Authors: Helena Newbury
Tags: #new adult romance, #Romantic Suspense, #cowboy romance
“He’s an asshole! How can you be so sure he’s right for me?”
“Because you’ve called him an asshole three times since you’ve been here. You’re never that down on
anyone...
unless you really, really like them.”
I stared at her. And then hugged her, which knocked the table and sloshed tea over my jeans. “Goddamnit!” Luckily, I found a napkin in my pocket so I mopped up the worst of it with that.
I spent the whole afternoon with her, then slipped into Mr. Hanwell’s room for a quick game of checkers before I left. On the flight back to Texas, I turned it over and over in my mind. By the time the wheels hit the tarmac, I’d made a decision: I was going to go and see Bull.
Not
to carry it on. I couldn’t. That would be dangerous for both of us. I’d just apologize and that would be it. I figured that seeing him again, just for a few minutes, would scratch my Bull-itch. It would be, I thought, like giving an addict a carefully measured dose to help them gradually kick the habit.
I hadn’t realized just how helplessly addicted I was.
Lily
“Y’all be taking out?” asked the smiling girl behind the counter. Even Starbucks was different, this far south.
“Yep,” I said. What would he like? What was safe? “Can I get an iced latte with extra ice?”
“Tall? Grande?”
I thought about Bull for a second. “Venti. Definitely Venti.”
“Whipped cream?”
“Probably not.”
I told her my name and went to wait at the end of the counter. He’d like an iced latte, right? Everyone liked an iced latte, on a hot day. Even if it showed up unexpectedly.
***
A half hour later, with the latte still relatively cold, I pulled up outside the ranch. It was mid-morning, which was deliberate. I wanted him to be busy and have to run back to work—that way, there’d be no way that things could get out of control.
One of the ranch hands directed me to a barn—a huge, old-fashioned one of red-painted wood, piled high with hay bales. When I peeked through the door, I saw Bull stripped to the waist, heaving hay bales around.
Doesn’t he ever wear a shirt?
I didn’t speak, didn’t move. I just stood there silently watching him for a moment, taking in the rippling muscles of his back and the solid mass of his biceps. Everything about him was...
physical.
Real. The opposite of my own world of electrons and secrets.
Then I saw him freeze, like an animal catching a scent on the breeze. He turned slowly to face me and I ducked halfway back behind the door. When he saw me, we just stood there staring at each other for a few seconds.
“Hi.” My voice quavered. “Um. I came to apologize.”
He tossed the hay bale aside as if it weighed nothing and strode towards me.
“I shouldn’t have blown up at you,” I said, and looked at the ground.
He put a finger under my chin and gently lifted my head so that I was looking up at him. I braced myself for something raw and coarse, some crack about how he wanted to fuck me.
“I’m sorry, too,” he muttered.
I just stood there in shock.
“I guess I didn’t expect...all that,” he said. “But that don’t mean it ain’t...impressive. Hell of a lot more impressive than roping steers and riding bulls. And better paid, that’s for goddamn sure.”
Had he just...
apologized? Bull?
The ground seemed to be slipping away from under my feet.
“I’m still mad at you,” he said. “Because I’m worried you’ll get yourself killed.”
Someone was worried about me? The shock of it was matched by how good it felt. The ground was gone completely, now. I was floating, helpless.
And then I remembered my plan. I had to turn away and leave, now.
I offered up the Starbucks cup. “I brought you an iced latte,” I said, holding it out. My hand shook a little.
“Did you?”
“Um...yep.”
He moved even closer. He
loomed.
So much power. My insides tightened again and this time the feeling slid lower—between my thighs. Our chests were almost touching. “I don’t want a fucking latte,” he said.
I stood there in shock, just breathing for a second. It wasn’t what he’d said; it was the unspoken message in his eyes. The realization of what he
did
want.
It wasn’t much cooler in the barn than outside. The air pressed in on me from every side, roasting me slowly through my jeans and faded red t-shirt. But there was a second kind of heat, throbbing into me from him, pulsing right into my depths. A sort of heat that made me weak inside, all my good intentions melting away.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head up, waiting for his kiss.
“No,” he said in a low growl.
I opened my eyes. He was staring right at me.
“No more goddamn games,” he told me. “No more letting me kiss you and then running, Lily. You come in this door, it’s going to happen. I’m going to take you, my way, so you better be sure you’re ready.”
The heat filled me completely, washing down to my toes and up to my brain, scorching away any last traces of rational thought. Somewhere, there had been a plan. Somewhere, there had been reasons why this was a bad idea. But suddenly, none of that mattered.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’m ready.”
The latte slipped out of my hand.
And he pulled me into the barn.
Lily
He spun me around and I went staggering backwards across the floor in my sneakers. I would have fallen if he hadn’t kept hold of my hands. Then I whumped into a soft, prickly wall.
His lips were on me instantly, his tongue slipping into my mouth, and I was panting and opening for him. His urgency, his hunger made me weak. I could actually feel my legs giving a little and I sagged, held up by his hands on mine and the press of his body against me.
I’m being kissed up against the hay bales by a cowboy,
went through my mind. Along with:
this doesn’t happen in New York.
He put one hand on my hip, squeezing me there, while his other hand roamed over my body, sweeping over my shoulder and side, teasing me, making me moan with need before it finally settled on my breast. When I felt his hot palm through my t-shirt, I trembled and gave a little mewl of lust. He didn’t even squeeze at first, just pressed gently, making my breast pillow and bulge under the cotton. I could feel my nipple stiffening in response and knew that he’d be able to feel the hard outline even through my bra.
“You particularly attached to this t-shirt?” he growled between kisses.
It seemed like a strange question. I swear I honestly had no idea what he had in mind. “No.”
His mouth pressed to mine again, taking my upper lip and sucking on it until I moaned and thrashed, then sealing me into a kiss. I was vaguely aware of his hands in the neckline of my t-shirt, stretching it away from my body—
There was a violent renting sound and my t-shirt was suddenly hanging off my arms in two halves, torn clean down the middle. My
MMF!
of shock was muffled by his kiss. I could feel the oven-hot air wafting over my stomach and the upper slopes of my breasts. For a second, all my insecurities about my body flooded back. Then his hands started to work over me, starting at my shoulders and sliding all the way down my front, following the shape of me. It was as if he was luxuriating in me, worshipping my shape. My brief protest died away and my shyness about my body melted like ice in a furnace.
A hand slid behind me. Some men have trouble getting bra clasps open; Bull was not that sort of man. I felt my bra loosen and then he was pushing it impatiently up and out of the way, both hands capturing my breasts and rolling and squeezing them, thumbs stroking across my nipples.
It hit me, for the first time, that we were doing all this in the middle of a goddamn barn. We hadn’t even shut the door, never mind locked it. And this was the middle of the day—wasn’t Bull meant to be at work?
I broke the kiss for a second. “Won’t someone come looking for you?” I panted.
“Maybe,” he growled. “Why, you want to stop?”
I stared at him for a second and then grabbed his biceps with both hands and pulled him into a kiss.
I moaned as he kissed right the way down to my jeans and then slowly back up in a lazy “S” across my stomach. No man had ever paid that area much attention, but he was almost reverent. Then he reached my left breast and sucked it into his mouth, bathing my nipple with his tongue, and I very nearly exploded right there. I let go of his arms and dug my fingers into the straw behind me, growling into his mouth. He slowed down, teasing me or maybe savoring the feel of me in his mouth. I could feel every slick millimeter as his tongue played back and forth across my breast with agonizing slowness. Every raised dot and tiny crinkle around my nipple became the epicenter of new tremor of pleasure.
His hands were on my jeans, just like last time. Except this time, I didn’t stop him. This time, my own hands were exploring his back, tracing over the hardness of the muscles, sliding down his torso as it narrowed towards his ass. At the same time he popped the button free and pushed my jeans down, I clasped his ass in both hands. God, he was so firm through the denim. All muscle. Power to ram and thrust and pound….
He shoved my jeans down my legs and I helped by kicking until they were a tangle of fabric around my ankles and I could prise my feet free. The feel of loose straw and warm stone under my feet was a shock—it reminded me where we were and how risky this was. It nearly made me stop.
Nearly.
His hand came up between my legs, cupping me through my panties. The heat of his palm surged through the thin fabric, melting any last traces of my resistance, adding to the twisting storm of heat that was building inside me. The one that had started as soon as I’d seen him...or maybe even earlier, maybe since the night before, when I’d lain in bed horny and frustrated.
And then his thumbs were hooking into the edges of my panties and he was tugging them down, kneeling as he did it, escaping my clutching fingers. I gave a low, shuddering moan as the kiss was finally broken, then another as his face drew level with my sex. I could feel his eyes on me, his panting breath sending little currents of air through the soft hair to blaze against my damp flesh. He leaned forward and licked me, just once, and I went crazy, folding at the waist as the pleasure exploded outward from my groin. But he reached up with one hand and pushed me hard against the hay bales, trapping me there. He hooked my panties off one foot, leaving them dangling from the other ankle. Then he was nudging my legs apart—
I hadn’t had much chance to make a noise before, most of my moans and groans swallowed up by his kisses. Now, though, my mouth was free and I couldn’t stop myself crying out, a long, keening sob of pleasure as his tongue speared into me.
Jesus!
I tried instinctively to shut my legs—the sensations were almost too much. But his hands were on my thighs immediately, his thumbs hooking around the inside of them so that he could haul me open and—
Ah!
His lips found my clit, sucking and teasing it, sending the heat inside me spiraling upward. His tongue plunged between my lips again and again, tasting me. My eyes were tight closed, so I had to feel for his head: then I buried my fingers in those soft brown curls. I started to pant, tasting sun-heated air, and the scent of the straw. I cursed and begged, squeezing and rubbing at his head in time with his ministrations. “Ah! Oh God, Jesus Bull please—
OH
God like that don’t—AH God DON’T STOP—”