Country Love (A Billionaire BWWM Romance) (6 page)

Chapter Ten

Tanner

I am Tanner
fucking Brock. I sang "Everwild," the number one country song for
nearly the whole of 2014. I've had panties flung at me in over fifty cities and
I've had my pick of women in even more. I'm a pro. I've got game. I have
swagger.

So where the fuck
did that all go?

Kiss it better?
That was the best I could do? She
had every right to shoot me down the way she did. I sounded like a junior high
Casanova, all sweaty with hormones.

I was embarrassing
myself and clearly she was embarrassed for me, because she shot me down
brutally and mercifully changed the subject.

And unwittingly
opened the door for me to make a fool of myself yet again.

My favorite spot
on the ranch. I should have lied. But I was already so far gone into embarrassment
that one more stupid blunder shouldn't have made a difference. So I told her
the truth.

"This is
going to make me sound crazy," I began.

"Too
late," she smiled, giving me much deserved shit.

I nodded,
accepting it as my due. "But my favorite place is up that a'way." I
turned my horse and beckoned her to follow me. I hoped that showing her, rather
than telling her would make me seem less crazy.

A narrow creek
wound through the property, bouncing energetically among the smooth boulders
that tried to stand in its way. It flowed right through the center of the
ranch, bisecting it into a natural two parts; the lower, where we were now, and
the upper where we were headed. We forded it at the narrowest point, coming up
on the other, rockier, higher side.

This was the
"Highlands," and though the difference in elevation was miniscule, it
was enough to feel like a whole different world when I was a kid. We kept the
goats up here, letting them crop the grasses that jutted up out of the rocky
ground. It was wilder, without the gentle feel of the rolling grasses below us.
Up here, it was mainly scrub, the wind scouring the earth clean and revealing
its red underbelly.
 
It made a high,
keening sound as it blew between the gullies, sounding like how my heart would
sound if you hooked it up to a speaker...

We rode in silence
for a while, letting the horses do the work of carefully picking their way
along the rocky ground. I could feel Monique's curiosity rising off of her in
waves, but to my surprise, she kept silent. I heard the occasional click and
whir of her fancy camera, but I didn't bother to look back. I figured whatever
shots she needed, she'd let me know. And besides, now that we were up here, I
was focused on something else.

"Careful
now," I called back as the ground began to fall off sharply. This part was
tricky even on foot, a steep descent when you came in at this angle. If I had
my wits about me, I would have circled around north and taken the far gentler
slope, but I was feeling so unsettled that I found I
needed
the peace of this place. I couldn't wait any longer.

Once we were at
the bottom of the slope, the wind fell away, and we were sheltered in the lee.
The silence that reigned up here was a living thing, and I knew that Monique
felt it too because her camera was clicking and whirring rapidly. When she stopped
suddenly, I knew she had realized where we were.

The gravestones
stood straight and tall. Two stones pressing together, too new and shining to
really look at home with the rest yet. The other stones had been there long
enough to seem part of the landscape, but the place that marked my parents'
shared gravesite was still a new addition.

"Is
that...?" Monique sounded

"Family
plot," I nodded. I wasn't sure where the lump in my throat had come from.
Except the knowledge of how long it had been since I was last here. I slid from
the saddle and walked over to where my parents, grandparents and
great-grandparents rested in eternity.

"All of
these graves?" Monique sounded mystified. "They're all related to
you?"

“I’m the last of
my name,” I said quietly, resting my hand on my mother's stone with a friendly
pat hello before looking back at Monique. Her expression was one of complete
confusion. If I was being honest, I'd say she wanted to bolt right the hell out
of there. "You okay?" I furrowed my brow. "Wait, are you
squeamish or something?"

"This is
your favorite place?" she asked.

I felt the heat
rise in my cheeks. "You asked me and I told you the truth. What's the
problem?"

Instead of
answering, she stalked over to where my Grandpa Sam was buried and crouched down,
tracing her finger along the carved stone. Then she moved to my Granny Sue's,
then over to my Great-Uncle Abel. Her mouth twisted and I could practically see
the thoughts that were racing through her brain, I just couldn't figure out
what the hell they were.

At once, she
stood up and shook her head, then said something that nearly knocked me out of
my boots. "I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "I guess I just...got
jealous."

Chapter Eleven

Monique

The words were
coming thick and fast all of a sudden. I wasn't sure what it was about him that
made me feel so vulnerable and open. Those blue eyes of his bored into me like
he could see all my secrets anyway, so there was no use trying to hide behind
lies.

I touched the
sunwarmed gravestone, needing to ground myself somehow.
 
He was waiting for me to speak, not
rushing me. For a fleeting second, I let myself marvel at how different he was
from most celebrities I had met. And then I took a deep breath.

"My father
moved us around," I began. "Constantly." I flinched as I heard
the pain in my voice. There was no use bringing up old sadness, it only made
you sad all over again.
 
But the
words kept coming in spite of my mind screaming at me to shut up. "I don't
think we stayed in a single place more than two years, three years at the most."

He strode a
little closer and leaned against one of the weather gravestones, so at home
here with his memories and his history.
 
"That must have been hard," he
said, neutrally.

I swallowed and
nodded. "When I was little I thought he didn't want me to make friends.
Any time I made a friend, I had to pack up again. Or that's what it felt
like." The wind through the trees sounded exactly like my sigh. "But
when we moved to Holcum, that was supposed to be different. We were supposed to
stay forever."

"I'm
guessing you didn't stay there?"

For a moment my
fists balled on their own. Old hot anger flashed through me, but with nowhere
to go, and nowhere to direct it, it settled into an ache in my stomach.
 
I didn't want to be telling this story to
a complete stranger, much worse a complete stranger who was also a rich white
cowboy country singer, beautiful blue eyes or no. I decided to keep it light.
"We had land that my grandparents had worked. When they passed, they
willed it to my dad. He told us things were different, that he wouldn't move us
any more. That we'd get to stay." The words caught in my throat and I
closed my mouth before I could spill out the whole, sorry story.

Dad led away in handcuffs, shouting promises over his
shoulder. Mom standing on the porch, eyes glittering with angry tears of
betrayal, but refusing to let them fall. He told her to stay and wait, but we
didn't.

We left in the night. That night. And moved on.

Again.

I stared down at
the ground. "But...he didn't keep his promise. And then my family kind
of...fell apart." I squeezed my eyes shut to catch the angry tears. "Having
these kind of ties to a place...shit..." my ability to form sentences
suddenly failed me...

And then just as
suddenly, he was right there. I nearly jumped out of my skin when his hand
brushed my shoulder, but he didn't shy away. His fingers trailed down my arm,
just letting me know he was there. The brush of his fingertips left trails of
electricity in their wake, my skin seared by the heat of him. I was certain he had
scarred me forever with his touch. My breath caught in my throat and I looked
up at him.

His face was
right there
, the strong angle of the sun
carving his beautiful profile into a stunning mélange of highlights and
shadows. He was so beautiful...but that was the wrong word for something so
ruggedly handsome too. His features looked carved by the hand of a master
sculptor who poured all of their genius into each stroke of the chisel. Without
meaning too, I found myself moving closer, intent on studying the structure of
his face. My artist's eye wanted to divide him into sections of light and
color, the better to paint him with my mind.

But the hunger in
his eyes insisted I do nothing of the sort.

"I'm
here," he said, simply.

"I know,"
I replied.

The magic of this
place was evident all around us. The wind died down, allowing our words to hang
in the air, all the promise of what was left unsaid ringing in our ears. He was
there, it was a simple statement. It was up to me what I wanted to do with his
presence.

My hands made the
decision for me.

I reached out and
pressed my palms against his rock hard chest. First one hand, then the other. I
was half holding him back, half eagerly seeking.

His breath caught
slightly when I touched him, but he didn't move. I was afraid to look back up
and see the hunger in his face, so I concentrated on my own hands as they slid
downward, sliding along the rippling landscape of his torso. The fabric of his
T-shirt bunched a little as I stroked back upward, lifting to reveal a small
sliver of tanned skin above his Wranglers.

Seeing that
sliver made my heart skip and my stomach splash into my core.
 
His abs contracted as I brushed my
finger under his shirt. It was like my hands belonged to someone else, moving
without input from my brain. They were on a mission to touch as much of his
skin as that little sliver of lifted hem would allow.
 
And I would have gone on forever like
that, in a mindless stupor, drugged by his nearness and the sighing of the
wind.

Until I realized
that the ragged noise I was hearing had nothing to do with the wind. It was
coming from deep within Tanner.

"Monique,"
he growled, catching my wayward hands with his. He hesitated, "Fucking
hell."

I looked up at
him, startled by his coarse words.

And then his lips
covered mine.

Chapter Twelve

Tanner

She kissed me
back. I have that much to hold on to, even if she changed her damn mind again.
She fucking kissed me back. Hard.

She flung her
arms around my neck and pulled me to her, pressing her long body into a sinuous
curve against mine. Her lips were just as soft as I had hoped, made for kissing
and sucking and biting.

I was just
finding my stride, delving deeper with my tongue, on a quest to make her moan
those little soft moans again, when she pulled roughly away.

"Tanner,"
she panted.

My hands were
still molded into the shape of her ass. "What?" I demanded. I wanted
that luscious rear under my fingers again.

"We
can't."

"And why the
fuck not?" I growled. I wanted her. Bad. My tongue stumbled and I growled
again. Desire was making me bad with words.

She narrowed her
eyes. "Strictly business, remember?"

"What?!"
I exploded. This woman was going to give me whiplash. "You were kissing me
just as hard as I kissed you. Don't be pretendin' it didn't happen that
way."

"I'm not
pretendin'
," she snapped in a
vicious imitation of my drawl. "I'm remindin'. We went over this
already." Her voice took on this placating, consoling tone that made me
want to fight something. "This whole...
thing?
We can't do this. You leave on tour in two weeks."

"Two weeks
and five days," I reminded her.

Her eyebrows
slammed together. "And I've got a job, and a life I have to get back to.
We're being stupid, right now. This isn't anything."

My legs were
moving before my mind was. I had her by the hair, wrapping her ponytail in my
fist and forcing her to look up at me. She gasped, showing that same
vulnerability that had driven me to kiss her in the first place. "Dammit,"
I swore and kissed her again.

This time it was
like a battle for dominance. Our tongues met and sparred. Her hands battered
and clutched at my chest, fighting me and pulling me closer as I drove her
backwards into a tree. When I had her pinned against me, I pulled back and
looked into her wild, furious eyes. "This isn't anything, huh?" I
panted. My cock was as hard as a diamond and her eyes widened when she felt me
press it against her. "Absolutely nothing, to you?"

For a moment, she
hesitated. I brushed her lips with mine, softly, gently. I would take as much time
with this woman as humanly possible. I would break down all her hesitation
until she was nothing but a quivering mass of pleasure and enjoy every second
of it. The thought of her body shivering under mine, watching the flush rise
underneath her ebony cheeks....fuck, I would take forever if need be.

Then she pressed
her lips tightly together. "We can't, Tanner."

I took a step
back, unable to contain my own feelings and unwilling to look at her. The sound
of her camera capturing the moment only made things worse.