Ride a cowboy, p.1
Ride a Cowboy, page 1
An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Ride a Cowboy
ISBN # 1-4199-0512-0
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Ride a Cowboy Copyright© 2006 Delilah Devlin
Edited by Briana St James.
Cover art by Syneca.
Electronic book Publication: February 2006
This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
Ride a Cowboy
Delilah Devlin
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
U-Haul: U-Haul International, Inc.
Popsicle: Unilever Supply Chain, Inc.
Kevlar: E. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company
Chapter One
The house Katelyn Carter had bought sight unseen was kind of like her—weathered by storms and in need of a lot of TLC.
After a quick glance around the empty road, she set her truck into park and stared. She let her eyes blur and tried to imagine how the old house must have looked once upon a time before the harsh South Texas sun baked its exterior. She wasn’t encouraged. Even seen from behind her dirty windshield, she could tell the one-story ranch needed a lot of work, and at the very least, a fresh coat of paint.
A lone tear streaked down her face, surprising her, and she sniffed. One last cry—she deserved that much. Then no more feeling sorry for herself. She had too much to do and a whole new life stretching in front of her.
A loud honk sounded and Katelyn swung her gaze to her rearview mirror to find that a dusty, older model pickup truck had pulled up behind her. She swiped away the tears with the back of her hand, and then stuck her arm out the window to wave the driver past.
Instead, the driver-side door opened and a tall Texan in faded jeans and a cream-colored cowboy hat stepped onto the pavement.
Katelyn cursed under her breath and quickly tilted down the mirror to see whether her mascara had smeared. She didn’t really care what a stranger thought—that was the old Katelyn. Still, some habits died hard.
When boot steps stopped beside her, she glanced up…and found herself trapped within a moss green gaze that raised the temperature within her cab a notch. The rest of him was just as captivating. Dark brown hair peeked from beneath his hat. His jaw was angular, his chin chiseled. Shallow crow’s feet surrounded those amazing eyes and crinkled when he frowned—as he was doing now. But they were wrinkles cause by the sun, not the weathering of a few years, like hers.
Damn! Here stood the first man she’d met since her separation who made her think of all the steamy possibilities, and he was too young.
She didn’t realize she’d cursed out loud until his soft chuckle washed over her like a silky caress. Her cheeks flamed instantly.
“Women don’t generally cuss me ‘til after they know me better,” he said, his baritone voice thick as molasses.
The timbre and tone of his voice appealed too much. She lifted a single brow, trying for off-putting and hoping he didn’t notice her lashes were still wet from tears. “Obviously, they’re not too discerning.”
His smile dimmed and his eyes narrowed, sweeping over her face and body hunched behind the steering wheel. “Not from around here, are you?” he asked, leaning closer.
She reminded herself she was alone, in the middle of a country road, with a large, predatory-looking man looming over her—and she’d just insulted him. She hit her automatic lock button.
“Whoa,” he said, lifting his hands. “I didn’t mean to scare you, ma’am.”
Ma’am! Now she really did feel like the spinster librarian she was.
“Look…” He straightened away. “I just stopped to see if you were having car trouble.”
“Funny, but I wasn’t having any trouble at all ‘til you stopped,” she said, making sure he understood her unsubtle dig, and hoping he’d take the hint and leave.
The cowboy looked around and then down the gravel road toward her home, before returning to give her a questioning glance. “You lost then? The main highway’s about three miles behind you.”
“Nope, I know exactly where I am.” She kept her response terse and lifted her chin. No way was she going to encourage the conversation to continue—no matter how handsome the man was—or more to the point, because he was so attractive. “Not that it’s any of your business. I was just double-checking the address.”
He pushed back his cowboy hat and leaned down again. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to waste any more of your valuable time,” he said, his gaze raking her face, “but you’re at 118 Amman Road. The letters are worn off the mailbox.”
The longer he stood there, the more certain she became she needed him gone. Something about him, his steady gaze and his large sturdy frame, made her…want…something more, something she was better off not having right now. “Then I’m in the right place,” she said, keeping her expression challenging.
His hand rubbed the back of his neck and he shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly. When his green gaze returned, his expression was hard to read, but intense, almost searching.
Katelyn shivered. All that attention from a handsome man unnerved her. She needed time alone to dam up her defenses against her unwanted reactions. Handsome she’d had and wasn’t what she needed now.
“Seein’ as how you don’t need any help,” he said, “I’ll be on my way.” One last glance with a naked promise she couldn’t misinterpret, and he left…taking Katelyn’s breath right along with him.
In the mirror, her gaze clung to his broad back and nicely rounded backside until he reached the door of his cab and glanced back. She whipped away her gaze and hoped like hell he hadn’t caught her looking at his ass. Sinking in her seat, she burned with embarrassment while he passed by, giving her one last smoldering glance.
Katelyn’s heart slowed and her hands released their tight grip on the steering wheel.
He was just a man—he had nothing she needed or wanted—ever again. Except maybe sex. She did miss that. But she’d never have sex with entanglement again. Complicating that fact, she’d come to a small town to start her life anew and couldn’t afford the kind of scandal a fling with a younger man would cause.
Pushing thoughts of the tall cowboy aside, she pulled onto the long gravel drive and forced her mind back to what needed doing before she could rest that night. Hard work was what she needed—not anything the young cowboy had to offer.
And looking at her new home, she guessed she’d get plenty of cowboy antidote. A long day’s work lay ahead of her—and that was before she could unpack the U-Haul trailer laden with all her worldly belongings. She squared her shoulders. She’d make it through the next couple of days like she had the last few years—one step at a time.
Her gaze lifted beyond the house to the field of ripening buffalo grass and broken rock behind the chain-link fence surrounding the two-acre property. The landscape was so different here.
Atlanta had just revealed the first hints of spring. Crocuses had pushed up through the lawn. Daffodils bloomed beside the porch where she’d planted them during the first year of her marriage to Chris, when she’d still had so much hope for their future together.
Here, the few live oaks that dotted the landscape looked like bushes in comparison to the tall pines of her former home.
And good Lord—the heat! Only April and already eighty degrees and climbing fast.
Katelyn opened her door, grateful for the stirring breeze. It was Monday; Thursday she started her new job and she wanted all her things in their proper place before she began her new life. She’d begin as she meant to continue—building order out of the chaos her world had been.
Besides its less than pristine appearance, she quickly discovered another problem with her new home—the ancient air-conditioner didn’t work. She raised every window she could and propped open the back door to let a breeze waft through the house. Warm though it was, the temperature outside was still better than the stale heat inside.
After wrestling with her bed frame, mattress, and small nightstand, she decided to get a good night’s sleep and start again early the next morning. She lay down on top of cool crisp sheets and sighed her relief. But despite her fatigue, she tossed on her mattress, unable to fall asleep.
She would have liked to blame her restlessness on the warm weather. But the temperature of the room had little to do with the heat pooling between her legs and everything to do with the cowboy in the faded jeans.
After pounding her pillow for the second time, she surrendered to her body’s demands and did something she’d only recently developed the skill to accomplish, masturbating to orgasm being something her husband had considered a theft of his own pleasure.
Moonlight glared through the top of the window and obscured her view of the front yard, but she relaxed, knowing darkness, a good hundred yards distance from the road and the spindly oaks in her front yard obscured the view inside her bedroom. She didn’t live in the city anymore.
With one last guilty glance out the bare window, she slid her fingers beneath the edge of her pantie s. And if her mind drifted to the tall Texan in the cream-colored cowboy hat, well, she’d just put it down to a momentary weakness. He’d never know.
Feeling as low as a snake, the cowboy hid in the shadows just outside the woman’s window and watched while her fingers disappeared beneath the edge of her pale panties.
Such a private thing to witness. A weakness betrayed. A deep passion exposed.
He’d walked the quarter mile from his house to hers, following an urge so strong he hadn’t questioned it. While she’d worked steadily, well into the evening, brushing away a year’s worth of dust from her wooden floors and wrestling with furniture, his gaze had followed her efficient movements, roaming the curves of her firm breasts and ass and the tempting length of her legs beneath the frayed edges of her cutoff jeans.
When at last she’d turned off the light, he’d been rewarded for his patient vigil as she’d drawn off her T-shirt and bra and slipped the shorts down her thighs. Although too dark to see the color of her nipples, he’d discerned their size and witnessed them drawing into beaded points when she’d rubbed them as though easing an ache. He’d licked his lips, anticipating their velvet texture on his tongue. Then she’d drawn a small top over her head that hugged her breasts like a second skin and did little to cool his ardor.
He’d grown hungrier by the moment, coveting each sweet curve of her body, determined to stake a claim and soon. She might be a little older than he’d have liked, but the difference in their ages didn’t mean a thing to his cock. The large, hard knot of his erection pressed uncomfortably against the front of his jeans.
But the physical attraction was only part of what drew him, what kept him skulking in the darkness outside her bedroom. The hint of sadness glinting wetly on her dark eyelashes when they’d met earlier on the road had done crazy things to the inside of his chest. The pain-filled defiance in her gaze hadn’t deterred him one bit. If any man was going to chase the shadows from her past, it’d be him. The loneliness he’d sensed in her was echoed tenfold in his own heart.
Her low whimpered moan carried on the air between them, tightening his thighs and balls, building a painful urgency he had to relieve. He flicked open the button at the top of his jeans and eased out his rigid cock. He’d share this private act with her, giving the ache a face—hers. Blue eyes the color of a clear Texas sky. Hair as pale and soft as corn silk. Her face was etched on his mind, and now on his body.
With his hand closing around his shaft, he joined her, imagining sinking into the moisture her fingers drew from her pussy.
Her thighs parted, her knees rising high and splaying wide as her hips undulated on the mattress.
His hand glided up the rigid shaft, squeezing when he reached the end, then glided back down. His hips pulsed in time with hers, driving his cock within his circled fingers until the friction became nearly unbearable. He dropped spit onto his palm and resumed the rhythm, the moisture easing the movements. He imagined sinking to his knees between her thighs and pressing into her. How hot and tight she’d be, clenching around his cock like a wet fist, like his was doing now.
Her fingers pulled out partway and swirled faster. She must be getting close. Her little clit ached for direct stimulation. Someday soon, he’d purse his lips around it, flutter his tongue on the hard little knot, then suck on it until she came, screaming his name.
Her cry was wispy, restrained, but was enough to push him over the edge, and he spilled cum into the dirt at his feet, jerking his cock those last, desperate strokes.
Tomorrow, he’d give her a proper introduction. And learn the name of the woman he planned to make his own.
* * * * *
The next morning sunlight streamed into her bedroom through the bare window. The air was stifling hot, and she lay drenched in sweat, her hair clinging to her face in sticky clumps. She flipped back the covers.
An ominous rattle sounded from the floor, and she froze.
She didn’t need to be a native Texan to recognize that raspy rattle. Easing up to stand in the middle of her mattress, she peered cautiously over the edge. A rattlesnake lay on the floor next to her bed in a fat coil, its tail erect and quivering. Even if the snake hadn’t paralyzed her with fear, he lay in a patch of sunlight between her and the bedroom door—she wasn’t getting out of this predicament by herself.
She needed the cavalry, or at least the local sheriff’s department. Moving slowly, she reached for her cell phone on the bedside table. Her heart nearly stopped when the dry rattle grew louder and the snake’s head drew back with its mouth open and fangs exposed.
Her hands shook as she punched 911.
“Wendall County Police, how may I help you?” a female voice chimed.
Relief nearly made her weak. “Um…this is Katelyn Carter,” she said, rushing to get the words out. “I’m at 118 Amman Road. I’m new here and I have a problem.” Her voice trembled with fear as she explained her dilemma to the dispatcher. “Can rattlesnakes climb?”
“We’ll send a unit right over, ma’am. You sit tight, now. I don’t think that snake’s gonna do any climbin’.”
“Wait!” For the first time Katelyn realized she stood in the middle of her bed, wearing only a tiny pair of bikini briefs and a thin white camisole that was transparent due to her own perspiration. Embarrassment warred with her fear.
“Yes, ma’am?” The dispatcher interrupted her thoughts.
“Uh…I’m not dressed. Can you send a female officer?”
The woman on the other end of the line chuckled. “Ma’am, we don’t have any female officers, but I’ll make sure only one fella comes in. You just stay right where you are.”
As she powered off her cell phone, Katelyn could already hear sirens in the distance and wondered irritably whether the whole Wendall county police force was responding to the call. It wasn’t long before booted footsteps made their way through her house.
One of the officers called out to her, “Miz Carter, you in there?”
Despite her fear, Katelyn cringed inside. The house was a mess—littered with cleaning supplies, wadded packing paper and half-emptied boxes. Worse, total strangers were about to see a whole lot more of her than anyone but her husband ever had. She inched her hand down to pull up the sheet to cover herself, but halted when the snake grew agitated by her slight movement and began to writhe in a tight circle around itself.
Wilting with embarrassment, she replied, “I’m in here.”
A broad, amused face peered around the corner of her bedroom door. The officer’s gaze widened slightly as it paused on her before seeking out her intruder on the floor. He whistled when he spotted the snake. “It’s a big’un all right. We won’t come in just yet, ma’am. I can tell that rattler’s gettin’ annoyed. We’ve sent for a rattlesnake wrangler to come pick up this bad boy.” He gave her a kind smile. “It’ll only be a few minutes. You just hang tight—and don’t move, ya hear?”
Long moments passed while Katelyn counted the drops of sweat that slid down her face and the brown and black diamonds that crisscrossed the snake’s back. She had just begun to wonder what a “rattlesnake wrangler” was when she heard more voices from the living room and heavy footsteps just outside her bedroom door.
“Ma’am, it’s Daniel Bodine.”
That voice! Warm as whiskey, it poured over her. Katelyn nearly groaned.
“I’m coming in, now. Don’t you move a muscle.”
A moment later, the cowboy who’d figured in her dreams—hot and sexy dreams—filled the doorway of her bedroom.
As nervous as she was, Katelyn couldn’t help but note his broad shoulders nearly spanned the doorframe, and he had to duck to clear his hat beneath it. In one hand he held a long pole with a hook at the end of it, in the other a white sack.
His gaze met hers briefly, and he nodded once in her direction. A flush of red tinted his cheeks as he moved slowly into her bedroom, then all of his concentration focused on the snake.
As he approached it, the whispery rattle grew louder and the snake’s attention moved to him. When its head rose with fangs exposed, the man reacted in a blinding whir of movement, pinning the snake’s head to the floor with the hook. Then the cowboy placed the toe of his boot just below its head and tossed aside the pole.
