Page 17 of Texas Kissing

Case in point: Lily.

One minute, she was into me, the next she was running. One minute she seemed to hate me, the next she was wrapped around me, soft and eager. She was the most frustrating woman I’d ever met…

...and yet I hadn’t stopped thinking about her in three days.

I kicked the fence, being careful not to spook the horse. I still couldn’t believe I’d pushed Kirsten away. Was Inuts?Kirsten, with her tight little body and that way she had of riding me, circling her hips like a goddamn belly dancer and gripping me between her thighs like I was a bronco trying to throw her off. We’d go like that for hours, out in the barn of her dad’s huge ranch, both of us bathed in sweat and her hair gleaming in the evening sun. Just the thought of her cute, perky breasts was enough to get me hard.

Or it had been, until Lily. Now, Kirsten didn’t interest me. I’d always loved that toned, tanned stomach with its little silver and diamond navel stud, displayed so proudly in crop tops and tied shirts. Butnow all I could think about was uncovering the creamy curves under Lily’s clothes. I wanted to strip her, slowly and carefully, exposing her inch by inch until she was nude. And then I wanted to run my hands all over her, cupping her shoulders, rubbing up and down her spine, stroking the outside and then the inside of her thighs until I knew every damn part of her, until she trembled and moaned under my touch.

I sighed at the horse and pulled the rope taut between my hands. “Now, are you going to cooperate?”

The horse stared back at me. If it could have raised an eyebrow, it would have.

Lily sure as hell wouldn’t cooperate. Part of me wanted to teach her a lesson—tie her and pull her over my knee and spank her ass until it glowed red and then roughly fuck her into submission. But she’d have to be into it, of course.

God, imagine if she was. The world stopped for fully five seconds as my mind turned over the possibilities.

No. She was way too innocent for that kinky shit. And right now, I’d take missionary position with the lights off, I was so hard for that girl.

I climbed up on the fence and put a comforting hand on the horse’s jaw. “How about we start over?” I said. “I’m Bull. I’m going to ride you. We can do it the hard way or the easy way, but I’m going to break you, no matter what.”

Dealing with horses really isn’t that complicated. Gentleness and force—it’s just a matter of using the right combination. Too gentle and you don’t make any progress. Too strong and you’ll scare them.

I stood there staring at the horse for a moment. It’dbeen three days. Maybe it was time to try again with Lily...but this time, with a gentler approach.

I don’t dogentle.Not with women. Some guys are all poetic:starlightthis andtranquilthat. I’ve never been much good with words.

But maybe it was time to start.

I pointed at the horse. “Don’t you go nowhere,” I warned. And pulled out my phone.

17

Lily

I’d spentthree days making passports and determinedly not thinking about him. Then, that morning, the air conditioning had gone on the fritz, so I was busy fixing it. I do my own maintenance, not because I enjoy it or I like the challenge but because I can’t have a maintenance guy poking around the bus and discovering tens of thousands of dollars worth of fake documents.

Because fixing the air conditioning meant digging into the bowels of the bus, from the inside, in July,without a/c,I’d taken most of my clothes off. I had the blinds drawn anyway to keep the worst of the sun out, so I figured it didn’t matter.

That’s why, when the phone rang, I was inside a claustrophobic crawl space, on all fours in my bra and panties, trying to keep the sweat out of my eyes while I tightened a loose hose. I listened to the ring tone and frowned, confused.

I have several phones on the go at any one time, “burners” I can use for business and periodicallythrow away. I color-code them with electrical tape.

Except this wasn’t the green phone I used to call the Mexicans, or the red one I used to call the Japanese, or even the blue one I used to call the Russians. This was the plain, boring one without any tape on at all. The one I kept for my normal, non-business life.

The one that never rang.

I backed out of the crawl space and grabbed the phone, expecting it to be a telemarketer. “Hello?”

“Been thinking about you,” said a deep Texas rumble. I almost dropped the phone. “How did you get this number?” I said when I’d recovered.

“Well nowthere’sa story. I had to do a whole heap of calling around. Eventually, I got it from Greta, at the library. I figured you probably read.”

“She shouldn’t have given that out! That’s confidential!”

“I threw myself on her mercy. I told her I wanted to woo you.”

“Woome? That’s what you call it?”