12-Alarm Cowboys (61 page)

He devoured her, suckling and biting at the pink peaks. She yanked his hair as a series of small moans burst from her throat. He knew he wasn’t going to last long. Hell, he was surprised he hadn’t lost it when she grabbed his cock.

“Now, baby.” He bit down hard on her nipple, the way she always liked to come, and he wasn’t disappointed.

A high-pitched, keening cry accompanied her pussy muscles fluttering and tightening around him. He let himself go, the orgasm starting somewhere near his big toe and racing through his body like wildfire. He might have shouted. He might have not made a sound.

Dax was lost in the pure ecstasy of the moment, the pleasure intense and sharp. He dug his fingers into her ass, holding on as he rode the wave of the powerful release.

“Holy shit, Dax.” Her voice came from far away, husky and confused sounding.

Holy shit indeed.

What had they just done?

To call supper
an awkward occasion would be a ridiculous understatement. Sophie could barely choke down the mac and cheese and its delicious, cheesy flavor. It was a crying shame she couldn’t focus on how hungry she was or how delicious the iced tea was.

Good sweet tea was worth its weight in gold and there was a full pitcher with ice cubes lazily floating in the amber liquid on the table. She focused on the tea so she didn’t have to look at Dax.

Her body still buzzed from the incredible sex they’d had in the side yard. In full view of anyone who happened to be nearby. Embarrassment made her cheeks burn with the memory but satisfaction made her pussy hum.

With her glasses back on, she could see him clearly. Good thing she was nearsighted or she’d have missed seeing all that male hotness without her specs. Ye gods, the man could model for a Michelangelo statue.

The situation was a conundrum. Kissing him had been like sliding down a slippery mountain with nothing to stop her fall. And oh what a fall it had been. She’d forgotten what good sex,
really
good sex, was like. How her body reacted before, during and after. How a delicious ache resonated through her afterward.

They shouldn’t have done it. Both of them knew it, but that hadn’t stopped them from losing control. Their physical relationship had always been strong. That obviously hadn’t changed.

However, she should have stepped away or smacked him or maybe even kick him in the balls. Something to avoid the disaster they’d just accomplished together.

“We need to talk.” His voice cracked through the thick silence.

“No, we don’t.” She stuffed her mouth with more mac and cheese, hoping like hell he would drop it.

“You’re staying here tonight. It would be kinda foolish to spend the next twelve hours in silence.” He tapped on the table. “This isn’t a monastery practicing silence.”

She snorted. They don’t have wild monkey sex at a monastery.

“I didn’t intend on that happening.” He wasn’t giving up.

She sighed and put down her fork, then a big swig of tea to buy her time to find a coherent answer. Apparently sex turned her into a blithering idiot.

“Neither did I.”

Scintillating conversationalist.

“We’ll call it a screw for old times.” He sounded as uncomfortable as she was.

“Isn’t there a drink called a ‘slow comfortable screw against the wall’?” popped out of her mouth.

It was his turn to snort. “That there is. Not a fan of sloe gin so I’ve never had one.”

A laugh exploded out of her mouth. “I think you’ve had one. About half an hour ago in fact.”

Just like that, the air lightened and the tension popped. She smiled at her plate as she resumed eating. The rest of the meal passed and Sophie was able to enjoy the delicious food. She ate much more than she expected. A burp escaped her mouth before she could stop it.

His brows went up. “Well then.”

She shrugged. “I usually don’t have time to eat well when I’m working. I can’t put it in my expense report that I was fed by the owner of the building.”

“What about the fire chief?”

The image of him in his turnout suit flashed through her brain. “Ah, no, definitely worse than the building owner.”

“Then tell them you stayed with an old friend. It’s the truth.” He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his belly.

Oh, that rock-hard belly with muscles of steel. Her fingers had traced the dips and lines and itched to do so again.

Easy, girl
.

She couldn’t forget what had happened between them when they’d broken up. How the vicious words flew through the air, slicing and dicing through their hearts. They couldn’t forget the past no matter how tempting the present was.

“You want coffee?” He got to his feet and picked up both their plates.

She hid her surprise. His mother had spoiled her children and did all their household chores. She’d never seen Dax put a plate in the sink before. To her shock, he turned on the water and started washing the dishes.

“Holy shit.” It jumped out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

He didn’t pause in his work. “You’d be surprised what I’ve learned to do the last five years.”

A shiver raced up her spine. He didn’t mean sexual skills, but her mind was rolling around in the gutter anyway. She had to pull it back, way, way back.

“Doing laundry too?” She poured herself another half a glass of tea.

“That too. Sometimes necessity makes a man do what needs to be done. I’ve been something of a bachelor.” He gestured to the back of the house. “Mama lives alone in the guest house. Hannah moved out years ago.”

He was telling her he had remained single. No girlfriend, live-in or otherwise. She didn’t want to know that. She especially didn’t want to feel a measure of satisfaction at the knowledge.

Sophie had lost her mind sometime in the last four hours. Why did she think she could survive coming back to Tanger unscathed?

She sipped at her tea and closed her eyes. After a few minutes, Dax touched her shoulder. “Do you want to go see the stars?”

The one thing she truly missed living in a city was the night sky. Growing up in the country, she had a front row seat to the most beautiful light show in the universe.

They walked out of the house together through the back door. No words were necessary. They had made a nightly sojourn to watch the stars many times. The best stargazing was at the crest of one of the hills where the trees didn’t grow. Thick wild grass dotted the land making for a comfy spot to look up.

Sophie breathed in the sweet scents in the night air. She resisted the temptation to find the honeysuckle and taste the nectar as she did when she was growing up. She wasn’t a child any longer and life wasn’t simple. The velvet blackness of the sky lay out endlessly above them.

They reached their favorite spot and lay back on grass. The dew had already coated the blades, providing a cool bed beneath their backs. The stars twinkled above them, thousands upon thousands of pinholes in the darkness.

An owl hooted nearby to accompany the night peepers filling the air with their song. Sophie hadn’t remembered what peace felt like. It came upon her in a slow wave, starting from her feet and sliding up her body. Goose bumps prickled her skin.

“I forgot.” The words were a whisper on the night breeze. She wasn’t sure if he heard her.

“Sometimes I forget too. I haven’t been out here in a long time.” His hand touched hers and she twined their fingers together.

She couldn’t imagine a more perfect moment.

‡

S
ophie didn’t have
a change of clothes or even a toothbrush. She found both sitting on the guest room bed. They had watched the stars in silence for an hour until sleep threatened to overtake her. The day had started with a hellacious morning commute and then the long drive to Tanger.

She yawned widely against her hand. Hannah must’ve left her the necessities. Sophie wanted to thank her but she didn’t know which room was her former friend’s.

Being beholden to others went against Sophie’s grain. She had done everything she could to be independent, to support herself, and rely only on her own wits, intelligence and skills. Now here she was stranded, without clothes or a place to sleep, or a car that ran.

No matter what Tennessee Williams wrote, Sophie did not depend on the kindness of strangers. She didn’t know how to accept it.

She took a long, hot shower, washing away the sweat, stink and soot that clung to her. The guest room at the Triple B had a lovely en suite bathroom that provided her with fluffy towels and everything she needed to get clean.

When she pulled on the nightie, she remembered that Hannah was tiny in stature although big busted. Apparently Sophie was a foot taller and her boobs were twice as big because the damn nightie looked more like a hooker’s outfit when she put it on.

She didn’t want to go work a corner and she couldn’t sleep in her dirty clothes so that left one option. Sophie crept beneath the covers naked as a jaybird. The sheets were the kind of cotton that had four-digit thread counts and was soft as a baby’s skin. She snuggled down into the pillowtop mattress and promptly passed out.

Sophie awoke sometime later, the room dark and still. Something had brought her to full wakefulness in an instant. Shadows danced around the room as moonlight crept in through the sheer curtains.

Dax stood in front of the window, wearing only his boxers. She tried not to react, but she wondered what the hell he was doing. At least he wasn’t standing over her. Yet he was in the room in which she slept.

She must have made a noise to alert him because he started speaking as if picking up a conversation they’d been having.

“You broke my heart, Soph. Big, strong football player and cowboy. Busted it into a thousand pieces.” He kept his voice in a hushed tone, but she could hear the real pain behind the words.

Shock kept her immobile on the bed. That, and she didn’t want to prance around in front of him naked again. Skipping down that path was not on her agenda.

“I broke your heart?” She sounded as confused as she felt. “You didn’t seem to want a girlfriend anymore. How many times did you visit me when I was in college?”

“I was working. I couldn’t just go gallivanting off in Houston with you and your college friends. Ranches are twenty-four/seven operations.” He pressed his hands against the glass. “You had plenty of fun without me being there to spoil it.”

“Fun?” Now she did sit up, her ire simmering to a boil at his assumption. “I worked my ass off at that school. I didn’t have a gaggle of friends. I was lonely every day and you never once visited me.” Emotion clogged her throat and her eyes stung. Here was the argument she’d dreaded. It was coming at them like a freight train. There was no stopping it now. “I needed you but you never came. You chose your friends, your horses and your damn cows over me.”

The silence in the room was only broken by their breathing. She held the covers around her chest, unwilling to let go of the shield.

“You chose college over me.”

“Bullshit! I wanted to get my degree to get out of Tanger.”

“Then you succeeded, didn’t you?” He shook his head. “Shook the shit right off your shoes from here.”

“Nothing I did was to hurt you. I felt stifled in this small town. Nothing has changed in decades. It’s caught in the past and you’re following right along with Blackwood tradition. You have a mind of your own, Dax, but you chose instead to snuggle down at the homestead and ignore what you wanted.”

A few beats passed. “What I wanted was my girlfriend to love me enough to stay here.”

“What I wanted was a boyfriend who loved me enough to support me.”

“Good thing we didn’t stay together then, huh?” He pushed away from the window and faced her, hands on his hips. “You would never be satisfied to live in a podunk down like Tanger with a backwoods cowboy who likes to lay out under the stars for fun.”

He turned and left the room, his strides almost stomping. She leapt out of bed and chased after him. When she caught up to him, she remembered she was naked.

Oh well.

She thumped him on the back with both fists. “You never talked to me and you still don’t. You assume you know every thought in my brain and draw conclusions. This is the conversation we should have had five years ago, not now. The scars are too deep to repair them.”

“Are you naked?”

She waved her hand to dismiss his obvious question. “I loved you with every fiber of my being, Dax Gideon Blackwood, and you didn’t love me enough.”

To her horror, a sob worked its way up her throat. She didn’t want to cry over him again. She’d made that promise to herself after months of depression and crushing sadness. He’d made his choice and it wasn’t her.

“I loved you more than any human being on the planet.” His voice sounded sincere, but the words were years too late.

“I don’t believe you. If you did, you would have come after me.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized what she said.

Her heart slammed against her ribs as they faced each other in the weak moonlight. She’d wanted him to chase her, to demonstrate she was more important than his family ranch. After accusing him of not accepting herself, the opposite was true. She’d not accepted him and his choice to be a rancher.