Red's Hot Cowboy (20 page)

“Don’t take too long.” He winked.

I shouldn’t be doing this,
she thought as she looked at the woman with smeared mascara and tangled red curls in the mirror. She ran the minty-flavored toothbrush over her teeth and argued that she should wrap up in the blanket and make a hasty retreat to her apartment. When he finished his shower he’d find her gone, get mad, and never call again.

I’m crazy, but there’s something different about Wil. There’s an excitement I’ve never known, something deep inside me that feels so right. Am I headed for a heartache?

She threw back the curtain and stepped over the edge of the bathtub. Heartache or not, she needed a shower and Wil had already invited her in.

“So you have a headache?” he asked.

She nodded.

His gaze started at her toes and heat traveled with it all the way to her eyes. He leaned in and kissed her. She tasted toothpaste and wondered briefly if he’d used the same motel complimentary brush that she’d just used. The thought slipped away when he teased her lips open with his tongue and made love to her mouth before running a warm soapy washcloth up her backside and across her shoulders.

He broke the kiss and gently walked her backwards until her hair was under the spray. When it was thoroughly wet, he poured shampoo into his hand and massaged it down to the scalp.

“That’ll make it all better,” he whispered as he planted wet kisses on her eyelids.

She moaned something but it wasn’t words.

He leaned her head back, cradling it in his big hands, and rinsed every smidgen of soap from her tight red curls. Then he began to soap her body using his hands instead of the cloth. It took forever and she’d forgotten all about the headache by the time he finished.

He stepped out of the tub, grabbed a big white towel, and hurriedly wiped the water from his body. Then he wrapped one around her hair and a second one around her body before scooping her up in his arms and carrying her back to bed. He laid her down gently, kissing her passionately before he flipped her over on her stomach.

“A good neck and back massage is good for a headache too,” he said softly.

She didn’t even know he’d picked up the small bottle of lotion from the vanity until she heard the burp of it leaving the plastic bottle. “If this is the awkward morning after then I vote we have another contest tonight,” she said.

“No thank you, Red.” He applied the lotion and massaged the knots from her neck and shoulders, working his way down her back, her fanny, and that tight place right under the butt where it meets up with the back of the leg.

“Oh, God, that feels so good,” she groaned.

“Now for the heat pad to help the lotion soak in and do its job,” he said.

“Heat pad?”

He stretched his warm body out on top of her back and kissed her neck, nibbled on her ear, and unwrapped the towel from her head. Then he dug his fingers into her damp curly hair to massage her scalp.

“Dear God,” she said.

“Are we going to pray? I’d rather turn you over and have sex.” He chuckled.

“Forget prayers,” she mumbled as she felt the hardness against her lower back.

He flipped her over, kissed her lips until they were swollen and her panting matched his, then he began a rhythm that kept time with the fast beat of their hearts.

“Have I told you this morning that you are even cute with wet hair and freckles shining?” he whispered as his fingers laced into hers.

“Have I told you that you are sexy as hell when you are all wet?” she answered back.

“Open your eyes, Red.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to look at me.”

Her eyes popped open and stared right into his dreamy eyes as he lowered his lips to hers. He kissed her one more time, his tongue doing a mating dance with hers, then he left her bee-stung lips and worked his way down to her breasts, touching and feeling and tasting.

Before he went on further down her body, she pulled him back up for another kiss.

“I like your lips on mine,” she said.

“They fit right together real well, don’t they?” he whispered.

“Like all the rest of our bodies.” She giggled.

“We’re sober now, Red. You sure you want to do this?”

“Yes, I am,” she said.

His hands slid down past her breasts to her hips. Just his touch fired her up to the explosion stage. She arched her back against him and the world disappeared in a blink. The delicious ache had returned. She’d never wanted sex more than she did right then, not in her entire life. No one or nothing had ever erased everything from her mind except the primal need to be satisfied.

She ran her fingers through Wil’s hair. “Please, Wil, take me now. I’m so hot,” she said.

“Your wish,” he said as he covered her mouth with his in a searing kiss and entered her with a powerful thrust that made her groan.

She arched her back and tangled her fists in his hair. “I don’t need a marathon. I just need release,” she whispered.

“Me too this morning,” he said as he sped up the motion. He thought he heard her say his name but his ears were ringing so loud that when he collapsed on top of her he wasn’t sure what she said.

“Dear…” she gasped.

“God ain’t interested in mighty fine sex, only begetting,” Wil said.

“Well, I’m not ready for the begetting but that was wonderful,” she said between raspy breaths.

“I’m sober.”

“What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

“It’s better when I’m sober.”

“Then you can’t ever drink again,” she said.

The storm had passed and the sun was sneaking through the slits in the mini blinds. She looked over at the clock and let out a squeak. It was already ten o’clock. Lucy would be frantic, trying to check out customers and worry about getting rooms cleaned at the same time. And Pearl had a research project due in three days for her last hospitality course that had to do with creating a space for a breakfast nook in the lobby. She didn’t have time to be lying around in a bed of pure unadulterated 100 percent guaran-damn-teed best sex ever, even if it was where she wanted to be.

“Wil, I’ve got a million things to do and you’ve got a ranch to run. It’s the middle of the morning. We’ve got to get up and—”

“Get up! I think I can arrange that at least one more time.” He smiled.

She kissed him and bounded out of bed before he could wrap his big arms around her again.

“You are a tease. Talk about getting up and then leave me cold,” he said.

She knew better than to look back at him. If she did she’d be in the motel room until she starved to death or died from too much sex.

“Time to go, cowboy. I’m going around the end of the motel and going in through my back door. You leave however you want. And Wil…”

He winked at her. “I’ll call you later today. I’ll cook for you tonight. You can cook later in the week. I think the whiskey contest was a draw so we’ll each pay up.”

“Sounds like a deal to me,” she said.

***

Delilah met Pearl at the door, yowling and fussing because she’d had to spend the night alone. Pearl took time to rub her ears for a few seconds before she unbuttoned her coat and dropped it on the sofa and headed straight for the bedroom. She undressed, piling all her rumpled clothing on a chair to send to the cleaners. She pulled clean underpants and a bra from a dresser drawer, jeans and a sweatshirt from her closet, and was dressed in record time. She was on her way to the living room when she caught sight of herself in the mirror above her dresser.

She went to the bathroom, took a very quick shower to get the smell of hot sex off her body, and scrunched mousse into her hair. She was on the way to the lobby when the feeling hit her. Austin used to tell her that the Lanier gut was never wrong. Well, the Richland gut knew when something or someone was watching. She turned around slowly. Her gun was stuck between the mattress and box springs, handle toward the outside so she could get at it easily. But she was in the living room and there was no way she’d make it back to the bedroom if an intruder was hiding over at the end of the sofa or jumped out from the pantry.

The hair on her arms tried to stand up but the sweatshirt and the jacket pushed it back down. The itch was unbelievable. When she’d made the full circle she saw Wil standing just inside the back door into her apartment.

“You forgot this.” He pulled her lace bra from the pocket of his jacket and held it out. “Don’t know what you are going to tell Lucy, but I didn’t want her to find it in the room when she goes to clean it up.”

“I’m cleaning that room today. She’d take one look at those sheets and know…” Pearl blushed scarlet.

Wil laughed. “I took all the linens to the laundry room and put them in the washing machine. Threw the whiskey bottle in the big trash can out back and made sure no one would ever know exactly what went on in there. You can tell her whatever you like.”

Pearl crossed the room, rolled up on her toes, and kissed him soundly on the lips. “You are a good man, Wil Marshall. Now go home and feed the cows. I’ve got a helluva lot of work to do.”

“Dinner is at six thirty at my house. Bring a tote bag and spend the night?”

“I’m not leaving Lucy with the place two nights in a row.” She shook her head.

“Then dinner is at my house tomorrow night at six thirty,” he teased.

She kissed him on the cheek. “Tomorrow night then it is. We’ll see about bringing a bag.”

He waved over his shoulder and disappeared outside. Pearl opened the door into the lobby.

Lucy looked up from the counter. “Good mornin’. I been checkin’ out folks and lettin’ you sleep. Who won?”

“I think it was a tie,” Pearl said.

“How’s your head?”

“Not too bad considering I almost got defeated,” Pearl said.

“Well, everything went smooth as it could last night. Got two more guests who called to say they’ll be out by the check-out time. They sounded like they had big old hangovers. Then I’ll get busy on the rooms.”

Pearl’s cell phone rang before she could tell Lucy that she’d help clean that morning. She expected to hear her mother’s voice but it was Wil’s deep drawl that answered when she said, “Hello.”

“So is it tonight or tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow.”

“We really brought in the New Year in style, didn’t we?”

She smiled. “We did.”

“Have a wonderful day. I’m going to be whistlin’ and singin’ all day.”

She giggled. “You are…” She looked up to see Lucy grinning from ear to ear.

“Can’t think of anything sexy enough to call me, can you?” Wil teased.

“Have a good day, Wil,” she said and flipped her phone shut.

Lucy kept grinning.

“What?” Pearl asked.

“First thing is that you got your shirt on wrong side out. Next is that you got that glow all around you. You might’ve got drunk but you slept with that cowboy, didn’t you?”

“Damn sure did,” Pearl said. “But that’s all I’m sayin’ about that.”

“Kind of like that
Forrest Gump
movie, huh?”

Pearl nodded. “You got it, Miss Lucy Fontaine.”

Only once had Wil ever let a woman spend more than a night at his place, and that had turned out to prove the old adage absolutely correct about fish and visitors stinking in three days. New Year’s Eve had been so hot it was a complete wonder they hadn’t melted a hole in the motel bed. And now Red was coming to his place for supper. She declared that she wouldn’t be staying the night, but that could change.

And that’s what bothered Wil that afternoon as he put the steaks in his special marinade sauce. Would she think that because he’d invited her to stay the night that she could take over his kitchen? Would she tell him how to grill the steaks or get all domestic and think she could make better bread than he could?

Everything was right where it needed to be by six o’clock, and he and Digger were watching out the living room window when the lights of the old Caddy came down the lane at six fifteen. She was punctual. The woman who’d tried to take over his kitchen was perpetually late for everything, so maybe it was a good thing that Red was on time.

“I didn’t think any woman on the face of the earth could get me this excited,” he told Digger as he headed across the living room floor in his bare feet.

He slung open the door before she could knock and stepped aside. “Come on in. I hope you like steaks. That’s what we’re having for supper.”

“Love steak. What can I do to help?” She wanted to walk right into his arms and have a steamy making out session before supper, but he kept his distance so she did too. She hadn’t felt awkward when she woke up next to him naked as a jaybird but she did standing in the middle of the foyer in his house.

“Nice house,” she said.

“It’s part of the reason I bought the place. Fell in love with it first time the owner gave me a tour. That and the fact that I can see all the way to the Pacific Ocean out my front door and to the Atlantic out the back.”