Cowboy Valentine (2 page)

Her voice hitched in her throat. “Nervous about what?”

“Leaving for college.”

She smiled, then stubbed out the cigarette in the metal ashtray. “A little bit. Mostly I just want to get out of here.”

“I felt that way too,” he said. “But being back is not so bad. Helps to see the place in a different light.” With a featherlight touch, he stroked her cheek and the side of her neck. The pad of his finger was calloused. “You were always so smart, though. I doubt you’ll be coming back. Am I right?”

“I don’t know.” She felt bold enough to rest her left hand on his thigh, which was rock-hard beneath the worn denim of his jeans. “I don’t know a lot of things.”

“What else don’t you know?” he asked. She could sense him smiling like a wolf in the dark.

“Boyfriend stuff, I guess.”

“What’s so bad about boyfriends?”

She shrugged. “My mom had me when she was sixteen, then ran off. A lot of my friends had kids in high school. Some got married. Some didn’t.” She touched the seam along his jeans. “They’ll be in Oleander forever. They don’t have a road out. I do.”

He finished off his beer and threw the can out the window. He leaned his head against hers, then pressed his lips against her temple where her hairline met bare skin.

She closed her eyes. His heat crept through their clothes and into her body, and she felt like she was hanging over some dark precipice with only a thread holding her back.

“College boys,” he said. “They’re no better than the boys out here. They may have money and good grades, but they’re animals too. You’re going to have to watch yourself.”

“Watch myself how?”

“You should know what to expect.” He leaned his rigid torso into her and dipped his head down to kiss the raging pulse in her neck. His lips were so hot they seemed to scorch her skin, and she leapt back, overwhelmed by him.

“I f-feel so…” she stammered, breathless, “…like I’m hot. All over.”

“Normal symptom, Doctor,” he said.

“Caleb.”

“Yes, Cora?”

“I’ve never been kissed.”

“Damn, seriously?” He smiled again, and in the silence she cursed his dimple and his stupid handsome face. “Get back here, then. I’ve wanted to kiss you since I saw you standing in front of that shop.”

She froze in place and stared at him. He was the same Caleb on whom she’d nursed a raging crush, but now he was a man. “Tell me something. Do you really remember me from back in school?” she asked.

He turned toward her. His shoulders were well built. “I remember a little girl with braided hair and glasses. What I don’t remember is the beautiful woman sitting in my truck telling me she’s never been kissed.”

She bit her lip. “What should I do?”

“First of all, do you
want
me to kiss you?” he asked quietly.

The faint moonlight illuminated the lower half of his face. She remembered his full, perfectly formed lips, but his jaw was more angular than it was when he was eighteen. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Close your eyes, then.”

He put his big hand on the back of her neck and held her steady. He put his other hand in the middle of her back and pulled her into his body. Her hands rested on his rock-hard shoulders and her breasts were crushed against his chest.

And then he was kissing her.

She was too agitated to feel anything at first. She tasted the faint aroma of cherry syrup on his breath. When she peeked at him, she saw that his eyes were closed tight, so she closed hers again too.

But as the kiss went on, the sensations unraveled and she was able to identify each part. She felt the sweet glide of his top lip on hers, tender and soft in contrast to the hard muscles under her hands. He pressed his bottom lip between her lips until she opened her mouth. He kept his hand on the back of her neck as he slid the tip of his tongue between her teeth. She parted her teeth a little bit wider, and he dragged his tongue against hers, back and forth, until she began to do the same to his. When she did it, a soft groan sounded in his throat, and he tightened his arms around her. She felt a tug in her lower stomach, and her pussy clenched, wrenching up and retreating into her body.

He pulled away just enough to whisper, “First time, my ass.”

She touched his face with her fingertips, unsure if he was real. “Again,” she said. “Do it again.”

He kissed her good and deep. Hours passed. He was in no hurry. There was a watering hole not far away and as they kissed, Cora could hear the quiet symphony of frogs gathered there for the night. In the distance, a pack of coyotes caught something and yowled like a schoolyard full of children, until it was eaten and they fell completely silent once again.

He explored the inside of her mouth with his tongue. They formed a flavor together: beer and cherries, salt and skin. She licked his teeth, lingering on the wolfish incisors she’d always thought were sexy.

He kissed her neck so achingly slowly that she felt her body collapse into a swirling core of hot liquid. By the time he’d made it back to her lips, she was trembling.

“You wanna go further, Cora?” he asked, kissing the corner of her mouth.

She nodded. She was so deep in his trance that she didn’t quail when he took her hand and put it on his erection.

“Feel that?” he whispered, smiling.

Eyes wide, she rubbed the palm of her hand over the hard bump behind his fly.

“Think about it, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Don’t rush. It’s your choice.”

“What would you do if I asked you to take me home right now?” she asked.

He leaned his head back and exhaled. “I might cry a little,” he said. “But I’d live.”

She smiled. “What was your first time like?”

“I was about your age. A woman in Montana. She brought me home from a bar. She must’ve been about thirty-five. She made sure her kids were asleep then took me into her bedroom.”

“That doesn’t sound so good.”

“I didn’t know any better. I was drunk as a skunk.” He kissed her again, stroking her cheeks with the sides of his thumbs as she rubbed him through his jeans. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let me fix up the back. I want to lie down with you.”

“It’s cold.”

“I’ve got blankets.”

She watched from the cab. He put the tailgate down and lined the floor of the bed with a thick pile of Mexican blankets.

“Come on out.” He opened the door for her.

He helped her climb into the truck bed and they lay down together. He threw a blanket over them both and settled down beside her, nuzzling her neck and throat. The blankets smelled of clean hay and fresh air, as though he’d just pulled them down from the wash line.

“What do you want, Cora?” he asked.

“I want you to sleep with me,” she whispered. “I want you to be my first.”

He kissed her closed eyelids—one, then the other. “It will hurt. Probably a lot.”

“I know,” she said.

He stroked her bare arms under the blankets and slowly unbuttoned the front of her uniform. The buttons went all the way down to her hemline, and when he was finished, she sat up and slid off the whole dress. He took off her shoes and socks, and she leaned back on her elbows, trying to make out his expression in the darkness. He reached behind her and unhooked her bra, letting it slide forward and releasing her breasts to the cold air and his waiting hands.

“Jesus,” he hissed. “Gorgeous.”

He leaned her back and kissed her neck while his big hands kneaded her tits. He worked her aching nipples between his fingers, pinching them lightly as she moaned into his mouth. Then he pinched them a little bit harder, and she felt her whole body surge with what felt like a wave of fresh, hot blood.

He dipped his head and put his lips on her left nipple, suckling her gently as he rolled her right nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Her nerve endings fired like sparklers, the sensations almost too intense for her to handle.

Caleb released her nipple. It was tiny and hard as a pebble, shiny with his saliva. “You have beautiful tits, Cora.”

She reached forward and undid the snap buttons of his shirt. Underneath he wore a white-cotton T-shirt that he pulled over his head, revealing a torso rigid with muscles and smooth, tanned arms that made her pussy weep with yearning. When he covered her with his body, his feverish, smooth skin seemed to brand her, and she moaned with the pleasure of it.

“Still feeling hot?” he whispered in her ear. He licked her earlobe, and she dug her fingernails into his back without meaning to. He hissed, sucking up air between his teeth.

“Holy Jesus,” he murmured.

He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her cotton panties and began to pull them off. They were soaked and clung to her sex for a moment, until he peeled them away, releasing the sweet, elemental scent of her pussy.

Before he could touch her, she said, “Yours too,” and she pointed at his jeans.

He sat up, pulled off each boot and chucked it over the side of the truck.

She sat up on her knees and ran her hands over the swollen muscles of his pecs. He had tiny pink nipples that grazed her fingertips and a chest lightly covered with dark hair. He had a shallow six-pack and deep lines along his hips that showed at the tops of his jeans.

She reached forward and undid the buttons on his fly. Smiling, he pulled another long kiss from her before he yanked his jeans off, boxers and all, and his penis sprang at her.

Cora gasped.
What the hell?

Kneeling, he took himself in his hand and gave his cock a stroke. It stood up straighter, pointing at her like an accusation. “Never seen one before?” he asked.

In books,
she thought, staring.
On Greek statues.
Not in real life, and definitely not one as big and erect as Caleb MacKinnon’s.

“Touch it,” he said.

“How?”

He took her hand and wrapped it around his shaft. Her fingers and thumb couldn’t span his girth. His cock was dry and hot, and the skin was smoother than she thought possible. When he squeezed her hand to show her how to hold him, she felt blood pulsing just beneath the surface of his skin. He took her wrist and pushed her hand back and forth to show her how he liked to be stroked.

“Grip harder.” He was breathless.

She did. His cock jerked forward, growing even more rigid in her hand. A drop of clear liquid appeared at its tip. He slid the pad of his thumb over the head. Then he held his thumb to her lips.

Without being asked, she flicked her tongue over his thumb. When he pressed it against her bottom lip, she opened her mouth and began to suck on it, her eyes never leaving his.

Slowly, he pulled his thumb from her mouth and leaned forward to kiss her. He held her against his chest as she worked his cock in her fist, and he groaned when she ran her own thumb over his glans.

“Enough,” he growled, pulling her hand away. He pushed her back onto the pile of blankets. “Open your legs.”

She leaned back on her elbows and did as he told her. With his big hands, he spread her knees farther apart, opening her wet pussy to the cool air. She was breathing quickly, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.

He ran his fingers up and down her outer labia, parting the soft hair and exposing the aching, swollen folds of her pussy lips. Cora was glad for the cover of darkness, for she had never before been naked with a man, never before even looked at herself this way.

He caressed the tender flesh with the tips of his fingers. “Do you touch yourself?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” she said.

“When?”

“At night. When I can’t stand it.”

“Do you make yourself come?”

She swallowed as his fingers began to part her folds. “I think so,” she whispered. “I’m not sure.”

With a smirk, he lay down on his stomach and propped himself up on his arms. She could see the curve of his biceps in the dark and feel his warm breath on her pussy. Then he covered her with his hot mouth, kissing her long and deep where a man had never even touched her.

She pushed her head back into the blankets and felt her mind go completely blank. She felt his tongue slide into her, and if he hadn’t held her legs open, she would have clamped them shut in surprise.

“Shh,” he said, pulling away. He ran two of his fingers along her lips and spread them apart, opening her up even farther with a sound like a soft kiss. “You’re so wet,” he whispered. “And so delicious.”

His hot tongue slid against her again, making her body weep with longing. He tongued her slowly until her toes uncurled and she released the arch of her back, paralyzed with arousal in the bed of his truck, her feet on the rails, her body completely immune to the cold night air.

Before she could react, he replaced his tongue with his finger and slid it into her with a tiny pinch. She whimpered and squirmed, but fell silent and still when he began to flick the tip of his tongue against her aching clitoris, strumming it back and forth until she stopped clenching at his finger. In response, he pushed his finger in deeper and began to slowly fuck her with it. Her pussy sucked wetly at him.

“I’m gonna open you up, Cora.” His voice was ragged and deeper than before. “You focus on relaxing, okay, sweetheart?”

She nodded weakly and shut her eyes. Her body seemed to both crave and rebel against what he was doing to her. He ran the flat of his tongue up and down her pussy lips, then sucked her clitoris as hard as he had sucked her nipples. When she flexed her ass in response, he slipped another finger into her, and she keened with pain and pleasure.

“Shh.” He rubbed her inner thigh with his other hand. “You’re tiny, Cora.” He shook his head. “There are other things we can do. You sure you want me to go on?”

“Yes,” she said, breathless.

“I feel like I might break you.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?”

He growled at her words. He continued to lick her, then gently began to thrust his fingers back and forth in her tight sheath. She felt her flesh straining around him, but she gritted her teeth against the ache and focused on pulling him in instead of pushing him out. When she moaned, he flicked his tongue harder at her clitoris.

He pulled his fingers out, then tucked his hands behind her knees and pushed her legs up closer to her chest. He dipped his head down once again and began to carve his tongue through her labia. He pressed the tips of his two fingers back into her and thrust them in and out, all the while sucking on her aching clit.