Dynomite: A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance (4 page)

Tipping an imaginary visor to me, he rode off sedately, leaving me there to gape.

What the fuck
? I had no time to ponder, though, because Lawson was pulling up in his Camaro. Melrod had continued on
into
my dad’s ranch property, not toward the highway. My brain felt completely blank, a giant black screen where my thoughts used to be.

Of course Lawson let me sit in the passenger seat. Olivia, though she was head cheerleader, sat in back with her alleged man of the moment, a bruiser named Kemp. He was so dull-witted, my dad would say he was “All hat. No cattle.”

“Is that that Dyno Drummond guy?” Olivia asked, sticking her head between Lawson and me.

“So what?” said Lawson. “Who cares what that Drummond asshole does?”

My heart nearly stopped. “Wait—Drummond? His stupid army jacket says his name is Elrod, Melrod, whatever.”

“He’s sort of hot,” Olivia said, though her alleged boyfriend sat right there. She could be kind of a whore, too.

Lawson said, “Well, that jackoff rode his stupid fucking Harley right by us last night when we were buying weed next to a liquor store. He yelled out some stupid Texas insults, flipped us off, right in front of a cop.” He gunned his engine. “I’m gonna show him who’s fucking boss.” And he peeled out so energetically that we fishtailed for a dozen yards.

“No!” I shrieked, gripping the dashboard. “Why would he do that, Lawson? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he flip you off? He doesn’t even know you!”

Lawson continued to yell. “And why’s he heading into your property? What’s he doing here anyway?”

“I don’t know!” Lawson was already closing in on Melrod or Drummond or whoever the fuck he was, doing almost seventy already on our one-lane private ranch road. “Maybe he got lost, I have no idea! Just stop it, Lawson. Stop causing trouble! I’m already
in
enough trouble.”

“I’ll say,” agreed Olivia heatedly. “Oo, there he is. Don’t hurt him, Lawson. I’d like to keep him in one piece so I can get my hands on him.” She was talking about wanting to handle another man while her boyfriend sat there guffawing.

“
Especially
not on my dad’s property!” I shrieked like a hurricane now. We were so hot on Drummond’s heels, I could—and did—roll down my window and lean out to scream at him. “Watch out! Get off the fucking road!”

Normally I would have laughed like hell at the sight of Drummond’s face when he looked over his shoulder at us. There was a definite look of
oh shit
terror in his normally squinty eyes. He jerked his arms to the right in a much too sudden fashion. Just as I cruised by him so close I could have touched his bare arm, he cranked a severe, almost forty-five-degree turn into the desert.

I swear, he almost did a high side over his bike. Lawson guffawed like a jackass as Drummond bounced over several dirt mounds, his boots flying free of the foot pegs. But Drummond managed to keep the bike under control, even when it was hurtling over several dry washes directly for a barbed wire fence. I was actually gasping, praying for him to set his bike right. My wishes worked. Soon he was on his way again, albeit riding over desert senna bushes with bright yellow flowers stuck in his spokes. This time, he really did flip us off.

“Yes,” mused Olivia. “He’s
definitely
banging hot.”

“He’s heading for that loser’s house,” observed Kemp.

I knew he was aiming for the driveway that led to Sequoia Crooks’ house. It made sense for them to pal around, since they already did so in the back of math class.

“I don’t care. Turn the fuck around, Lawson,” I ordered. “We’re already going to be late for class. Who
cares
what a scumbag like him does? You could’ve sent him to the hospital just now, and the liability would be on my
dad’s
insurance.”

“Yeah,” Olivia said, under her breath. “And you wouldn’t want
that
right now.”

I shot her a warning glare. I wondered how long it’d be until the story of my arrest got back to Lawson. Would he care? He actually seemed to encourage my juvenile delinquency. He might even laugh. Football players could be delinquents. It was seen as “high-spirited teen hijinks” when boys did it. When girls got in trouble, suddenly we were back in the Stone Ages with double standards all over the place. Girls were supposed to forge into the modern world, but wearing high heels and pearls. We had to do
two
jobs now—work a fulltime traditional man’s job
and
take care single-handedly of the home front. Our mother’s women’s lib had done nothing to free us. Sure, we could do the same work for half a man’s pay. While still doing a hundred percent of everything around the house. Women’s lib had just chained us.

“Check your texts,” I commanded Olivia, before I’d even typed one.

That guy you’re drooling over is my new stepbrother.

We locked eyes. Olivia’s mouth was as round as a clock face.

Last night my dad wouldn’t stop calling me a whore. I’d proven that to myself when I’d showered for half an hour. After washing the initial couple layers of grime from my skin, I started toying around with the showerhead. I often did that. It was harmless. Orgasms were good for you, for your hormones, your pores. I’d been playing with this same showerhead since I was thirteen—a million years ago.

Only this time it was different. In my fantasies, I was stripping the threadbare army jacket from Melrod’s torso. I lifted his thin cotton T-shirt at the hem, exposing his ripped washboard abs. I knew he’d be built just from the definition in his biceps, and in my dreams, I wasn’t disappointed. I fell to my knees and licked the tantalizing trail of fine, soft hair that arrowed down the valley in the center of his abdomen. I swirled my tongue around his navel while the bulge in his jeans grew like an inflatable doll. When I cupped his growing penis in my palm, it sprang to life, and I squeezed its entire length lustfully.

I only got to the part where I undid his belt buckle and 501 buttons before I came, and the fantasy evaporated. It was all perfectly routine for me, and I got a better night’s sleep than normal.

Only last night, I hadn’t known the object of my fantasies was my stepbrother.

I’d only figured it out just now when Olivia called him “Dyno Drummond.”

My dad had married Sadie Drummond. She had a douchetard son who’d been arrested in Texas on some kind of drug rap. He was a no good, lowdown toolbag, from what my dad said. He let him cowpoke for Javier but there was no talk of allowing him to live on our property, which was quite extensive. He could’ve easily lived anywhere, really, and I’d never run into the guy. Which led me to believe he was dangerous.

Apparently, dangerous was a turn-on for me.

It terrified me. It grossed me out.
That’s my fucking stepbrother
.

It didn’t matter that we weren’t related by blood. He was legally my stepbrother, and I was the most twisted sister on the planet to have imagined taking his well-hung cock from his jeans and plunging it down my throat! I didn’t even fantasize about Lawson that way, although I’d certainly performed for him that way, several times before. It was the only way to keep a guy interested these days. Put out.

Now, as we cruised to Mario Lanza High—yes, that’s the real name of the school, believe it or not. We’re all starstruck out near Palm Springs—my father’s words sank their tentacles into the depths of my soul.

You’re becoming a god-damned whore, April. I don’t care if you weren’t soliciting that old guy in the Caddy. The fact remains, you’re slutting around. I won’t have a slut living under my roof. You need to be a representative of the Hardscrabble brand while you’re working for me.

But I’m not working for you, dad! I’m just filling in until you find someone else to run the office.

You’re working for me, April. You do good work, and I don’t want anyone else. But you’ve got to get your act together. The way you’re going, you’re not attending college anyway. If I hadn’t of gotten you off that charge, it would’ve gone on your record. Think about it, April. You’re a god-damned slut and I’m having Josefina take you to the fucking doctor next week to get you an IUD. You’re not eighteen for another five months and you have no say over it.

I was sick to my stomach by the time Lawson parked at Mario Lanza. He didn’t see me dry heaving behind a bush, but Olivia did. She even crouched behind me, holding my hair back. I had nothing in my stomach, which was probably worse than actually puking. Minus the bile going backward up my nostrils.

But her first question wasn’t about puke. It was about Dyno Drummond.

“Is he
seriously
your new stepbrother?”

I nodded, trying to breathe.

“Oh, wow,” she whispered, in awe. “How the hell are you going to keep your hands off him?”

DYNO

S
equoia went out
the back door a few times—that is, thrown over the back end of the mount.

“Come on, Sequoia!” I hollered. My legs were twined through the fence near the bucking chute at the arena. We’d been practicing this every night for a week at the corral, but Sequoia had been hammered when I’d picked him up at his rundown shack.

“Get the fuck up!” I bellowed. For the fourth time that evening, the pickup man had to swoop in and grab Sequoia, getting him out of harm’s way of the animal. The horse was more of a runaway, not even remotely a star-gazer or an arm-jerker. I’d already ridden this paint way past the eight-second mark just to show off. We were all rookies tonight, the bareback director having given us the opportunity to ride in the arena. Nothing was official except the equipment and animals. There were several pros in attendance too. Last year’s rodeo queen was there, wearing her cowboy hat emblazoned with a giant buckle, like a fireman.

And Sequoia was fucking up by the numbers.

The paltry crowd in attendance booed the hell out of him. The poor pickup man was even slothful about it, dismounting and ambling over to where Sequoia was collapsed like a priest in a strip club. The spectators were wanna-be jocks, the kind who liked to think they could compete professionally. They were just eating this shit up. They would’ve loved it more if it was
me
caved in on the ground like a pile of sugar.

But they’d take the next fucking best thing, which was a drunken Indian, a cowboy-killer, a John Redcorn.

“Whoo!” squealed that dick, Lawson Willard, the nozzle who’d run me off the road the other day. “Way to go, gut-eater! Hey! I’ve got a bottle of Jim Beam in my trunk if you want to celebrate your win!”

Lawson and his buddies were crawling all over the fence on the other side of the chute. There was no purse tonight, aside from what Lawson and his crowd had gotten together to bet against me.

I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of that rah-rah, April Pleasure. She sat above her boys in the VIP grandstand, poised and pretty. Tonight she was all got up in some powder pink fringed number, a shorty jacket—a wannabe buckle bunny. I’d pounded many of these chicks in my time down in Paducah, but for some reason the sight of this ice queen struck me clean to the bone.

She just
looked
at me, her face dead as a mackerel. Her sky-blue eyeshadow made her look like a reject from an eighties aerobics class, and her feathered hair shouted that she wasn’t even ready for Charlie’s Angels. What the fuck was I doing, caring what she thought of me?

I conjured up all the loathing and hatred I could, and let it show in my glance. It seemed to strike terror into her cold, hard heart. She gasped and turned her eyes straight ahead, like she was waiting for a nurse to give her a shot in her arm.

“C’mon, Crooks!” This time I leaped off the fence and into the actual arena. A few clowns who had no face paint on tried to corral me.

“Hey now!” one shouted. “Get the fuck out of the arena! Only contestants allowed!”

“Yeah!” yelled another unpainted clown. “You know the rules!”

The pickup man was handling Sequoia with disgust, like he was afraid to touch him. He lifted Sequoia’s arm between his outstretched fingers as if it was a turd.

I got on the other side of the pickup man and slung my friend’s arm over my shoulders. I wondered how the hell I was going to get him home riding two up on my scoot. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“But you still have another ride,” insisted Sequoia. “I don’t want to fuck up your next ride.”

That was true. There were only about five of us rookies out there that night. The director had told me I could have one more ride, and the next animal was a chute fighter. I was looking forward to showing up that Lawson jackhole. I still had no fucking idea why he ran me off the road the week before. We had no beef, at least that I was aware of.

Up until now. As Sequoia and I staggered through the gate, Willard blared, “Hey, Smoke Signal! Hey, Wounded Knee Jerk! Let’s go down to the liquor store and get some Garden Deluxe!” Garden Deluxe was the godawful fortified wine Navajos made near Gallup.

“Yeah!” goofed his buddy, a moron named, I thought, Hemp. “My mom’s got some Aqua Net!” He referred to some Indians’ habit of drinking hairspray.