The Cowboy Page 12

  “Stop,” I said.

  “I can’t, I can’t. Cody. I’m so close…so close—”

  I pulled my hands away from her body, because I wanted my mouth on her when she did it. I wanted to taste her. Feel her.

  “No!” she cried out. “What are you doing?”

  I stepped back and she turned, dropping her skirt. She leaned back against the wall. Her eyes so blissed out, her skin pink and red. Her nipples against that shirt.

  Jesus, god.

  I looked up at the ceiling and prayed for strength.

  “You want to watch me do it?” she whispered. She began lifting her skirt. “Is that your thing?”

  My body tautened.

  “Does that help you keep all your rules intact? Does that help you keep things from getting messy? You don’t mind the come, it’s the feelings you don’t want all over your hands.”

  Fuck. She nailed it. That was the whole appeal of My Morning Girl. Well, clearly not all of the appeal.

  Why was I thinking about her right now? Why were they so confused in my head?

  Bea bunched that skirt up around her waist and tucked it behind her back so her hands were free. And her hands went down to the soaking red silk of her underwear, pulled askew by my hands.

  “It won’t feel as good without you,” she whispered. Her eyes were losing that blissed-out look, and instead her gaze was sharpening its way into a blade and her mouth wasn’t soft and kissable anymore. It was a straight line. “The one time I’m going to let you touch me and you don’t want a piece of this?”

  “One time?”

  “Your rules are a drag, Cody. I don’t fuck guys with so many rules.”

  I shoved her up against that wall, my body flat against hers. She gasped, but her eyes on mine did not lose their edge. And her anger made the air taste like smoke.

  “I like you like this,” I told her, looking down into that pissed-off sweetheart of a face of hers.

  “I don’t like you much at all.”

  I didn’t call her a liar, but I bent my knees and arced my cock up against the heat and wet of her. And I did it again and again. Until her lips parted on a moan and the skin of her neck went red.

  “You want to know why I stopped?”

  “Because you’re a coward?”

  Yes. But that was a different conversation. “Because I want to taste you as you come. I want all of this…” My hand slid down over her wet pussy. “All over my mouth. Because I want to suck on your clit until you scream my fucking name. Because my fingers inside of you isn’t enough, I want it to be my tongue—”

  “Then do it,” she spat.

  Oh, man, how easy it would be to love this woman. Maybe I already did. I couldn’t unravel the threads of what I felt.

  Her face softened. “Do it,” she whispered. “Please.”

  And I got down in front of her as best I could, I found a position my knee could live with for the moment, knowing I would pay for this later. But now, right now, I was drunk on her. Drunk on the smell of her, the heat I could feel on my face. I put my mouth right over the wettest part of those panties and she flinched against me like I’d touched her with fire.

  God, the taste of her. I’d go to bed tonight and probably every other night for months thinking about this, right here. The salty sweetness of this woman’s pussy. I sucked on her until she cried out. Until her knees buckled again.

  And then I got serious.

  I pulled that underwear out of the way, leaving it just above her knees because I liked the way that looked. Dirty and desperate.

  My cock was so hard it hurt. But like I did with anything I couldn’t be bothered to feel while I was competing, I put it out of my head. My body was down the list of shit that mattered.

  She was so primed I could feel the tension in her body.

  “You’re so ready, Bea,” I whispered, blowing against her pussy. I saw goose bumps lift against the skin of her thighs.

  “Hurry.”

  I laughed. No fucking way was I hurrying. This might be my only time on my knees in front of this woman. I wasn’t going to waste my shot. With my thumbs I stroked the edges of those lips, pulling them back just slightly until I saw the pink of her and then…there. the glossy hard ridge of her clit.

  “Look at you. So pink. So pretty.”

  She made some indecipherable groaning sound in her throat. She was getting pissed but was too far gone to push me away.

  “I like you like this,” I said and pressed a kiss against that clit and then pulled away. She followed me with her hips, but I pushed her back against the wall. “So fucking desperate to come you don’t even care that you’re mad at me. I can play with you all day and you’d let me.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” she said.

  From my position on my knees I looked up at her. “You’re beautiful,” I told her.

  “Make me come.”

  I laughed in my throat. My belly. My fucking heart. And I did what she asked.

  I put my mouth right to that pretty clit and sucked and a slid a finger deep inside her and I could tell it wasn’t enough, so I gave her another one and I found that fleshy spot inside her body and I gave it some love, too.

  And, god, there would be nothing in my life as amazing as this woman coming against my mouth. Her come ran down my hand and the walls of her pussy clenched down hard on my fingers.

  Her fingers gripped my head, pushing me into her, holding me there until all I could breathe was her scent. She shook and she shook and she cried out high and loud, and when she finally stopped she slid down the wall until she was sitting across my knees.

  “Oh, my god,” she whispered. Her hands were over her face, her skirt draped over us like a blanket. I could feel the heat of her pussy through my shorts.

  “You okay?” I whispered and pulled her hand away from her face. “No, baby,” I breathed, horror flooding my body so hard and so fast I nearly gagged. Because she was crying. Tears clung to her lower eyelashes. “I hurt you.”

  When would I learn? When would I fucking learn? It didn’t matter what my intentions were, I hurt everything I touched. I struggled to get to my feet, but my knee made it impossible, and instead I ended up bracing my arm against the wall and trying to use it for leverage to stand up.

  She stopped me by putting her hand on my cock. The heat of her palm made the fabric of my shorts irrelevant. Her touched seared me. Scorched me.

  “I’m crying because you made me feel so good,” she said.

  That was some Grade A bullshit and I shook my head.

  “It’s true, Cody.”

  “I have to—” I said and then stopped because my weakness was suddenly too much. “My knee, Bea.”

  She let go of me and actually helped me to my feet. The embarrassment was chilling. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t fucking stand it.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  No. “Fine.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She was on her feet, too, between me and the wall. Her breasts, when she took that deep inhale, touched my chest and I stepped away.

  “Yeah.” My laugh was dry and awful. Because inside I was dry and awful. “Me too.”

  “Don’t…” She cupped my face in her hands and I wanted to shrug her off. I wanted to step away but I was in so much pain and her touch felt so damn good. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “You’re not sorry you touched me. And I’m not sorry I let you. That was the best orgasm of my life, Cody.”

  I pulled my face away because there was something similar about her words. About the tone.

  You’ll get back on your feet. You’ll be better before you know it.

  I stepped back and my knee lurched, and she reached forward to grab me but I pushed her hands away.

  “Cody,” she said, still coming for me.

  “This is over.”

  She blinked at me and I sounded like a dick. I got that a hundred percent, but I needed her to g
o. I was in pieces here.

  “Look at you,” she said. And I knew what she was looking at. I was a fucking mess. I’d nearly come about 800 times in my shorts and I was hard as stone and probably would be for days. “Please. Let me touch you—”

  Watching her face so I could see exactly what kind of pain I caused, I slipped my hand into my shorts. I bit my lip against the pleasure that was so sharp it was practically painful.

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  Yeah. I did it anyway. Three hard strokes and my orgasm exploded through me. I forced myself not to shut my eyes. Not to stagger back. I stood, rock solid, and watched her face go white and distant.

  I pulled my hand out and wiped it off on the back of my shorts, and finally she looked away. She hiked up her skirt as if to show me everything I’d had in my grasp and never would again but it was really only so she could pull up her underwear.

  Her legs were splayed out differently than they had been when I was between them, or maybe I was just less distracted, but I caught a glimpse of what looked like a birthmark, on the inside of her thigh.

  My Morning Girl had the same mark.

  But then she dropped her skirt and I told myself it was a shadow and a trick of my mind. It had to be, right? I couldn’t even process it so I did what I did with everything I couldn’t process.

  I shoved it aside to be dealt with later.

  She grabbed her purse from where it had fallen on the other side of the door, next to the brisket and the beer. When she stood she put her hands through her hair and sighed heavily, the kind of sigh that, if she were alone, maybe would be a scream.

  “This,” I said, my voice a sandpaper rasp. “Is why I had the rules.”

  “I don’t give a shit.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore,” I told her. As plain as I could. My soul right there.

  That made her look at me and I couldn’t read her expression. Her face could have been carved from marble. And not for the first time and probably not for the last I thought—Jesus. She’s so damn pretty.

  I could tell she wanted to say something. She probably had a laundry list of shit she wanted to say. About how I hurt her anyway. About how I was hurting myself more than I was hurting anyone else. All of it completely true. But it didn’t change anything. And maybe she figured that out, because she grabbed her purse, opened the door.

  And walked away.

  And I spent my night drinking that Shiner.

  Thinking about birthmarks and lies.

  17

  BEA

  That was…well, that was a lot of things. But mostly it was what I deserved.

  It was a miracle I got into my Jeep, my hands were shaking so hard. When I sat, I winced because he’d used my clit hard. Tears burned behind my eyes again.

  Don’t, I told myself. Don’t sit in front of his house and cry. Don’t be that girl.

  I started the Jeep and turned the corner around the block and tried not to do it. Tried with every foot between me and that broken-down, emotionally stunted cowboy to shore myself up. To get my armor back in place.

  But it didn’t work. I pulled over and stared out the windshield at the Dusty Creek Elementary playground, empty except for a mother with a stroller and a toddler she was pushing on a swing.

  You’ll be okay, I told myself. It was the first in a long litany of things I used to tell myself when I was a kid. When my dad or stepmom would say some shitty thing about me.

  They don’t know you. Not really.

  That’s how bad Cody had just hurt me. H’de knocked me right back into my childhood.

  Somehow, someway, I’d given him access to that little spot in me. That core place that no one saw. No one got to know. Because he did fucking know me.

  The tears came hard. Like sobs. And I gave myself three of them. And then I pushed the tears off my face. Hardened the soft, miserable parts of myself that he’d bruised. What hurt the most, maybe, was how intentionally he’d done it. How clear he’d made it that every second against that wall was a mistake for him.

  A regret.

  I’d been a lot of men’s mistake. And I’d regretted a lot of men.

  But Cody…fuck. Cody was different. Or I’d thought he was, anyway. Stupid me. Again. How many men had I thought were different only to have them treat me the same as every other man?

  But even as I thought that it seemed wrong. Cody had hurt me. A slice right through the heart. But not like the other men who’d hurt me, because they’d been lying all the time and Cody…Cody never once lied.

  It was me, always me, that was lying to him.

  A couple of deep breaths and I had myself back under control. This was for the best. I had been in danger of falling for that guy. And falling pretty hard. It wasn’t nice what he did, but it was the reminder I needed.

  Cody was not for me.

  When I got back to my apartment, I parked behind Sweet Things because Sabrina had two parking spots back there and she only used the one. Which saved me from having to buy a parking permit for the street.

  We usually never saw each other. Her hours were different from mine and I tried pretty damn hard not to run into her. But tonight the lights were on in the bakery and the air smelled like buttery crust in the oven.

  And I wanted my sister. But Ronnie was on the other side of the continent and Sabrina was the only sister option open to me.

  She probably won’t make you feel better, I told myself. Because we weren’t those kinds of sisters.

  But we were some kind of sisters and I was desperate.

  The parking area behind the bakery also held the dumpster and a big composter Sabrina was fanatical about. The back screen door was shut, but the storm door was open and a welcoming light and smell were coming out from it.

  As well as the sound of Lady Gaga. My sister’s time in Los Angeles had nearly ruined her sense of music. Luckily Lady Gaga came out with a suitable country album and “Million Reasons” was blasting from the kitchen.

  I opened the screen door and poked my head inside. “Hello?” I said.

  Sabrina popped up from behind one of the stainless-steel worktables. “Bea!” She actually smiled to see me and I felt myself smile back. ‘What are you doing here?” she asked.

  It would have been so easy to lie. I’d been lying to Sabrina my whole life. Pretending something I never really felt, just to show her I didn’t feel anything. “I had a…really bad day.”

  She actually looked like a deer in headlights. Like she was terrified I was going to need her help. She glanced around like Ronnie might magically show up to save her from this sisterly moment.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, saving her. “You’re usually not open at this time.”

  She pursed her lips and I had no idea what she was thinking. For a person I’d spent half my life with, she was a total mystery. “Garrett and I had a fight and he needs to learn a lesson about taking a girl for granted.”

  “Garret’s taking you for granted?” Seemed impossible. Garrett was a class-act Southern boy madly in love with Sabrina.

  “He’s thinking about it. I can tell.”

  “Preemptive lesson. I like it.” Her hands were coated in flour and the table in front of her had rolled-out dough cut in circles. “Well, you’re busy—”

  “I’m not busy,” she said. “I’m working on a different kind of pie crust. I added vodka. It’s supposed to make it flakier.”

  She pulled a bottle of vodka from the shelf under the table, and because my sister never did things in half measures it was a big bottle. Of the good stuff. And our eyes met as she held it up and slowly her eyebrow lifted.

  “Want to have a drink?” she asked.

  “I want to get blind drunk,” I said.

  My sister was beautiful. It was documented in magazines like People and shit. But this moment, with the flour and the bottle of vodka and the happiness she wore like sunlight dress—well, she’d never been lovelier.

  The vodka still
in hand she looked around. “I’ve got some glasses,” she said. ” But I don’t have anything to mix it with.”

  “Leave it to me,” I said. Because there were lemons in a basket on the corner and a seven-gazillion-pound bag of sugar on the far bench.

  Within twenty minutes we were drinking Lemon Drops out of coffee mugs and eating a baked piecrust dripped in whipped cream she’d had in the walk-in cooler.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, with whipped cream stuck to her upper lip. We were both a little loose.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The bad day. And…you’ve been crying.”

  “What? Don’t be ridiculous—”

  “Bea,” she said. “You and Ronnie are exactly alike. Your face holds on to your tears long after you’re done crying.”

  “That’s…kind of beautiful.”

  “Yeah, I’m a real poet,” she said with a sigh. “What happened? No, wait, let me guess. You gave all the inheritance to some asshole guy who gives good head and now you need money?”

  Her eyes were bright as she sipped out of her coffee mug. And this is what we did. She took a shot and then I’d take a shot right back and then we’d be fighting. For our entire lives that’s what we’d done. And I was too damn tired.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Please.”

  The coffee cup paused on the way up to her mouth and she put it down again. “Bea. I’m sorry.”

  “I know, usually this is our thing. But I can’t fucking do it tonight. Okay?”

  “Of course. Yeah. I’m sorry. Tell me…what happened?”

  It took two mugs full of booze and more than my half of the piecrust. But I told her. I told her about Cody. About what we did at dawn and then what we’d done in the afternoon. How I lied to him. And how I liked him.

  “Wait a second…not to get caught up on the details here, but you…” She circled her hand around her crotch.

  “Don’t be a prude.”

  “In public?”

  “In the extreme privacy of my side deck. And he stands behind the oak, and it’s all really secretive.”

  Sabrina’s eyes were wide open. “That’s hot.”

  I laughed. “Yeah. It was. And now it’s over and I fucked it all—”