with tenderness.
“Shhh,” he said, and pressed another kiss between her brows. “I’m going to kiss every inch of your body. From here—” he touched his mouth to each eyelid in turn “—all the way down to your toes and back up again. And you’re going to lie still and let me do it.”
“Do I have a choice?”
> “None at all,” he said and bent his head to his self-appointed task. He kissed her cheeks and her chin and the curving line of her jaw. He kissed her throat and her shoulders, and the soft swell of her breast where it curved gently away from her rib cage beneath her armpit. He kissed her flat stomach and little jutting bump where her hip bone pressed against her skin and the soft, sensitive crease where her pelvis joined the top of her thigh. He kissed her knee and her shin and the top of her foot and the tip of her big toe. And then he worked his way up the other side of her body, giving her soft, sweet baby kisses that were almost more breath than substance, giving her tenderness, making love to her instead of just having sex.
Jo Beth was quivering by the time he started the return trip, her body drowning in sweet sensation, her mind drifting, floating on a warm sea of nascent emotion that threatened to overwhelm her with an unbearable longing for more. It terrified her. She stiffened against it, resisting the siren’s call of tenderness, afraid she’d weaken and reveal just how much she needed it, and him.
“Untie me,” she demanded. “I want to touch you. Untie me.”
“Not yet,” Clay said, and redoubled his efforts, trying to evoke a response from her that wasn’t primarily sexual.
It was war, a primal battle of the sexes, except that the combatants had changed sides. He gave her everything he had, everything he was, offering her love and tenderness along with the delights of his body. She held herself back emotionally, and opened her thighs, offering only lust and physical passion.
Helpless to resist, Clay positioned himself between her wide-open legs and accepted the sensual invitation. He surged into her in one forceful thrust, both above and below, his tongue penetrating her mouth as his penis penetrated the slick, swollen walls of her vagina. She moaned and lifted her legs, clamping them tightly around his waist, crossing her ankles at the small of his back to keep him locked deep inside her and increase the power of his heavy driving thrusts. He slid his hands into her hair, cradling her head, cupping it gently in his wide calloused palms, holding her to him while he delicately ravaged her mouth. Their lower bodies slammed together with brutal passion, hard and fast and desperate, driving relentlessly toward completion. Their mouths melded in a paroxysm of reckless tenderness. She fought to maintain control, to keep a sense of self, to remain separate and apart from him no matter how closely they were entwined. He fought to absorb her into his very soul, to inhale her, to make her acknowledge him as more than a sexual convenience. Neither one of them succeeded completely, nor failed entirely.
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