Texas Kissing (4 page)

He looked up, saw me and grinned as if he was genuinely pleased to see me. And my idiot body reacted. My lungs point-blank refused to move any air and, as his eyes flicked down over my breasts and thighs, a wave of heat rolled down in their wake like thunder following lightning.

“Lily,” he said in that slow Texas drawl. He tipped his hat back just a little. “Come sit down.”

And he glanced down at the one remaining space—his groin.

Ego.
That’s what I’d been about to think. He had an enormous ego.

“Careful,” one girl muttered. “You might crush him.”

I hadn’t had any intention of sitting in his goddamn lap anyway, but that did it. I turned and pushed my way back through the crowd, head down. I’d done my part. I’d showed up. Fuck him and the horse-sized ego he rode in on, if he thought I was going to join his fan group and—

A hand grabbed my arm just as I reached the door. A
big
hand. The heat of it soaked through my thin blouse and throbbed into my skin.

Bull hauled me around to face him. I didn’t resist. “Now, that ain’t very sporting,” he told me. “You just got here.”

I glanced towards the crowd, confused. Why had he come after me? “Seems like you’ve got all the attention you need.”

He glanced over at the girls who were now staring at us, frowning. “I don’t care about them,” he said with an easy shrug. He squeezed my arm and I went squidgy inside. It was something to do with the strength of those fingers and the heat of his hand, soaking right into me.

I took another look at the girls. They were frowning and pouting, now. At
me
.

“I didn’t come here to get between you and your groupies,” I said.

He laughed—a big bass laugh that made heads turn. The sort of laugh you can only do when you’re completely unconcerned what anyone thinks—the sort it’d be impossible for me to do. He glanced over at the girls again and gave them a wave. They started to glare at him, too. I think I actually saw one stamp her foot.

He really didn’t give a shit what they thought, I realized. What
anyone
thought. He’d had fun with them and then—for some reason—he’d wanted to toy with me and so he’d dumped the whole lot of them.

And then, no doubt, the next girl would come along and he’d walk off with
her.

“I’m outta here,” I told him, and turned to go.

He still had his hand on my arm. He didn’t grip me tight and pull me back, he just used his hand to guide me in an arc back towards him. “Hey, hey,
hey,”
he said, his tone changing. When I reluctantly looked him in the eye, he was frowning. “What’s the matter?”

The funny thing was, if I hadn’t already pegged him as a cocky, womanizing bastard, I would have believed he actually cared.

“Nothing,” I said. “This was a bad idea.” And I took a step back.

And he took a step forward.

I looked up into those big blue eyes again. They really were like the Texas sky—when I looked into them, there was this impression of
size,
like I was in the middle of a desert, turning slowly to see the blueness that was all around me. It felt as if he was seeing me from every angle, even the bits of me I tried to hide.

It didn’t
feel
like he saw me as just another girl, when he did that.

“Stop it,” I muttered. I only realized afterwards that I’d said it out loud.

He let go of my arm, but didn’t move away. “Stop what?” he asked. He wasn’t smiling anymore but he didn’t look angry, either. He looked almost concerned. “Why are you so damn keen on running out on me?”

I swallowed and forced myself to lift my chin. I wasn’t going to look like I was scared of this. I mean, I
wasn’t
scared of this.
Goddamnit!

I grabbed the back of a chair, pulled it out from under the table and sat down.

Immediately, he relaxed. That lazy smile came back. He dropped into the chair opposite me, leaning back with his arm resting on the back. For just a second there he’d seemed really worried that I’d leave.
Why does he care?
It wasn’t like he was short of women.

I glanced over again at the crowd of girls. Most of them were standing with their arms crossed, stares of pure death aimed right at me. If I ventured over there again, I was pretty sure I was going to get bludgeoned to death by ten pairs of heels.
That’s ridiculous. They think
I’ve
stolen their man? Me?!

Bull grinned at me across the table—laidback and easy, not a care in the world. The polar opposite of myself. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to make conversation. He was happy to just look at me and, the more he looked at me, the more antsy I got. I could feel his eyes sliding over every part of me: my cheeks, my neck, down my collarbone to my breasts. Down over my stomach to the little bit of leg he could see around the table. I could understand him drooling over one of those girls in the crowd, but a big girl like me?

He was looking at me as if I was something special, which made no sense at all.

And
God
he was hot. The hard line of his jaw. Those full lips that suggested rough, powerful kisses. The sheer size of him—he looked as if he could carry a horse across those shoulders, and the way his pecs pushed out the front of his shirt…

You know it’s impossible. Just have a drink with him and go.

“Why do they call you ‘Bull,’ anyway?” I blurted, just to break the silence.

His grin got even wider. He leaned back further in his chair, almost lying on it, and humped his hips skyward. “I’d be happy to show you.”

Before I could stop myself, I was looking at the thick bulge in the denim, a bulge that extended well down his thigh. The more I stared, the more the heat gathered inside me, rolling down through me and turning to sticky wetness as it hit my groin. I tried to tell myself,
that’s ridiculous. It must be padded. No guy is—
 

I’m staring at his groin. How did I fall for that?

I tore my eyes away, face flushed, and heard him laugh. I felt the anger bubble up inside me.
What the hell am I doing here?
Let the local girls fawn over the alpha male. I didn’t need the cocky son of a bitch.

I was just fine on my own. And I didn’t have any choice in the matter, anyway.

What I should have done was to get up and walk out. What I actually did was to clear my throat and say, in a cool, crisp voice, “Aren’t bulls often castrated?”

Bull

Ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha wait WHAT?!

I sat up in my chair and pressed my legs together. No guy wants to hear that word.

“Especially the randy ones,” said Lily.

I just sat there open-mouthed for a few seconds. And a few seconds is a long time for me to be dumbstruck. I
always
have a line.

Except, apparently, with her.

I could feel the eyes of the girls I’d abandoned on me. They were too far away to have heard her put-down, but they’d certainly have seen my reaction. Normally, that would have bothered me. But all I cared about, right at that moment, was looking back into those big, dark brown eyes. All I wanted was more of her, this mystery woman with the curves to die for and her way of pulling the rug right out from under me.

When she’d suddenly walked away from me, I’d jumped up so fast I’d dumped one girl clean off my leg and onto the floor. When she’d nearly walked off the second time, my heart had been in my throat. Now I’d finally gotten her sitting down and got her looking at my cock and, instead of melting like any reasonable girl would, she was knocking my lines back at me.

Why was she not playing the game? Was it possible she didn’t know how it was played?

No. That was stupid.
Just look at her!
A girl as gorgeous as her couldn’t be some innocent.

Then I figured it out:
she must be deliberately teasing me. It must be a city girl thing.

Now it all made sense! I’d figured out she was a New Yorker from her accent. She was an evil genius man-eater from the land of cocktails and designer shoes and she’d traveled to small town Texas to find herself a stud and now she was toying with me. Yeah, that was it. She probably went through a man a week.

Well, fine. I had no problem with a girl with a healthy sexual appetite. But she’d picked the wrong guy to toy with. I was mad at her, but the anger was wrapped around a hot core of lust. I wanted her more than any girl I could remember.

If she’d come here to find a stud, she was going to damn well get one.

You mess with the Bull, you get the...well, the horn.

I leaned forward. “Yeah, people do that,” I said. “If they need a steer, because they can’t handle a bull.”

“Oh, you think I couldn’t handle you?”

“I’m sure you couldn’t handle me.”

“Oh, really?”

“Not all of me?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Not
all
of you?”

The madder I got, the hotter for her I got. And the hotter for her I got, the calmer and cooler she seemed to be.
Oh, goddamnit, I want to teach this girl a lesson.
I imagined her bent over in one of the stables, that full peach of an ass naked and perfect
.

I leaned forward even more and my voice dropped to a low growl. “Why don’t we find out?”

Lily

It was the first real...
flirting,
if that’s even what it was, that I’d done in two years and I’d gotten lost in it. I was angry at him for thinking—
assuming—
I’d want to fuck him.

Even if I did.

Very, very badly.

But that wasn’t the point. I was mad at him and, at the same time...the way those big hands pressed into the tabletop, his forearms like a couple of tree trunks as he leaned forward; the sight of that big, muscled chest peeking out through the collar of his shirt....

It did something to me. Made me go a little weak on the inside and even spikier on the outside. As if I needed to keep knocking him back so that he couldn’t get close enough to see what he was doing to me. Or, maybe, because I wanted him to get mad enough to just damn well muscle through the spikes and get...
inside
me.

Did I really just think that?!

And then he suggested we
find out
and the reality of my situation rushed up to meet me. What the hell was I doing? I’d had less than half a beer, but I was flushed and panting, the blood pounding in my ears. I felt drunk...drunk on him.

Go home.
Go home and get into a hot bath and probably jill off to the thought of him bending me over in some stable somewhere, my ass in the air and—

Stop thinking like that!
I prayed that it wasn’t showing on my face. Hopefully, I looked cool and calm. You develop a pretty good poker face, when you’re dealing with arms dealers and drug cartels.