Cowboy Heat (6 page)

She peeled away from him, back to her teammates. “No,” she shot back over her shoulder. “I’m going to win.”

At the start of the sixth and final chukka, the game hung in the balance. Scores were tied. She took to the field to the cheers of her teammates and applause from the smattering of spectators lining the rail. For a moment she let herself soak up the atmosphere she loved: heat, dust and the dry and drooping landscape of outback Queensland. Horse sweat and leather.

Her inattention cost her, and her team was swiftly down two goals. “Get yer arse in gear, Mel!” yelled Dan from the railings, and she focused tight, caught the ball just inside the goal-scoring area. Two strides and she shot for goal. Seven down. Three to go.

The next couple of minutes passed in a blur. She scored again, and with a minute to go scored a lucky goal that just rolled through.

Her team was winning, but that wasn’t what mattered to Mel. One more goal and a minute to do it. She gritted her teeth. Jack caught the ball, but she came up tight on his off shoulder and her stick crashed into his, freeing the ball. She scrambled for it, and scooped it up. Minty flattened her ears, her neck
and shoulders wet with sweat, and galloped toward goal. Mel twisted, trying to get a clear shot, but Jack was with her, his mare matching every twist and turn with uncanny ability. There were seconds to go.

Mel raised the net, but Jack’s mare dropped her shoulder and the horses crashed together. Off balance, Minty stumbled. Mel sat still, letting her regain her footing, but Jack was close, his thigh pushing into her own, their stirrup irons slamming together. Dust blinded her, as Jack’s mare shoved Minty around, away from goal. Jack reached behind, trying to block her shot, but there was no need. His mare continued to shove, and Minty was forced off.

The game ended before the throw in could be taken. He came up alongside and grinned at her from under his helmet. “Good effort, darling. Nine goals. But not good enough. You’re mine.”

She shivered at his words, at the low, caressing tone, and at the way his eyes swept up her body to settle on her face. She pushed a sweaty tendril of her from her cheek. “A bet’s a bet, Jack. I won’t renege.”

Turning, she headed for her float and set about unsaddling Minty and hosing her down to a chorus of shouted commiserations and good-natured insults from her teammates. When Minty was settled with a hay net, Mel went over to the makeshift counter that served as a bar on game days. She accepted a cold tinnie, but passed up on food; her churning stomach wouldn’t allow her to eat. She knew the second Jack arrived to join the gathering. His broad-shouldered body drew her gaze as he took a beer and joined his teammates in a toast.

The beer lay sour in her stomach. Mel tipped it onto the brown grass and continued to circulate with an empty tinnie in her hand, pasting a fake smile on her face, wondering when Jack would come to claim her.

It was an hour later, when people were starting to drift away, back to stations and communities that were a couple of hours’ drive away, that Jack approached her group, and his hand slid around Mel’s waist.

“Time to go.”

His arm lay hot around her waist, each fingerprint scorching her through her shirt. Sliding from his grasp, she said her farewells. Jack loped along at her side and the air between them crackled with tension.

“Where are we going?” she asked, more to break the silence than from a need to know. “I have to take Minty home first.”

“My place. Minty can come along. There’s a stall for her, or you can turn her out in the paddock with the others.”

“You were that confident you’d win?” She knew she sounded petulant, but his casual assumption annoyed her.

They reached her float, where Minty lipped at fallen strands of hay.

Jack grabbed her arm and pushed her so they were hidden from passersby. The slats of the float pressed hard against her spine. Jack’s hands palmed her hips, and he pushed his lower body against her.

His bulk loomed, but his touch was gentle as he tucked an errant curl of hair behind her ear. “Not confidence, Mel. Just cautious optimism. I was hoping.”

His voice was low, smooth and almost tender, different from his normal bantering tone. He moved closer, and the sudden tightness in her chest made her breathe in shallow pants.

His lips moved closer, hovered over her own. “A little something on account…”

And then he was kissing her, and she knew she was lost. His lips teased, tormented, fine lips, surprisingly soft, surprisingly gentle. Her pulse thundered in her ears and her breasts were
suddenly uncomfortable, hard and aching, as they pushed against his chest. His kiss went on, past the point where she had breath of her own, past the point where she knew where she ended and he began. She was liquid heat and light, weak with wanting him.

He drew away slowly, returned to taste her once more and then withdrew again. When she opened her eyes his face filled her vision. He was smiling.

When she could trust her voice she said, “And that’s just a kiss. What will happen when we fuck?”

He grinned in delight at her words. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”

“What, ‘fuck’?”

“No. For you to admit that we will.”

She hooted. “I never thought you’d want to do otherwise with your bet. Are you going to tell me you want to spend the night knitting tea cozies?”

“You’ll find out very soon what I want to do. But now we head home.”

She followed him along dirt roads, through open range where cattle grazed, past dams ablaze with pink and gray galahs and flocks of sulphur-crested cockatoos. The sun hung low in the west, its clear light spilling over the flat landscape. They reached Bundawalla Station and Jack drew to a halt at the yards. The next twenty minutes were spent seeing to the horses.

Mel lingered, watching Minty roll in the dust. The heat of the day was fading to a comfortable warmth and the early stars were out. Cicadas filled the night with sound.

When she turned from the railing, Jack took her hand without a word, and led her toward the manager’s house. The wide wraparound verandah of the old Queenslander was worn smooth, but swept clean. There was a couch on the side facing north, and a blind pulled half down to deflect the heat.

“Beer?”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “We both know what we’re here for, and it isn’t beer.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m without courtesy.”

She turned to face him, and her fingers drifted to the waist of his dusty jeans. Her blood thrummed, pulsing in heated beats, energizing her. “I’m more interested in seeing what else you can do.”

His thumb brushed briefly over her lips and then traced a lazy path down her neck to where her pulse skittered. “I don’t think you’ll have any complaints.” His fingers pushed into the neck of her shirt, spreading over her collarbone, drumming lightly. “You’re overdressed.”

She took the hint, and her fingers moved to the buttons of her shirt.

But he grasped them, stilled the movement. “No, darling. This will be my pleasure.” He slipped the buttons, so slowly, so carefully that his fingertips didn’t graze her skin. When the shirt hung loose, he pushed it from her shoulders, and as his fingers trailed down her back she felt the catch of her bra loosen.

His eyes were dark and mysterious in the starlight. She toed off her boots, and then his fingers were at the waist of her jeans, unsnapping, unzipping, pushing them down over her hips with her panties. The dreamy lethargy of earlier was gone, and she tore at his clothes, fired up with lust and the need to feel him. The drumming in her head was a heated urgency, it pounded like the blood in her veins, it burned like the feel of his fingertips on her skin.

She bent and kicked her jeans away, impatient as they tangled and bunched. Jack threw his shirt down and discarded his own clothes, so that they lay in a tangled heap on the timber. “Can’t wait, Mel, not anymore.”

“Then don’t,” she replied, and pressed her naked body against his, skin to skin for the first time, chest to breast, thigh to thigh, his cock rising hard and proud between them.

He twitched at something hanging on the back of the couch. A sleeping bag, she realized, as he broke away from her to throw it to the floor, spreading it over their clothes. He drew her down, down to the soft cotton on sun-warmed timber, and his mouth was on hers and his body over hers.

She thrilled with the feel of him, with the urgency of it all, and the overwhelming need to feel him inside her. His cock bumped her thigh, and she raised her legs, cradled him with her hips, urging him on.

“Can’t wait,” he gasped again. “Foreplay—”

“We’ve been foreplaying all day,” she said. “I want you now.” Impatience surged within her. She didn’t want subtle or delicate, or long and slow; she wanted fast and hard; she wanted to be filled, to know his solidity within her. She wanted to be fucked.

He changed the angle of his body, and his cock nudged her folds. She canted her hips toward him and he slid inside with one smooth movement. Mel arched her back, clenched down. The feeling of fullness, the fat slide of him inside was enough to send frissons of pleasure deep into her belly.

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the sensation as he started to advance and retreat. His hips were solid between her thighs. She dug her fingers into his buttocks, urging him on. His face pressed against the crook of her neck, his breath hot and urgent on her skin. She wanted his finger on her clit because it wasn’t enough with him inside her. And then he raised up on his hands, and suddenly it was enough, and he was hot and hard, moving hard and fast, and spirals of light danced behind her closed eyelids.

“Mel,” he said, his voice hoarse with effort, “look at me darling. I want you to know who’s inside you.”

She opened her eyes, and his face filled her vision. He was holding back, she realized, waiting for her. Tenderness overwhelmed her, and she curled a palm around his cheek. “I know who I’m fucking,” she said. “You, Jack. Only you.” And then the spasms started deep in her belly, long drawn-out waves of pleasure that rolled through her like the tide, advancing and retreating.

As her orgasm subsided she found he was coming too in deep thrusts and a spreading liquid heat. He rolled over, taking her with him, so that she straddled his prone body. His cock softened but remained tucked inside. His hips undulated and aftershocks of pleasure coursed through her.

Jack’s hand drew idle patterns on her thigh. “We’re not done yet.”

“Confident?” she teased. “You don’t need recovery time?”

“I do,” he said, and his hand moved to cover her mound. “But you don’t.” His thumb found her nub and rubbed it softly. “I’m going to stroke you…” His thumb passed once more over her clit. “And suck you here—” Raising up, his mouth opened over one nipple. “And here.” The other nipple. “Then you’re going to suck my cock until I’m hard, and I’ll taste that pussy of yours.” His hips pushed up into her again. “By then, we might be ready for the second chukka.”

She gazed down at him, her fingers mapping the way forward on his smooth chest. “Better get started then.”

In answer, he lifted her away from his body and laid her back on the sleeping bag. The ceiling fan stirring the warm air before it was blocked by Jack’s big body.

He kissed her neck, the hollow of her throat where a pulse beat furiously, and moved down. His tongue dragged moist
pathways down her breasts, and when he took a nipple in his mouth a shaft of scarlet pleasure made her cry out.

“Touch me,” Jack commanded.

And she complied, tracing the sun-bronzed skin of his forearms, down along his chest to where his copper nipples jutted, down farther to where his cock rose from its nest of hair. Not hard yet, but tumescent. She palmed the shaft, ran fingers over the head, pushing his foreskin down and up. His cock twitched, lengthened and hardened.

Jack moved farther down, and her fingers fell away from his cock as he moved between her legs. A brief pain bloomed as he bit lightly on her inner thigh. Then his face was between her legs, his tongue on her clit, and the world went hazy and faint, and there were stars behind her eyelids as well as in the sky.

Jack turned, straddling her body so that his cock hung heavy, bumping her lips with mute appeal.

Mel licked the tip, tasting herself and his own musky scent.

His tongue flickered on her clit, pushing her up to her peak, and she gave herself over to the sensation, coming hard against his face.

Eager to repay, she sucked him in, using lips and tongue until her nose rested in his sweat-damp hairs. His balls tightened hard against his body, and then he lifted her and sat her over his hips.

“You wanted to ride me,” he whispered.

She raised up on strong thighs, lowered onto his cock, feeling once again the thick slide of him inside her. Strange how he was already familiar, as if he was destined to be her lover. Mel rode him hard, a slide and a slam and a crash of motion, a frenzied coupling that was all too short as he spurted inside her once again.

She rested her hands on his chest as her breathing slowed to normal. “Are you always like that?”

He grinned, proud of his prowess. “Only with you. Why did we wait so long to do this?”

She shrugged. “You won the bet, but I’m doing well out of this.”