Tempted by a Cowboy Read online

  “You did incredibly well today,” she managed.

  “Not me, Blanco.”

  “He wouldn’t have known what to do if it hadn’t been for you. Getting him to walk through those streamers, and without any ropes, how did you accomplish that?”

  “Blanco and I understand each other,” he said, glancing at the stallion. Then his attention was back on her and she felt as Blanco must have the day his freedom had ended—trapped.

  Deliciously trapped.

  “The two of you think the same way?” she asked, hoping her attempt at a light tone would get her through the next few seconds. And after that?

  “I let him inside my head.”

  Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Gaining Blanco’s trust and obedience by getting inside the stallion’s primitive mind? But the truth was, she didn’t know enough about what natural horsemanship gentling constituted. If she could get her mind, emotions, and body off the moments they’d spent fucking, she’d ask him to educate her.

  Instead, she stared up at him while her legs trembled and heated. This was why she’d come here, the only reason. She had to see him. Touch him. Have sex again. Maybe even kiss him.

  “Tomorrow’s the riding competition,” she heard him say. “Will you be here?”

  As long as I’m alive. “I’m planning on it.”

  “Good.”

  So far he’d seemed to have no difficulty keeping his end of the conversation going. Now that had changed, making her wonder what was going through him. His thoughts had to be on her, but did he want to go on talking or were there other things he’d rather be doing, another woman—

  A cold river of emotion forced her to widen her stance. What a damnable fool she’d been to think other women didn’t want him. The presence of the attractive young women she’d just seen were proof of that.

  “Ah, I didn’t mean to—you must have plans for tonight.”

  Instead of replying, he stared at her, his gaze so intense it burned her. She was so damn transparent and pitiful! A sex-hungry broad who’d driven hundreds of miles for a second chance at meaningless sex. Ashamed, she wiped her hands on her hips.

  “You, ah, you said you learned your horsemanship from your mother. She must be proud of you.”

  “She was.”

  “Was? Is she—dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.” Did he expect her to say anything else?

  “So am I.”

  “She must have been young.”

  “She was.”

  “What—happened?”

  “She was thrown.”

  “My God.”

  “It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.”

  Was he telling her that working with horses was inherently dangerous or that his mother had made a mistake that had cost her her life? Incapable of forming the words that might lead to an explanation, she stepped toward him. Half believing he’d shake her off, she reached for his hand. He let her take it, and when she lifted his hand and pressed it against her breasts, his darkening gaze sucked her in.

  “Were you there?” she asked, pulling his strength into her.

  “No. But even if I had been, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  As she stood with his still fingers on her breasts and their legs inches apart, he spun a brief tale of a remarkable and wild woman whose life had ended on a trail leading up a ski mountain in the middle of summer. She’d been hired by the ski resort to take a trio of pack horses carrying repair equipment to the top of the mountain. The pack horses had been hers but not the mare supplied for her to ride. The mare had belonged to one of the resort employees who’d assured her that it had been on the trail numerous times and could be trusted to lead the pack animals.

  What the mare turned out to be was terrified of the cougar they’d encountered.

  “No one was with them when it happened so I don’t know all the details,” Miguel quietly said. “When Mom didn’t show up they went looking for her. They found her, dead. Against a boulder.”

  Sensing how hard it was for Miguel to know his mother had died alone, she kissed his knuckles. Heat-energy still hummed over her nerve endings, but the sensation was blunted—for the moment—by her determination to comfort him, if that’s what he wanted from her.

  “How do you know a cougar…”

  “From the scratches on the horse’s flank.”

  “Then it was more than her being thrown,” she said, wondering if that made a difference. “The horse she was riding was being attacked. It panicked.”

  He was still, too still. Although there was a graceful fluidity to the way he moved, it seemed to her that until this moment he’d always been in motion. This contrast was saying something she didn’t understand, or did she?

  “What bothers you is the idea that she was killed doing something you believe she was born to do, isn’t it?” she asked.

  More silence from him kicked up her heart rate. She waited for him to jerk free, to retreat to wherever it was men went when they wanted to protect their emotions. She shouldn’t have intruded on his personal emotional space! Should have kept their relationship physical.

  “I’m sorry,” she started, then shook her head. Yes, their relationship had been purely physical and wanting to recapture that was why she was here. But right now sex wasn’t enough. “No,” she amended. “I’m not. I was going to say I had no business trying to analyze what you’ve been through, but from what I know of you, that’s the only conclusion I can come to.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  Damn him for being such a macho male! For locking up his emotions, or trying to. “No, I don’t. Not all the way. But—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, all right?” he said and pulled free. “My mother died years ago. Let her stay that way.”

  7

  Miguel had stepped back into Blanco’s stall, closing the half door behind him as he did. At first Dawn simply stared at where he’d been while the warmth left from his hand on her seeped out of her and into the early evening air. She felt adrift and lost, rejected. Just the same, she couldn’t let things end like this.

  Pulling courage from deep inside her, she walked over to the stall and pulled on the door. It opened too easily. Studying his back and outstretched hand on Blanco’s neck, she stepped inside. He didn’t acknowledge her, but his awareness of her presence played out in the rigid set of his shoulders.

  “I’ll apologize if that’s what you want,” she said. “But I think we’ll both agree it’s the truth. Your mother should still be alive, not dead at the hands of something she loved so much.”

  “It doesn’t matter, not after all these years.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Miguel, please look at me.” The words said, she wished she could take them back. Even with her eyes still adjusting to the shadows in here, he was the most incredibly put-together man she’d ever seen. A true cowboy, his legs were slightly bowed, his ass and thighs hardened by the lifestyle that had chosen him.

  Wild.

  Then he faced her, Blanco right behind him as if they were one and the same, and she couldn’t think. Yet felt. Everything.

  There it was, raw sex slamming into every particle of her being and her longing to stretch out her arms in welcome.

  He felt the same thing. He had to! Otherwise, why was he closing the distance between them and taking hold of both of her wrists? Placing one over the other, he secured them in a single paw. The rough calluses at the base of his fingers took her thoughts back to the only other time they’d been on her body and how much she’d loved the sensations.

  “You came alone?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  In the silence that followed, she weighed the emotion behind the single word. She’d been hoping to have time alone with him and for no one from work to know what she was doing. Did he understand how vulnerable she felt?

  On the brink of asking the same of him, she reconsidered. If he was
here with another, like a woman, he’d let her know. Otherwise, she’d take whatever he gave her.

  On the tail of a low snort from Blanco, Miguel brought her hands down by his right side. The move pulled her off balance, compelling her to shuffle closer to him to keep from falling. Her thighs kissed his.

  Electrified by the contact, she sucked in a breath in an attempt to put distance between them. Then, giving into the insanity that had brought her first to Sacramento and tonight to his turf, she eased against him. His free arm went around her shoulders.

  “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” he said.

  “You could have called, said something.”

  “So could you.”

  True but what would she have said after “hello.” Could you please come fuck me? Meet me in a motel room? Tell me how to stop obsessing about you?

  “I thought about it,” he was saying.

  “So did I.” Endlessly.

  She was trying to think what to say next when he released her hands and spread his fingers over her throat. With his arm still around her, she felt caught, not trapped but closed in on. Surrounded by him.

  The stall was too small. Blanco took up too much room and might demand even more. They couldn’t possibly have sex in here. Could they?

  A mix of nearby male and female voices supplied the answer. Whatever groping might take place in here wouldn’t go beyond that. There’d be no undressing, no end to the ache that was everywhere and everything.

  “I’m not used to thinking so much about a woman,” he said, still holding her in his strange embrace. “I didn’t like feeling like that. That’s why I didn’t call or come see you.”

  “The solitary cowboy then? Free to ride the range unencumbered?”

  “Maybe.”

  As when they’d been talking about his mother, she’d gotten too close. Even with his hands on her, she felt him drawing away. Damn him, if this was how he reacted every time a woman breached his personal space—

  Confused, she pulled his hand off her throat. He could have resisted of course, but he’d let her have her way. In this.

  “Where are you staying?” she asked. “On the grounds?”

  He nodded. “There’s a camper on my pickup.”

  Large enough to accommodate two people? “Oh.”

  After a moment, he placed both hands on her shoulders and held her at arms’ length. She felt small again, and alive. Terribly alive. Horny and vulnerable. About to combust.

  “What are you looking at?” she demanded, unable to take any more of the stare she couldn’t fathom.

  “You. Trying to figure things out.”

  “What things?”

  By way of an answer, if that’s what it was, he marched her backward until her spine pressed against the wall across from where Blanco continued to observe the two humans in his space. Miguel released her but only so he could flatten a forearm over her breasts and hold her in place. “I want you here, right here. Not moving until I’ve figured out what to do with you.”

  She could do that, do anything he wanted. It wasn’t dark yet, but if he told her to strip down to nothing, she wouldn’t think of the consequences beyond what the sight of her might do to him. How strange to care about nothing except him.

  And liberating.

  Blanco gave another of his short, soft snorts. She would have laughed if Miguel hadn’t pressed his free palm against her mouth just then. Although she guessed he was warning her to say nothing, she couldn’t help nibbling on his baby finger.

  His chuckle, the first she’d heard from him, made her smile. Knowing they had precious little in the way of privacy was both disconcerting and exciting. Of course Blanco had a clear view of whatever took place.

  She was trying to look over her shoulder at the mustang when sudden, unexpected pressure against her mons lifted her onto her toes. Miguel had released her mouth and now cupped her sex, or rather what he could reach of it through her cotton shorts. “That was…”

  “What? Don’t you want me to?”

  “I do, Miguel, I do.” Sighing in expectation and pleasure, she settled back down onto the balls of her feet. His forearm still pressed against her breasts; she’d have to fight him if she wanted to free herself, not that she had any interest in doing so.

  How long had she waited for him to touch and control her like this, months. Thousands of months.

  Eyes blurring, she stared at the ceiling she couldn’t have described if her life depended on it and gave into his touch. Became his touch. He no longer simply rested his forearm against her breasts but had rotated his arm and now covered one breast with his palm. The other palm, of course, continued to shelter and tease her crotch. Both hands were moving, kneading her clothing and beneath that flesh in danger of melting.

  Her mouth dried. In contrast, her sex juices drenched her underpants. She dimly acknowledged how quickly they’d gone from a simple “hello” to groping—or rather her being groped. But she wouldn’t have come here if she hadn’t wanted this or something like it to happen.

  And more.

  Once again the nearby speakers’ voices filtered into Blanco’s stall. Someone said something about rusty tasting water. Another someone agreed.

  “We can’t—” she began.

  “I know.”

  Because she couldn’t do anything on her own, she waited for him to lay out what they needed to do and where they should go, but he continued to hold her suspended somewhere on the downhill side of sanity. Yes, she was still in danger of melting, but it had become more than that. A single flame and she’d go off like a rocket.

  “My life’s pretty solitary,” he told her with his breath warming the top of her head. “Not much interaction with the opposite sex.”

  Because you’re as wild as the land you roam. “I’m surrounded by the opposite sex, not that it matters.”

  “No work-related affairs?”

  “None.” His hands and arms had gone still on her. “Most are married. Those that aren’t—there’s never been anything. No spark.”

  “Not like what’s happening between us?”

  “Not remotely,” she admitted, suddenly on the brink of laughter. “This thing we have going defies description.”

  “Yeah, it does.” Leaning over, he placed his lips against the top of her head.

  The unexpected whisper of intimacy relaxed her, soothed a little of the energy snapping throughout her. She tried to imagine them years down the road when looking at each other didn’t send them racing for the nearest bed. Instead, they’d curl up together on the couch to watch TV.

  No, they were far from that.

  Needing something she couldn’t define, she ran her fingers over his arms. Next she slid them under his shirtsleeve where powerful muscles reinforced what she knew of his life.

  “I love it that you’re a cowboy,” she told him. “The timelessness, the permanency of what you do.”

  “Permanency?”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “I wonder, will my son or daughter be able to earn a living the way I have, or are things changing too much? Like the mustangs, will they be corralled?”

  “You think they shouldn’t be?”

  “I want them left alone to live the way they have for hundreds of years.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Was this the time to tell him about the BLM program she’d signed on for? Yes, but if she did, it might ruin everything between them.

  Maybe because he continued to trap her with his unmoving body, she left off her exploration of his arms and remained silent. Taking hold of his shirt, she tugged it out of his waistband. She touched his warm, naked sides.

  “Careful,” he groaned.

  “You’re telling me to be careful, after this?” She pushed her hips toward him.

  “I’m just warning you.”

  “And I’m doing the same.”

  When he didn’t reply, she risked touching him
again. No, she wouldn’t say anything that could jeopardize these moments. Later, much later. He shivered, and his breath snagged. Taking pity on him, she increased the contact so hopefully her touch no longer tickled. With his lower body angled away from hers, she could only guess what was going on between his legs. Hoped it was what she needed.

  Blanco stomped his foot and snorted, loudly. Laughter fueled by nervous anticipation escaped her lips. “I think he wants us to leave him alone.”

  “After what he did today, he deserves the rest.” His fingers still trailing over her mons, Miguel took a miniscule step backward. “It isn’t much, but my camper’s private.”

  “I’m sure it is,” she managed, unable to drag her fingers off a part of his skin that hadn’t been rubbed rough by the elements.

  8

  Miguel was careful not to touch Dawn as he led the way to the collection of campers, trailers, and tents at the far end of the fairgrounds. Because he’d fed, watered, and rubbed Blanco down before she’d shown up, he only had to make sure the stallion was settled in for the night before going to bed himself. At least that had been his plan before the woman who’d taken up too much of his thoughts had made her presence known.

  He was a fool, a damn turned-on fool!

  Pulling his keys out of his back pocket, he unlocked the camper door. Instead of climbing into it, however, he pushed the door open and stepped back to let her go first. If she couldn’t handle the cramped quarters, now was the time for her to say.

  After a brief hesitation, she brushed past him, climbed the three steps, and entered the small, metal structure. Staring at her neatly rounded ass, he forced himself to come to grips with reality. She, the only woman he’d ever fucked within a few minutes of meeting her, had come looking for him. She’d seen what he’d accomplished with Blanco and hopefully understood how proud he was of the intelligent stallion. More to the point of the moment, she’d endured his adolescent groping of her in Blanco’s stable. Even more to the point, she’d agreed to come here.

  Yeah, he was a fool! A mature man would have handled things differently, damn it! Instead of zeroing in on her shorts-shielded crotch, a male worthy of the label would have taken her hand, asked her out to dinner, something, anything civilized.