The Curvy Vet and the Billionaire Cowboy (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) (3 page)

Except…the world seemed to be sliding sideways.
I’m still moving….
I felt for the other stirrup with my foot, but I couldn’t find it. Already, I could feel my ass lifting out of the saddle again. I was going to fall straight off the other side and land on my head—

Strong hands caught my waist and upper arm. Russ had ridden up beside me and was sitting there, supporting me. “You okay?” he asked softly.

I nodded quickly and tried to tell myself that the rush of heat, the flutter in my belly was the adrenaline from nearly falling off. I let him push me slowly back to vertical, and this time I got my feet into the stirrups properly and settled myself. Russ’s hands slowly retreated and, immediately, I felt coldness—a sense of loss—where they’d touched me.

“Ready?” he asked, looking towards the mountains.

A lot of things went through my head. I was about to head off into the wilderness for close to a week, with a guy I barely knew, sleeping on the ground while vicious animals and dangerous insects tried their best to eat me. All so that I could try to treat a horse who might be past saving already.
Ready?
No, I wasn’t
ready!

“Yup,” I said.

And we set off.

Chapter 4

People send postcards of the Wyoming countryside and, in particular, the mountains. That’s cute, in the same way a paperweight of the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids is cute. And about as comparable.

Flat, grassy plains stretching out to the scrub and trees. Then a carpet of lush green foliage, the shadows so cool and dark they were almost blue. Arcs of forest stretching like fingers up the gray rock and then, high above, snow caps gleaming white against a crisp blue sky.

For the first half hour or so I just sat in my saddle and let Constantine follow along behind Russ’s horse, Caesar, just…drinking it in. I’d seen pictures on the internet, and seen it again through the window of the SUV. But it’s different on a horse. On a horse you’re part of the landscape, not just moving past it. On a horse, you’re
there.

There was something else I couldn’t stop looking at, too. Him.

Riding behind him, I was free to feast my eyes without him knowing. Now that I could take a really good look at him, I realized that it wasn’t just his height, or even the width of his shoulders that made him seem big. He was
solid.
Solid like an engine block is solid. He didn’t seem to have any fat on him, but he was…
weighty.
Almost as if floorboards would creak under his feet. As if his boots would leave a deeper impression than anyone else’s. His upper arms, with their biceps that looked as big as my head, were hard as iron and, like the thick branch of some ancient oak tree, I could imagine a kid swinging happily from that arm not just for a minute but for hour after hour. There was a sense of permanence there I’d never seen in any man, as if he’d still be there in a thousand years. I wondered what he’d been like when he’d been in the oil world. I couldn’t imagine him in a suit…not that he wouldn’t have looked very good on him, but I couldn’t imagine him wearing one, and making conference calls, and chairing meetings. He just seemed so right for this world, for the horse and the jeans and the big sky. Maybe he’d just found his place, like I had in the lab.

I wished I was back there now. It wasn’t the riding. So far, Constantine seemed to be the most sedate, quiet ride imaginable—the horse equivalent of a Cadillac—although being so high off the ground still terrified me. It was the isolation. Every step took us farther and farther from civilization. I felt like an astronaut floating helplessly off into space. I wanted my nice, smooth roads and Netflix and air conditioning. Somehow I’d been dragged, in the space of twenty four hours, from a nice safe environment I understood to…
this.
And it was all thanks to him. This sexy, muscled man, sitting there all naked and distracting on his horse.

Okay, he wasn’t actually naked. But I was thinking so hard about his body under his clothes that he might as well have been. I wasn’t a virgin, of course, but it had been a while since I’d last dated or even hung around bars and things. Maybe my friends in Atlanta were right. Maybe I
was
burying myself in my work. Certainly, I wasn’t used to being alone with a guy like this. With his jeans stretched over his lean, hard ass, and those strong forearms gripping the reins, just like they’d grip my wrists as he stared down into my eyes and thrust—

My eyes bulged, heat rising in my face. Where had
that
come from?

I looked quickly away from Russ, staring at the horizon. Okay, I
definitely
needed to get out more. When I got home from this crazy trip, I was going to give in and let my friend Shelly drag me to some bars and meet some men. I’d obviously got way too much pent-up sexual frustration in me.

“You need to relax.” Russ’s voice.

I blinked guiltily. “What?”
He doesn’t know what I was thinking. He can’t know!

“You need to loosen up in the saddle. You’re sitting there like a mannequin, all stiff. A couple of hours of riding will destroy you.”

I knew immediately he was right. As soon as I relaxed a little, I could feel how tight all my back muscles were. I’d been so worried about slipping out of the saddle again, I’d tensed up. But I wasn’t going to let
him
know that. I felt enough of a klutz already. “I feel fine,” I said.

“That’s because we’ve been walking. I was hoping you’d loosen up as we went, but you’ve gotten worse. And we need to start moving a little faster.”

I flushed. “How do you know? You’re in front of me.”

Now he looked momentarily guilty. “I’ve been checking, now and again.”

I looked at him blankly.
Checking?
Had he really been glancing back at me, without me noticing? Even if he had, why would he feel guilty about it?

“C’mon,” he said. “Ride alongside.”

I nudged Constantine forward. He didn’t need a lot of coaxing. In fact, he turned his head and gave me a look, as if to say,
I’m doing it, already. Keep your panties on.

“Okay,” said Russ. “Just come alongside, and—”

He suddenly swung himself out of his saddle…and onto my horse, right behind me.

“What are you doing?” I squeaked.

“Reminding you how to ride,” he told me. He settled himself a little closer and suddenly his chest was pushing against my back, his body hot through the thin cloth of his shirt.

“M—Mr Tyler?” My voice was querulous.

“
Russ,”
he said. His fingers were suddenly on my waist. They seemed to burn through the thin material of my shirt and tank top, straight through to the skin beneath. “Let’s start here. Stop hunching up.” His fingertips glided up my sides, and it was as if they were skimming along the surface of water, sending ripples outward through my body. “Nice and relaxed, but draw yourself up from your head.”

I did it. I sat up straight and tall in my saddle and my reward was that the fingers skimmed even higher. They reached a point level with my breasts and I swallowed, wondering if he was about to slide them around to the front. But he just drew them gently over the soft skin at the side of my breasts and continued on to my shoulders. “Relax these,” he said, tapping them gently. “Or you’ll be aching in an hour. Nice and relaxed.” His voice was so soft and melodious that it was like listening to a hypnosis tape. I wanted to slide into a warm bath filled with that voice. My shoulders unclenched and lowered.

“Good. Now….” His fingers started to skim down the length of my arms, tracing all the way down to my hands. His huge palms surrounded my slender fingers. “Firm but easy grip on the reins. Use your strength when you need to, but mostly just communicate.” He eased the reins left a little, and Constantine obediently turned that way. “See?”

I did see. But with his chest pressed up against my back and his arms alongside mine, he was basically hugging me from behind, and that made it very difficult to think. The back of the saddle meant that his groin wasn’t snugged right up against my ass, which meant I couldn’t tell if he was hard or not. Was he as turned on as I was? Or was he sitting there just giving a lesson to some stupid city girl, and he had no idea?

“Okay?” asked Russ, and I realized I’d been sitting like that, with his body wrapped around me, for a while.

“Yes.” I nodded quickly and felt my long hair brush his chin. That alone made me giddy. “Yep. Got it. It’s all coming back to me now. Thank you,” I babbled.

He chuckled and made a noise in his throat to call for Caesar. When the horse was alongside again, he swung himself back into his own saddle. Immediately, I felt the loss of his presence. My mind was whirling. What had
that
been? Was I reading too much into it—had it been completely innocent?

Russ indicated the mountains ahead of us. “We’re going to have to go slow when we start climbing. We should speed up and make up some time now, if you’re okay with it.”

I nodded, hoping I didn’t look as terrified as I felt. “Absolutely!”

He urged Caesar into a trot and I did the same with Constantine. At first, the extra speed made me cling on for dear life with my legs. But as the horse proved to be just as predictable and gentle at speed, I began to relax…and to enjoy myself. It was eerily quiet, after being used to the noise of the city. Just the sound of hooves thumping against the grass and the jingle of buckles and reins. Eerie…but sort of peaceful.

“Here,” said Russ. “I’ve got something for you.” And he reached into a saddle bag and pulled out a blue and white check shirt. “To keep the sun off your arms,” he told me, tossing it across.

I thanked him and slowly put it on. Right at the collar, I caught the scent of his citrus cologne. It smelled good.

“So who’s in Atlanta?” Russ asked.

“Wh—What?” I asked, thrown.

He nodded at my hand. “No ring on your finger. Boyfriend?”

I swallowed. It was an innocent enough question. He was just killing the time. So why had I suddenly gone hot inside. “No.”

“No boyfriend?!”

Yeah, try to act surprised. The big girl doesn’t have men all over her.
He’d done a good job of pretending, though. He’d managed to sound genuinely astonished. “No.” We lapsed into silence. “You?”

“No. Wasn’t much time for anything romantic, in the oil business. One of the reasons I quit.”

He’d moved ahead of me again so I felt I could look at him without fear of discovery. My eyes took in his wide shoulders and trim waist. The powerful legs, hard with muscle. The firm, toned ass.
How the hell,
I wondered,
is he still single?
It was a dangerous thought to have, because it started to curl black tendrils around my brain and tease ideas into life.
He’s single. I’m single. We’re all alone out here.

I gritted my teeth.
Except this is me. He’s not interested in me, or any girl my size. What do you want—to get rejected and humiliated? It’s not even like you can just go home, once you’re out in the sticks with him.

I had to be sensible. And that meant not thinking about him.

Now that we were trotting and I’d loosened up, my ass was bouncing up and down in my saddle.
Ump. Ump. Ump.

I had to not think about him at all. I had to not think about that ass of his, all firm and smooth and perfect, or what it would feel like under my hands.

The saddle was soft, burnished leather, but firm enough at the same time.
Ump. Ump. Ump.

I shouldn’t even look at his ass. There, there it was in front of me, bouncing up and down. I looked at it, just to remind myself not to look at it.
That is the ass you must not look at,
I thought sternly. Now stop looking.

My jeans were soft and tight, giving me just the right amount of cushioning as my sex ground against the front of the saddle. I squirmed.
Ump. Ump. Ump.

It was hard not to imagine his ass going up and down in another context. Viewed in the mirror of some motel, me on my back on the bed, watching it rise and fall between my thighs as he drove deep,
deep….

The saddle pressed and stroked in all the right ways as I moved against it. And it wasn’t just the bouncing as I rode, now—I was twisting a little as I bounced, rubbing against the hard leather almost subconsciously.
Ump. Ump. Ump.

He’s big.
I just knew it, somehow. I had a vivid mental picture of him, hanging thick and long below chiseled abs.
He’d stretch you. Make you gasp.

My thighs tightened around the horse and I must have unconsciously tapped his sides because he started to go faster. Damnit, I was catching up to Russ, and Oh God I was about to—
Ump Ump Ump UmpUmpUmp—

I sped past Russ, which meant I had my back to him when I reached my silent, trembling peak. I didn’t think he could see anything from behind. Did my ass clench as the orgasm thundered through me? I hoped not. I sat there, eyes closed, as the pleasure filled me and then sluiced slowly from me. Constantine slowed back down to a trot and I heard Russ come up alongside me.