Wrangler (14 page)

T
he scents of rich, comforting food and campfire fill my nose. 

But, there is only one thing I want to eat right now and that’s her pussy.  I’m sure all this food is delicious, but I’m not thinking about that. I’m not hungry nor thirsty. Fuck, I’m only breathing because it’s a reflex. All I can think about is how I can secure Rachel into my life for good.

Okay, I’ll be honest.  I’m thinking about other things too.  My mouth is watering for another taste of her sweet cum for sure.  But, I’m about to lose my mind thinking of fucking her for the first time.  Sinking so deep inside her she’ll feel it in the back of her throat.  I want her to remember our first time forever.  I want her sore, taking tentative steps for a week so she doesn’t go a second without remembering when I claimed her for the first time.

“You still got that dog I see.”  Enrique’s says, the seemingly ever present smile curves at the corners of his lips as Leroy limps into the circle around the fire and plops down at Rachel’s feet giving me a territorial squint before setting his head on his front paw.

Singular.

Jessie laughs through closed lips. “Tell Chad how you got Leroy.”

I look across and she meets my gaze, then throws up a long neck Budweiser to her lips and empties it. Her grin is both an acknowledgement and a warning.
Just don’t hurt her
. I nod, and the fire isn’t the only sparkle in her eye.

“I found him,” Rachel replies, crossing and uncrossing her ankles with a shrug of her shoulders.

Every cute thing she does like that makes it harder to stay focused.  My thumping need for her is incessant.  I want to know all her stories, listen to her talk all night, but this other force swirling inside me is sure making it difficult to sit still. 

A long silence falls between us all, tense like the edge of a thunderstorm. I’m waiting to hear the rest of the story but Rachel sits there thumbing something invisible on the knee of her jeans until Enrique waves his hands in the air.

“Naw, naw, naw.” Enrique lets out a belly laugh breaking the tension. “That’s not it.  She fought a grown man for that dog.” Enrique acts the part, punching the air.

“No.  It wasn’t like that.”  Rachel tries to minimize Enrique’s dramatic reenactment. She lets out a long breath and her discomfort at being the center of attention makes me want to draw her in next to me, reassure her and tell her how amazing she is.

“Tell me what happened,” I urge, eager to know everything about her.  I want to listen to her stories until she has no more to tell, then make new ones with her.  “Please.”

“Fine.”  She stuffs her hair behind her ears and I see her press her luscious thighs together, making my mouth water.  Jessie and Enrique seem to already know the story, so she’s not telling them. She’s telling me and I can’t believe how much I want to know.  “Jessie and I were in town. I was waiting for her to come back around and pick me up outside of McMillan’s market.”

I roll another stump next to her and sit down.  The warmth from the fire is pinking her cheeks and I watch the orange and yellow sparks reflect in her eyes.

“So, this guy pulls up in a rust bucket of a truck.  He’s got Leroy in the bed.  He’s wagging his tail and looking up expectantly, like he’s eager to please this guy.”  Rachel looks at me for a second as she pauses to take a breath.

I see the flush on her cheeks seeping down her neck and over her chest.  My thoughts are on the swell under her shirt and those nipples hardening in my mouth.

“And?”

“He just smacks the dog on the side of the head as he walks by, and Leroy looks so hurt.”  She stiffens her spine and I love that she’s feeling that moment of confidence.  “So I jumped up and told him that wasn’t nice.”

“She was sixteen; he must have been forty, maybe forty-five, and rounding out at three-hundred pounds if he was an ounce.”  Jessie adds with her head held high.

“Well, anyone would have done it. You don’t
do
that.” Rachel screws up her face in disgust at the thought, and reaches down scratch Leroy’s head.  “Anyway, he made some remark about the dog being his property and he can do what he wants or something.  Then he grabs Leroy by the neck and hauls him up and over the bed of the pickup, dropping him like a sack of potatoes on the sidewalk. He doesn’t even look back, just starts to walk away expecting the dog to follow.” 

Rachel chuckles and the sound of her laughter only hardens my dick more.  Her laugh is the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.  Outside of her moaning, and cumming, that is. 

“And that didn’t sit well with Rachel,” Jessie adds, taking a draw on a fresh beer, her silver gray hair piled on top of her head and tied in place with a stretch of soft green cloth.  Her weathered face is kind with a look of pride and admiration as she waits for Rachel to continue.

“So?”  I knock my knee into hers and that small touch sends my blood running through my ears and the wolf in me growling something about a mate.  “Then what?”

“Soooo,” she exaggerates the word.  “That dog just sat his butt down and looked at me.  Like he was sayin’, ‘Well?  Are you going to help me or what?’  The guy turns around and calls him but Leroy doesn’t move, he just keeps looking at me.  So the guy stomps back, starts to jerk his foot back like he’s going to kick him or something.”  Her indignation lights a fire in her voice and my heart swells with pride. 

“I said, ‘If you kick that dog, I’m going to punch you right in your fat stomach.’  I stood up, shaking like a leaf.  He laughs at me and cocks his foot back another few inches.  I don’t think he expects me to be serious, but I jump forward and hit him as hard as I can, right where I thought his belly button would be, because for some reason I’ve got this notion that it’s his weakest point.  I didn’t hurt him one bit. He just smiled at me. Then he leans down and starts to say something.  That’s when he wasn’t expecting what came next.”

Enrique can’t hold back his enthusiasm. “And then she comes up under his chin with another punch!  Right under his chin, knocked his teeth together so hard, one of them flew out and landed on the sidewalk.” 

Vanessa lets out a hearty laugh at Enrique as he does his Rocky impression dancing around punching the night air.

“And that dog been at her feet ever since.”  Jessie smiles with a satisfied nod.

I lean in to Rachel, wanting nothing more than to steal her away right now.  Even over the smoke and delicious food smell, it’s her.  A sweetness hangs in the air around her and I need it more than my body needs oxygen.  I want to live off her body, she’s all the sustenance I’ll ever need.

“You’re the most beautiful badass I’ve ever seen,” I tell her, watching her pull her shoulders up at my words.  I lower my voice so only she hears.  “And that ass is mine.”

RACHEL

W
e all laugh, and cut up and eat all the delicious food Vanessa cooked.  We drink up the beer and wine, and revel in the cool air of late summer and I’m as close to heaven as I think God made here on earth.

Much to my surprise, Chad doesn’t knock back the Budweiser’s with Jessie and Enrique.  And after some pushing from Jessie, he finally sips a bit of red wine from a Dixie cup but clearly the drink is not what he’s here for.

“So, where are you from?”  I pluck up a bit of courage to ask the gorgeous cowboy next to me an innocuous question.

“Well, I’ve been living out west for a few years. Oklahoma.”  He clears his throat and I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallows.  Even that part of him is sexy as heck; I imagine my lips there, feeling the masculine part of him move with the rasp of his day of beard under my lips.

“And before that?”  I bite into my last tamale, the red juice squirting out and dripping down my chin. Trying to slurp it back and hold it with one hand, I feel around for my napkin with the other before realizing I already tossed it in the fire.

Why do I do this to myself? I was sure I wasn’t going to eat the last tamale because my stomach was already fit to burst. 

Before I stand up to go wipe my dripping chin like a four-year-old, Chad’s fingers are there, scooping the liquid off my chin.

When he brings his fingers to his lips I can barely hold back the whimper that threatens to squeeze its way out of me. Some part of me wants to spread my legs for him right here and let him take what he wants, but instead I watch wide-eyed as he sucks his fingers clean, looking at me with eyes full of lust.

“Delicious.”  He bites his lip and another pair of panties bites the dust.

As the night draws on, Enrique and Vanessa take the family and head off to their cabin. 

“I’m going inside too,” Jessie adds. “Now you kids stay out here and make the most of the evening...”  Jessie looks over at me, then nods at Chad.

“Wait. Jessie. Are you sure?  I’ll come and help you clean up inside.”

What is wrong with me? 

“Sit
down
, Rachel.  I’m old but I’m not helpless.  You stay out here, have a little fun.”

“Yeah, Rachel, have some fun.”  Chad’s mocking tone spins my head around.

“Hey...I have fun!”

“Really?  When?  I want to know what you do for fun,” Chad challenges.

“Lots of things. All the time.”  I try to think of the last time I had fun. Writing is fun for me.  Drawing and painting.  In my head it sounds lame so I pinch my lips together and say nothing.

“Tell me.”  His eyes regard me up and down, not even trying to hide the fact that he’s giving me more than just a friendly glance. He’s ogling me and I like it.  “I want to know all about how you have fun.  I want to know all about you period.”

An eruption of warmth surges up my chest and into my cheeks.

That was flirting.  For sure.

“Oh yeah?” 

Jessie leaves us and Chad takes the conversation.  He doesn’t take
over
the conversation, but he leads it and it’s that quiet confidence that makes me flutter and float on the night air. 

I don’t remember ever talking so much with someone before, except maybe Jessie and Tabitha.  She couldn’t make it tonight, but we have a girls night scheduled for tomorrow.

I keep people at a distance, guard myself from them, but Chad has made quick work of chipping away my normal armor and I can’t even be sure when or how he did it.

He asks me all kinds of questions and then he
listens
to my answers.  You know how most people are when you first meet them, they ask you something, but they’re really waiting for their turn to talk.  The moment you take a breath, they jump in and want to tell you all about them, the things that they think are interesting, and whatever you could possibly want to share becomes a distant memory.

Not Chad.

He’s rapt. Absorbing every word like he’ll be taking a final exam on the subject matter that falls from my lips.

We talk about art, my writing, the chickens, even about Jessie.  He asks me what I dream of when I think about my future.  He asks me what I think about kids, and when I answer that being a good mom is one of my dreams, the way he smiles makes me want to fling myself on the ground in front of him, my ovaries exploding like tiny atom bombs.

I stay away from any of the ugliness in my past and he glazes over most of my questions for him. He’s so intent on me that I’m willing to ignore his clipped answers. After all, who doesn’t have a past they’d rather forget about?

The fire turns to flickering low flame, then glowing coals. The breeze turns the temperature down, sending cooler air over the standing hairs on my arms.

The surge of tension between us is growing as the fire dies.  He lifts my hand, pressing my fingers into his palm and squeezing. We are connected again and the moon shines out from behind a cloud like it’s been waiting for this moment just like me.

It’s the line, we’ve crossed it, and now I only need to follow along.

“I’m going to kiss you, Rachel.  I’m not asking, I’m letting you know.  And it won’t be the last time either,” Chad whispers, interrupting the self-doubt inside my head.  His voice is deep with smoke from the fire.

“What are you waiting for?” I tilt my head, soften my lips.

Surprising myself with how forward I am, I grab his head and twine my fingers in the soft, dark hair at his neck, nearly knocking his cowboy hat from its perch. When our lips meet I feel his breath but he holds us there for a million years, his hand on my cheek, his thumb circling the flushed skin. My heart races, my thoughts spin. For a split second, I’m engulfed in that same fear of being the butt of some joke.

Too late, the softness of his lips as they graze mine and all bets are off.  It’s like tiny electric shocks shooting into my brain and down my chest and I’m one of those lucky girls in one of the hundreds of books I’ve read.  He presses harder, with more urgency.  I part my lips as his tongue is warm and nudges forward, not asking, needing more.

He moves between my lips, over my teeth until our tongues collide.  He swoops up and down, around like he’s corralling me with this kiss.

He tastes like wine and lust and man.  His body moves closer, his long arms reaching around to my back, running down from my shoulder blades to the indent above my waist and then pulling me closer as his mouth captures mine.