BUCKED Box Set: A Bull Rider Western Romance (74 page)

When he pulled apart from my lips, his
eyes had a wild look as he asked seductively, “Oh, do you like that?”

I felt a harrowed breath escape my chest
as I fought the inclination to surrender myself to him.

I didn’t like to feel as though I wasn’t
in control, especially being out in the open like this, but from the
enchantment of his touch, I felt as though I could easily slip into oblivion.

“Yeah…” I answered, just before he pulled
his hand back, only to be quickly replaced by the feel of his shaft carefully
rubbing itself against me.

Excitedly, I ran my fingers up and down
his chest before finally landing on his arms and squeezing tightly.

He smiled at me carefully as I felt him
ease his way between my legs before finally, in a glorifying burst of passion,
he buried himself inside of me, which caused me to yell out with enthusiasm and
an intense sense of anticipation.

However, once he had entered me, I could
tell that it wouldn’t be long for either of us. As he submerged his blatant
arousal inside of me deeper, I felt his own exhilaration throbbing with need.

I held onto Shawn tightly as he rocked
back and forth, while my legs instinctively moved up and curled easily around
him.

It was then that my breath and heart rate
began to speed up magnificently and I whined with arousal, helping him to keep
a speedy rhythm.

Together, the two of us thrust back and
forth with fervor, faster and faster, breathing as one with our hastened
cadence, until finally, I heard Shawn groan, just before an explosion of his
passion blasted inside of me.

His love filled every crevice and excited
me enough to push through my own climatic threshold.

In a moment, I too was overcome with a
blinding, convulsing, thrilling sense of euphoria that caused me to yell out
and squeeze Shawn closer to me. In that moment, all I wanted was to feel him:
against me, in me and all around me.

For that mind-altering, fantastic moment,
Shawn was the end-all, be-all to my world. To me, in my mind, for the length of
that experience, the sun rose and set around him.

I could stay there forever, but
eventually, felt the hold of his lovemaking releasing.

However, even after I was able to let go
of him and he sat back a little, I could still feel the caverns of my loins
pulsing around him excitedly.

I looked up at him and laughed slightly
before he eased himself out of me and we connected in a sweet, loving, quiet,
reflective embrace, where we remained for quite a while enjoying the feel of
one another against our bare skin.

While we laid next to each another, still
tightly wrapped in one another’s arms, I began to contemplate how strangely,
but also how perfectly this day had turned out to be; especially since it
started out so strangely. I certainly hadn’t anticipated that things would end
up like this.

Not only had Shawn and I been able to
rekindle our relationship, I had also started the healing process with my
mother.

There
might be a lot of uncertainty…
I began to think and
then sat up suddenly as I had another thought leap into the forefront of my
brain. “Oh God! What time is it?” I demanded before I looked around, trying to
find a clock that I could use to answer my own question.

First, I heard Shawn grown as though I had
landed on a sore spot as I sat up with such haste, but then he answered
carefully, “I think it’s only like, seven o’clock…Why? What’s wrong?”

“I have to call my mother!” I exclaimed
before I ran back into the room and closed the door.

Chapter
36

Shawn

Valerie was in the room a long time. I
wasn’t quite sure what they were talking about, but I did hear her laugh from
time to time and so, I guessed that everything was going all right.

When she walked out though, I made sure
that I asked, “How did everything go?”

Valerie smiled and I wondered if the glow
that I saw radiating from her was because of how I felt about her, or if it was
just a byproduct of us having sex. The
afterglow
as it were.

She shrugged and crashed onto the couch
next to me, now fully dressed. “I think it went well. She’s really upset over
someone tampering with her phone, but she doesn’t seem too upset with me…”

I stared at her, trying to figure out if
that just extended to herself, or if it also pertained to me.

I didn’t have to ask. Instead, she
offered, “I don’t think that she is even really mad at you either. She said she
was shocked, but not overly surprised. She just needed to get past the initial
weirdness before she was actually able to talk to me again, but I was,
‘kicked-out’” She illustrated with air quotes, “before she could figure out how
to approach the subject.”

I made a face and sat up. “So, do you
think she’s okay with it?”

Valerie shrugged and for a moment, it was
almost as though nothing had changed. I had the feeling now that we were just
best friends again. After all, the feelings that I had for her had not changed.
I have loved her almost from the moment I was able to love in that way and so,
there was always that underlying attraction. I relished in the familiar feel,
despite the unfamiliar subject that we were actually speaking about.

“Umm…” she answered thoughtfully before
she squinted her eyes, which wrinkled the carefully placed freckles that were
scattered over the fair skin of her nose. “I think it’s too soon to tell?”
Valerie then raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “I hope so, but I also think
that would be weird, you know?”

“Yeah, then they’d want to double date and
that would just be strange…” I replied in a dorky way.

The awkwardness was proven completely when
instead of laughing and just going with it, Valerie stopped and stared at me.

“What?” I finally asked.

She shook her head slowly. “Please,
never...ever mention us double dating with our parents again. Or dating, even
exclusively, in the same comment. That is just gross.”

I smirked while I shrugged and teased an
easy, “Give it a few years.” I watched her body twitch and quiver
uncomfortably.

“Too soon?” I chuckled.

“Never, Shawn,” she replied with a shake
of her head, “Never.”

I moved toward her and placed my arm
around her. She leaned into me and smiled with a sense of contentment and I
realized that this was definitely something that I shouldn’t take for granted.

Even though we seemed to be nicely settling
into our own ways, this was definitely a new perk of being open about the way
we felt and I was ready to enjoy every minute of it.

We sat there quietly for a few moments
before finally, I asked Valerie the question that I was just waiting for the
right timing to inquire about. However, the longer I waited, the more I really
wanted to know and the stranger the time seemed to ask it. “So, what is going
on with your mother’s phone?”

Valerie shrugged. “I’m not really sure.
She thinks that someone tampered with her phone. When she compared the number I
called her with, my cellphone number, the number for her contact information
was one number off.”

Confused, I narrowed my eyes and thought
aloud, “Do you think it could have been a mistake?” Then, I amended, “But
that’s a lot of steps to take to make an error like that, I think.”

Valerie agreed. “I told her that she needs
to come over and we need to work this out together.”

I nodded, still thinking about the phone.
“It makes sense that someone could have tampered with her phone…” Then, for the
question that I really wanted to know. “If your mother didn’t write the note
and kick you out of your house, then who did?”

At that, we heard the front door open. I
tensed and whipped around, ready for a fight, but soon realized that it was
just my mother.

She looked at my pugnacious stance
strangely, but either did not notice or chose not to mention my injuries.
Instead, she replied, “Different girl, huh?” She gave a sly smile and I rolled
my eyes, hoping that Valerie was not offended by her comment.

“Mom, this is Valerie,” I answered.

My mother shrugged. “I know. It’s just
that you had another girl here before. I was curious about it.”

Valerie said hello to my mother, but not
much else. That was perfectly fine with my mother though, since she had always
viewed her and her mother as the reason she and I never had a good
relationship; despite the fact that if she really thought that was true, then
she was even crazier than I gave her credit for.

“How are you, Mom?” I asked, trying to be
causal and end the awkwardness that my mother was purposefully creating between
Valerie and me.

“Fine…” she answered and rolled her eyes.
She observed the remnants of Valerie’s belongings around the house. “I didn’t
know she was staying here.”

“She just got here,” I answered flatly.
“You haven’t been home.” I wasn’t surprised that my mother noticed this right
away though. After all, she had a knack for finding women’s clothes that didn’t
belong to her. With the company that she kept most of the time, she had to know
whether her boyfriend was sleeping around, or if she was the only woman in his
life.

It was sad that I even knew that about my
mother, but it was a fact that was common knowledge.

Instead of acknowledging my comment, she
looked directly at Valerie. “Why are you here?”

Valerie looked at me as though she was
slightly ashamed, or perhaps just confused, considering the situation that we
found ourselves in and was unable to accurately explain the reason for her
being here.

I stepped in and answered immediately,
“She got kicked out.”

At first, my mother looked surprised, but
then that expression faded and she shrugged before she grumbled, “Paul is
really cleaning house, isn’t he?”

“Paul?” Valerie asked and then looked at
me apologetically as though she had not meant to say anything.
  

I was curious too though. “What are you
talking about? Why would you think that Paul had anything to do with this?”

“Because he was the one who kicked me out
of the house,” my mother answered, as though she was revealing something that I
should have known a long time ago, as though just a casual reminder. Staring at
my blank expression, she must have either realized that I didn’t know for the
first time, or decided that perhaps the way she told me wasn’t the best,
because she moved toward me. “Shawn…Honey, I didn’t leave you. Not like your
father told you I did.”

“What?” I demanded, not sure if I should
believe the woman who had never been there for me throughout my entire life
over the man who had at least raised me and gave me a good life for the
majority of it.

“Yes,” she answered, now slightly upset by
the rush of emotions that seemed to be spiraling back to her. She took it upon
herself to sit down before she continued. “You see, right after you were born,
your father and I were having some marital problems. I had a touch of
post-partum depression and he was using it to his advantage. He was egging me
on, telling me that I was an unfit mother and wife. One night, I was so upset,
I demanded to know what I should do and he told me to leave. Afterward,
whenever I would try to make it back into your life, he would tell me that it
would be worse for you if I just randomly showed up. He told me that you didn’t
need me in your life and for a long time I believed him.” She shrugged. “Then,
you came to live with me.”

Skeptical, I answered harshly, “Yeah and
you never actually even tried to work with me. You just came in and out of my
life randomly, even though I wanted you there.”

Seeming upset by this, my mother’s face
fell before she answered, “I’m sorry, Shawn. I could hardly get past your
father. He was the one who made everything so difficult for us. He was the one
who told me that you didn’t want to see me. He was the one who kept us apart
all of these years.”

At first I didn’t respond. It was a lot to
take in and I was very nervous that she was just trying to make things worse.
After all, she had never even tried before now. She would always cancel and my
father would always be there, telling me how much she loved me and how much she
wished she could be there. I had always thought he was just lying to make me
feel better, but the thought that he was actually the mastermind behind my
ultimately motherless childhood was a far more intimidating option.

When I didn’t respond right away, she
sighed and shrugged. “Look, I know this isn’t a conversation that we should
have in front of anyone and I understand that it is a lot to take in, but I am
telling you the truth when I insist that your father is the reason that I was
such an absent parent. I never wanted to be this way.”

I narrowed my eyes at her before I finally
got up the courage to ask, “Then why are you this way? Why now? After all this
time…After all of this time that I have been living in your house and you were
still absent, why would I believe you?”