Loving A Cowboy (17 page)

“I want to strip you naked.” He aimed his chin at her blouse. “Everything.” He rolled off, and she gulped in a breath as she sat up.

Everything was moving wonderfully fast.

“You first.”

He smirked as he rose off the bed and planted his feet on the floor. “Gladly.” His fingers tugged at his buckle.

“Let me,” she said, leaning forward to reach for him. Her fingers grazed against the callused palms of his large hands. Hands that could be as tender or rough as the work demanded.

How many times had she done this for him? Many. Very many. But not enough. And for five long years—never. She felt nervous and giddy, like the schoolgirl she had been when they’d first made love.

She pulled against the large silver rodeo buckle, inscribed with a testament to his prowess with a horse. But she knew eight seconds would be nothing compared to the bucking they would be doing.

The buckle opened and the belt ends flapped against his hips. She undid the button and slid the bulging zipper down. Then she reached her hand into the dark opening. He’d gone commando, like he’d often done before when he knew they’d be making love. Like he’d chided her to do, but she never could. Her fingers slid under the denim fabric.

She felt for the soft-skinned hard rod that leaned left on a bed of coarse hair. His chest rose in a sharp inhale as she wrapped her fingers around the hot, steely pole. It twitched with life and vigor.

He pushed down his jeans, pushing her hand away as well, as he kicked his feet free of the pants.

“Your foot? Your ribs?” she asked.

“All the blood’s rushed somewhere else, darlin’,” he growled as climbed on the bed, rising up on his knees.

Freed and springing to life, the long, thick, engorged member begged for attention.

“Now you,” he commanded before she could give into the urge to touch again. She didn’t have time to move. He’d grasped the ends of her ruffled top and tugged it upward. It glided over her head and went flying to the floor. With a snap of her bra clasp, her breasts were free, the bra sailing in the air.

“God, Libby.” Warm palms caressed while a thumb tortured each nipple. He’d always praised her breasts.

She’d often wondered what had been the initial attraction for him. He’d sought her out in the school hallways, dogged her footsteps, appeared at her locker. No one she had associated with had been friendly with him. But something had drawn him to her. And something beyond the handsome face and cocky attitude had drawn her. Something that spoke to her from those guarded eyes. Something vulnerable and hurt and in need.

Something she’d recognized then. Something she searched for now.

But tonight, this moment, the need she saw in his eyes was an elemental one. A need she could identify with. The same force that was spinning her mind and twirling her insides with each circle of his thumb.

“Now for the skirt and those bikini undies,” he reminded. He knelt on the bed totally naked, in all his glorious, sculpted maleness, daring her to touch and be touched.

He pushed down the skirt, carrying the panties with it and tugging them off her legs. They joined the pile of clothes on the floor. Then she felt his rough hands brushing up her legs, up her hips to her cradle her breasts.

Chance held his breath as he surveyed her. He was naked, in bed, with Libby. Her smile was shy, but her look was eager. She swung her hair back behind her ear and for a moment, he was back in high school, looking at her beautiful body for the first time.

She leaned in, the tips of her breasts grazing the bare flesh of his chest.

He dipped his head. “Now for some real pleasure, honey.”

He kissed, touched, felt everywhere. Her nipples brushed against his skin, her fingers swept through his hair, then down his neck until her nails dug into his shoulders, causing hot molten desire to course through him.

He latched on to her nipple and nipped, suckled, pulled, laved. She moaned so deep and so low, he could feel it in his groin.

“More of that,” she groaned.

He complied while she squirmed and wiggled, one knee coming up, the other leg folding until her hips arched toward him.

He held her waist, keeping her in place as he suckled at first one, then the other breast.

“Please,” she whispered.

“Soon. But not too soon,” he promised. “I’m just getting started.”

His body rubbed against her legs as he inched down to lick and lave along her stomach. Her back arched, her hips begged with impatience. He knew what she wanted, what she needed, what she liked.

Nearing his destination, he licked. She was wet and salty and sweet.

“Please. Come in me.”

“God, how I’ve missed you. Missed this. Missed the taste of you,” he ground out as his heart pumped hard in his chest and his balls tightened with need.

He wanted her to remember what it was like, how good it had been. How it could be. He’d been nothing but a frisky colt back then. Now he was a more experienced stallion.

He licked the nub and then circled his tongue over that sensitive spot. Once, twice, again.

Her breathing became ragged. A moan rumbled through the air.

“Don’t come yet, honey.”

“Hurry.”

He continued, sparing her no quarter as he flicked and teased. He sensed the heat tightening her insides.

“
Almost there,” she breathed.

“Not yet.”

Chase stopped. He knew she was close, but he wanted to prolong her pleasure, increase it. Instead, he inserted fingers into her and began the rhythmic drilling while his thumb stroked that most sensitive spot.

Another moan, this time more animalistic, emanated from her throat.

“That’s it, darlin’.” He wanted to give her pleasure, intense, mind-blowing pleasure.

“Come inside me. Now.” She practically yelled it.

“First things first, honey,” he said as he reached for the condom package on the table. Within a heartbeat, he gave her what she wanted, long, hard, hot thrusts into her slick essence.

He brushed the silky hair from her neck and whispered in her ear. “Is this what you wanted?”

“God, yes.”

His pulse hammered in his temple while his heart pounded against his ribs as he thrust again and again. His balls tightened and he tried to hold back. But the need was strong and he kept driving into her.

Her breathing ragged, she hung on to his shoulders as if she was afraid some tide would carry her away.

“Let it go, honey,” he growled, hoping she would come before he did.

He reached down between them, found the spot, and rubbed. Her moans sent shots of testosterone right to his balls. He pumped harder and harder, faster and faster.

She let out a deep, guttural groan. The first contraction of her orgasm squeezed him, and he succumbed with a roar, feeling the ferocious pleasure of release that gripped him, flaming his skin, burning his insides as the pulses of her body milked him dry.

He leaned his forehead against her and braced his weight on his elbows. He needed time to recover, time to gather himself together. By the wide eyes that were looking back at him, she did too.

“Like old times,” he said when he could breathe again.

“Better.”

He smiled. “I always thought we did pretty good back then.”

“We did. But this…” She shook her head, her beautiful face flush with afterglow. “This was spectacular.”

* * *

Chance slid the pizza into the hot oven, then closed the door and sat down at the wood table to wait. He’d left Libby curled up asleep, like a contented cat. Like Cowboy after you stroked him a bit. Chance had been too charged up to sleep. And too hungry.

He rubbed his face with his hands and wondered what he was going to do. How could he still feel so much for Libby? A woman who had once betrayed him and was capable of doing it again, if the situation with Ben was any indication.

Clasping his hands in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees, he tried to reason through something that wasn’t forming into a logical pattern. What was it about Libby that kept him coming back?

Sex? It was good, great actually, but for five years he’d managed without her.

Love? Maybe.

But did he love her, or was it her love he wanted?

He loved her, God help him, but it was her love he wanted. More than anything.

He glanced at the timer. A few more minutes for the pizza to heat. A few more minutes to wait.

Because if Libby loved him, knowing what she knew about him, knowing the good, the bad, and the ugly of where he’d come from, what he was, then the bad and the ugly must not be so bad or so ugly. Maybe if she could love him, he wasn’t unlovable. Maybe he could be that good person he tried so hard to be. And sometimes failed. Maybe he could be someone’s husband. Someone’s father, despite the fact that he hadn’t come from good people. Hadn’t known a good home.

His father certainly hadn’t been a good father or a good husband. There were beatings, of course. Those scars had healed on the outside, but they’d never go away on the inside. And memories of nights when Chance would listen in bed to his parents’ drunken brawls. His earliest memories were of hiding under the kitchen table while they fought. He could still hear the screaming and shouting, wailing and whipping sounds in his mind. He’d been too young and too afraid to do anything. And by the time he turned ten and felt ready to stand up to his father, his mother left.

One day, when he was at school, she just packed up her things and walked out, closing the door behind her. She’d left him to face his father’s rage when he’d returned home from one of the odd jobs the man picked up when he was sober, which hadn’t been all that often.

There had been rage. And Chance had paid the price. So bad that finally one of the neighbors, he never learned who, called the police, and after a trip to the hospital, he’d been placed with a foster family. It wasn’t until a few years ago when he learned his father had died in some back alley in Texas that the nightmares had stopped.

The Larsons, his foster family, weren’t bad people in the sense that they didn’t beat him, which at the time was all he asked. But they took him in because they needed the money, and they used very little of the state’s check for his care. He learned the lessons of hard work for little pay early.

And then he’d met Libby. A girl whose experience had been so different from his it was as if they lived in different countries and spoke different languages. She had been raised in a loving home, and as domineering as Sam Brennan could be, Chance never disputed the fact Sam cared about his kids—maybe too much. But Chance had one thing in common with Libby—they’d both been abandoned by their mothers. Libby through her mother’s death, Chance when his mother left.

Circumstances had made him stronger, if cynical. Libby, on the other hand, seemed more vulnerable and yet hopeful. It was that hope that someday things would be better that had pulled Chance. He thought when he married Libby and she’d pledged to love him no matter what, his someday had come. He’d been wrong.

The timer was buzzing. Pizza was ready. But was he.

Chapter 14

“I’m famished,” Libby said as she took another bite of the thin-crusted, cheesy pizza. It wasn’t surprising that their bedroom activities had escalated her appetite, and for more than food. But given the emotional turmoil that had preceded it, it was a wonder her stomach wasn’t still in knots.

The summer sun was setting in the sky, casting a purple glow on the fields and mountains outside the kitchen windows as they sat across from one another at the table.

Chance’s ranch was set in a beautiful space—serene, majestic, God’s country. And yet, she felt anything but peaceful. Every time she looked at Chance, sitting across from her, a rare smile gracing his face as he watched her eat, her heart raced. As if it was trying to get to some finish line to celebrate.

Only there really wasn’t anything beyond the moment to celebrate. No strings, remember, she chided herself. But her feelings for Chance weren’t strings—they were ropes. And after making love, those ropes had become thicker. What had she been thinking? Clearly, “thought” hadn’t entered into it.

“Pretty out there, isn’t it?” he asked, gesturing toward the view. He’d donned a pair of jeans, but his chest was bare. There was something about his naked, muscled chest that created pressure inside her. The pressure of need.

“It’s a wonderful spot, Chance. Just like we used to imagine.”

They’d talked about having a ranch, raising some horses. At the time it had seemed such an unrealistic dream. But Chance had made his dreams come true. Libby hadn’t.

“Are you planning on raising horses?”

“I’ve got one brood mare I’m hoping to breed. She’s got good quarter horse bloodlines. I’m lucky to have neighbors who are willing to board my horses. I don’t get to ride much when I’m out on the road, but as soon as I get home, I’m usually on one of my horses.”

“It sounds promising.” And safer than rodeo.

“I don’t have time to devote to breeding right now. But I’m thinking ahead to when I can’t rodeo anymore.”

“Can’t?” She tried to keep the concern out of her voice. Was he waiting for some calamity to befall him before he stopped?

“I’m guessing that someday the choice to stay and work the ranch will be made for me. Like most sports, bronc riding is a young guy’s game—at least for making big money. I doubt I’ll ever give it up completely, but competing at the circuit level isn’t the same. At least I’m planning ahead. What about you, Libby? What are you planning for?”

Home. Family. You.

“Right now, finding a job.”

Chance winced. “Hell, I never even asked you. How did the interviews go?”

The interviews. It seemed like they’d taken place in another time, given how much things had changed in just a few hours.

“Good. At least I think they did. I’ve been asked back for a final round.” She forced a smile. Not that she wasn’t happy about it. She most definitely was. But her world had gotten way more complicated.