Let Your Heart Drive (16 page)

“She’s three,” he replies and slides out of the truck. Leaving me alone for a second or two with his scent consuming me. His jacket is intensely overpowering and it makes me wish I could sniff it, like a druggie. My god this man is making me become a wannabe stalker.

I swing myself out of the passenger side, without any physical grasping or hip touching. Which makes me miss his truck suddenly. His oversized jacket blocks the nipping Sunday breeze as we walk to the back of the flatbed, he jumps up without a hitch and starts tossing bales of hay out. He tugs on the leather glove he has on his right hand and pauses a beat. “I don’t remember you mentioning anything about your mom, Sin?”

I feel kind of out place with him standing above me, working and I’m leaning idly off to the side, but I meet he eyes regardless and reply, “She passed away.”

He inhales long and slow and apologies, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, it wasn’t your fault.” I know this is something everyone usually says, and I know they truly mean it or they wouldn’t say it. But I always feel like I should be the one comforting them. I tuck my hands inside the deep denim pockets and give him a noncommittal shrug. “She passed when I was really young, I don’t have any memory of her.”

He crouches down and holds my gaze. “Do you mind if I ask how?”

Again I’m touched with how attentive he tries to approach his question. “She was twenty-four like Beatrice’s age, but from what I’m told she was very, very sick and she didn’t have a fighting chance when she came down with pneumonia.”

“So your dad, Officer Noelle, raised you and your sister?”

I rock back on my heels and raise a teasing brow. “That’s right Mr. Roadside.
So…
if there’s some long, long criminal list I need to know about, now’s the time to fess up.”

He grips the side of one of the hay bundles and jets over the edge in one swift motion and lands directly in front me. Grinning like a wanted man with a twinkle in his lawless eyes, he steps closer and says, “And who says there’s a long, long, list?”

Briefly I close my eyes remembering the way his smoky tenor would drop over the phone and feel my whole body reawaken. All this happens in a blink and when I open my eyes he’s a defined breath away. “No one has to tell me…” I state daringly, standing my ground.

He guides a firm hand around my waist, cinching us together, tighter, closer, matching our anxious breath. “And why is that?” he asks reveling a triumph perfect smile.

“Because it’s written all over your face.”

“Since you can read me so well… do you see this one comin’?”

He tips his head, casting the shadows from his Stetson hat to one side and steals my next breath. His sinful lips press tenderly like he’s coaxing my soul to the surface. Fiercer our mouths crash striving to taste, to feast and overthrow the reserve in us. And just like the times before when he kissed me, I feel the earth beneath my feet caving in and disappearing, and the only thing riveting me in place… is Trey. His hot, heated lips scorch through my cold veins and I’m willingly, freely his.

Heartbeat after heartbeat I’m weakened and swayed to follow his come-hither steps, eyes closed, I instinctively feel the rear of the flatbed truck. He grips my waist without breaking our kiss and hoists me up. Scattered loose hay becomes my new heaven as he seductively reclines my body back. He shields me and saves me from myself as my lips are far hungrier than his, nip and suck with ravaging kisses. My hands blindly tangles and threads through his hair until he softly chuckles and tosses his hat over a heap of hay. His hard powerful body presses against me and I trace a hand down his chest. His racing heart throbs and pounds just like my own heart on the verge of shattering. Ready to eradicate anything between us. My fingers learn the lean, solid contours of him, every muscle, every curve, to the way his flesh ignites under my touch. And then I hear the loudest commotion behind us.

“If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

A ruckus of snorts
, whinnies, and shuffling of a hundred hooves thunder the ground and suddenly I feel very small in the vast open field. 

“Ah Trey?”

He kisses my lips once and then midway down my neck and mumbles, “It’s the horses, they know it’s feeding time.” He lifts up and simply adds, “They recognize the truck.”

I crane my head around trying to catch the glimpse of the unruly beasts, but Trey pins me with another kiss. My body begs for more attention from him, but my mind stalls. I can’t believe I’m lying in a bed of hay with a band of wild horses surrounding us. It’s a gathering of pure unaltered beauty and I smile.

He abducts another unchaste kiss from my lips and halts. Scrutiny lines his clear-cut features as he questions me, “Sin…have you ever rode a horse?”

I raise up on my elbows and shake my head with a perplexed notion. My head moves like I’m implying
yes
but I reply with a, “
No
.”

My eyes sail across the sea of sundry colors, bays to greys and marble blacks. They’re numerous, far more than the herded group I spotted in New Mexico. Trey flips over onto his own elbows and views the impeccable sight with me, every so often he tosses a grinning glance my way.

“So, you’re telling me you’ve never rode before?” He finally quips breaking through my engrossed fascination.

I meet his stare. “No, I guess I’ve always been too busy with school and other stuff to have any fun.”

“Until now,” he confirms and hops off the truck. He extends an ungloved hand out, waiting for me to grab, and hesitantly, I reach for it and let him sweep me away. His fingers lock through mine and he leads us toward a white speckled Mustang, my heart thumps louder and louder with each step. All the other horses take notice of our movement. Some pin their ears back, others snort and stomp, warning us to keep our distance, but most continue eating without a worry, and maybe in a sense they know we are not here to cause them harm.

Trey’s humble voice drops lower and says, “A decade ago a law was passed that killing a wild Mustang was a strict federal offense, so they became protected, by farmers and ranchers like us.” He offers his other hand out and the white speckled Mustang bobs its massive head, unsure if it should approach us. Or perhaps me.

Its thick chest twitches as its long tail swooshes rhythmically back and forth. Finally as if giving in, it huffs and sputters its way closer to us.

Trey eases my hand along with his, upward, stretching, offering our fingertips to be sniffed and approved by this big majestic creature. My nervousness spreads through me, this is the closest I’ve ever been to something so heart-stopping, but never in a million years would I want to change this moment.

“Are you afraid?” he asks watching me carefully as I suck in a breath.

“Ah…slightly,” I retort keeping my eyes locked on our outstretched fingers.

“Riding is kinda like life, if you hold on to the fear then you become its prisoner.”

“So, does this mean you’re going to strap a saddle to this one and ride the fear out of me?”

He laughs and startles a horse, it scats off into a spooked gallop, but slows a few feet away. Trey’s eyes the wild thing and bit by bit curls his strong fingers back around mine. Securing and safeguarding my hand in his, he motions his head toward the flatbed and says, “I’ll ride the fear out of you, but not today. Sadly…” he bravely states aiming a finger at the truck in front of us. “There’s no saddle and there’s no way we could ride one of these.”

He pops open the passenger’s door for me and I hustle inside. His words ‘
I’ll ride the fear out of you’
replays over and over. His tone wasn’t testing me, he knew how it sounded and from the dark hooded look in his eyes he meant it. I redirect my smutty thoughts and focus out on the huddle of horses. Most of them content, lazily grazing like they’re at a backyard feast. And for the spunky ones they mostly usher and roughly shove the others to the side and out of their way as we drive past them.

He grips his hat at the crown and adjusts it on his head so it conceals his eyes. He must’ve shaken the hay from it because there’s no trace of hay anywhere on it. My hair, an entirely different story. I start to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and feel the bombardment lodged in practically every tress. Now, I am afraid, I probably look like I have scarecrow hair. It’s taking me months and months to get it just past my shoulders, thinking how I would never want to curse it like I am now. I comb my fingers through and grumble, “I think you used a word I had removed from the English language. How is that possible?”

Trey shifts gears, he peeks up at the rearview mirror attentively and then drops his eyes on me. “It doesn’t have anything to do with a petition does it, you had one signature, right?”

A slow brewing smile enhances his face and I raise two fingers up. His expression changes like he’s doubtful.

“So did you get someone else to sign it, your petition?”

“Sadly…not,” I confess still combing and plucking the hay from my hair. My resurrected butterflies flutter inside fanning my swelling heart. He remembers the one word I think is rooted to all evil—
but
is a horrible coordinating conjunction. Trey circles us around a wide, surveying loop, sizing up a massively wheeled tractor and some farming equipment hooked up to it. Once he’s circled it, he drives on over to the barn and parks.

“C’mon, let’s go inside and we’ll address this signature issue.”

-

We enter through the kitchen, Trey clarifies that we’re entering through the backway and no one really uses the front door. He maintains a steady gaze on me as we tread from the open spaced kitchen and down the hall. I peek at the framed wooden pictures as he leads me. They’re all scenic. One’s of a church doused in oil pastel and snuffed out whites, the rest are rivers, streams, and beautiful horse silhouettes. Secretly I’m hoping for a picture of his mother. Is she just as stunning as his sister? And then I wonder what he looked like at Garrett’s age, was he just as rambunctious too?

The house is as hushed as we are, and I take it Melanie hasn’t arrived home yet. We slip by a vacant bedroom, a few potted plastic plants, and then he swings open a pine-stained door.

“I figured you might want to finish removing the straw from your hair,” he says lightly and tenderly he brushes my hair back. His touch sends a fierce need in me, and I don’t care what they say, my blood may contain ninety-four percent water, but right now it’s fully concentrated with lust.

My clever words falter and trip over themselves while I hang my mouth awkwardly open. Nothing comes out. So I throw a finger toward the bathroom and elegantly answer, “I’ll be in there.”

I narrow my eyes at myself the second he closes the door, my fingers latch onto the white under-mounted sink and I swear under my breath. If he kisses me one more time I’ll come undone. Plain and simple.
Where did he learn how to kiss like that?
Jake never handled the kissing technique very well, but then again, he didn’t handle anything very well. Chelsea’s voice lectures me from the far dark corners of my mind—
Don’t compare the men, just live in the moment.

I rush trying to extract the tiny leftover pieces of hay that remained and pray like hell my hair looks somewhat natural and decent. And not some convoluted mess. I lick my lips and straighten my back and march out of the bathroom.

Trey cuts me off halfway down the hall, his hat is gone and he’s holding up a black Sharpie. He has something permanent to scribble with, and again, he’s definitely supporting his promises. But the second I snap my eyes up to him, he shows off his perfect domineering smile.

I prop myself against the wall and gesture toward him. “Are you sure you’re not married, hiding her somewhere in Barbados or Bora Bora?”

He stands facing me and replies, “I’m sure.”

I quirk a hard stern brow at him and plant my hands behind me. I don’t trust myself, not when he looks so irresistible.

“So is this your tactic,” he says twirling the marker at me. “How you lure your victims in?”

“Oh, they’re not victims,” I remark eyeing how his agile fingers roll the Sharpie easily between his fingertips.

He single-handedly takes the cap off as if he just unbuttoned his grey shirt, a simple act, yet the rising anticipation clings in the air and hangs dangerously.

“They’re just candidates, you know, write-ins for my petition,” I tease, forcing my voice to sound unnervous and collected. 

The toe of his boots hit the toe of mine and he releases the first button on my red flannel top. And then another until he reaches the point he can see the subtle deep crease between my aching heavy breasts. The moment I feel the cool tip hit my skin I want to explode, my heart rocks in time with the desperate air infiltrating my lungs. He takes extremely deliberate and precise slow motions as he carefully writes his name on me.

His name marked in the darkest of colors, making it stand out against my skin. He lingers over the last letter, hovering on the curvature of the y and says, “Anything else you need signed?”

“No… no—I think you pretty much covered it,”
I whisper faintly out. If there wasn’t a wall behind me keeping me upright, I would be oddly familiar with the rosewood flooring. Our eyes meet and everything abandons us. The uncertainty, the fear, and the playfulness all sink just like a shipwreck plunging into an abyss.

As swift as lightning he drops the pen and slams our bodies up against the wall. His strong hands cradle either side of my face as his mouth claims the threads of my beating heart. Diving deeper, hungrier, I feel his lips, his breath untangling the storm inside me and rules it as if it were his own. Immediately my fingers rush through his hair, holding on in pure savageness. Trying to find some anchor, some purchase because I feel myself dying to be beneath him. Feel him devour me, taunt me with more than just his lips.

My hands fall and untuck his shirt, jerking, tugging like I can’t do it fast enough. His mouth presses harder, teasing our tongues in a duel, pacing and thirsty for more. My body trembles when his fingers glide smoothly beneath my blouse. I close my eyes even tighter and tip my head back and drink in his enslaving scent. I listen to his kisses as he lowers his mouth, breaking our inebriating kiss, and skims his mouth down my jaw, my neck, and to
my—

A door slams closed and a shrill voice beckons out, “Trey?”

My heart crashes and hinders a beat inside my chest and I can’t find my breath, leaving me to mouth breathlessly, “
Melanie?
”

Trey drags his hands through his tousled hair and grins wolfishly. “Ready to meet my sister?” He helps me button up my shirt and drops me a wink. I’m not sure if he’s trying to make me feel at ease or taunt me more. But, I quiet my unsteady crazy heart and take his warm consoling hand.

“I’m ready,” I lie and paste a confident smile on. Ready my ass, how in the world am I supposed to walk normally? He has me so on fire I’m surprised my panties aren’t reduced to ashes.

Melanie’s one of those women who could wear a burlap sack and still look good. She stands after she sits her little girl on the couch. Her face falls the moment she sees Trey leading me into the living room. I thought she was older than me, but in reality she’s only beating me by one year. As the pieces come together for me, and I’m guessing here, a single mom running this ranch with one of their closest relatives, their mother living so far away in Texas. I can understand how she pulls off her no-nonsense demeanor.

“Sinead, this is Melanie,” Trey introduces us and strides on over to the little girl. He brushes her thick brown bangs from her tiny forehead and kisses it. “And this, is Faith.”

Melanie sends me a cordial nod and watches Trey, after a beat she asks, “Trey can you help me bring in the groceries?”

I barely have enough time to say, “
Hi, nice to meet you too.”
before she’s stomping away.

Trey pauses as he strides by me and asks, “Are you going to be okay here for a minute?”

I slip my hands inside my pockets and smile. “Yeah, sure.” He gently touches me under my chin and raises it an inch. Positioned just right he presses his sinful mouth over mine and I feel the tenderness he possess. The moment lasts only briefly and then I’m ultimately left with ebbing, longing memories of him and his incredible lips.