Going Cowboy Crazy (11 page)

“Good night.” The door shut with a decisive click.

It took a minute for his mind to comprehend what had just happened. He moved around the edge of the bar and stared at the closed door before he walked to the empty bathroom and looked inside. He looked back at the bedroom door and opened his mouth—then closed it.

Slate wasn’t sure how long he stood there before he finally turned and walked back to the counter to pour
himself a shot. It burned a path of fire down his throat, and by the time it reached his stomach, reality set in.

It seemed that Hope’s shy, insecure twin from Chicago had just given him—the star quarterback of two state championships, the only football player in Bramble’s history to receive a full scholarship to the University of Texas, and the man who could send most women in a tizzy with just a smile—the brush-off.

It just didn’t make any sense.

No sense at all.

All the time spent on charming conversation and witty remarks, the effort put in on shopping excursions and sunset picnics, and the attention given to lighting and mood music was for nothing. He hadn’t even made it out of the chute.

He moved through the kitchen and turned off the light, let Buster in, and then wandered over to the couch to make his bed for the night.

Damn fool woman, he thought as he spread out the tattered blanket. She didn’t know shit from Shinola about seduction. He ripped open the snaps on his shirt, yanked it off, then wadded it up and threw it at the 12-inch TV. Hell, he was lucky he wasn’t going to have sex with her. A woman like that probably didn’t know one end of a man’s johnson from the other. Sex with her would’ve been a major disappointment.

He flopped down on the couch and crammed the pillow beneath his head. And he didn’t need any more disappointments in his life. Losing state championships was enough. Which was just another reason he didn’t need to have sex with her. He didn’t have time for a woman in his life right now. Not when he needed to figure out how to
win football games with an inept quarterback, a mediocre defensive line, and a punter who couldn’t kick his way out of a paper bag.

Buster whined at the bedroom door wanting to be let in.

Well, Slate wasn’t going to whine. He wasn’t the whining kind. Especially since he’d figured out that sex with some screwy broad from the East was the last thing he needed. And once he made up his mind about something, that was it. And he’d made up his mind about Faith. Hell, even if she stripped naked and came out and forced herself on him, he wasn’t doing it. He didn’t care how great her legs looked beneath his T-shirt or how nice her breasts jiggled under the thin cotton. He wouldn’t have sex with her now if she was the last woman on the face of the earth.

Faith stood with her back up against the bedroom door and her hands pressed over her quivery stomach. She didn’t know how long she’d been standing there. It felt like hours had passed since she’d peeked out of the bathroom and had seen Slate looking all sexy and rumpled in his untucked western shirt and gym shorts. Hours since she heard the front door open, then bang closed, and the creaks of the floor as he moved around the living room. Now, except for a few whines from Buster, everything was quiet.

If she was smart, she would let Buster in and go to bed.

Except she wasn’t smart.

Beneath her straight-A report cards was a stressed-out C-student with a nervous stomach. An average little girl who studied for hours every night to get the grades that would make her above-average parents proud. She read
every book her father suggested. Practiced her violin until she formed calluses. Joined the debate team. Was secretary of the Honor Society. And spent every weekend at foreign film festivals, the symphony, or some Save the Earth rally.

But it was all a façade.

Because deep down, she wasn’t a child with a high intellect as much as a normal girl who wanted to spend her evenings reading celebrity magazines, watching romantic teen movies, and chatting on the phone with her friends. A teenager who longed to spend her weekends at slumber parties or on dates with guys who gave hickeys.

Of course, it wasn’t her parents’ fault that she didn’t do these things. They had no idea what she liked or disliked because she never told them. Not wanting to disappoint them, she buried her desires way down deep and tried to become what they wanted.

Until now.

She didn’t think her parents would want her staying the night with a man she barely knew. Or buying western clothes she would probably never wear again, or red high heels that would give her back problems later, or pink glitter lip gloss that supported an industry that put too much emphasis on physical beauty. And they would never understand the quivering need she had for a hot cowboy with sultry eyes who drove a gas-guzzling truck that probably deposited more emissions into the air than a textile factory in India.

They wouldn’t understand that at all.

Faith barely understood it.

Sex with Slate was not a good idea. She didn’t believe in casual sex. The previous night’s behavior excluded, all
her sexual experiences had been with men she’d known for at least six months. Men who lived in houses with foundations, good-sized tiled bathrooms, and at least 300-thread-count sheets. Men who drove conservative cars without gun racks and disposed of aluminum cans in recycling containers instead of in the bed of their trucks.

Yet even knowing this, she still wanted Slate, wanted him like she’d never wanted anything in her life. More than low-rise designer jeans or artery-clogging, chemical-infused pizza. She had spent the entire day fantasizing about kissing that cocky grin from his face, and nibbling a trail down the strong column of his throat, and ripping the snaps on his western shirt apart to expose all that tanned, smooth skin to her fingertips.

And what made it even worse was that Slate wanted that, too. It was there in his desire-steeped eyes and in every teasing note of his voice. In the heated brush of his fingers and his wicked grins. It was in his cheerful whistling as he did the laundry and the care with which he smoothed the sheets over the bed.

So why was she cowering behind the door when she could be drinking tequila with a gorgeous redneck who was an extremely good kisser?

Because it was hard to do away with thirty years of conditioned behavior in one day. Hard to throw her cautious nature to the wind and take a ride on the wild side. And she had no doubt that having sex with Slate would be a wild ride—one she would regret taking for the rest of her life.

The trailer was dark when she eased open the bedroom door. Buster greeted her with a wagging tail and wet tongue, following behind her as she hesitantly took the three steps needed to reach the living room. In the
faint light spilling in from the cracked window, she could just make out Slate’s tall form stretched out on the couch. It looked as if he was asleep, which was probably a sign from God. Unfortunately, her parents were more metaphysical than religious, so she took a step closer.

The floor creaked, and his head came up.

“Faith?”

“Oh… you’re still awake.” She tugged at her T-shirt and pressed one big toe over the other. “I thought you might be asleep. Although I don’t know how you can sleep on that little couch, seeing as you’re so tall—how tall are you? Six-one? Two? My father would’ve fit on the couch perfectly—he was short, like me—not that we have the same genes or anything but—”

“Did you need something?” His voice sounded nothing like the teasing cowboy who’d done such a good job of seducing her all day.

“Need something?” She hit an unusually high note. “Well, I was just thinking that maybe we could… umm… I thought that we could—I mean if you wanted to—”

“Look, Faith.” Slate sat up. “Between finding your car and work, tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. So unless there’s something you want…”

Faith swallowed. “Yes… well….” She cleared her throat. “There is something I wanted.”

“What would that be?”

“You.” The word just popped out of Faith’s mouth and hung there.

In the thick, painful silence that followed, she pretty much wanted to crawl out the front door and never look back. But before she could move, Slate sprang up from the couch.

“Well, that works out real nice, darlin’.” Within two steps, he had her in his arms. He buried his nose in her neck and inhaled deeply, almost as if he wanted to breathe her in. “Because I’m about to combust from wanting you.”

His fingers pressed into the muscles of her back, coaxing her up to her toes, as his lips found hers. The kiss was hot and greedy—one sizzling slide of wet heat followed by another—and another, until Faith didn’t know where one stopped and the other began. She grew dizzy on desire—or perhaps from lack of oxygen—and her head fell back as he trailed kisses along her jaw and down her neck.

“I tried not to want you,” she whispered. “We’re so different… and I’ll be leaving soon… and it will only make things more complicated—”

“Darlin’ ”—Slate sucked on the spot just behind her ear, sending a sensual shiver through her body—“you think way too much.” He swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom.

“But I don’t know if I can have casual sex, Slate.” She looped her arms around his shoulders and nestled against his bare chest. His skin felt like warm toast all ready for buttering. When he reached the bed, he let her legs slide down his body before pressing the hard evidence of his desire against her.

“There’s not a damned thing casual about this.”

Catching the hem of her T-shirt, Slate drew it up over her head. Thankfully, there was very little light in the room. She wasn’t comfortable enough with her body to want it displayed to someone who looked like he did. As if sensing her shyness, he didn’t grab or fondle, but instead cradled her face and gave her a leisurely kiss that had her hands gripping the lean muscles at his waist for balance.

The kiss deepened, his tongue caressing her mouth in sweet strokes as his hand slipped from her cheek to one trembling breast. He held it as if it was the most fragile keepsake, gently cradling the flesh against his palm as his thumb feathered over the pebbled peak. Then he pulled back from her lips and dipped his head to take her nipple in his mouth.

The feel of rough tongue and scorching heat caused her knees to buckle. His hands tightened on her waist and his biceps flexed as he lifted her up off the floor. Her legs instinctively wrapped around his waist, her quivering center riding the hard ridge that swelled beneath the cotton of his shorts as he continued his sweet torture of hot sweeps and gentle tugs. When she thought she couldn’t take it a second longer, he lowered her down to the mattress and gave the wet, beaded tip one last gentle kiss before he released her to slip off his shorts. He came back for her panties, his hot fingers slipping beneath the elastic and slowly skating down her legs.

Then the mattress dipped beneath his weight, and for some strange reason the bumper sticker flashed through her mind—
If you think my truck is big…—
and apprehension reared its ugly head. But instead of the arrogant redneck, the gentle cowboy settled against her side. So close she could feel the solid wall of his chest against her shoulder, the rhythmic thumping of his heart, and the hard length of him nudging her thigh—a hard length that was impressive but not in the least intimidating. As he bent his head to kiss her, the backs of his fingers trailed in a feathery soft caress down her throat, back and forth along her collarbone, then around each breast before he repeated the soul-tingling pattern. Faith melted
beneath his skilled fingers, although when those hot digits deviated down her body, she couldn’t help but cover his hand with hers and pull away from his lips.

“I’m leaving.” She whispered the words more to herself than to him.

“I know.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then each eyelid. “But for now, let me touch you.”

It was too late.

He already had.

Closing her eyes, she released his hand. But his knuckles only stroked back and forth between her hip bones as he delivered one sweet kiss after another. Lulled into a blissful, hypnotic state by his talented lips and gentle caresses, she wasn’t even aware of his hand moving lower until one finger dipped into her wet heat.

She tensed, but he soothed her with soft whispers as he adjusted his finger and his thumb came to rest on the pulsing nub at the top. Her legs quivered as a jolt of desire swept through her. But it was nothing compared to how she felt when his thumb began to move. There was a callus on the pad, like the finest grain of sandpaper ever made, and he brushed it around her pulse point in wispy little sweeps. On the upsweep his finger deepened; on the down sweep it receded. The circle grew tighter, becoming more of a stroke that pushed intense heat first one way and then the other.

Completely mindless, Faith could only dig her head back into the pillow as Slate manipulated the flame into a full-fledged bonfire that soon consumed her. Then with one final sweep and stroke, he brought her back to earth.

He brushed a kiss on her forehead before he shifted away. In a hazy mist, she turned her head and watched
as he fumbled with something in the dark. It only took a second to figure out what it was.

“Do you think one will be enough?” she asked.

His head came up. “What?”

“One condom. Maybe you should use two.”

“Two? You got something I don’t want, darlin’?”