(3 Book Box Set) "Cowgirl Desires" & "Last Chance Cowboy" & "Embracing Love Again"

by Celina Whitley, Kelly Warren, & Stephanie Hunter

  She studied how he walked, when he turned toward her to tell her something about the area, and how he carried himself. He wasn’t a very rigid walker. He swayed a bit. He made the outdoors his home. His strength and sincerity oozed in every one of his glances and there seemed to be a wounding shyness that she wanted to sample. Her kind of shyness stayed hidden underneath, layer upon layer of staying in control. She usually was one of the guys dealing with the realities of the sport.

  Cavanaugh didn’t become so decent by getting caught up on hype. He knew cowboys were well liked and loved but he didn’t for a second mistake awe and wonder for something real, like he was hoping for in Carmen. Carmen also knew what it was like to look at the cowboys and gawk, but to truly understand the internal terrain outside of the medic’s mobile center, like the personal side, not what they put on for show, was a new journey. She knew her brother a little bit, but he’d kept everything close to his chest.

  Each time they were taking a chance, just like the one she was taking by taking this hike with an established competitor who might not have healed his heart, but was certainly willing to give it a real try. She didn’t feel like a rebound. He seemed to have considered every one of his moves, and was very smooth. She was a little lame at being smooth, but she let the feeling that they were discovering, guide her. Sometimes, she realized when she let her head do all the thinking she got clumsy.

  She felt lightheaded, because he was so close; she felt her feet were firmly on the ground while her soul was floating above them whispering way to go. Every time the wind blew, she felt it was helping them along on their personal exploration. The sound of the flowing river encapsulated her thoughts and she understood how the small rapids invited so many rafters. The excitement at this time of year by nature lovers wasn’t a small endeavor. People came from all over the country to enjoy the Chattahoochee.

  Water sports lovers floated by and they had no idea that Carmen and Cavanaugh were on their third official date. She wondered if they gave off that new couple glow. The river rippled around ducks and logs and occasionally you’d see a duck stand on a log and ride a bit further down the river. Maybe I’m wrong but I wonder if there’s anything about walking that gets us out and looking at nature, she thought

  She heard the sound of kids laughing and splashing and hollering for their parents. There wasn’t a day that she didn’t appreciate living so close to the river.

  This river held lots of memories and here they were living, without a care in the world. They were dreaming about how they could live without a plan. If Sally wasn’t willing to welcome another love further into her son’s life, Carmen and Cavanaugh weren’t on the same page with her. It was a lot about living, and if there were tons of mistakes in the process, then it meant they hadn’t stopped learning.

  Despite thinking she knew every curve of this river it still held many mysteries. One of the mysteries was what being there with Cavanaugh felt different from the other times she was there. Motorboats made their way along the river and stopped right before the rapids.

  Sometimes those motors got her wondering about whether the river could be seen as having its own motor. Did it ride fiercely at times accelerating, enjoying the thrill of it all, then slow down when an obstacle was seen. Revved and uncertain, she grabbed sight of a motorboat spreading out fishing lines. She wondered what they might catch.

  Cavanaugh said, “Hey, looks like you caught one.”

  The fisher yelled, “Key to this is a gold blade.

  Cavanaugh asked, “What’d you catch. “

  He answered, “A brown trout caught with a blue back herring. Two pounder.”

  Carmen and Cavanaugh waved and kept walking.

  “If you want to dip your toes in, I don’t mind.” He said.

  She took off her shoes. He pulled out a small radio, but didn’t turn it on. They put their toes in the water

  “Sit down next to me.” She said. So he got a little closer.

  Cavanaugh told her to close her eyes and then he hopped up. Cavanaugh came back and said, “Isn’t it the sweetest smell?” He held a few rubbed leaves of sweetgum between his fingers.

  She said, “I would have thought the sweetest smell would have been my fabric softener after a wash.”

  He said, “Well you would have been wrong.”

  Overpowered, they sat on the shore and kissed passionately, secluded by a small grove of wisteria. Her reaction to the sweetgum made Cavanaugh enjoy the hold he had on her.

  “Easy now. We might end up back at the truck instead of making it to the special spot I picked for us.”

  She said, “Well, the image of someone wearing spandex might bring us back down to earth.”

  He laughed, “No thanks. I don’t want this feeling to ever pass.”

  The rich feeling of their embrace lingered as they stepped up from the shoreline. A little ways away, Carmen spotted a cardinal flower. Cavanaugh grabbed his camera. Carmen made him sit down next to the flower so she could compare his lips to the flower to gauge which ones were more alluring. Cavanaugh went ahead with the charade. He was thrilled that his lips won despite the beauty of the bright red cardinal flower.

  Chapter Nine

  Carmen and Cavanaugh decided to drive up to the hiker hostel. The day’s events had them reeling a bit and they craved a little more seclusion. They pulled up and it didn’t take long before the cooler and their bags were inside.

  Cavanaugh looked at her like he wanted to love her. Carmen looked him squarely in the face and wanted to be greeted with a warm wet kiss. She gave him a look that made conveyed her desire. Both of them felt like it was going to be a couple of rounds tonight.

  Carmen said, “We’ve got the whole night. No interruptions.”

  Cavanaugh crooned, “You’re not wasting our alone time.”

  Carmen teased, “What if I were to say that you got me slowing down, got it real bad, got that smile of yours to speed me up and that I have never tasted your lips, before. What if I said I don’t know where you walked in from, but I can’t seem to manage to do anything but want to drink you up like I do when I have my hand outreached in a jar calling out for more. What if I said I have a crush on you?” Oh my, did I just say that?

  Cavanaugh quivered, “You’re not very good at this are you?”

  Her nerves split open as she replied, “No”.

  Carmen withdrew, “I want to crush us some ice for those glasses.”

  Cavanaugh nodded then grabbed a piece of ice and pressed it against Carmen’s hot neck bringing her right back towards him.

  He whispered, “I should have been a piece of ice.”

  Carmen restlessly laughed and felt heat shoot between her thighs straight up to the spot that was getting all the icy attention, “I should have written a number one hit, because one of them would be about this very moment.”

  At this very moment are relationship was about to deepen. No one would have to write it off, like their past mistakes. Holding another piece of ice kept Carmen reminded that the one Cavanaugh held now spilled down her neck, where his lips were drinking it up.

  Cavanaugh licked off a second and third ice cube. The fourth ice cube was somewhere in the small of her back and she couldn’t see his eyes, but his strong hands held her waist and hips and she couldn’t come to grips. She spilled forward and arched her back. Magnolias and sweetgum lingered in her thoughts and the way he moved when they were in their eyesight.

  She fell apart in his arms, although she couldn’t be sure if really he was putting her back together. His haunting eyes captured hers and they both knew that they weren’t going to get over this for a while. As her fingers traced his arms, she spun around and removed his shirt one button at a time. He let the shirt fall off his shoulders and he pressed her hips against his groin. She almost opened her mouth and decided there was very little she could add to this moment with words. She ached for every part of him.

  She held onto his neck cupping her palm in
one spot. She didn’t move, just looked him in his eyes and fell in. She blinked and tossed around inside of herself like she had swallowed a vortex. She kissed his cheeks and let the gypsy in her take over and fly solo all over his body. Cavanaugh went wild. He fell back on the bed with her all over him falling free. He couldn’t breathe, then all he could do was breathe to catch his breath and keep up with all the feelings weaving themselves through their bodies. She told him more in the silence about how to call and respond to their body talk than he’d ever learned about a woman. She lingered on his nipples and he lingered on her shoulder as her blouse fell off.

  Inside, he wondered if he should stop himself from moving any further. Would he wake up learning anything if he didn’t know when to draw a red line? Right now she was a pussycat walking up right into his hand for a good rubbing. Any advice that his head was giving him right now was part of the same part of the brain that later would yell at him for not being young and crazy. This wasn’t about banishing their exploration. This was them seeing each other in a small cabin in the woods, alone and unwilling to catch their breath. Nothing needed to get between their skin and that they were better off that they had left the rest of the world behind.

  She lightly scratched his chest that set his eyes on fire. He arched his back and put her hips between his thighs and squeezed his knees and calves around her. Her hands started to shake then all she needed to do was forget that maybe tomorrow or the next day he’d be riding a bull again. They swayed their hips to the music that they were feeling despite forgetting the radio in the truck.

  They tossed around on the bed sheets and she spread her legs over his thighs. He was so used to being on top. Now she was turning him into that nitty-gritty that could catch a silver bullet between his teeth if it happened to be necessary ever.

  Round one was feeling like he wasn’t just some guy with a rope. He hadn’t lost his direction, but he had lost whatever he had to weather before this moment. Couldn’t think of any of those moments that made his heart a mess. She knew that the ground shook every day at the rodeo and she watched those riders push their limits on their way up to their highest and next pinnacle. Here she was living and letting herself risk what it took to feel completely on fire.

  At his touch of her hips, she bit at his neck and smelled the musk that must have penetrated into her every bone. There was nothing frantic about their motions. This was a cross between a soul station and a George Jones album. This was what terms between wandering souls came to scrawled on the backs and thighs and hips of two interlocked drifters whose life’s callings led them to life on the circuit. No ink, no signatures, and so the whole deal could come undone and that was part of living dangerously. It was just a feeling of being held again. It wasn’t going to be easy under the gun and out of each other’s sight after tonight.

  She wondered what walking around all those weeks dead inside keeping her heart and love in check was all about. Cavanaugh shook up every step she had taken cautiously. What if she ended up lonely again? She was learning how to climb outside of her tended fenced-in soul. It had screeched to a stop and Cavanaugh was releasing it back into the slow lane. They might have a second wind or a third. Round one was feeling like she wasn’t just some chick who could stitch scars. She wasn’t losing her composure. She was leaving poise for something a lot less picture perfect, something messy. They weren’t fighting feelings like so many do walking in their ordered life showing how in control they really are.

  This was the backwoods and there wasn’t any dust, rust, ropes and seconds to count. All they heard was the sound of trees swaying occasionally, and tonight they would hear the night creatures taking over the air and letting anything nearby know there were tons of them and they would be hard to find.

  Still on top of him, Carmen besieged him with momentary blazing clenches, true grit, and driving fits that unfastened burdensome inhibitions. Heat rushed through their imprisoned minds. Wetness and the smell of sex and sweat dominated the Georgia night. Carmen was shackled a few times by her understanding that she was about to sleep with a bull rider, the very type of man that set her life spinning and caused her to try to live past life’s tragedies. It was as if by falling in love, as she was finding herself to be falling, with the very type of man who would remind her of her terrible losses, she could turn life’s misfortunes into a way to conquer them and lead to her escape from powerlessness. He was a doorway into a second and third chance.

  He tugged Carmen’s nipples and she leaned back, barely sensible, and mostly convulsed. He could see she was ready for him to send her quivering. He looked in her eyes and enveloped her between her legs. The muscles in her legs rippled as he traced her folds over her underwear. She grinded feverishly against his palm as his fingers moved like little tongues circling her clitoris all together. She couldn’t concentrate ever since they started this hot July night, but now she couldn’t even beg for mercy. She buckled and spread her legs to his slow thick fingers sketching circles around her folds. He parted her folds and as he stroked her clitoris, he pressed inside of her with a few of his fingers and slowly guzzled her squeezing around his fingers. She shook down to her toes as he brought to the edge gradually.

  Then he laid her on the sheets and took one lick up her inner thigh over her sex, before her hand released the bulge of his jeans. He found her g-spot and she called out his name. He hadn’t heard his name in that tone and it brought out a wild in him that had him surge. With his finger on her g-spot, there was nothing for her to grasp onto. He had her oozing and imprisoned. He looked at her lustfully and he tilted her hips back before he guided his wild oat gradually inside of her. Her folds tugged his cock in fiercely one inch at a time until he was fully inside of her.

  They ravenously swallowed and plunged as they lapped the tips of their shuddering inner thrusts against moist thighs and greedy hands. He wriggled out of her and slowly watched as he moved his fingers over her slick clit and then pinched lightly, leisurely and frequently. She was enticed and inflamed as he meandered the pinch and right before she convulsed uncontrollably he grabbed one of her thighs with his hand and he slipped his cock inside of her and applied slight gyrations. Carmen spiraled and swallowed him. Heat stabbed through her back and thighs and supple clitoris as they climaxed and surged in their trance.

  Chapter Ten

  Carmen and Cavanaugh continued to date, relieving Carmen of the idea that Sally might have been warning her that Cavanaugh might not be ready for a woman in his life. Cavanaugh’s brown hair fell into his eyes as she watched him walk towards her at the rodeo. Her thoughts went to Sally saying that Cavanaugh was still not sure what was heads and tails when it came to women. It seemed like Sally just planted that seed for Carmen, but Cavanaugh might not be interested in what Sally and Greg had built for themselves.

  All Carmen knew about Sally was that she was the perfect mother at the hospital and at their house whenever Carmen came around. However, there was always more than one side to a person. Moms also have a tendency to want to overdo their version of the story. Sally was not as much of a risk-taker as her sons. She could be thinking that is what got them into all of these terrible situations, and she’d be right, sort of, Carmen thought.

  ***

  They had incredible times together. It started with a good afternoon kiss on a balcony above a square she’d walked many times as a single woman and with friends. There had been a lot of late nights walking around wondering if anyone had ever had a successful relationship with someone drawn to the rodeo. She wondered if other women kept a bull rider in their life given that they were rarely around to help with any home improvements or on those nights when things got unbearable and they wanted to put their hand across the bed and make sure everything was okay. A little bit of home town feel is what many people were looking for, because reaching for the stars might feel hollow after a while.

  Cavanaugh lived for the spotlight and riding that bull each time to stare danger in the eyes and tes
t his fortitude. He was a self-made man, despite past heartbreaks. That’s what made up for uncertainties. Carmen didn’t have a great track record with men either. Somehow she managed to find guys who liked to treat her well for a little while, and then start chewing on her like a chew toy. She started feeling like they didn’t really see her for who she was. She kept pictures sometimes of the good times she’d had on a date, and it dawned on her that her and Cavanaugh hadn’t taken any photos yet on their dates.

  After a few dates, she thought it would be a good idea to ask Cavanaugh to meet her family. They didn’t live that far from her place. She’d been raised in Dahlonega all of her life. She’d come and gone a few times, but always ended up there. Cavanaugh agreed. He didn’t see any harm in meeting them, he told her. She’d met his, although for different reasons, but still it was a matter of respect. Her parents, Claudia and Alfredo Delfino lived about 10 miles away from her near Highway 60. They looked forward to meeting Cavanaugh.

  “Hon, you know me, I love meeting anyone you start dating. I know you have such a hectic schedule so when you find someone who can handle that, I’m all ears,” said Claudia. “I’ll make sure your dad is here.”

  Carmen was a little nervous about the meeting. She had requested that her mom tell her father not to ask a million questions and make it feel more like a lovely evening and less like a firing squad. Her father wasn’t very good at relaxing around men, especially ones that were younger and had caught Carmen’s eye. Claudia promised she would put in the request with her father. She said she’d ask Alfredo to save the questions for another time, although she was still unsure.

  They pulled up to the cream colored house a few yards away from the barn covered in purple wisteria. Cavanaugh gave off a nervous laugh and looked at Carmen then looked down at his jeans. He hoped that he’d picked the right shirt to wear. Carmen looked at him right then and figured, and reassured him, “There’s likely very little you own that doesn’t look good on you.”

  He thanked her. Carmen told him that if her dad started to irritate him, that he could give her a quick sign to help bail him out. He asked, “Like what?”