Cowboy Heat (14 page)

I follow the sounds of gentle water in the side room that serves as both a tack room and a tool station. Standing in the doorway, I register only the sights I’ve seen before, albeit with furtive glances.

Colt stands at the utility sink, a wet rag pressed against the back of his neck. Water runs in darkening rivulets over bronzed shoulders and down his furred chest.

He’s washing up, that’s all. I should return to the house or call out so he’s aware of my presence. Instead, I let my gaze slide along his now-slippery body, to where the water would soak into the waistband of his jeans.

But his waistband isn’t where I thought it would be, buttoned up. Instead, the two sides of his fly splay open, and the damp-darkened white of his underwear is pushed down, allowing his curved cock to jut from his body. It’s clearly quite hard, which he confirms by thrusting it into his fist.

He moans, a low sort of grumble, and my body responds with a strangled gasp. He looks up and—oh shit, he actually
looks up at me
, and I think I might melt onto the dusty floor, leaving nothing but a shameful wet spot where Alex used to be. That might be preferable to standing here, caught red-handed, having already made him so uncomfortable in his own home that he won’t wank off there.

Though he doesn’t look disturbed, as his nostrils flare, and he murmurs my name. He doesn’t seem put off from the whole
wanking
business as his fist seems to tighten and—one, two—strokes his length.

I blink, but I really can’t deny what is happening right now: he’s masturbating while watching me.

He’s pleasuring himself to the sight of me.

Lust is a strong current in my mind, but I force myself to still. I can turn around, away from the pretty muscles and the angry-aroused face of the most decent man I’ve ever met, and I would hate myself forever. Or I can go to him.

So I do, walking toward him on the heaviest feet known to man. I’m literally shaking, and I can’t think why I’m so nervous. Except that I want this, badly. More than I had wanted a job and a place to live and food on the day I came here, I want this. To be connected to him with my body, my mind and whatever else there is knocking around inside us. Something meaningful, so that even if I had to drive away from Colt’s farm tomorrow, the ripples of our joining would gently rock me in my sleep.

With my every step, his hand quickens, his lids lower. His lips part, and I’m sure he’s going to come. He must be almost hurting himself, so tightly and so quickly. He releases a sound on every upstroke, like something that would come in the middle of a word, just
unhhhh
, breath expelled and body taut. He can’t hold out anymore, I think. Any minute now, he’ll climax, and it will be over.

I don’t want it to be over. I want to watch this sight every night, like the sunset from the porch. More than that, I want to join in.

My knees hit the hard-packed dirt, bringing me eye to eye with the beautiful cock made blurry with motion and glistening with precum. I open my mouth, a little hesitantly. I want this, and I think he wants this, too. But I’m not sure. I need a sign. Just a hint that this is the right direction, that he doesn’t think I’m overstepping the boundaries here.

“Your tits,” he says on a groan. “Show me your tits.”

That will work.

I look down at the slight swells of my breasts above the heather-gray camisole I’m wearing. When I’m working on the
ranch, I wear a T-shirt or sometimes flannel, something sturdy to ward off the elements. But at night, I had recently begun stripping down before dinner. I’d felt more at home here, and so I began to dress more comfortably—more sparingly, too.

I wonder if that’s why he’s out here, pulling out a quick orgasm before joining me for dinner. Have I been teasing him without knowing in my comfy camisoles and soft, stretchy pants? More disturbing, have I known all along? Either way, it seems to have turned out all right. I pull the thin fabric over my head. My nipples pucker in the sweet night air.

I expect him to come at the sight of my tits, by request. Maybe he’ll even come on me, spraying warm and wet onto the pale flesh. Instead, he slows his hand. In fact, it stops entirely, but his hips take up motion then, pushing into his fist. More leisurely now. As slow as he might actually fuck someone.

Dropping the wet rag into the sink behind him, he reaches out to touch my nipple. His finger is still cold and damp, and a shiver runs through me.

“So lovely,” he says. “Do you want this? I don’t know if I can even stop now, but I need to know if you—”

“Yes.”
God, yes
.

“It wouldn’t be right, if you didn’t want to, if you thought you had to…”

I know what he means. He’s worried I think I owe him sex in exchange for the housing and food and money he pays me. I’m not sure how to answer, because I do feel like I owe him. I
want
to owe him. My feelings of gratitude and relief are all tied up with other ones, tangled and roped with oh-so-ordinary things like lust and affection and maybe even love. They can’t be separated out into neat little compartments. They’re all how I feel for Colt, over full.

But I can’t explain all this while I’m on my knees and he’s
fucking his own fist right in front of me. So I do the next best thing; I reach for the head of his cock with my mouth. Though
reach
is too polite a word for what I really do. I lunge for it, but that’s how I’m feeling now—hungry for him.

His taste is like a kaleidoscope on my tongue, salt and sweat and man, while my tongue swirls and swirls around him. I’m dizzy with lust, but he’s there to ground me. He clamps on to the back of my head and holds me still, as still as his fist a minute ago, and pumps into me. I hear him groaning, those same low trebled noises that bounce around the hollow room and fill me up inside.

He moves faster and more roughly, exactly how I’d imagined it all those nights in the bedroom beside his. Except I had worried he’d be too careful, too gentle, but that was silly, I see now. He’s the same with sex as with everything—hard and a little bit mean, but endearingly so, at least to me. I’m just a little perverse like that. In fact, I’d prefer for him to be rougher, to hold my hair and call me names, but I’m hopeful those things will come later. Like a kinky courting ritual, this slightly cruel blow job is just a portal to sweeter things.

I open my mouth and close my mind, letting myself become a vessel for him to use, trusting my body to him the way I’ve already entrusted my heart.

He doesn’t disappoint, releasing thick cum into my mouth, which I swallow down eagerly. By the end, I’m panting and leaning my head against his leg while he pets my hair.

“You were so good, sweetheart. Did you like that?”

I murmur something unintelligible against the denim. I
loved
it, but I’m burning up inside, all fidgety and near to crying over it, and I don’t know if it’s finished now. There wasn’t a section in the employee handbook titled “Unexpected Stable Sex with Your Cowboy Boss,” or really a handbook at all, and with the
receding of his lust, I’m suddenly self-conscious.

He rustles a bit. I think he must be tucking himself away in his jeans when I hear the zipper, but I face the ground. My cheeks feel hot with arousal and embarrassment and why won’t he fuck me? Except I know the answer. I’ve already taken care of his fuck-urge, and now there’s just me, horny and shamefully clinging to his leg.

He tugs me to standing and with careful but sure hands, takes off my jeans and my panties.

The surety in his touch eases some of my tension. He seems to have a plan, and thank god, because I want to follow it. He leads me over to a table that’s strewn with tools and the bottom leather bits of a saddle. He clears it away and then pats the edge.

“Jump up here.”

I stare at it. “I don’t know. Will it break?” It’s wide enough for me, and it’s got all four legs, but I’m not sure how much trust I have in a random almost-outdoors table.

“It’ll hold,” he says. “I built it.”

I built it
. Which raises all sorts of questions. Did he expect to fuck a woman on this table when he built it? Or does he just include that specification in all his furniture-making plans—
must be fuck-sturdy
?

He gets impatient and lifts me by my waist.

Right as the flesh of my ass touches the cool wood, a worrisome thought flashes through my mind:
splinters
. But I don’t even have to ask this time. I know the answer. He built it, and the surface feels smooth as butter against my ass.

He parts my legs with large, insistent palms and stares at me. Just stares at the place between my legs. My gut clenches. I know I’ve groomed there, but it’s not the perfect smoothness I want for him. There aren’t any Brazilian waxing salons in Paloma, and even if there were, I wouldn’t really have
spent the money. Stupid, stupid, why hadn’t I done that?

“This is such a pretty pussy,” he said, running two blunt fingers from bottom to top.

Ohhh, and without even knowing it, that’s why. But there’s more.

“I love how pink you are.” He touches my nipples, tweaks them, one then the other. All the while, his other hand runs gently over swollen, slippery lips. “I love how ready you are to take me. So slick I could just slide right in.”

“Do it,” I breathe.

He pauses, then. “We have to talk first.”

I let out a shuddery breath. He’s the devil, the actual devil with horns on his head that I can’t see. He’s reduced me to this quivering mass of need and now he needs to handle it with all due haste. He needs to take out the renewed bulge I can see in his jeans and come inside me. If he doesn’t, I’ll just… I’ll just…

My whole body trembles, on the cusp of a decision. Take or give. Leave or submit. Though I know what the answer will be; it’s already decided. Even as I mentally brace against his steely delay, a small part of me revels in it. I love his selfishness to take his pleasure first and his control as he withholds mine. Maybe it’s because I know with absolutely certainty that he’ll take care of me. Or maybe it’s because the glimmer in his eyes says he knows all of this is only making me hotter, bringing me higher. This is all for me as much as it’s for him.

“What do we need to talk about?” I force myself to say.

“What do we need to talk about…
Sir
,” he corrects.

“No,” I say, although it’s not really a refusal; it’s surprise. Really? This is going to be an actual thing that we do? He’ll give me orders, and I’ll call him Sir? At the thought, a small bit of wetness tickles my opening, sliding onto his probing fingers. My face flushes.

He pauses, raising his hand between us, turning it this way and that, letting the moonlight reflect off my arousal. Then he puts his forefinger into his mouth and sucks.

My hips buck, so empty and cold without his touch. “Sir,” I whisper. “Sir, Sir, Sir…” And I have no idea what I’m supposed to say after that. It doesn’t even matter, because I’ve already said it all with the breathless litany.
Yes, anything, please, so much
.

“You need to promise that you aren’t going to run off after this.”

I’m dazed, but I try to focus. This seems important, and maybe the worst possible time to be having an important conversation. Or the best time. “Why…would I run off?”

“If you start worrying about our situation, with the job and the house, talk to me. If you’re not getting what you need from me, ask me for it.”

“Yes, of course.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m serious. I don’t care why you ran before. It brought you here, after all. But you don’t just cut out with a trunk full of boxes, not this time. If you get scared, you run
to
me, not away, understand?”

My breath hitches. I
had
been running, although not from anything in particular, just myself and my failures. My fears, which he seems to already know. He understands me; he accepts me—he wants me to stay. And I
will
be strong enough this time. At least, I want to be. I want to be solid and steady, like he is. I want to be next to him while I do it.

“Yes, Sir,” I say quietly.

His gaze seems to bore into me before he relents, pressing a kiss on my lips. It deepens, and I part my lips. His hands are everywhere, my breasts, my back, holding me, securing me, and this is so much better than what I’d wanted before, the hard fucking.

At least until his lips descend in a languorous line—one kiss, two—dropping like breadcrumbs in a twist-turn path. His mouth closes over one nipple and tugs and worries and plays there until I’m crying or crying out, “Fuck me, oh please, oh Sir-Sir-Sir…”

And it’s the very best thing ever, until the slippery silk of his tongue trails lower, down to where I’m pulsing and aching for him.

He’s on the job, though. He’s got it covered—with that clever tongue and those tender lips. He seems to know right where I ache, because he makes it worse before soothing it better.

I climb and come down at his command, bound by nothing more than the power I give him. I want and I plead and I think,
Maybe this time
. And then he flicks my clit, just once, and I think it must be now, oh god, now, now.

He chooses this moment to stand up straight, sending a wash of cool air to my clit, which feels like sleet against my damp, throbbing nub. I release a coarse groan of frustration that’s not at all feminine, unless it’s feminine to be demanding and ravenous for sex.