Stripped Down (12 page)

Rose whimpers.

I actually debate yelling for Axel to go away and then finishing her. She’s so close, and I’ve waited so long for this.

Axel barrels into the room, on a mission to empty the fridge. He’s halfway there before he even realizes we’re there.

“Whoa,” he says, coming to a halt.

Rose gives him a half smile that makes his eyes narrow. Yeah, he smells trouble. Since I’m pinning Rose to the counter, I also block his view and that’s fucking convenient. She’s mine, not his.

So shoot me. I’m a possessive bastard.

“New ink?” Axel asks, his gaze dropping to Rose’s bare leg. It’s about all he can see of her, and that’s just because she’s decided to drive her heel into my thigh. I’m lucky I didn’t park her above the knife drawer, because she’d probably go for my balls.

The tattoo in question is part of the vine-tree-thing that stretches over her spine. I can see two yellow flowers and one pink.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I did it myself.”

“Didn’t it hurt?” He rummages in the fridge for sandwich fixings. Rose flushes, like she’s wondering if he knows what we were doing. If he’s silently judging us.

She shrugs. “Pain’s relative.”

What the fuck has she seen or done that makes her so blasé about tracing a needle over her own thigh? Axel sees something too, because he nods slowly. I scoop Rose off the counter and drop her on her feet. She elbows me hard in the stomach, and I’m pretty sure she was aiming for Mr. Happy.

“Grab your shoes.” I smack her on the butt too, and I can practically hear her brain explode. She’s torn between yelling at me and plotting a sneakier, more painful demise for me. This is where I have the advantage because I grew up with two brothers and an endless supply of cousins. This, followed by two tours of duty with the US Navy, has made me an expert on aggravation and practical jokes.

“Rose is riding out with me,” I tell Axel. “We’re gonna check on the water trough on the south side.”

Axel nods like this is perfectly normal and crams the remains of his first sandwich into his mouth. Usually, it’s his job to check the troughs, so he scores out of this one as I herd Rose toward the door. When we reach the bottom of the stairs, I lean down so I can whisper in her ear. My dirty girl likes that.

“If I have to come get you, I’m finishing what we started in the kitchen wherever I find you.”

She turns red as a peony. “That was all you in there,” she hisses.

As if her pussy wasn’t wet.

I glide my hand down her arm and over the pulse banging in her wrist. She’s excited and we both know it.

“Tell me no and I’ll go away,” I tell her.

She doesn’t.

ANGEL

I need to establish a few ground rules before we get to our destination. At least she’s a captive audience in my truck. It’s summer, there’s a drought, and we’re driving through acres of brown plain rimmed by mountains. It’s not like the close up landscape’s gonna hold her attention.

“When we get to the trough, you follow the rules.”

Rose has got me hotter than hell, but she’s more
rush in
than
hold back
. That’s great for sex—as long as it’s with me—but not so safe around cattle. Those beasts are gonna outweigh her. When she looks at me, all sweet innocence, I add, “I mean it, Rose. No games.”

I wait for her nod, because I need the buy in.

“Sure.” Her hand darts out and flicks the radio on. She’s not one for silence, either. She used to blast pop music out of her room the summer she lived with us, and I’d hear her dancing around, belting out the lyrics. Her voice is good, and I used to think she might make a career out of singing. Used to think lots of things.

I cover her fingers with mine. “Give me the words.”

“I can follow the rules.” When she spots the grin tugging my mouth, she slaps my fingers away with her free hand. “I can.”

I let her, nursing the small sting as I guide the truck down yet another dirt road. “You never met a rule you didn’t want to break, Rose.”

“I was a kid,” she protests.

“You were sixteen and old enough to know better. You took the truck out into the foothills and camped out in the truck bed for two days. You had a bonfire going when I showed up, although the only food you had were marshmallows and beer. Three days after that, you toilet papered my barn. Four days later, you did the same to my orchard. If I posted a no trespassing sign, you’d be sitting just beyond it in a lawn chair.”

“I did those things
once
.” She gives me a devilish grin.

Okay. So she’s the best kind of trouble.

“You cemented my saddle to the tack room wall and I woke up one morning and you were all sleeping in the cattle chute.”

“Those were pranks,” she protests. As if it makes everything better that she did it for fun and laughs. The guys in my SEAL team were also pro-prank. Shit got so frequent there that I’d had to think stuff up proactively. Of course, everything’s fun right up until someone dies or fires a mortar round into your fucking tent.

Case in point? “When I discovered you in said cattle chute, I’d just pulled up with a load of bulls.”

The discovery took at least ten years off my life. After you’ve seen a grown man go down beneath a thousand pounds of animal, you know exactly what would happen to a small girl like Rose. “What do you think would have happened if I’d unloaded directly into the chute?”

“You didn’t. We all knew you wouldn’t run cattle in that chute without double-checking first. You were always careful.”

Rose pulls her hair up into another one of those gravity-defying twists she likes so much. Her new do exposes the back of her neck and the top of her tattoo. There’s an orange flower right where her hair meets her neck. It’s half-open, half-closed, a bright pop of color.

“I closed gates. You opened them.” I could list her misdemeanors for hours, and not because I hold a grudge—but because there were so goddamned many of them. It’s a miracle she got any sleep. “You drove that car of yours twenty miles an hour over dirt and we all knew you were coming when we saw the road dust. I said: Be home by nine, and you’d drop my brothers off at nine. The next morning.”

“A simple misunderstanding?” She grinned over at him. “Next time, you knew better. You clarified.”

“No games today. You do what I say.”

“Sure thing, boss.” She flicks me a two-fingered salute.

As we jolt down the dirt road, Rose hums along to a country hit playing on my appropriated radio dial. Her taste in music has certainly changed since she was sixteen. I’m not sure it’s improved, though. The song is all heartsick love and loneliness, suiting the sky ahead of us, which is filling up fast with dark clouds. The air is pure tension, and I’ll have a storm on my hands soon enough.

When we reach the trough, the galvanized tank that should hold almost a hundred gallons is as dry as a bone. The pipeline from the source well runs almost a mile to this particular trough. If that well is running dry, too, Mother Nature has just raised the stakes on me.

Grabbing my tool belt from the back of the truck, I wade through the thirsty cattle and swing myself up onto the trough. The inch or so of standing water is barely enough to wet my boots, which explains the cattle’s unhappiness. They’re depending on me to drink, and I’m failing them. I get busy with the wrench, working the valve until the water seeps out grudgingly, flowing just a little faster.

Bottom line? There’s not enough. The pipeline is only delivering maybe five, ten, gallons per minute—far less than I need to keep the trough full. The cattle will drink today, and there may even enough to get the herd through the rest of the summer, but the well is clearly running on empty. Exhibit A is the sluggish trickle from a pump that should flow hard and fast.

Never content to watch, Rose slides out of the truck and wanders over to lean on the railing. Watching.

Her eyes move over the milling cattle and the too-empty trough. “Empty?”

I don’t want to have this conversation right now. Silently, I point the wrench at the too-slow stream of water feeding into the trough.

She frowns, fingernails tapping on the railing. Those nails are bright blue today with teeny-tiny yellow polka dots. Rose loves color. “You checked the pump?”

Better to have a broken pipe or a clogged pump than the truth. I’ve brought three drillers out to the ranch, and they’ve all said the same thing. There wasn’t enough rainfall this last winter, and the aquifer is done. My ranch drained it dry. The change hadn’t happened overnight, but the slow, steady suck—decades of overuse—still spells the end unless I pull the ultimate Hail Mary and strike cheap water.

“Pump’s sucking air.” I give the valve one last, hard twist. Tightening the hardware won’t help, but better to do something than nothing. “Water level’s just too damn low.”

She chews on her lower lip, running through an unseen mental checklist. “You had someone out here to take a look?”

Yeah. And they told me my only hope is the water underneath Rose’s beloved house. Bulldozing those walls means knocking down her dreams, too.

“I’m working on it,” I tell her, not wanting to take everything away from her right now. I’ll call it in. One of the hands can bring the water truck out here and fill her up.”

If I give her more time, will she see the light and decide to sell? I shoot her a sidelong glance. In addition to the tattoo that runs down her spine, she’s got tattoos inside her wrists and another, smaller tattoo twined around her ankle. She seems to be all about the flowers and bold swirls of ink. They’re fucking gorgeous, bursting with color and life.

“I don’t know how you lost that contest. The other guy had nothing on you.” Shit. My voice sounds gruff.

“You watched?” She sounds surprised.

“Every episode.” I give the equipment another once-over. The other guy had nothing on her.

“I want to open my tattoo shop here,” she says eagerly.

“Right here?” I say dryly. I love my ranch and have nothing but fucking appreciation for my herd, but it’s not where you’d head to get a tattoo done.

She punches me on the arm. “Don’t be so literal. The plan’s to do it in Auntie Dee’s house. Rory’s going to be my right-hand guy, and we’re going to give the best ink in the state.”

“Thought you might prefer somewhere busier,” I say.

She shrugs. “I love that house and I love my job. I can make it work.”

I understand why she wants to open her own shop. It’s just the Lonesome part that doesn’t make sense—it would be like me running cattle in downtown San Francisco. Some places are simply wrong for the job. She’s not going to have a million cowboys lining up for tats, not unless she’s inking dicks.

Fuck, but I’m screwed.

And it must be my un-birthday, because I discover fate isn’t finished with me yet. I’ve obviously pissed that bitch off big time. The truck has a flat. Punctured tires are an occupational hazard out here, but we’re not going anywhere until I change the tire. Taking the rough ranch roads on bare rim would jack the truck’s suspension and bounce Rose around like rocks in a can.

When I grab the jack out of the pickup bed, Rose pops up by my side. “You want a hand with that?”

Gotta wonder what makes her so uneasy with accepting help or letting someone else do the heavy lifting. Ignoring her, I strip off my shirt, hang my hat on the side mirror, and lower myself down, sliding under the truck to free the spare with the wrench.

Rose’s bare legs move in and out of my field of vision. She’s got the prettiest thighs, golden brown from the sun. Her ink seems to be focused on her back, shoulders and arms, but I can think of a few designs I’d draw on that smooth, bare skin. Granted, I’d be playing artist with my tongue and my teeth, but the insta-boner in my jeans is a distraction I don’t need.

She crouches down. I swear the world about stops because her crotch is right on my eye-level and there’s no way I’m not looking. Her shorts cut into the soft curve of her upper thigh, and I want to shove the denim out of the way and lick the shadowy hollow. I’ll bet she’s got on a pair of cute panties. Given how brief her shorts are, they’re gonna be real tiny panties.

“You need anything?”

Jesus. I’d be happy to give her a list.

“I’m good,” I tell her roughly, although I should be honest. I’m bad. I shouldn’t have brought her out here, and I shouldn’t be fantasizing about stripping her shorts off, spreading her in the back of my truck, and eating her until she screams. But I am. Fuck, am I ever.

The spare pops free right before I spontaneously combust and I slide it out. She stands up, moving away because she’s never been one for sitting still. Somewhere close by, thunder rumbles, and the cattle call restlessly.

“We’re going to have rain,” I say, but there’s no response. Figures. When I want her far away from me, she sticks like a burr. When I want her close at hand, she goes off. Sliding out from beneath the truck, I sit up and spot the rain sweeping down from the hill. Water’s good, but the timing sucks. We’re gonna get soaked.

The gray sheet of rain heads for us with more accuracy than the last guided missile I launched at enemy aircraft right before everything went to fucking hell in Afghanistan. It was raining then, too, and we’d been ass-planted in a valley on the Pakistan border. The Indian monsoons had dumped water on us mercilessly, and it had been a toss-up which was worse—the never-ending wet or the baking heat. For too long, the razor-sharp, hostile peaks and the sodden grass of that Afghani valley eat up my ranch, my cattle, and my girl. I’m back in that hellhole, and I want to tell that stupid ass to fall back. To get out because a whole different kind of hurt is coming from him. My voice dries up and I can’t get the words out, though. All I can do is crouch in the grass, my finger clenching on the trigger, unaware that the enemy is sneaking up on me for the last time.