Texas Kissing (31 page)

I ran my hands down his body, just managing to reach his ass. So smooth, so hard, flexing and plunging. He growled as I fondled it. I could tell from the tension in his arms and shoulders that he was getting close, holding himself back until he was sure I’d come first.

I suddenly gripped his arm. The orgasm was blasting up towards my brain now, seconds away. We were in the old west and I wasn’t some lonely girl eking out a life making fake passports, I was a normal, happy woman and I’d found my man.

I wrapped my legs around Bull, my heels kicking at his ass—

His cock was so, so deep inside me, throbbing and hot and—

I lifted my head off the ground, eyes still squeezed shut. My whole upper body came up, my breasts pillowing against his chest. “H—Husband!” I blurted.

The orgasm arrived a micro-second before the horrifying realization of what I’d just said. My arms and legs clenched tight around him as the explosion went off in my mind. I tightened around his plunging cock, triggering a whole new wave of sensations. My head and shoulders fell back against the grass but my chest thrust up, back arching and breasts mashing against his pecs.

—
WHAT DID I JUST SAY?!

My eyes flew open and I just had time to see Bull’s expression. He was startled, for once, genuinely thrown. And then the feel of my body spasming around him took him over the edge and he groaned. He stared down at me and his eyes took on a look of such burning, all-out lust that my climax collapsed in on itself and exploded again like a dying star, blowing away all coherent thought.

He shoved his hips forward, burying himself, and I felt the long, hot streams of him.

And then I was collapsing back onto the grass, panting and sticky with sweat. And I wondered what the hell would come next.

Lily

He rolled off of me, but caught me around the waist as he did it so that we were lying on our sides, facing each other. “
That
was unexpected,” he said, when he got his breath back.

“What do you mean?” I said hopefully.
Maybe he didn’t hear it.

He looked me in the eye.
Yes he did.

I jumped to my feet, my face scarlet, and started walking around the lake towards our clothes. I heard the rustle of grass as he got up and, after only a few steps, he grabbed my arm. “Hey!”

I turned to him.

“Talk to me, Lily!”

“What? It was just some stupid—” I sighed. He was doing his stern expression. “I had this dream, okay?”

He wrinkled his forehead. “Mary?
That’s
where that came from?”

My jaw dropped. He remembered the fair! I dropped my eyes to the ground, cheeks flaring even hotter. Now he’d
really
mock me.

Strong hands cupped my cheeks, lifting my head so that I was looking at him.

“I’d marry you,” he said.

I forgot how to breathe. I just stood there staring into his eyes for a second. But however hard I tried, however much I wanted to see it, I couldn’t see even a trace of his usual teasing.

“People like us don’t get married,” I said hollowly. “Remember?”

My hand was swallowed up in his warm grip, the heat radiating up my arm. “But if we did,” he said, “I’d marry you. And kids, someday. The whole damn shooting match.”

I opened my mouth to speak once, twice—but couldn’t find any words. Eventually, I just nodded quickly and pulled my hand away, then hurried off towards our clothes.

Before we were even halfway there, the Texas sun had blasted the remaining water from our bodies. But my cheeks still hadn’t cooled to their usual color. I stumbled along, trying to process it all.

All that time out there on my own in the bus...I’d never needed anyone. Never
been able
to have anyone. Of course some vision of idyllic family life would gradually become a fantasy, bubbling away under the surface. That’s what I told myself. That’s all it was.

But I knew it was more than that. This hadn’t started until I’d met Bull.

It wasn’t about some need to get married. It wasn’t that literal.

It was about sharing my life with someone. Finding someone I could finally open up to about everything: what I did for a living, my deepest insecurities...even, one day, the horrors of my past.

I looked over my shoulder at Bull and he smiled at me. I whipped my head back to the front, wide-eyed and almost panting with fear and excitement.

For the first time in a very long time, I dared to hope.

***

When we’d dressed, Bull showed me how to build a campfire. Which involved an axe.

“Aren’t I meant to just sit here?” I asked. “While you go off and be a lumberjack?”

He rested the hand axe on his shoulder. “I could,” he said. “I can if you want. But then you’d never learn how to do it yourself.”

It took me by surprise. I’d got it into my head that cowboys were, in some quaint and sort of understandable way, sexist.
Especially
ones like Bull, with his rodeo riding and arrogant attitude.

He must have caught my expression because he said, “I don’t know what it’s like in the big city. But Texas girls learn to shoot and ride and make fires just the same as the men. ‘Least, they do if they’ve got a dad like mine.”

“You’ve got a sister?”

He nodded. “Just the one.” He grinned. “I guess that has something to do with it—my dad raised her just like the boys. What about you? Your family still in New York?”

Shit.
Now it was more difficult to dodge the questions because he thought I didn’t have any more secrets. I nodded quickly. “Yeah. I’ve, uh...sort of lost touch.” Then, because that sounded suspicious, I added, “I miss them, actually. I wish I saw more of them but...you know how it is.”
There.
That was good. I held out my hand. “Can I have a turn with the axe?”

We worked together, stopping only to watch the sun go down and turn the lake to gold, just as the name promised. Chopping the wood and building the fire was strangely therapeutic—very different to the painstaking work I normally did. And the payoff was huge. As night fell, we cuddled up in front of our very own crackling fire, the smell of wood smoke in our noses. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen actual flames and not the sterile glow of light bulbs and computer screens.

We ate chili and drank our way through the one luxury Bull had brought with us—a very good bottle of red wine. When the meal was over and we lay back on our bedrolls under the stars, my head slightly buzzing from the alcohol.

“I can see the stars, reflected in your eyes,” said Bull.

He snuggled up beside me and I nestled my head into his shoulder. Underneath that huge Texas sky, I felt tiny. Insignificant. But not lonely.

Not anymore.

I pressed the whole side of my body against his, from head to toe. I was convinced I’d made the right decision, back in his pick up. Bull never needed to know about my past. Tomorrow, Calahan would go home. And then we’d be safe.

Antonio

I stalked out of Lucky Pete’s, shoving the photo of Tessa back into my pocket. The guys there remembered her—she’d ridden the mechanical bull a little while ago, they said. And now she was fucking some cowboy
named
Bull. No one knew where she lived, but they knew all about him. He was some sort of rodeo rider, a local hero.

I fingered the gun I had stashed under my jacket. Part of me really hoped he’d get in the way. I’d enjoy seeing Tessa’s face when I offed her boyfriend.

Christ,
but it was hot. I ran a finger around my collar. I’d already taken my tie off and still it was unbearable. Who the fuck would want to live in a desert?

I tried the ranch first, but it was all closed up for the night. Then I tried Bull’s trailer but there was no one home.

Well, fine. I knew they were here. I could wait it out.

I found a motel to stay in—the Stallion Inn, cowboy-themed like every other thing in the fucking state. I grimaced. I was sick of cowboys already.

It was when I was getting a soda from the machine that I saw him going into his room.
Calahan.
One of the FBI pricks who’d been hounding Erico for years.
Shit!
No way was that a coincidence. Tessa must be talking to him.

I ducked back into the shadows so that he didn’t see me. Then I hurried to my room, called Erico, and told him to send me some men.

Bull

Lily was still asleep, but I’d gotten up early to make her breakfast. I had bacon sizzling on a skillet over the fire and coffee brewing in a metal jug.

The real reason I’d risen early, though, was because I couldn’t sleep.

I couldn’t lose her. I’d never felt this way about anyone. What if, when we got back to town, she ran again?

I was scared of saying the wrong thing and driving her away. I was scared of
not
saying anything and losing her because she didn’t know how I felt.

I rubbed my hand over my face and went over to Caliope. I needed to practice this. And if I was going to practice on a horse, I figured it should be the female.

“Hey,” I said softly. I glanced over at Lily, but she was still fast asleep. “You and I need to talk.”

Caliope blinked at me expectantly.

“Look. I know I’m not much good at stuff like this.” I scratched the back of my neck. My stomach felt like a nest of rattlesnakes. “But I gotta tell you how I feel.”

Caliope gave a little snort. But I plowed on.

“Ever since I saw you, I wanted to bang the—I wanted to fuck you like—I
wanted you.
But I never said—” I swallowed. “I never said that I—”